Unique partnership helped resolve lingering homicide case that went unsolved for decades.
By Suryatapa Chakraborty
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Arlington police announced Monday that they arrested a 63-year-old woman in connection with a 1991 homicide that was solved in part with the assistance of college students.
The U.S. Marshals North Texas Fugitive Task Force took Janie Perkins into custody on Nov. 6 in Azle, according to a news release. Police said they obtained a warrant to arrest Perkins on a capital murder charge.
In 1991, Cynthia Gonzalez was reported missing by her ex-husband on Sept. 17. Gonzalez, who was 25 at the time, was last seen the previous evening as she left her home to meet with a client, the release said.
Police said her vehicle was found abandoned in a neighborhood in the 900 block of Cedar Springs Terrace, which prompted officers to begin looking into the possibility of her being kidnapped.
A few days later, her body was found on Sept. 22 after she had been dumped on private property in a rural area of Johnson County. She was shot multiple times, and her body was decomposing, the release said.
“Detectives pursued numerous leads through the years, but never made an arrest in the case,” the release said.
The case was assigned in 2024 to a current homicide detective for review, who, after an initial review, did not find any new evidence or leads to pursue but agreed to keep the case open so that he could continue the investigation.
Arlington police don’t have a full-time cold case unit, but unsolved murders are assigned to homicide detectives to work on, along with their active cases.
In the fall semester of 2025, the University of Texas at Arlington’s Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice launched an advanced course in partnership with the Arlington police, which gave selected students the opportunity to review active cold cases and try to develop new leads.
Gonzalez’s case was one of three cold cases given to the students, the release said.
The students communicated with detectives about their cases throughout the semester and the group assigned to Gonzalez’s case started asking several questions about Perkins, prompting a review by Arlington police detectives.
“When we launched our cold case partnership with UTA, we always hoped we’d get an outcome like this one day,” said police Chief Al Jones in the release. “I don’t think any of us expected that lightning would strike the first time.”
Police said Perkins was a friend of Gonzalez, who would frequently hang out with her.
During the original police probe, detectives investigated Perkins after discovering she and Gonzalez shared a romantic partner. They also learned that several weeks before the woman was slain, the partner told Perkins he was breaking things off with her to be with Gonzalez.
Perkins could not provide the original detectives with an alibi for where she was the night Gonzalez went missing and failed two voluntary polygraph tests when she was asked if she killed Gonzalez or knew who did.
She had also made statements to investigators indicating she was glad Gonzalez was dead and that she even thought about killing her or having someone else kill her, according to authorities.
Perkins was never charged, as polygraph tests are not admissible in court, and she maintained she was not involved in the murder, according to police.
Police said current detectives reviewed the case files more thoroughly and learned that witnesses came forward to claim that Perkins had admitted to them that she was involved in the murder and gave them specific details about the killing.
Detectives compared the witness statements to the evidence in the case and found they aligned, which made them believe Perkins either participated in or facilitated the murder. After consulting with the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, detectives moved forward with filing criminal charges against her, the release said.
Suryatapa Chakraborty is a Breaking News Reporter at The Dallas Morning News. She graduated from Boston University in 2025 with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has previously completed internships at the Boston Globe Media and the Cape Cod Times
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
