DAVE MCCALL

Note: I put **** for my home town.

Corpus Christi Caller Times

Sunday, Nov. 22, 1998

Offenders lost in probationer-tracking flaws Texas case shows criminals can slip state-to-state unnoticed, officials say Associated Press

DALLAS -- Betty Rhodes helped David Wayne McCall move to Texas without knowing he was convicted of sexually assaulting an Indiana college student when he was 15 years old. The Paris woman said she didn't know the job she offered him in her home improvement company was a key factor in Indiana probation officials' decision to let McCall leave their state. "The authorities never did contact us at all," Rhodes said. "Why did they not at least give me the choice?" Texas law enforcement officials told The Dallas Morning News they don't have an answer for Rhodes because they said holes exist in the national probationer-tracking system that allowed McCall and many other convicted criminals to move around the nation with no supervision. If Texas authorities had known that McCall was on probation, they would have sent him back to Indiana a dozen years ago -- before he pleaded guilty to raping an Irving woman in 1997, before he was indicted on a murder charge in the 1995 death of a Coppell woman, and before he became the suspect in slayings in Irving and Carrollton and an aggravated sexual assault in Dallas. The interstate compact statute is meant to alert authorities when probationers or parolees relocate. Under the compact, created in 1937 to allow probationers and parolees to return to their home states, local probation departments are supposed to forward information about such transfers to the probation department that would supervise the offender. More than 67,000 probationers and parolees nationwide requested transfers within a year, according to a survey by the National Institute of Corrections, part of the U.S. Department of Justice. George Keiser, chief of the national institute's community corrections division, told The Dallas Morning News the information about those parolees isn't always transferred. Texas authorities said the answer is education. "For about two years now, we've made a hard push all over the state," said Larry Hermance, Texas' deputy interstate compact administrator. "And I know that we are seeing the results of what good training can do." Hermance said Texas should have known about McCall when he moved to ******, about 90 miles from Dallas. But Texas also is guilty of causing probationer problems in other states. In a recent one-year period, Texas transferred 5,900 more probationers and parolees to other states than it accepted. "Texas has been, historically, probably more guilty than other states in allowing offenders to leave the jurisdiction," Hermance said. According to a report by the National Institute of Corrections, the compact should be controlled by a national administrator who would have access to a computerized index of transfer cases. "There is a need of information flow from one line officer who is sending someone to a line officer receiving them in a new community," Keiser said. According to the newspaper, Texas authorities did not learn about McCall's Indiana conviction and probation until his guilty plea last year in the Irving rape case. Eight years earlier, he had pleaded guilty to trying to kidnap a Coppell woman. McCall, now being held in Dallas, is also a suspect in slayings of women in Irving and Carrollton since October 1995.

The Metrocrest News, Friday, October 23, 1998 --- Page 2A

Irving drops murder charge; Coppell case stands No By Line

DAN EAKIN, News Staff Writer, covers Coppell

Irving police have dropped a murder charge against David Wayne McCall, 35, of Irving, but Coppell police are still pursuing murder charges against him in the 1995 death of Catherine Casler of Coppell. Irving police said last week they have at least tentatively dropped charges against McCall for the 1995 murder of Staci Terrell. However, police indicated only that more investigation is needed and that new charges could be filed against McCall in the same case later. At the time McCall was arrested, according to records in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, he was on probation for sexual assault. At press time this week, McCall was in Lew Sterrett Justice Center in lieu of $100,000 bond on the murder charge, and was being held without bond for probation violation, according to a spokesperson at the jail. Catherine Casler was found stabbed to death near MacArthur Boulevard after jogging on a Sunday morning in August of 1995. Coppell Police Capt. Gary Nix said the arrest of McCall was a result of an investigation conducted by the Coppell Police Department, Irving Police Department, the Texas Rangers, the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nix said McCall was arrested at the Coppell Justice Center and then booked into the Coppell holding facility. He was transferred to the Irving Police Department and was then booked into the Irving city jail before being transferred to Lew Sterrett. Although Irving police dropped the charges against McCall in the Terrell case, Nix said this week, "We are still pursuing the charges" in the Casler case. According to the arrest warrant, McCall drove a faded red pickup. A witness had reported seeing a red pickup near the crime scene on Sunday morning, Aug. 13, 1995, the date the Coppell woman was murdered. Also, a Coppell resident who saw a man and woman fighting in a field near the intersection of Condor and MacArthur on that morning provided information for the drawing of a composite sketch of the suspect, which police said resembled a photograph taken of McCall in 1994. McCall's wife also worked at a convenience store in Coppell, about two miles from the crime scene, according to the arrest warrant. The warrant also said that McCall told a police detective he was on a cocaine binge on Aug. 13, 1995 and had come to Coppell to get money from his wife at the store. Also, a search of the pickup truck uncovered light brown hairs between the driver's side door and the seat which were determined to be microscopically similar to those of Catherine Casler, the report said. -end-