A Tarrant County grand jury has declined to indict the woman accused of a 1991 murder, arrested after students from UT Arlington provided new leads to police.
Janie Perkins was accused of killing Cynthia Gonzalez in Arlington in 1991.
Gonzalez left her Arlington home on Sept. 16, 1991, and wasn’t seen alive by her family again, according to police.
The next day, Gonzalez’s ex-husband reported her missing.
On Sept. 22, 1991, her body was found. She was shot multiple times and then left on private property off County Road 313 in Johnson County. Her body was already decomposing. Investigators identified her with fingerprints.
By handing up a no bill, the grand jury has said prosecutors did not have enough evidence to take the case to trial.
Perkins was represented by attorney D. Miles Brissette, who said in a news release that the grand jury made its decision based on the facts presented.
“The Perkins family is grateful to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office and to the members of the Grand Jury for taking the time to conduct a thorough, evidence-based review,” Brissette said. “Their evaluation was grounded in the facts—not in the narrative advanced publicly by the Arlington Police Department and UTA. We appreciate their commitment to fairness and to the integrity of the judicial process.”
A statement from Arlington police said investigators hope to find more information that will enable them to obtain an indictment at a later date.
"We stand behind the investigative efforts of the detectives who worked on this case over the past three decades, and the efforts of the UT Arlington students who assisted as part of our cold case partnership with the university," the statement read.
A spokesperson for UTA did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
When Perkins was arrested last year, 34 years after Gonzalez’s death, police said she was already in the case files.
She and Gonzalez were friends and shared a romantic partner, according to police. After Gonzalez’s killing, investigators said Perkins could not provide an alibi.
Homicide detectives in the original case suspected Perkins but didn’t bring charges against her at the time. The case files showed she failed two voluntary polygraph tests when asked if she killed Gonzalez and even told investigators she was glad she was dead.
Polygraphs aren’t admissible in court, though, and Perkins maintained that she wasn’t involved in the killing, police said. She wasn’t charged until the students at UTA grew suspicious of her.
The decision by the grand jury not to indict does not mean Perkins is cleared of charges – authorities can present the case to another grand jury and seek indictment again. If a grand jury does hand up an indictment, it does not indicate that a person is guilty, only that the case has enough evidence to go to trial.
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