04: Patricia Ann Becks

Imagine vanishing off the face of the earth, leaving behind a trail of questions, accusations, and an estranged husband who was the last one to see you alive. This episode of The Texas Missing Podcast invites you to dig deep into the chilling 1994 disappearance of Patricia Becks from Waxahachie, Texas. We'll bring light to her troubled relationship with her husband, Archie Becks, and explore the most recent updates to her mysterious case.

If you have any information regarding her disappearance please reach out to the Waxahachie Police Department, 469-309-4400.

Resources:

https://charleyproject.org/case/patricia-ann-becks
https://uncovered.com/cases/patricia-becks
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1044dftx.html
https://www.dps.texas.gov/mpch/MissingPerson/mpDetails/M10-12-20014-10-14PM
Court Documents provided by Ellis County 
Interview with Waxahachie Police conducted by TTM

https://www.instagram.com/thetexasmissing/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550699270048
https://www.threads.net/@thetexasmissing

Chapters

• 0:03 Texas Missing Podcast Episode
• 15:30 Finding Evidence in Missing Person Case
• 24:58 The Texas Missing

Transcript

Kate: 0:44

Hey y'all, it's Kate and Bri. Welcome to the fourth episode of the Texas Missing podcast.

Bri: 0:49

Now, Bri, I believe you have a small announcement to make yeah, I just wanted to let everybody know that I am sick, so if I sound a little wonky on this episode, that's why, um, this is my man voice, basically so we're gonna try something a little bit different with this episode.

Kate: 1:08

So normally, both of us will research the case and then we'll kind of go back and forth during the episode. Well, for this episode, I am the only one that researched the case, so Brie doesn't know anything about it, and we'll just try and kind of like more or less have like a natural conversation about it, and maybe she'll be asking questions that you guys will have too. So that's what we're gonna try for this episode. We appreciate all feedback as well. So once you listen to the episode, send us a message, let us know how you like this format or, if you like, the format where both of us are researching the case.

Bri: 1:44

Yeah, we're new, so we're just testing stuff out and seeing what works best and what people like to listen to exactly so.

Kate: 1:50

With that being said, let's get into it. So, Patricia Ann Becks, who also went by Patricia, and Mason I'm pretty sure Mason was her maiden name. She was born august 6 of 1966, so that would have made her about 27 years old when she went missing. Patricia, she went missing in Waxahachie, Texas, which is about 30 miles south of Dallas. It's not a huge town. Population is maybe around 45,000 at this point.

Kate: 2:22

Um, so the day of July 7th 1994, Patricia was seen at work at the Golden Corral in Waukesha, hatchie. Later that day she was picked up from work by a friend and dropped off at her home. Now I have two potential addresses where her home was, just because I've been looking at police reports and also online, and it was either the tuner block of Murdock or an apartment complex off of Martin Luther King Boulevard. So it was one of the two. So from her residence, Patricia was last seen walking to her friend's home, which was within the vicinity of Patricia's home.

Kate: 3:05

So the last person to see Patricia was an unknown person who told police that they had watched Patricia's estranged husband, Archie Becks, and an acquaintance of his, possibly a Dennis Miller, approach Patricia while she was walking to her friend's house. That instance is the last time she was seen and the subject she reported this did not see Patricia get into a vehicle with the men, nor did they see the actual encounter. But whoever reported this obviously knew who Patricia's husband was. So I'm thinking maybe it was her, her neighbor or even her friend that you know she was supposed to be going to meet that night. But I would assume that it's got to be someone that at least semi knows her. If they knew who Archie was and that he approached her did they say where they saw it, like?

Bri: 3:57

was it in front of her house or was it they did?

Kate: 4:01

not it just on the street. Yeah, like they literally said, just on the street when she was walking.

Bri: 4:06

They watched Archie approach well, at this point and you know the mid 90s walks of hatchy is not that, it's not that big right now. No, yeah, it would have been very small town at that point in time.

