Cynthia Gonzalez was murdered 34 years ago, and the investigation to find out who killed her ended in a glacial period. That was until detectives turned the file over to a class of criminology students at the university.
Criminology student helps police make arrest in Texas cold case
Criminology students at the University of Texas at Arlington shed tears after discovering a clue that could lead to an arrest in a cold case murder.
The 1991 murder of 25-year-old Cynthia Gonzalez in Texas all pointed to a male killer.
Gonzalez was an exotic dancer who performed at private events, sometimes for solo guests. The night Ms. Gonzalez was last seen alive, she was meeting with one such male client. And when her body was found dumped in a ditch along a remote country road, she was naked.
So when a 34-year-old cold case landed on Arlington Police Detective Anthony Stafford’s desk last year, he was focused on finding the man responsible.
Until recently, it was all thanks to a group of amazing detectives, college students.
As part of a remarkable new partnership, detectives handed the case file to students in a criminology class at the University of Texas at Arlington earlier this year. By the end of the semester, the students were assaulted by a woman mentioned several times in the case file. So they asked Stafford about her.
“In the back of our minds, we just had a gut feeling that we needed to check it out,” one student, Jaycee Concannon, told USA TODAY. “I just asked, ‘Could you please check again?’
Stafford told USA TODAY that she had never thought about women when the students brought up the possibility of women and became interested in her. “I immediately stopped what I was doing,” he said.
That woman, 63-year-old Janie Perkins, now faces capital murder charges in Gonzalez’s death, a charge she disputes. Her lawyer is confident of her innocence and told USA TODAY, “Once all the facts are presented, the truth will come out.”
Here’s what you need to know about the case, including why students suspected Perkins and what Stafford believes was his motive.
What happened to Cynthia Gonzalez?
Police said on September 16, 1991, Gonzalez dropped off her 6-year-old daughter at her ex-husband’s house before meeting clients for a private striptease show. Her ex-boyfriend reported her missing the next day.
Police found her abandoned car not far from where she was scheduled to meet her client. But Gonzalez was nowhere to be found.
Five days later, her family’s worst fears came true. A property owner found her body dumped in a ditch in a rural area about 30 minutes from where the car was found. She had been shot at least twice in the chest, stripped naked, and her body badly decomposed from the Texas heat and several rainstorms.
Stafford said the case was an immediate issue because the condition of Gonzalez’s body made it very difficult to determine whether a sexual assault was involved, and there was no way to collect potential DNA evidence of a suspect.
Lead detective Jim Ford at the time immediately zeroed in on the client he was scheduled to meet the night Gonzalez was last seen alive. He will begin to scrutinize many of the men in her life.
“He spent almost 20 years of his career investigating this case and identifying all the men who may have been involved with her,” Stafford said. “He determined that none of them were involved or had a motive, and that they had alibis. He eliminated them all as suspects.”
Mr. Ford was never arrested in the case and died in 2013.
An unlikely partnership
Patricia Eddings, a criminology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, had an idea last year when Arlington homicide detectives spoke to students about cold cases. He told the class that his department did not have a cold case unit and had to rely on six overworked homicide detectives whenever possible.
For example, in 2024, detectives had to investigate 17 murders, including triple and double murders. There were seven officer-involved shootings, about one infant death per month, and far too many suicides. Some weeks, you may not have time to spend on cold cases.
So Eddings, herself a former forensic analyst who spent years working in the police crime lab and medical examiner’s office, proposed a new class with a limited number of carefully selected students to tackle the department’s cold cases. The faculty liked the idea, and classes began in September with 15 students.
While some officers can be territorial about their cases, Stafford said he fully accepts that idea. He gave the students five boxes of case files containing more than 1,000 documents, including handwritten notes, research reports, crime scene photos, and recorded interviews.
“I thought this was a great opportunity to take a closer look with fresh eyes,” Stafford said. “We knew that if anyone was going to find anything in this case, they needed uninterrupted time to do it.”
After mulling over the case for months, the students became intrigued by the woman who appeared several times in Ford’s notes. They asked Stafford about her.
