Murdered Texas Woman Dubbed 'Orange Socks' IDed After 40 Years

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TX — Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody on Wednesday staged a press conference detailing identify of a murder victim who's gone unidentified for 40 years.

The woman was found naked and strangled on Halloween in 1979 in a case that has perplexed local, state and federal law enforcement officials seeking her identify for the better part of four decades. Infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas once claimed credit for the killing before retracting his story. She was dubbed "orange socks" based on the distinctively colored footwear she was wearing when she was killed.

During an afternoon press conference, the woman was identified as Debra Jackson, 23, of Abilene, Texas, born Sept. 28, 1956. Chody said the woman left home in 1977, but was not reported missing by family members as she had run off several times before. As a result, the sheriff said, information on her was never input into a database, Chody said.

Related story: 'Orange Socks' Texas Homicide Victim IDed After 40 Years

From 1977 to 1979, the woman worked in the Texas towns of Abilene, Amarillo and Azle. In 1978, she worked in Amarillo at what was then Ramada Inn hotel that is now a Camelot Inn. The following year, she worked at an assisted living facility in Azle.

Law enforcement officials now are asking members of the public who may have worked with Jackson to contact the sheriff office cold case unit at (512) 943-5204 as they piece together details on her life — particularly her last moments leading to an untimely end. As he released details on the case, Chody was flanked with law enforcement agents, a sketch artist and a member of a group that searches for missing persons — all of whom he acknowledged for having helped in the woman's identity.

Despite the identification, Chody said, the case remains open. Consequently, it's still too early to name a suspect in the case, the sheriff added. Chody noted male DNA has been extracted from Jackson's fingernail clippings that continue to be analyzed.

Chody ticked off various key dates in a timeline over the years as law enforcement officials sought to learn the woman's identity in efforts that proved futile until recently. Although much about the woman's life is still a mystery, the sheriff said he was gratified to have secured her identity as an important step forward in investigating her death —closer to knowing how she came to be murdered in Georgetown so long ago after being found in a drainage ditch underneath a highway — in their ongoing quest to find her killer.

"This cold case team, with help from DNA, has done something in two years that most haven't done in 40 years which I'm very proud of," Chody said. "Now we have a starting point. Just by getting her identified we now we have a starting point already with three different cities in our own state. Now, we have a place we can go to, we have authorities we can go talk to. That's a big deal for us, so we're very hopeful and very motivated."

Much is left before the cold case can be solved, but the woman once bearing the identifier of "orange socks" drawn from hardened police nomenclature at least now has a name — she was Debra Jackson, who has a surviving sister, according to one of the law enforcement officials present at the press conference. She has other living relatives too, but Chody declined to say where they live to protect their privacy.

For those surviving family members — wherever they might be in the wide expanse of Texas — Jackson's identification so long after her death yields some measure of closure: “I spoke to a family member,” the sheriff said. “They said, ‘We can let her rest now.’”

Watch the press conference by clicking on the link below: