A Texas Cold Case: 1989 Murder of Amanda Goodman

Sissy Goodman walked out of school in the rain carrying her books and a denim purse. She was 13, headed home the same way she always went, and people saw her out there walking. Less than an hour later, that purse was on the side of a country road miles outside Brownwood, Texas. Investigators have a theory about how it got there.

Who Was Amanda “Sissy” Goodman of Brownwood, Texas?

Her full name was Amanda Laura Goodman. Her family called her Sissy, so we’re gonna call her Sissy too. She lived in Brownwood, Texas, which sits out in the middle of the state, about 2 hours southwest of Fort Worth if you’re driving. It’s the spring of 1989. Sissy is in 8th grade. Her mom is Barbara, and Sissy has a sister and 2 brothers.

Sissy’s birthday was in May, and that year she turned 13. The family threw her a party at Coggin Park, a city park right there in Brownwood. That party was only a few days before Tuesday, May 16.

On school days, Sissy walked home. That was her regular routine, and it was a walk she had made plenty of times.

The Walk Home From School on May 16, 1989

That Tuesday it rained in Brownwood. Sissy went to Brownwood Middle School, and school let out around 3:30. She started walking home. People saw her on the way, and she had her school books with her and her denim purse.

That’s the last solid picture anybody has of her alive. What’s missing is the last sighting with a name and a time attached to it. Nobody has ever said publicly who saw her last or when. Nobody has said publicly which route she took home, either. If you grew up in Brownwood, you might know that walk yourself. You’ve got a girl walking home in the rain with her books, and then a hole in the record about an hour wide.

The next time anybody sees Sissy, she’s 10 miles out of town.

What a Driver Found on Indian Creek Road

Indian Creek Road runs south out of Brownwood into the country. At about 4:25 that afternoon, a driver was on that road and spotted Sissy on the side of it. She had been shot once in the head. Her school books were right there next to her. The denim purse was there too.

That’s less than an hour after the bell.

Investigators came to believe she was shot somewhere else and then left there by the road. Where that other place was, nobody has ever said publicly. The rain made collecting evidence out there a mess. The autopsy found no sign she had been sexually assaulted.

The Denim Purse at Barbara’s Door

The first hint Barbara got came over a police scanner. She remembered that a friend from her church had one, and the friend heard something on it about a body. If Barbara’s memory is right, word of a body was out on the scanner before anybody official ever knocked on her door. There’s no published police log out there to line her memory up against, which leaves the timing of that evening resting on what Barbara remembered years later.

Around 5 o’clock, officers came to Barbara’s house. She remembered what they had with them. It was Sissy’s denim purse. Sissy had carried that purse out of school maybe an hour and a half earlier, and now it was at her mom’s front door.

Barbara’s pastor went with her to identify Sissy. He did the funeral too.

Who Investigators Looked At in the Amanda Goodman Murder

Bobby Grubbs was a Brown County lawman, and he worked Sissy’s case from the day it happened. He came out of it with a theory he carried around for years. He believed Sissy got into a car with somebody she knew. If Grubbs was right, somebody she recognized pulled up in the rain and offered her a ride.

That would explain the clock. A girl on foot needs a ride to get 10 miles out of town in under an hour. A stranger with a car fits that same clock, though, and investigators never said publicly what pointed them toward somebody she knew.

Several people got questioned back then. Nobody was ever indicted.

Barbara said police treated her like a suspect. She took a polygraph, and after that she was cleared. Investigators tried hypnosis on this case too, which some police departments actually used back in the ’80s. Nobody ever said who got hypnotized or whether anything useful came out of it.

They also looked at a Brown County man named Ricky McGinn, and it’s easy to see why his name came up. His stepdaughter, Stephanie Flanary, was 12. In May of 1993, McGinn killed her, and her body turned up in a culvert a few days later. That’s the same county and the same month as Sissy, 4 years later.

