JoAnna Laverne Gish King was 27 when she and her husband, Homer Butch King, were shot to death inside their home in the 6600 block of Dinner Creek Drive in northwest Harris County, Texas, on August 15, 1987. Investigators documented that both victims had been shot in the back of the head at close range, a detail that suggested a deliberate execution-style killing rather than a chaotic exchange.

The case stayed unsolved for years until Harris County cold case detectives Roger Wedgeworth and Harry Fikaris re-opened the file and re-interviewed people connected to the original probe. Their work produced a new witness: an 18-year-old who said she had accompanied her mother and a man named Gerald McKnight to the Kings house in 1987 and waited outside while the drug-related shooting occurred. The mother had been interviewed in 1987 but reportedly withheld details out of fear of McKnight.

Detectives located McKnight in federal prison in West Virginia, where he was serving a 22-year drug sentence. He told authorities he had gone to the Kings for drugs and shot the couple in self-defense, a claim inconsistent with the close-range shots to the back of both victims’ heads. Indicted in March 2000, McKnight pleaded guilty to two counts of murder; on May 2, 2000, a state judge imposed two consecutive life sentences. JoAnna was buried at Magnolia Cemetery in Onalaska, Polk County.

Does anyone have memories of the Kings, the Dinner Creek Drive neighborhood in 1987, or information about people connected to them?