Kate: 4:22

So, yeah, yeah so, speaking of Archie, he will play a very big part in this case. So with that let's take a look at Patricia and Archie's relationship timeline, as it is very tumultuous and it'll be tied back to some of the theories that maybe happen to Patricia and I do want to talk about a trigger warning with domestic violence and sexual assault. We'll be talking about those quite a bit in this episode. So Patricia and Archie were married in 1988 and by address records it appears that they lived in Waukesa Hatchie for their entire relationship.

Kate: 5:04

In October of 1992 Patricia was arrested for aggravated assault in Texas. The elements of this offense are assaults with the addition of either family violence or exhibiting or using a deadly weapon during the commission of an assault, and in this case it appears that both were present. According to court documents obtained from Ellis County, Patricia was charged with ag assault and the verdict stated the following Patricia and Bex did then and there intentionally and knowingly threatened to cause bodily injury or death to Archie Becks by shooting in his direction with a deadly weapon, to wit a handgun. Now, unfortunately I was unable to find the original offense report so we could at least get a better understanding of the incident. You know how it was going on domestic disturbances. Oftentimes they are super convoluted and it ends up being a he said, she said incident, and so I don't think we get the full picture when we're just reading the court documents, and I think we can get a much better understanding if you at least read the entire offense report that occurred that night.

Bri: 6:18

Yeah, so let me just get this straight she actually shot at him.

Kate: 6:23

Yes, that's what the court documents state, that she had the gun and she shot in his direction, but we don't know what happened before. You know, that's all, that's all that we have to go off of, and I and I tried to get the offense report and nothing came up. I received no feedback other than it wasn't available, and so it's hard to really judge what happened during that incident without that.

Bri: 6:49

Yeah, I think before the cases were digital. I think it's hard going back and finding some of us because they're literally just on paper.

Kate: 7:02

Yeah, and almost all of them are. There's no digital record of them, so it's it's hard to obtain them. Yeah, so it's something odd, though, is that there is within those court documents, there was an order of dismissal that was dated 6 11 of 93. So my guess is Archie dropped the charges or there was insufficient evidence, but most of the time when there's something like that, it's difficult to get those charges just completely dropped. Well, it's, the state picks them up. Yeah, at that point, that didn't happen. They're dropped. Yeah, so, according to, because there's a ledger that came with the court documents and the last portion of that ledger is that it was dropped.

Bri: 7:47

Interesting.

Kate: 7:48

Yeah, so, and you know that would have been in. It would have been nice to get a little bit more information on that, but nothing. So, moving on, in September of 1993, archie apparently beat Patricia and held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. There is no police report for this that I could find. So either there was a port and no offense came from it or the police were just never called. In general, and all explained how I got that information later on, and finally, july 13 of 1994, archie once again beat Patricia, putting her in the hospital and also threatened to shoot her. This offense report was also not found, but I'll explain again how I obtained this information as well.

Kate: 8:33

So sometime between July 13 and July 20 of 1994, patricia filed for and received a temporary ex parte order, which is a protective order that can be filed when a member of a household can articulate to the courts a clear and present danger of family violence. It's Patricia filed the order on Archie and he was listed as the respondent. I was able to find the actual order that Patricia filed and it stated the following On July 13, 1994, family violence occurred when Archie began beating Patricia. Patricia woke up in the hospital. Archie later made the statement to her wait until we get home, bitch, I've got something for you. Patricia strongly believes that Archie is talking about using the gun, since he has made numerous threats that he will shoot her.

Kate: 9:26

In September of 1993, archie came to a friend's house where Patricia was and began beating her. He dragged her down the street to his house and then held a gun to her head and if y'all remember, I said that Patricia went missing July 28, which is literally just a few days after she filed that protective order and the day before Archie was supposed to make a court appearance in regards to the protective order. So I find that very suspicious. Yeah, just the timeframe of it. What a coincidence. Oh yeah, I don't think there is coincidences.

