Nonprofit aids in solving 39-year-old murder case

HENDERSON COUNTY — A murder mystery that lingered for nearly four decades has finally been solved, thanks to cutting-edge forensic testing funded by a Texas-based non-profit dedicated to cracking cold cases. According to our news partner KETK, Seasons of Justice, founded in 2020, specializes in financing advanced DNA analysis for long-stalled investigations. Its work proved crucial in identifying the person responsible for the 1987 killing of 29-year-old Rickey Herriage — a brutal crime that had haunted Henderson County investigators for 38 years.

Herriage was murdered in the late hours of March 7, 1987, after he was shot multiple times and thrown from a bridge. His body wasn’t recovered until 1 p.m. on March 8 by a man picking up beer cans on a bank on County Road 1500. His case remained dormant until 2019, when Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse revived the investigation and sent clothing from the original crime scene to Pure Gold Forensics in Redlands, California. Technicians there extracted a usable DNA profile and entered it into the national CODIS database, but no immediate match surfaced.

Determined to push further, the sheriff’s office partnered with Seasons of Justice to pursue more exhaustive DNA testing. The expanded analysis finally produced a breakthrough: a match linking the DNA on Herriage’s clothing to Dallas Reynolds Casanova.

Casanova will never face charges as he died in 2008.

“Unfortunately, we see a lot of deceased suspects in these cases,” Kendall Mills, project manager for Seasons of Justice, said in an interview on KETK+. “It’s disappointing when the prime suspect doesn’t get to go to trial, but bringing answers to families is still incredibly meaningful.”

With the match confirmed, the Herriage case is now officially closed, resolving a crime that stretched across generations and offering a measure of closure to Herriage’s family.

Seasons of Justice helped solve this cold case by providing the funding that aids advanced DNA testing. They provided funding for DNA analysis through Othram Labs and the FBI’s Dallas Violent Crimes Task Force, enabling the use of forensic genetic genealogy to help identify the person responsible.