- In Commerce, city government today announced the search for a new Commerce Chief of Police has been narrowed down to three finalists: John Densmore, Paul Odin and Corely Weatherford. All three candidates are from Texas. Densmore is a recently retired police chief from Athens. Odin is currently police chief in West Columbia. And, Weatherford currently works for the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office. The release said all three candidates will participate in a two-day interview process in early February. The City of Commerce is using the services of Keller-based Strategic Government Resources to assist in the candidate search.
- The Texas Department of Public Safety says it’s solved a nearly 30-year old murder of a Paris woman. On the night of Aug. 18, 1996, Mary Moore Searight was found inside her home with major injuries from an assault. Searight was air-lifted to a hospital in Dallas where she died three days later. Using DNA evidence, officials were able to build a case against David Paul Cady Jr., now age 54. Cady was one of Searight’s tenants at the time of the murder. In February 2024, the Texas Rangers and Paris Police Department arrested Cady, who was already in the Hopkins County Jail for another crime. He remains in custody at this time. Cady was indicted on a murder charge by a Lamar Co. grand jury last month (Dec. 2024). The DNA testing was made possible by federal funding. Texas officials received funding for the investigation through the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program which is funded by the federal Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (DOJ/BJA). The agency provides investigative funding to help solve cold cases involving sexual assault and sexually related homicide.