Bri: 10:05

Yeah, I think it's really interesting that she was able to receive a protective order without any case being filed against Archie, because typically in the state of Texas I don't know what it was like in 1997, but here you have to have clear and convincing evidence that an offense has taken place and that you're in danger of further threat of violence, extreme violence, because just a class C assault. A judge is not gonna sign off on a protective order. So I don't know if she had maybe health records or medical records saying hey, she was beaten up, whatever, and provided that. But even then you would think that the police department would file a case after the fact.

Kate: 11:05

Yeah, and I even thought maybe there was just offense reports that I wasn't able to find. But if you look at Archie's criminal history, there is nothing for domestic violence, there's no arrests for domestic violence. So I mean, my guess is that maybe the hospital she had to have something we're damning and they showed evidence of abuse and assault. And when she mentioned the incident that happened in September, she was at a friend's house and I mean obviously those friends watched him drag her out of the house so maybe she was able to gain witnesses to kind of contribute to the pattern of abuse from him.

Bri: 11:49

Yeah, well, and maybe they did file an offense report later, but she's gone now, so I felt like they could have arrested him.

Kate: 11:58

There's no victim? There probably wasn't.

Bri: 11:59

Yeah, it ended up being dropped, yeah and that adds another aspect to this case too, like if she did file an offense report for domestic violence and it could have been the event at the friend's house and that would cause Archie to incur very serious charges. So but if there's no victim, really, and it kind of goes away.

Kate: 12:24

Yeah, yeah, and maybe that was his thinking if he was the culprit, which I'm leaning towards, but we'll go into more of that later. So unfortunately, that is really the end of the timeline. That includes Patricia, but not so much for Archie. So fast forward to 2013. If you didn't already have your suspicions about Archie and his morality, this will probably push you in the right direction. So in September of 2013, archie was sentenced to prison for 60 years for sexual assault of a child.

Kate: 13:03

The Dallas Morning News reported that Archie repeatedly molested a 13-year-old female and continued to do so after his initial arrest and release. First, I kind of have several questions about how he was still able to be in contact with her after he initially was arrested and released, because he was right back where she was. So I have some questions about how he was allowed to be around her after that. But something interesting also in the article is that one of the victim's siblings stated even after Archie was arrested he often went into the teen's room during the night and touched her inappropriately. So I'm not for sure the dynamic of the victim in Archie.

Kate: 13:59

See, he was probably dating the mom of his own, and that's kind of where my head went is that he was living with them and then he was dating their mother, yeah, and I think, as a parent, if you don't protect your child, that's on you and you should also be charged with that.

Kate: 14:18

Yeah, he's allowed it to be right back into the home. Yeah, as the victim, I can't imagine how traumatizing it would be to have the bravery to come out and list him as a suspect. But then, once he's arrested and released, he's allowed to be back in your home, and that's disgusting. Now, something good that came from this is, as I said, archie was sentenced to 60 years and he has to serve at least 30 of those years before he has a chance for parole. So he would be just about, I think, 82 or 83 when that happened. So at least he's tucked away for what seems to be quite a while.

Bri: 15:09

Yeah he needs to be. Yeah, all of that. He's not safe to the general public, like he's a danger to society. He needs to be locked away. Yeah, to keep him Strombly. Keep him. Probably not going to live till he's 82 anyway. No, probably not.

Kate: 15:27

So let's skip to the present day. This part of the case to me is I don't want to use exciting I think we've talked about using the word excited when it comes to these cases, but maybe compelling might be the better word. So I filed for an open records request for Patricia's initial missing person case from the Waukesahatchee Police Department.

Bri: 15:50

And remember every time we filed an open records request. Up to this point, every single bit of it has been redacted, or they say that they can't find it.

