In the dark of a moving commercial truck in February 1991 near Shamrock, Texas, a 21-year-old woman pointed a gun at a man who’d just raped her.
Mary Ann Newton had left her bad job behind in Olathe, Kansas, days prior. Wanting a fresh start, she hitched a ride south, first with one commercial truck driver, then another — and they both behaved as gentlemen.
Then she hopped into Clark Perry Baldwin’s truck in Oklahoma, Newton told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
They stopped at a truck stop in Oklahoma City overnight and left there on Interstate 40 on Feb. 18, 1991, arriving at a Texas restaurant at 11:30 p.m.
Baldwin bought her dinner.
Back on the road, Newton decided she wanted to go back home. She asked if she could use Baldwin’s CB radio to find a different trucker headed back toward Kansas. He allowed it, and she got a ride lined up, she recalled.
The bag in which she’d kept her clothes for several days on the road was ripped, and she asked Baldwin if he had a plastic bag she could use.
“He said, ‘Come back here, to the bed area,’” Newton said. “I went back there — and that’s all I remember.”
She woke in the truck’s sleeping quarters naked from the waist down with Baldwin raping her and choking her nearly to the point of death, Newton said.
Her wrists were taped; a sock had been stuffed into her mouth. Her lips were duct-taped shut. She kicked and fought for breath.
“I’m gonna let you go,” Baldwin said, according to Newton’s account. “Or are you gonna scream?”
Baldwin untaped her and let her put her clothes back on. Then he handed her a handgun, said Newton.
“If I were you I would shoot me,” Baldwin said, according to Newton’s account.
The Sprint
But all she wanted was to get out of the truck.
“I held the gun on him and said, ‘You’re gonna drive ’til I tell you to stop, and I’m getting out of here,’” she recalled. It was dark. Her eyes searched the road for any sanctuary. She spotted a gas station beyond an off-ramp and told Baldwin to pull over.
“You throw that gun back up in the seat,” Baldwin said.
Without thinking about where the gun would land or what would happen to it, she threw it as hard as she could, then took off in a full sprint — wondering if Baldwin would shoot her, she said.
At the gas station she called police.
Newton doesn’t remember the ride to the hospital where medical personnel conducted a rape examination on her. She vaguely remembers speaking with a prosecutor in Texas.
She spent days on a Greyhound bus headed back for Kansas, then went two weeks without leaving her home. She tried seeing a therapist for a while, but the therapist wanted to unpack Newton’s childhood as well, and she wasn’t up for that, she said.
Baldwin was interviewed by police at the time, released pending indictment. He was never convicted on the rape charge, which was dismissed for failure to prosecute.
'I Was A Voice'
Twenty days after Newton’s escape, the dead body of a pregnant young woman, Pamela McCall, turned up in Maury County, Tennessee, with marks of strangulation on her neck and semen deposits on her clothes and genital area.
In 1992, the bodies of two young women — one pregnant — were found in Wyoming off Interstate 80 in Sweetwater County and Interstate 90 in Sheridan County.
Law enforcement named the mystery women “Bitter Creek Betty” and “I-90 Jane Doe.”
Decades of investigation followed.
A break finally came in 2019 when a Tennessee investigator reopened McCall’s case, loaded the suspect DNA into a national database, and Wyoming State Crime Lab Investigators linked it to the male DNA found on the two women found dead off the interstate highways of Wyoming in 1992.
Investigators eventually traced that DNA to Baldwin, court documents say.
Newton told her story to a jury in Maury County, Tennessee. And on Friday, the jury convicted Baldwin of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison immediately afterward.
For Newton, that was better than therapy.
“I’m so happy I was a voice,” she said.
Framing that joy are regret and mourning over the women who didn’t manage to escape, said Newton. “I just know he can no longer hurt anybody else. He’s never going to get out of there.”
Wyoming authorities are waiting for one post-trial motion to unfold over the next month or two so they can take custody of Baldwin and prosecute him for first-degree murder in the case of Bitter Creek Betty.
Buried In The Snow
Strange discoveries started surfacing in Wyoming on March 1, 1992.
A female truck driver stopped her rig at the Bitter Creek truck turnout on I-80 about 40 miles east of Rock Springs, says an evidentiary affidavit Sweetwater County Attorney Danny Erramouspe compiled in 2020 from the investigative reports of Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Loy Young, who has since retired.
The trucker found the nude body of a Hispanic female lying face-down, partially covered in snow, and called the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff’s deputies and a coroner’s deputy converged on the scene to find the body completely frozen on top of about 9 inches of snow. She had a gold, wedding-style band on her left ring finger, wore a solid gold necklace; her right breast bore a tattoo of a rose with a stem and leaves.
