It had been more than 25 years since 34-year-old Kimberly Langwell — known as Kim — vanished after failing to return home on July 9, 1999. Her 15-year-old daughter, Tiffani McInnis, found Kim’s locked car in a strip mall parking lot the next day with no purse, wallet or keys inside. Investigators considered that Kim either left voluntarily with someone she trusted or had been abducted; no witnesses reported seeing anyone enter or exit the vehicle.
Early police work focused on people close to Kim. Her boyfriend, Ken Weatherford, who discovered the car, drew scrutiny because he waited until the following day to report it. A former supervisor, Frank McCormick, sent obsessive letters and unsettling photo collages but provided a grocery receipt that supported his alibi. Kim’s ex‑boyfriend, Terry Rose, a man she had been with for six years and who stayed in contact after their breakup, became a central suspect. Kim had stopped by Rose’s house the evening she disappeared; he later told police she was there briefly and then left to meet Tiffani. Detectives found his early statements vague and began watching him closely.
Rose voluntarily came in for questioning two days after Kim vanished and later failed a polygraph. Police searched his cluttered home but found no sign of Kim or overt evidence of a struggle. With no physical proof, the case cooled despite an FBI interview in 2001 in which Rose admitted one physical confrontation and acknowledged he had no alibi during the critical hours that night. Detectives, including former Beaumont detective Joe Ball, said they suspected Rose but lacked the evidence to charge him.
The case was reopened in 2023 by the television program Cold Justice. Beaumont detectives Heather Wilson, Mitch Sliger and Jesus Tamayo reexamined timelines, reinterviewed witnesses and revisited past suspects. Weatherford was eliminated from suspicion, and McCormick’s letters were addressed but did not break the case. The detectives kept returning to Rose, whose former partners and acquaintances described him as controlling and sometimes violent; family members recalled Kim telling them she feared him.
Investigators expanded their focus to Rose’s associates and circled back to David Wiley, a friend who had been at a pool hall with Rose the night Kim disappeared. Wiley had been interviewed decades earlier but had offered inconsistent, evasive answers. In April 2024 a grand jury compelled testimony. Wiley’s lawyer later told detectives he had information that could lead to Kim’s whereabouts, but Wiley wanted assurance he would not be prosecuted. With an agreement that he would not face charges, Wiley met with detectives and said Rose had confessed to him.
Wiley recounted that on July 9, 1999, Rose called and Kim was in her car. Wiley picked Rose up at a Walmart parking lot that night and later dropped him off at his house. The next morning, according to Wiley’s account, Rose told him they had argued, that Rose had shot Kim and that he had put her body “under the slab in one of the bedrooms.” Wiley passed a polygraph after providing that information. Detectives said Wiley’s statement gave them the lead they needed, but they still required physical evidence before moving toward charges.
Investigators planned a covert search. On June 10, 2024, Rose and his common‑law wife, Violet, were summoned to the police station under the pretext of an unrelated interview. While executing a search warrant on the house, officers used FBI equipment and ground‑penetrating radar to scan the floors. After an initial sweep, Texas EquuSearch founder Tim Miller and his team were called in. In a second bedroom, radar revealed a hollow area beneath tile where cinder blocks had been stacked and the flooring showed signs of disturbance.
Officers broke through tile and collapsed the cinder blocks to expose a void. In that space they found a key chain, a pair of sunglasses and, shortly after, small human bones believed to be toe bones. The discovery of human remains led to an arrest warrant. Undercover officers observed Rose leave a restaurant and arrested him on June 13, 2024, as the warrant was signed.
Excavation at the house continued through the night. Investigators recovered a skeleton wrapped in a blanket and observed a clear bullet wound to the back of the skull. DNA and dental records later confirmed the remains were those of Kimberly Langwell. Detectives said the site had functioned as a hidden grave where her body had been concealed for more than 25 years.
Terry Rose was charged with murder. Prosecutors said the motive was tied to control and possession: Kim had moved on and been involved with a new partner, and prosecutors said that led to a violent response from Rose. Facing what prosecutors described as strong evidence — the body found beneath a man’s floor, Wiley’s testimony and forensic confirmation — Rose’s defense entered plea negotiations.
Prosecutor Luke Nichols offered a deal in which Rose would plead guilty in exchange for a sentence up to 40 years with no right to appeal. At sentencing, David Wiley testified, admitting he had known the details in 1999 and had concealed them. He said he came forward decades later because he could not live with the secret. Wiley repeated Rose’s alleged confession that Kim had been shot in the back of the head.
Tiffani McInnis delivered a victim impact statement describing the years of uncertainty, the milestones missed and the void left by her mother’s absence. During sentencing, the judge criticized Rose’s attempts to minimize his actions and admonished him after prosecutors played a recorded jail call in which he discussed the crime with seeming callousness. The judge said that killing someone once loved and hiding the body beneath a home fit the dictionary definition of a psychopath.
Ultimately, Judge Raquel West sentenced Terry Rose to 40 years in the Texas Department of Corrections, the maximum under the plea agreement. Family members expressed mixed emotions about the plea but relief that the case had reached a resolution. Tiffani said no sentence could make things right but that she hoped Rose would “rot in jail.” Friends and relatives remembered Kim as a devoted, loving and strong mother; Tiffani said she tries to hold on to memories of how her mother lived rather than how she died.
For the investigators who had carried the case for years, the discovery provided a measure of closure: the remains of a missing woman located, the person accused held to account, and a grieving family finally able to know what happened and begin to grieve with certainty.