Kate: 16:02

Right, and that's going to be a majority of the case when we're applying for these open records requests, because these cases are not closed, they have not been solved, they are still open and, although most of them are considered cold cases because they are still open and they're active, a lot of the information is not public. So, although I didn't receive her original case, I did receive a supplement to her original case. This supplement included the first updates on the case since 1994. In 2012, detectives were contacted by an acquaintance of Archie's. This subject stated that on several occasions in 2009, he would go over to Archie's home to drink alcohol in that, in an indirect way, archie may have implicated himself as the person who murdered Patricia. The subject noted that he did not have proof of this and Archie never directly stated that he killed Patricia. Now I'm not going to go into detail about the specifics that he told the detective, but just know they are gruesome and heinous. They're terrible, yeah it's gross.

Bri: 17:18

I don't think that this acquaintance would have made up something that terrible. So if Archie told this acquaintance about the incident in 2009, why did it take him so long to contact the police? Did you ever find that out?

Kate: 17:38

No, and I also caught on to that. I thought it was a little odd, like what would bring you, after three years, to all of a sudden go and tell police this information. Usually, there's some type of driving factor. Was Archie already imprisoned in 2012? No, he went to prison in 2013. He was sentenced in 2013. Now, I know there was a moment where he was arrested for the initial charge and then he was released, but I don't have that exact info.

Bri: 18:13

So at some point in 2012, he could have been in jail he might have felt safe, like finally coming to police, because he was like, hey, maybe this guy is not going to get out.

Kate: 18:25

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously he has a history of violence, so he could have very well been afraid of him and once he was arrested, that he felt safer to go to the police and talk to them about this. Because I mean, from all accounts it kind of appears that Archie was possibly getting back at Patricia for going to the police on him, so maybe that's that was his thought process. Well, you know, he potentially did something to Patricia. So when I found, or when I received the supplement, I also found the detective's name and I reached out to him.

Bri: 19:04

Yeah, I know you called me and you were nervous about reaching out to him because you thought he was going to tell you to hand the whole thing I was going to like shut me down, and I'm not for sure why. Because it's because you're not used to receiving information like that. Like you got that full, unredacted supplement, which is surprising. I honestly thought he was probably going to tell you to, can it?

Kate: 19:25

Yeah, I thought he was going to be like, oh, you accidentally received that, yeah, but no, he was actually really nice and he was more just wanting to figure out how I stumbled upon Patricia's case. He specifically said that there is not a lot of information about her and even publicity just about. You know, no one in Waukes, a Hatchee, a majority of the town, even know who she is. And so what happened so long ago? Well, yeah, absolutely Almost in 30 years, yeah, and it is coming up on 30 years.

Kate: 20:01

But basically I just went in with the detective on our purpose and how our entire purpose is to highlight those cases that are less known, and so he completely understood. So obviously the detective wasn't able to give me a whole lot of detail, as the case as we talked about it's still ongoing, but he was able to confirm that on the original report there was a witness that did state they saw Archie approach Patricia on the street that night. She went missing. And there is one more bit of information that could be incredibly important. The detective stated that recently there has been some information received that could possibly break the case wide open and he had to kind of leave it at that. He couldn't tell me anything more, but has he gone back?

Kate: 20:51

and interviewed Archie by new chance, so I don't know if he specifically has spoken to Archie, but he was. He did tell me that previous detectives have went in, spoken to Archie, but they have not been able to find definitive proof to tie him to her disappearance, and so that's why. That's why it's still open. There's just an all around lack of information and evidence.

Bri: 21:18

But he's sitting on something that could potentially yeah, like the case wide open.

Kate: 21:24

And he had to leave it at that. He couldn't go into more detail, which I totally understood. But you know, after almost 30 years I think that would be great if her remains could at least be found and that she could be, you know, have a proper burial.

Bri: 21:42

But Based on some of the information, yeah, that were excluding from the podcast. I don't necessarily know if remains will be found, but as long as justice can be served, that would be a start.

