If you live in Texas, specifically Austin, you may have heard of Mary Moore Searight for any number of reasons. Though she grew up in Paris, Texas, she moved to Austin along with her family when she was in her twenties. Her father, William Folsom Moore, served briefly as the acting chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1940.
While in Austin, she met Dan Searight, an older widower and president of the Walter Tips Hardware Company, and the two were married shortly after. Dan had a son from his first marriage, but it doesn't appear that he and Mary ever had children, based on my research. They did, however, buy a large ranch in the Austin area, and even after her husband's death in 1958, it's been said that Mary herself continued raising livestock and "herded cattle by driving around them in a 1964 Studebaker." The ranch was actually noteworthy for two reasons. First, the Searights were said to be the first people to sell Aberdeen Black Angus Cattle in that region of Texas, and it was the first ranch to use a "binder" to cut and roll hay.
Mary was passionate about Texas history and nature. She founded the Austin chapter of the Audubon Society. And as she got older and retired from the ranching business, there were many multimillion-dollar offers to buy her property for development, but Mary wasn't having it. Instead, she donated 206 acres (and sold the remaining 88) to the city of Austin in 1988 for a park that still bears her name today. Mary Moore Searight Metropolitan Park sits on West Slaughter Lane, and it's known for its disc golf course, playground, and horseback-riding trails, which are kept up by Friends of Mary Moore Searight and other volunteers.
After donating her land, Mary moved back to her hometown of Paris and bought a white, two-story wood-frame house at 711 Pine Bluff, as well as other properties that she would rent out to tenants. Sadly, this move is what led to her murder.
On August 18, 1996, someone who has been described as a "caretaker" who would look in on Mary went to that wood-frame house to check on her, and what they found was gruesome. She'd been badly beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted. But she was still alive. First responders jumped into action, and she was airlifted to a hospital in Dallas, but it was was just too much for Mary's body. She died on August 21, just over a week shy of her 88th birthday.
In the weeks that followed the murder, police investigated and interviewed several suspects, but they came up empty-handed. Well, for the most part — there was one suspect who stood out: 25-year-old Paul Cady Jr., who rented a home from Mary. Apparently, Cady was shifty and inconsistent when questioned. He even had a cut on his hand that he couldn't quite explain to police. They swabbed it for DNA, but the results didn't provide them with any reason to connect him to Mary's murder. The case went cold for nearly three decades.
"In 2021, Searight’s case was identified by the Texas Rangers as being eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program which is funded by the Department of Justice/Bureau of Justice Assistance (DOJ/BJA). DOJ/BJA provides investigative funding for agencies across the United States to further unsolved sexual assaults and sexually related homicides with the hope of bringing justice to victims and their families," according to the Texas DPS. It added, "Two years later, in 2023, while reviewing Searight’s case information, investigators determined the swabs taken from Cady’s injured hand were also eligible to be submitted for further analysis under the SAKI Program at DPS’ crime laboratory in Garland. That testing led to the discovery of Searight’s DNA on the swabs taken from Cady’s hand."
Score one for advancements in technology. In February 2024, Texas Rangers and the Paris Police Department arrested Cady for the murder of his elderly landlord, but get this: He was already in jail for unrelated felony charges. Last month, Cady, who is 54 years old now, was officially indicted by a Lamar County grand jury. Officials say he remains in custody, and with any luck, he'll never see the light of day.
Here's something else I found kind of neat. That two-story wood-frame house at 711 Pine Bluff may have a dark history, but today, it's the home of the Children's Advocacy Center of Paris. According to its website, the organization is "dedicated to serving child abuse victims and their non-offending family members in Lamar and Red River Counties." The site also says that "We provide a safe environment where children can disclose abuse and receive the support they need. Every child’s voice matters."