McGinn’s case got famous because of DNA. In 2000, he was minutes away from execution when Governor George W. Bush stopped it so new DNA tests could run. It was the first time Bush ever handed out a 30-day reprieve. The tests pointed right back at McGinn, and Texas executed him that September.

Grubbs said Sissy’s murder didn’t fit the way McGinn operated. The cases look different too. Stephanie was sexually assaulted and beaten with an ax. Sissy was shot once.

By 2009, Grubbs said there was a person of interest. He wouldn’t say who. Nobody has named that person publicly since.

Barbara’s Life’s Work and the Texas Rangers Cold Case Squad

Barbara kept pushing the whole time. By 2005, Grubbs was the sheriff of Brown County, and he reopened Sissy’s case and took it to the Texas Rangers’ cold case squad. He said they ran into dead ends back in ‘89, and he said her family deserved to know what happened. Barbara said she wanted finding Sissy’s killer to be her life’s work from then on.

She also begged Sissy’s old classmates to come forward with anything they knew. Those classmates were pushing 30 by then. If you sat next to Sissy in 8th grade, Barbara was talking to you.

Grubbs said, “It’s like an albatross that I have carried for all these years.” He said the Rangers would go back over the old evidence, and he named DNA testing as one of the newer tools they planned to try on it.

By 2009, they still didn’t have enough evidence to charge anybody. Grubbs said he wanted to see the case solved in his lifetime.

In 2013, the Texas Rangers put up a webpage of unsolved homicides from all over the state. There were 68 cases on it. None of them came from Brown County. When Brown County’s chief deputy got asked which of the county’s own unsolved cases stood out to him, the first name he said was Amanda Goodman. He called her a young girl who was “innocently, brutally murdered.”

Barbara died before the 25th anniversary. A family member said she died without ever getting her answer. Grubbs, the lawman who called this case his albatross, died in 2015 with it still open.

Birthday Parties for Sissy at Coggin Park

Sissy’s people kept going back to Coggin Park, the same park where she’d had her 13th birthday party a few days before she died. One of those gatherings came in 2009. It landed right around what would have been her 33rd birthday, and family and friends lit candles and prayed together in that park.

For the 25th anniversary they went bigger. They planned a birthday party for Sissy and invited the whole town. There were free hot dogs, and friends and family released balloons for her. People chipped in donations to cover the food and some T-shirts. They set it for May 17, the day after the anniversary of her death.

Sissy’s cousin Judy Shank helped put it together. Judy was 8 when Sissy died. She said they picked Coggin Park so the town wouldn’t forget Sissy. Then she said Sissy “was only 13 years old and didn’t deserve this.”

Sissy is buried at Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood. Back in 2018, the groundskeeper out there was a man named Shane Agan. Shane was 19 when Sissy died. He said he keeps visiting her grave. He said a case with a kid is heartbreaking, and Sissy never got any kind of justice.

Is the Amanda Goodman Murder Still Unsolved?

In 2018, a sergeant with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office said some of the evidence had been sent off for DNA testing, and none of it came back with a DNA signature. He said there were no suspects and nobody had ever been arrested. He wouldn’t even call it a cold case. To him it was an unsolved murder, and he said any time new information comes in, they go right back to it.

That no-suspects answer sits right next to the person of interest Grubbs talked about in 2009. Nobody has explained publicly what happened to that lead.

In 2024, Sissy’s cousin Judy Williams went on a podcast and talked about new information she says she turned up. Law enforcement hasn’t said anything publicly to back it up.

The piece that’s still missing is the same one from the very start. Somebody saw Sissy walking home that afternoon, and nobody has ever said publicly who saw her last.

If you were anywhere near Brownwood Middle School that rainy Tuesday and you saw a girl walking home with her school books and a denim purse, or you remember a car stopping for a kid near that school that afternoon, call the Brown County Sheriff’s Office. The number is 325-646-5510.