Kate: 21:55

Yeah, and you know, I mean he's probably not getting out of prison anyway, but Well, and I was thinking, you know, because he will not have the opportunity to make parole until 30 years, maybe they can use that as leverage, like you know what is? What else does he have to lose? You know, he's probably going to be in prison the rest of his life, like why not just go ahead and come out and and say what happened? But I don't think he's that type. No, I don't say well, based off of his history, he probably doesn't give a shit.

Bri: 22:29

Yeah, because at this point, even though it's you know, he's got a chance for parole, even though it's in the distant future. He'd be 82 if he admits to murder he's. There is no chance. There is no chance for parole.

Kate: 22:43

Yeah At all. But what is he? What would he gain from telling the truth or helping detectives? He wouldn't gain anything.

Bri: 22:53

I don't know. Maybe they could sweeten his deal a little bit, some kind of special accommodations or something, not necessarily early parole, because nobody wants him released at this point. There's a danger to the general public.

Kate: 23:05

Yeah, well, and I think that would be the only way that he would even be willing to help investigators if they were able to cut time, and no one wants to cut his time. No, he needs to be in prison for the rest of his life. Yeah, and I just I don't think that he would be willing to offer up any of that information unless the deal really, um, maybe special privileges in prison.

Kate: 23:27

You know, I don't know, I don't know what they could possibly give him that would make him want to give him Maybe like a facility transfer yeah, you know literally any lines something that would, you know, benefit him in any type of way, because he sure as hell doesn't seem like the type that would do anything unless he's benefited from it.

Bri: 23:48

Yeah Well, and I've seen this picture and I don't think he's going to be making an escape anytime soon, so I don't think that like a prison transfer would really be uh you know, dangerous or hazardous.

Kate: 23:59

So so, based off all the information that I have told you today, is there any kind of raising questions that you have?

Bri: 24:08

regarding any of it. No, I think, um, I think it'll just be interesting to see this case evolve, especially since the detective has something that we are not privy to so kind of information. Um, I hope that they're able to act on that and charge him Um with her murder, if she is indeed deceased, which I think she is, because, um, I know that you told me that there was also possibly like a jail informant that had also said kind of a similar story as yeah, um, so that was another little bit of information that the detective was able to share that there was someone in prison that was going to be in prison For life.

Kate: 24:58

And they had contacted the police Waxahashi police stating that they had information. But the information was all hearsay. It wasn't anything that they could use to bring charges against Archie or to locate uh, her remains.

Bri: 25:15

The story was similar to what the first.

Kate: 25:18

Yes, so, um, the most prevalent theory is that Archie did kill Patricia, um because she filed the uh, temporary order on him, and I think my guess is that charges were coming for him involving domestic violence. Because of that temporary order was um was activated, and so my math think he did it purely out of out of spite and to get rid of her. For sure, um, and that is the the overlapping theory, um that he did have something to do with it and, matter of fact, I haven't seen or heard a theory that involves anybody else other than Archie?

Bri: 26:03

Yeah, cause I know you said her social security has never been used since. No, there's been no activity, no Grace.

Kate: 26:10

Um, cause, you know, sometimes you can um Google missing person names and they'll be like last spotted here, last sighted here. Um, there is nothing on her, matter of fact, there is not even news articles that include her name. The only thing that pops up when you Google her is the DPS missing website, the Jane Doe website, where someone has entered in all of her criteria in her photo and then a name is and that's it. Yeah, and so you know, that's that's kind of where we leave it.

Kate: 26:42

Um, but Patricia is a black female and at the time of her disappearance, she was five foot six inches and weighed 120 pounds. Today she would be 57 years old. If you have any information regarding her disappearance, please reach out to walks of hatching police department and, as always, make sure to follow us on social media, as I will post Patricia's photos and case info on our social media platforms Instagram, facebook, twitter threads and Tik Tok, which are all under the handle at the Texas missing, and make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast and, with that being said, I'm Kate and I'm Brie, and this is the Texas missing podcast.