MARBLE FALLS, Texas (KXAN) — Feeding into today’s Lake Marble Falls is another waterway – a smaller stream darkened by cedar elm and Chinkapin oak trees. Backbone Creek snakes its way through neighborhoods near the city’s downtown and onto its outskirts.
Just feet from the creekbank, along Avenue N, was a small, rubble sandstone house where 13-year-old Daynon Lewis lived — and a shed out back, where she died.
Nearly 60 years later, the mystery of her strangulation now brings to light concerns over the influence some in the Texas judicial system have to determine cause and manner of death – with scant training and sporadic oversight. It is a unique, widely-used, antiquated process that still exists today after two centuries, foreshadowing a renewed debate among state leaders in the upcoming legislative session about the need for more modern methods and expertise.
Explore KXAN’s project about Texas’ unique system for investigating deaths, and how it played into the questions that persist about the 1965 strangulation of Daynon Lewis.