The Bathroom Slayings Part Three: Juanita Carroll

On April 24, 1977, 59-year-old Juanita Carroll was found dead inside the bathroom of her home on Ballinger Street in Abilene, Texas. Natural gas was flowing from a bathroom heater, and Juanita was seated in a chair, fully clothed, with her legs bound, her hands secured behind her back, and a cloth gag across her mouth.

From the beginning, the scene appeared to investigators to be a homicide. Justice of the Peace Silas Clark described what he saw as resembling an “execution,” while detectives searched Juanita’s home for fingerprints, fibers, hairs, and anything that might identify another person who had been inside. Her purse had been disturbed, an interior door from the garage had been left open, and yet there was no obvious robbery, clear evidence of a struggle, or apparent motive.

But as the autopsy progressed and detectives reconstructed Juanita’s final months, the investigation began moving in an unexpected direction. Medical findings, the unusual bindings, Juanita’s private life, and the absence of evidence clearly showing that another person had overpowered her forced investigators to reconsider what had initially seemed obvious.

Whatever happened inside Juanita’s house carried an unsettling familiarity. Ten years earlier, Sharon Kay Watts had been murdered in the bathroom of her Abilene apartment. In 1973, Geneva Jackson was beaten and left to drown in the bathtub of her home. Now a third woman had been found dead in a bathroom within the same small area of south and southwest Abilene. All three cases involved no signs of forced entry, no obvious robbery, and no clear motive.

What investigators ultimately decided happened to Juanita Carroll would only create more questions about the strange scene, and whether her death truly belonged alongside Abilene’s other unsolved bathroom slayings.

If you have any information about the murder of Juanita Carroll, please contact Abilene Crime Stoppers at (325) 676-8477.

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