An autopsy in Colorado by forensic pathologist Dr. Patrick Allen revealed that the woman was between 24 and 32 years old, stood 5 feet, 8 inches tall, weighed about 125 pounds and had suffered neck and facial trauma consistent with manual strangulation.
A scar on her abdomen indicated she’d had a cesarian section at some point in her life, the affidavit says.
The 9 inches of snow under her body indicate she was dumped “several weeks” prior to her discovery, possibly in late fall or winter.
Investigators didn’t know who she was, and a 50-state distribution of her fingerprints to other agencies didn’t help, so they called her Bitter Creek Betty.
One Month Later, And North
Wyoming Department of Transportation crews were checking the right of way fence off Interstate 90 about 15 miles north of Sheridan on April 13, 1992, when they found a dead pregnant female in the barrow ditch.
She wore a midriff-bearing blouse, a belt with a gold-colored buckle and blue jeans. But her socks and shoes were missing.
An autopsy two days later by Allen determined this woman stood about 5-foot-5 and weighed about 110 pounds.
She’d suffered bleeding in her head, indicating someone had struck her. She was about two-and-a-half months pregnant at the time of her death and had likely given birth at least once before, the affidavit says.
Investigators had found a paper towel in her crotch area. They also took swabs from her genital area. The Wyoming State Crime Lab later determined those pieces of evidence contained semen.
But the DNA profile taken from those weren’t sufficient to enter into the Wyoming or national DNA database at that time, says the affidavit.
Investigators named her I-90 Jane Doe.
Remember, Remember
The investigation stalled but didn’t die.
In January 2007, the Wyoming State Crime Lab conducted an analysis on sperm found in Bitter Creek Betty’s vaginal swabs and in swabs from an ice sample near her body.
This time, the sperm fraction yielded a complete DNA profile for a suspect. Investigators didn’t know who he was, but they put his profile into the state and national DNA databases, hoping for a connection, says the document.
Five years later, the Wyoming State Crime Lab was able to link that DNA to DNA swabbed from I-90 Jane Doe.
“In other words,” wrote Erramouspe in the affidavit, “The same suspect’s DNA was found on both Wyoming victims.”
Two years after that, University of Wyoming head of anthropology Dr. Rick Weathermon studied I-90 Jane Doe’s jaw and determined that she was younger than investigators first thought: she could have been between 17-23 years old, he said.
Tommy’s Call
In 2019, Tennessee’s Spring Hill Police Department contacted 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office criminal investigator Tommy Goetz to ask if he’d reopen McCall’s cold case.
Goetz did.
To him, the swabs taken from McCall’s vaginal area and pantyhose were the key, he told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. He sent those to the Tennessee Crime Lab for testing, and the samples yielded a DNA profile which, when loaded into the national database, alerted the Wyoming State Crime lab of a potential match.
“The hit was confirmed as being the same suspect’s DNA … as the two Wyoming homicides,” wrote Erramouspe in the affidavit.
Goetz sent Wyoming DCI Special Agent Loy Young reports from McCall’s murder.
And Those Said …
Those reports described how McCall was found March 10, 1991, in a wooded area off Saturn Parkway near Port Royal Road in Spring Hill.
Investigators at that time photographed skid marks on the side of the road that indicated an unloaded semitrailer rig had locked up its tires. Those marks were put down directly in front of where McCall’s body had lain.
Her body bore marks of blunt-force trauma and strangulation. She wore a black, cotton, pleated mini-skirt and a pullover sweatshirt. Her black bra was pulled up above her breast, and the crotch-area fabric had been cut out of her tan-colored pantyhose, says the document.
Like the two women found in Wyoming, she was also slight of build: 5-foot-6 and 114 pounds.
Just like I-90 Jane Doe, McCall wasn’t wearing shoes. Another similarity with I-90 Jane Doe: McCall was pregnant, though further along at about five months.
Her face and the nearby rocks were bloodied.
Hearsay Exception
Investigators were able to run down leads of people who saw McCall last at a truck stop in Tennessee, and one woman who believes she heard McCall screaming the night of her death.
According to Pam Anderson, assistant district attorney general for the 22nd Judicial District of Tennessee, that’s because Spring Hill Police Department’s initial investigator, Ron Coleman, kept detailed notes on every person he interviewed and every lead he chased.
Coleman documented the witness who noticed the pregnant McCall at a local truck stop with her swollen belly and high-heeled shoes. And a drug dealer who remembered McCall saying she was going on a ride with a trucker who drove a blue truck like the one Baldwin drove at the time.
She said she’d be back in a couple weeks.
Coleman took statements from the person who saw the skid marks on the road at 5:30 a.m. the day McCall’s body was found. That man has “complete dementia” now, said Anderson. But the prosecution was able to get a hearsay exception to introduce his 1991 written statement as evidence, with verification from his wife, she said.
