On the morning of May 4, 2007, a 19-year-old woman was beaten to death in a bedroom in Winnsboro, Texas. Nearly two decades later, no one has ever been convicted of her murder.
An Ordinary Morning That Turned Fatal
Brittany McGlone was 19 and working two jobs when she died. She spent her nights on the overnight shift at a Lowe’s Distribution Center in nearby Mount Vernon, usually clocking out before 5 a.m., and she also put in hours at Alco, a local discount store in Winnsboro.
She kept both jobs for a simple reason: she was setting aside money so she could enroll in nursing school. Everyone who knew her described the same person — driven, dependable, and already building toward the life she wanted.
At the time, she was seeing 21-year-old Jeff Stogner, on and off, for about six months. Jeff still lived with his mother, stepfather, and two younger siblings in a modest single-story home in Winnsboro.
Brittany’s mother, Patricia Tice, had never warmed to Jeff — she felt he was headed in a different direction than her daughter — but the couple had recently gotten back together after a short breakup.
When Brittany finished her overnight shift in the early hours of May 4, she broke from her usual habit of heading home to shower and sleep. Instead, she drove straight to Jeff’s house to spend a little time with him before he left to drive several hours to pick up his grandmother.
She climbed into his bed to rest while he and his stepfather got the car ready for the trip. His younger brother had already left for school, and his sister had stayed elsewhere overnight and gone straight to school from there.
Jeff’s mother was dropped off at work, and by roughly 9 a.m., Jeff and his stepfather were on the road. Both of them had walked through the bedroom before leaving, and the stepfather later confirmed that Brittany was still there, asleep.
No one has reported seeing her alive since.
Finding Her, and the Investigation’s Opening Hours
By the afternoon, Jeff had been trying to reach Brittany’s cell phone with no luck. Worried, he called Patricia to ask if she’d heard from her daughter, which set off alarm bells for her too — she’d also been calling Brittany’s phone over and over with no answer.
When Jeff called back as he was pulling into the driveway, he told Patricia he could see Brittany’s truck still parked outside and figured she was just in a deep sleep. That relief didn’t last. Around 2:30 that afternoon, Jeff walked into his bedroom and found Brittany dead.
She was naked, and blood had soaked into the sheets, the pillow, and the wall behind the headboard, in a pattern that pointed to repeated blows from a blunt object. Investigators suspected something like a tire iron or crowbar, though the weapon itself was never recovered.
Nothing else in the house looked disturbed — Brittany’s jeans and boots sat right where she’d left them on the floor after changing out of her work clothes.
Wood County Sheriff’s deputies noticed the bathroom looked recently used, as if whoever attacked her had showered there before leaving. There was no sign anyone had forced their way in.
Jeff was brought in for questioning. Patricia later said that even before she knew how her daughter had died, her gut told her it was murder — and that Jeff was behind it.
She pointed to the timing: the one morning Brittany deviated from her routine was the morning she was killed. But investigators worked the case methodically.
They checked Jeff and his stepfather’s story about the drive to get his grandmother, and convenience-store surveillance video along their route matched the timeline they’d given. The alibi held up.
Widening the Circle of Suspects
With Jeff’s account largely verified, detectives started looking at anyone else who might have known Brittany would be there alone that morning. One name surfaced almost immediately.
Jeff told police he had a standing arrangement with a marijuana supplier named Cody, run through a garden gnome in the yard — Jeff would tuck cash underneath it, and Cody would swing by later to leave the product.
Jeff said he’d left money out that morning as usual, and that by the time he got back, the cash was gone but no marijuana had been dropped off.
Cody told investigators a different story. He confirmed the arrangement existed but insisted he never came by the house that day.
He said Jeff had texted him repeatedly asking if he’d stopped in, and that he eventually replied “yes” just to get Jeff to stop messaging him, even though he claimed he hadn’t actually been there. Detectives couldn’t pin down which version was true.
They also looked at the man Brittany had briefly seen during her split from Jeff. He cooperated with police, described the relationship as a single encounter with no lasting connection, and was cleared.
Around this same period, something surfaced that shifted the direction of the investigation entirely. At Brittany’s funeral, her sister, Hope McGlone, ended up standing next to their grandfather, James McGlone — technically not a blood relative, since he was the adoptive father of Brittany and Hope’s dad.
A comment he made about Brittany’s body left Hope deeply shaken, partly because she’d been holding onto something Brittany had confided in her before she died.
A Family Secret Comes to Light
Brittany had told Hope that James had sexually abused her for years, starting when she was a child and continuing on and off into more recent times. Hope had kept quiet, wanting Brittany to be the one to decide when and whether to speak up.
After Brittany’s death — and especially after what happened at the funeral — Hope no longer felt she could stay silent.
When investigators pursued the allegation, other relatives confirmed that Brittany had mentioned James making her uncomfortable, including instances of him showing up unannounced at her workplace. That behavior reportedly picked up around the time she started dating Jeff.
Jeff himself said Brittany had told him about the abuse directly. Investigators treated the claim seriously and looked at James as a possible suspect, but his employer’s time records placed him at work from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. the day of the murder, and he was ruled out. James McGlone died in 2009.
