My Unintentional Connections to Murderers and Serial Killers - Part 4 - Terry Blair
Fast forward to 2004. The local news was buzzing about the body count of women piling up on Prospect Avenue. For those of you not from the Kansas City area, it is that part of town you do not want to be. High crime, rapes, prostitution, homicides, robberies, boarded up and burnt out abandoned houses, and the list goes on. I accidentally ended up on Prospect one night and when I realized where I was, I am hoping for green lights to just get the hell out of there. Let's just say this is not a place for anyone to be at 1:00 in the morning on a weekend. Most likely I would not have been messed with due to the fact I just got done working a local haunted house. I still had my makeup on, probably had some fake blood on my face, wearing all black, and had long hair at the time. See my Contact page. Even as crazy as I looked, I was getting stares from lots of groups of young gentlemen gathered around their tricked out cars with subwoofers that could be measured on the Richter scale. Heck, they were probably more scared of crazy-ass white boy looking the way I did than I was of them.
So now that you know the kind of place Prospect Avenue is, I remember the news about women being murdered on Prospect at the time, but honestly didn't pay much attention because that is what happens on Prospect Avenue...murders. A few years later, I am watching The First 48 episode, "A Serial Killer Calls". The crew happened to be here filming when all this was going on. So I am watching and then it gets to the point where they are determining the victims names. I'm casually watching the show and they mention victim # 5...Darci Williams, 25, who was adopted as a child and was recently trying to track down her biological family. She was found covered up in an alley near 24th and Prospect. She was strangled and had a broken neck. They put up a picture of her and I did the cartoon double take. WHOA!
I knew her! I went to church with her. She was a mixed race child of an alcoholic mother and drug-addicted father, adopted by a white family who ran the local KC Opry. I remember her being just a little kid in the early 80's. In the mid to late 80's I helped out with the Children's Church program and she was one I was always handing out Children's Church Bucks to that could be redeemed for prizes once a month. Always participating and being quiet during the lessons. In the 90's my Mom used to pick her up for church when she didn't have a ride. So I definitely knew her, and the picture they showed on The First 48 was definitely the Darci Williams that I knew.
Man, that hit me. From what I knew of her, she was the nicest kid. Obviously I had no insight on her family or personal life, only how she was at church. The last time I saw her would have probably been in early 1997, before my Mom died and I stopped attending that church. By doing a little research, it would have been after this time that she had a baby that died of SIDS only a month after birth. Also she did have a couple drug possession charges. I don't know if she was a prostitute or not, but this was the complete 180 of what I knew of her. So sad.
Terry Blair was charged and convicted on 6 counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2008.
After they caught the killer, Terry Blair, it came out that back in 1982, he killed the mother of his kids because he said she was a prostitute, and he saw prostitutes as less than and scum. He was in jail for that and released on parole in 2003. Also, his mother murdered her husband, his brother Walter Blair, Jr. killed a woman, and he had some other brothers and sisters in jail for stabbings, murders, rapes, etc. What the hell is wrong with that family?
Rest in Peace, Darci. You were a good kid and had a whole life ahead of you.
Darci Irene Williams on FindAGrave
