The unidentified woman was found on a Waller County road, her dark hair shorn off, a plastic bag taped around her head, her hands severed. She had been strangled and tossed away by her killer.
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| Efforts to bury murdered woman turn into racial dispute in Waller County |
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More than a year later, the crime remains unsolved, the murder victim's name is still unknown and efforts to bury the unidentified woman have churned controversy in Waller County - a rural area just west of Houston that has long been roiled by racial divisions.
The victim is white. The funeral home and the cemetery a justice of the peace initially chose to handle her burial are historically black.
Waller County Commissioners Court balked at paying for that burial. And when activists started raising questions about the county's hesitation at burying the woman in a black cemetery, the commissioners asked a white-owned funeral home to handle arrangements - adhering to what community activists say is a long-standing tradition of cemetery segregation in the county.
"I'm just appalled right now. I can't believe this county stooped that low," said Walter Pendleton, a local black minister who filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Hempstead that forced it to integrate its public cemeteries. "The county overstepped its boundary to get a white funeral home to pick up the body so that it could not be buried in a black cemetery."
Had the unidentified woman been buried in a black cemetery, she would have been the first known white person buried in a black cemetery in the county.
Instead, since March 25, Waller County has paid neighboring Harris County $50 a day to store the body.
"It's clear that when there is a white body and no family members or anyone to claim it, that the authorities will call ... a white funeral home for a white body," said DeWayne Charleston, the Waller County justice of the peace who first ordered a black funeral home to handle the arrangements for the unidentified victim.
He added: "I have never seen such defiance and determination to protect a segregated system."
Waller County Judge Owen Ralston, the county's top elected official, denied that racial issues were at play.
"I didn't know if the victim was black or white, and I didn't care," said Ralston.
Rather, he attributed the delay in burial to the black funeral home director's insistence that the county sign a letter guaranteeing payment. Ralston said that went against county policy, and instead contacted another funeral home to handle the arrangements.
Charleston is black, Ralston is white.
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