The surveyors were driving a station wagon that day. The green one in this picture is a nod to my stepfather, Harvey. He had a green 1964 Impala station wagon when my mother married him in 1967.

Chapter 1 || July 30, 1965 || Day 12 

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“We’ve found the girls.”

Friday Afternoon, North Austin

Around half-past one on that Friday afternoon, three surveyors began work on a site near the intersection of Rundberg Lane and North Lamar Blvd.

The parcel was about the size of two city blocks, vacant and treeless, covered in waist-high johnsongrass and wild sunflowers. It would be easy work  that afternoon since the temperature was only 93 degrees, much better than the triple digits earlier in the week.

July of 1965 had delivered brutal temperatures and little rain to the Austin area.

Surveyor Chester Guynes set up his tripod and transit and waited while the other two men, Rayburn Holstine and Gordon Powell, poked around in the dirt with shovels. They had walked to the far corner of the property where they were supposed to find an iron rod.

Left to right: Gordon Powell, Rayburn Holstine, and Chester Guynes. They found the girls’ bodies in a field they were surveying on 7/18/1965.

While Chester waited on his crew, a slight north breeze enveloped him in a stench so strong the surveyor felt obligated to investigate. He knew for sure it wasn’t small animal like a rabbit or an armadillo. The source was larger.

The surveyor took an old towel lying on the seat of his car and waded into the field, parting the tall johnsongrass and prickly stalks of the sunflowers with his hands as he went.

Chester wanted to look at the ground before he stepped, being careful to avoid the source of the smell should it be in his path. It was getting stronger; Chester put the towel over his face.

About thirty feet into his search, he saw a small clearing ahead about the size of a bathtub, a hole where neither the mammoth blades of johnsongrass grew nor the bouncing heads of sunflowers.

When he reached the clearing and saw inside of it, Chester expected what lay there. A corpse rested under a shallow covering of dead grass pulled from the ground by its roots and laid upon the body in a half-hearted attempt to hide it.

What Chester would remember the rest of his life was the color of the body, and how twelve days in the sun blackened the corpse to the color of charcoal.

He felt more sadness and anger than shock because he knew it was  one of the missing sorority sisters. No young woman’s body should be viewed in this grotesque condition.

Chester knew many more would see her like this today. He wanted to get a tarp and come back and cover her up out of respect, but he knew he couldn’t. Chester felt bad because he had to leave her like that.

“I’m so sorry,” he told the young woman. He wondered if he had said the words or just thought them, but he realized it didn’t matter. He just needed to get to a phone to call the authorities.

The surveyor turned around and retraced his steps through the field, heading back to his green Impala station wagon. Chester reached in the open window on the driver’s side and honked its horn to signal Rayburn and Gordon. When he had their attention, he waved them in.

As soon as they reached the car, Chester said, “We’ve found the girls, or at least one of them.”

Neither Gordon nor Rayburn had to ask, “What girls?” They knew Chester meant he had found one of the missing girls who had disappeared almost two weeks earlier.

For several days, the pretty, cheerful faces of Susan Rigsby and Shirley Ann Stark had become part of the men’s routines.

Pleas for information about the missing U.T. coeds had appeared in every Austin newspaper and all around Texas since they had gone missing. News stories about the girls had spread into national news, and even into Canada.

The radio mentioned the disappearance of “the brunette sorority sisters” constantly, and Austin’s Channel 7 flashed their pictures just as often.

Radio and television bulletins, like the newspapers, requested that anyone with information about the young women call the Austin police.

They drove to a little country market. It was a place they were familiar with, and it had a payphone outside where Chester could call and talk to the police, with no one hearing what he said.

He dropped a dime in the round slot and dialed. Lieutenant Detective George Phifer, a seasoned homicide investigator, promptly took his call.

After Chester finished describing what he had found to Detective Phifer, the men returned to the field to wait.

Until now, it had been twelve days since anyone had seen Shirley Ann Stark or Susan Rigsby.

Susan was 21 years old and embarking on her last two semesters of college. This picture came from Ancestry.com.

Shirley, age 21, had one more class to take before she would receive her teaching certificate. This picture came from Ancestry.com.

Coming in 2024, UNLIKELY VICTIMS by bk smith.

More pictures.