“They asked if she had been interviewed, if her husband had been interviewed, and if they had ever compared her footprints and DNA to the crime scene,” he said.
This question prompted Stafford to switch gears from tracking the male killer to investigating Perkins. He was stunned by what he found.
Who is Janie Perkins?
After the students’ questions led Stafford in a new direction, he said he and his partner immediately went to the police archives, cleaned out a conference room and spent six hours “going through every single document line by line and pulling out everything we had” about Perkins, who was allegedly in a love triangle with Gonzalez.
Stafford discovered that Ford had interviewed Perkins in 1991 and then again in 1993 after two men came forward and told police in affidavits that she had confessed to the crime.
“In those statements, she told them specific details about the murders that only those involved would have known,” Stafford said. “The two men did not know each other, but their statements were almost mirror-like.”
One of them was dating Perkins when he met Gonzalez and fell in love with her. He ended his relationship with Perkins to be with Gonzalez, which infuriated Perkins, Stafford said. “She made it very clear that she wanted Cynthia killed so she could be with that person.”
Perkins had no alibi for the night of the killing, and Stafford said she had failed two separate polygraph tests with the highest degree. “Detective Ford was stunned,” Stafford said, adding that Perkins maintained his innocence throughout his interactions with police.
Stafford said he believed Ford did not arrest Perkins because polygraphs were not admissible in court and could not forensically link Perkins to the crime. In the 1990s, he said, many prosecutors “wanted smoke bombs and smoking gun evidence before charging someone with murder.”
“I know Jim Ford wanted to pursue it, but you can only operate within the scope of what you are given as an investigator in the jurisdiction in which you work,” Stafford said. “Today, in 2025, district attorneys are more aggressive than ever in building cases based on the evidence we have.”
Perkins was arrested on capital murder charges on November 6th at his home in Azle, Texas. She was later released on bail while Stafford continued to gather evidence and prosecutors finalized the charges.
“We are currently working on some of the connections between DNA and forensics that we believe will give us the kind of positive results that Jim Ford needed in 1993 and 1991,” Stafford said. “We believe we can prove Johnny’s involvement in the murder in court.”
Perkins did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY through her husband. Her lawyer, Gill & Brissett, said in a statement that Perkins “is innocent of the charges and looks forward to the opportunity to clear her name in court.”
“We are confident that the truth will emerge once all the facts are known,” they said. “The presumption of innocence is not just a legal principle, but a fundamental right that must be defended.”
Arrest in Cynthia Gonzalez murder stirs emotions
Stafford personally broke the news of Perkins’ arrest to the college students involved in the case. Some of them broke down in tears.
Concannon, a 29-year-old student, told USA TODAY, “I was just emotional because I was so shocked and so excited that my family was going to get some answers.” “Wow, I actually did this.”
Concannon remembers being excited to work on the case earlier this year, but had no idea how taxing it would be on her and her fellow students. They were only required to work on the case during class twice a week, or about three hours. But the group always arrived two to three hours early and often stayed late.
Concannon estimates he spent a total of 100 hours on this work over the course of the semester.
“Once I got into the case, there was nothing else I could do,” she said. “We were very focused on this case and were doing everything we could to provide new leads to police.”
Jessica Roberts, who was 6 years old when her mother was murdered and is now 40, had no idea that students were working on her mother’s case and only found out after Perkins’ arrest.
“I was just stunned,” she said at a press conference announcing the arrest. “Still processing.”
She thanked the students and detectives who worked directly on the case and said she hopes other departments will form similar partnerships with the university to tackle cold cases. “This is going to give a lot of hope to a lot of families,” she said.
Professor Eddings said he has been flooded with student applications for next semester’s cold case class, and has received dozens of requests from other professors from around the country who want to start their own classes. She heard that the Fort Worth Police Department is actively looking for schools to partner with.
She said the experience was both satisfying and emotional.
“You work so hard on something so meaningful, but when you’re inside an incident like this, you can’t talk about the horror,” she said. “It’s amazing to think that you could have played a small part in bringing justice to that family and bringing closure to that family.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering cold case investigations and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