With no solid lead yet, investigators ran polygraph tests on several people connected to the case. Cody passed. Jeff’s stepfather passed. Jeff passed too. Stuck without a clear direction, detectives went back over the timeline Jeff had given them on the very first day.
The Detail No One Had Followed Up On
Tucked into Jeff’s original statement was something that had gotten little attention at the time. Around 8:30 that morning, while Jeff and his stepfather were finishing up with the car, a 25-year-old named Chad Carr — full name Chad Earl Carr — stopped by the house.
Chad was seeing Jeff’s younger sister, Velva Bourland, who was still in high school. He’d come to pick something up for her. Jeff and his stepfather told him not to come inside because Brittany was asleep in the bedroom, and after a short visit, Chad left.
That brief stop put Chad among a very small group of people who knew Brittany would be alone in the house once Jeff and his stepfather drove off. Investigators started scrutinizing him more closely.
When they brought Chad in, he volunteered an unusually detailed rundown of his entire day, unprompted.
He said that after leaving Jeff’s place, he drove to the Alco store where his aunt worked, went home to change clothes because of the weather, picked up a Sonic breakfast order for his aunt, dropped it off, and then made it to a 10 a.m. eye appointment.
Afterward, he said, he picked up Velva from school, and the two ran several more errands before eventually arriving at the house where the crime scene was still being processed.
But when detectives checked the timeline, it didn’t hold up. Staff at the eye doctor’s office remembered Chad hadn’t actually shown up at 10 a.m. — he’d called to say he’d be late and arrived at 10:20.
That left roughly an hour unaccounted for between his last known sighting on surveillance footage and his arrival at the appointment. The Alco store where his aunt worked was only about a six-minute drive from Jeff’s house.
His explanation for changing clothes that morning also didn’t add up well. Weather records for that May morning showed mild temperatures, in the upper 60s to low 70s, which undercut the idea that he’d needed to change because of the cold.
Investigators got a search warrant for the home of Chad’s aunt, where he was staying, and executed it on May 21, 2007 — a little over two weeks after the murder.
They recovered a white t-shirt and white shorts that appeared to have blood on them, along with a gray ski mask and two pairs of women’s underwear. One pair, pink and a size seven, was identified by Jeff’s mother as belonging to Velva.
Nobody in the household recognized the other pair, white and a size five. When shown to Patricia, she confirmed that size five matched what her daughter wore — and, notably, Brittany’s own underwear had never been found at the crime scene.
By the time investigators got to it, the unidentified pair had already been washed, and testing couldn’t conclusively tie it to Brittany.
Chad also sat for a polygraph. Unlike everyone else who’d been tested, he failed it.
Years of Waiting Before Any Movement
About eight months after the murder, Velva reached out to investigators on her own. She said that when Chad picked her up from school the afternoon Brittany’s body was found, he smelled strongly of her own body wash — a Softsoap product with shea butter — even though he hadn’t smelled that way when he’d dropped her off at school earlier.
She hadn’t been home the night before, going straight from Chad’s aunt’s house to school that morning, so there was no innocent explanation for the scent. When she asked if he’d showered at her house, he didn’t answer.
Velva also described Chad as unusually anxious and unwilling to be left alone for the rest of that day. She told investigators he’d previously complained that Brittany was allowed to spend the night at Jeff’s house while he wasn’t given the same privilege with her.
Even with this new information, the case stalled for years without a formal arrest. That changed in 2021, when a new administration took over the Wood County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Kelly Cole, who had worked in the county since the time of the original investigation, and Captain Mike Chilson dug back into the case file, with their attention centered on Chad Carr — who, by then, had already served roughly a decade in prison for sexually assaulting his ex-wife.
On September 1, 2022, Chad Carr was arrested and charged with capital murder. Captain Chilson noted that Chad didn’t seem surprised by the arrest.
Not long after being taken into custody, Chad reportedly told a Texas Ranger that he had actually been inside Jeff’s house on numerous occasions — directly contradicting his earlier claim that he’d never gone inside.
The case went to a grand jury. Almost exactly 90 days later, on November 30, 2022, the grand jury returned a no bill, meaning no trial would take place, and Chad Carr was released.
Sheriff Cole and Captain Chilson said publicly afterward that important testimony, including their own, had never been presented to the grand jury before the decision came down.
The case remains open. Investigators have kept reviewing the evidence, and Sheriff Cole has confirmed that DNA recovered from the shower at the scene doesn’t match anyone who lived in the house. That lead hasn’t produced charges yet, but authorities say they’re still actively working the case.
In 2025, funded by a grant from Season of Justice, Brittany’s family put up a billboard northeast of Winnsboro in Sulphur Springs, Texas, asking anyone with information to come forward.
Remembering Brittany McGlone
Brittany McGlone was 19 years old when her life was taken. She worked two jobs at once, not simply out of necessity, but with a clear goal in mind — she wanted to save enough to go to nursing school, a plan that spoke to both her compassion and her drive.
Family and friends remember her as hardworking and dependable, someone who rarely stood still and who followed through on the things she set out to do. She was a daughter, a sister, and someone’s first love.
Those who knew her choose to remember her not for the way her life ended, but for the energy and purpose she poured into everything she was working toward. She deserved the future she was building for herself.
