In 2014, Barry Hinkle moved up to the position of Chief of Police in Blue Mound, Texas. While his responsibilities certainly grew, Hinkle still actively sought to solve the 1976 slayings of Kevin, Brian, Fae, and Wayne Joplin, and family friend Terry Trice. He’d uncovered, or simply investigated, something no investigator in the case ever had – a jailhouse letter written by an inmate to his wife. It implicated a man named Johnny Cotton. As Hinkle investigated Cotton and pieced together a timeline that for the most part was not public knowledge, the jailhouse letter seemed to match. And it looked like the sole surviving Joplin might have hired a man to kill his entire family and set up his former friend as a patsy.

If you have any information about the 1976 Joplin Family murders, please contact the Blue Mound Police at (817)232-0665

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Grand Jury testimony, an anonymous individual once involved in the investigation, Tom Stephenson’s 2018 article in D Magazine titled “Reopening the Blue Mound Massacre,” and The Dallas Morning-News were used as sources for this episode

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