The investigation spanned 34 years, said Anderson, so, “We ran into a lot of death and dementia.”
‘I Think He Was Expecting That Knock’
Wanting more firm DNA evidence, FBI personnel shadowed Baldwin in April 2020 around his then-hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
They pulled DNA swabs from things Baldwin threw in the trash. They followed him around at Walmart and swabbed his shopping cart handle, court documents say.
The Wyoming State Crime Lab received those swabs that same month, pulled the DNA and found a match with DNA from McCall’s case and both Wyoming cases, the affidavit says.
Strapped with recording devices, investigators Goetz and Young approached Baldwin’s tiny, sixth-floor apartment in Waterloo the morning of May 6, 2020.
They rode the elevator in silence, Goetz recalled. They knocked, and after four minutes, Baldwin answered the door.
After 44 years of interviewing “every criminal element out there,” Goetz wasn’t nervous, he said. He was just eager to find the truth.
Baldwin wasn’t working at that time. He allowed the investigators into his living room, but he had just one couch and no other furniture, Goetz recalled.
Baldwin sat.
Both investigators stood throughout the hour-long interview.
They asked general questions about trucking. Baldwin wore a blank expression.
Then Goetz got specific, delivered Baldwin’s Miranda rights and asked questions about McCall, he said.
Baldwin conceded that he may have had sex with McCall, who was a prostitute, but he said he didn’t remember her at all, Goetz related.
“He never asked why we were there. He knew he was talking to cold-case investigators — but he never asked why the entire time we were there,” said Goetz. “I think he was expecting that knock to come at some point in his life.”
After that interview, FBI investigators served a search warrant for more DNA, and law enforcement arrested Baldwin.
Goetz tried to interview Baldwin again at the jail, but by then the man had asked for a lawyer.
Trial
Delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and rescheduled multiple times, Baldwin’s trial wouldn’t happen until nearly five years after his arrest.
Anderson said her office originally charged him with two murder counts, including one for McCall’s unborn baby. But under the law, she would have had to prove by witness testimony that the baby — a little girl — would have been able to survive outside the womb at the time of the woman’s death.
That testimony wasn’t conclusive enough to carry the second murder charge, Anderson said.
As for Newton, “she did wonderfully” during her trial testimony, said Anderson.
Anderson’s last trial witness was Gary Henderson, retired Texas Ranger who spotted Baldwin’s truck that day in Texas as he was on his way to interview Newton. Henderson was able to lay the foundation for Baldwin’s typed statement from February 1991, which was a partial confession of his attack on Newton.
Baldwin confessed to Henderson that he’d “forced” sex on Newton at some point, and at some point bound her, says a transcript of that interview Cowboy State Daily has obtained.
The prosecution had to make a special request to introduce evidence from Newton’s case, since it wasn’t tied to the murder charge. The judge allowed that evidence, but wouldn’t let the jury hear details about the two bodies found in Wyoming, Anderson Said.
The jury sat and heard Wyoming DCI Crime Lab Director Scott McWilliams and Young testify about the crucial DNA breakthroughs made in the lab, but had no idea why the Cowboy State investigators were involved, Anderson said.
She listed some other evidence that helped link Baldwin’s identity to the man who was in the Spring Creek area around the time of McCall’s death.
Baldwin’s public defense team “put on a vigorous defense,” she added. Essentially, the defense’s theory was that it could be coincidence to find a man’s DNA on a prostitute.
That’s where evidence from Newton’s case proved vital.
“Our big point to all of that was, this occurred 20 days after he’d had the encounter with police, in the situation with Mary Ann Newton,” Anderson said.
That evidence helped to confirm Baldwin’s motive, she added.
As for Goetz, his impressions from last week’s trial are on the eerie side.
“He smiled a lot,” said Goetz. “Especially when they were showing autopsy photos. And even after he was convicted, he walked out in handcuffs, smiling.”
“In my opinion, he was re-living his crime,” Goetz said. “He was basically just getting his 15 minutes of glory.”
Newton, who now lives in Missouri, was back home from the Tennessee trial as of Monday.
She breathed a sigh of relief during her interview.
“All I can say is, he’s got his justice now. It’s justice, right there,” said Newton.
Who She Was
Baldwin will reach Wyoming within about two months, said Anderson.
Erramouspe will prosecute him on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Bitter Creek Betty.
The Sweetwater County prosecutor charged the case in April 2020, about the time FBI agents were following Baldwin around his local Walmart.
But on May 17, 2022, Erramouspe filed a new affidavit in the case, with one extra paragraph.
Bitter Creek Betty had been identified.
Using family-tree DNA companies, Young had found Bitter Creek Betty’s half-sister, who confirmed that her name was Irene Vasquez. The half-sister hadn’t heard from Vasquez since 1990.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
