NORTH RICHLAND HILLS (CBSDFW.COM) – The man drove a red jeep, with a suspicious tag. For almost two decades that’s about all Jeff Garner knew about the man who shot him through the leg in 2003.
He never forgot the man’s face though, as the Jeep drove toward him through a field, the driver firing out the window. This week, he picked that face out of a police photo lineup.
There were goosebumps when he saw the picture, he said Friday. Police already had all the evidence they needed without Garner’s identification, but it put an ending on a story he’d been waiting to finish for all these years.
“I held onto hope, but you can’t hold on too tightly for that long,” he said.
Now a Captain with the North Richland Hills Police Department, Garner gave all the credit for solving the cold case to Detective Erik Whitlock.
Garner had tried to move on from the shooting when there were no leads to follow in the first few years after it happened. Whitlock was a young officer on his shift though, he said, who just wouldn’t let it go.
Violent crimes with no answers, no justice for the victims, Whitlock said just bothered him on a personal level.
He figured if he could solve any one of the seven bank robberies that appeared to involve the same man driving the Jeep, then he would find their shooter.
The DNA from a bloody glove and a shirt at robberies in Oklahoma and Arlington never led them anywhere though.
Garner had a message though Friday for the unnamed person who uploaded their own DNA profile to a genealogy database in December, who turned out to be a relative of the mystery shooter.
“You opted in,” Garner said, speaking to that person. “With no imaginable idea of the role that decision would come to play. You shined a light into darkness. And brought justice and healing.”
Investigators don’t believe that Mark Long, the Oklahoma City man they connected to the robberies and shootings, ever told anyone what he had done.
He had a great-grandfather, Whitlock said, who was a sheriff in Oklahoma and had been killed by a bank robber.
Long had actually been arrested and sentenced for misdemeanor bank robbery in 2000, after forging a signature on a check and spending most of the money. Part of his sentence was to pay back more than $26,000. Despite not having a job at the time, and in debt, Long was able to pay back the cash in one lump sum. It was after three bank robberies in 1998-99, where a total of $250,000 was stolen.
Investigators are confident Long acted alone. They still aren’t entirely sure why he chose banks in North Texas. A friend said they would come down to Dallas shop. He was a HAM radio operator and the hobby may have taken him into the area. The story that started 19 years ago though, finally has a conclusion.
“While one of Mark’s bullets hit me, the other four missed,” Garner said. “And I have done my best to honor my survival day, serving the members of this department and our community in our fullest ability.”