FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - It’s been 20 years since Amy Robinson’s lifeless body was found on a remote road in far east Fort Worth, the victim of two savage killers.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports her grandmother wanted her to be remembered instead of her killers, so she started Our Garden of Angels Memorial Park.
“Amy was murdered out there,” Carolyn Barker Maifeld of Grand Prairie said. “The first time I went out there I said those boys aren’t going to be remembered for doing this. I wanted Amy to be remembered so I put her cross out there.”
Since Amy’s cross was planted on April 15, 2000, she has been joined by 131 other murder victims at the garden, at Trinity Boulevard and Moiser Valley Road.
They include:
- Kaytlynn Cargill of Bedford, the 14-year-old who was killed in 2017 and dumped in the Arlington landfill, across the street from the garden. The suspect accused of killing her, Jordan Roache, is awaiting trial.
- The five children - Noah Jacob, John Samuel, Paul Abraham, Luke David and Mary Deborah - drowned in their Houston home by their mentally ill mother, Andrea Yates.
- The two young daughters - Faith and Liberty - of John Battaglia, the Dallas killer who was executed in February.
On April 15, in a special ceremony at the garden, two more crosses were added.
One is for Samuel McKay Everett, 12, of Conroe, outside Houston, who was kidnapped and killed by a family friend in 1995. Hilton Crawford was executed in 2003.
The other is a replacement cross for Tonnaye Hightower of Watauga, a 33-year-old mother who was killed by her 16-year-old son in 2003. David Hightower was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Robinson was riding her bike in 1998 along West Division Street in Arlington when she was abducted and murdered by her grocery store co-workers Michael Wayne Hall and Robert Neville, who bragged about killing her.
She was missing for 17 days before her body was found, not far from where the crosses rise today.
The garden has crosses for children and adults. Some are decorated with flowers and ribbons; others just show names.
There is only one requirement.
“They have to have been murdered,” Maifeld said. “Not a car wreck or anything. Murdered. It’s a memorial for them.”
The garden greets eastbound motorists on a busy stretch of Trinity Boulevard, not far from where the borders of Fort Worth, Euless and Arlington meet.
While they’re a reminder of awful things that have happened, Maifeld said the crosses give solace to her and the loved ones of other murder victims.
“It’s a peaceful place to go,” she said.
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Information from: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, http://www.star-telegram.com
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