HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) – It’s been 35 years since the quiet summer night shattered two families forever and left Houston with one of its most excruciating cold cases.
On August 23, 1990, 22-year-old Cheryl Henry and 21-year-old Andy Atkinson went out for a night out in west Houston. The young couple, still at the beginning of their relationship, went to a club called Bayou Mamma’s with Henry’s younger sister, Shane Craig.
But by the next morning, neither of them had returned home.
When Cheryl didn’t show up for work, something her sister says was very different from her, alarms started going off.
“I didn’t know what I knew at the time,” Craig recalls. “But I knew something was wrong. She had just started this job. She loved it so much she never showed up.”
What followed was every family’s worst nightmare.
The search led police to the couple’s parked car near a remote wooded area on Houston’s west side. Nearby, investigators made a horrific discovery – the bodies of Cheryl and Andy. Cheryl was brutally raped. Andy is found tied to a tree. Their murders would soon become known throughout Texas as… The Murders on Lovers Street.
Friends and family who rushed to the scene still remember the chaos and heartbreak.
“It was terrible,” said Danny Walker, one of Cheryl’s closest friends. “They took the dogs out, and when those dogs started going crazy, we knew they had found someone. It was terrible.”
At first, investigators were confident they would find the killer. There was evidence – blood, DNA, a crime scene that seemed to hold evidence.
“At first I thought, ‘Okay, three to six months,'” said Tim Goodwin, Andy’s cousin. “We will find out who did this, there will be a trial, and they will be brought to justice.”
But months turned into years. One year became five. Then ten. Even fifteen years later, there have been no arrests or suspects, only sadness and unanswered questions.
Then, seventeen years later, a glimmer of hope emerged. A DNA sample from the crime scene matched that of an unknown suspect in the assault of another woman. Police released a composite sketch, raising hopes that the case might finally be opened.
However, no arrest followed.
“There are a lot of dead ends,” said Cheryl’s father, Robert Henry. “But there are those who know something. If they come forward, maybe it will ease their conscience.”
Now, 35 years later, Andy and Cheryl’s memories live on for the people who loved them – two young souls whose futures were stolen on a dark Houston road.
“I wish he was here,” Andy’s mother, Anne Fowler, said quietly. “That we were at the beach having a good time. And that he was married with kids… and I had grandchildren to play with. I wish we could all be together.”
As families continue to speak out — and as forensic technology advances — they cling to hope that someone will eventually come forward.
Who killed Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson in Lovers Lane?
After 35 years, their loved ones are still waiting for a response.
Watch Texas True Crime: Lovers’ Lane Murders wherever you stream ABC13.
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Texas True Crime: Only on ABC13 is an in-depth documentary seven years in the making. After three trials, AJ Armstrong is now serving a life sentence for the murder of his parents in a prison in Abilene, Texas. Courtney Fisher is the only reporter in Houston who has covered this case from the beginning and sits down with the people involved in the case who were never recorded — until now.
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