The cold case murder of Jill Bounds - Dallas, Texas - September 20, 1988
Around noon, a client of therapist Jill Bound showed up at her door to be treated by her. It was not only a customer, but also a long-term friend, and had known Jill for many years. On the way to the front door she noticed that the always punctual Jill had not yet picked up the newspaper from the garden. When they didn't open the door, she got a bad feeling. She should just be home. The customer drove to the nearest payphone and called Jill, but there was no answer. Now she was really worried, because when Jill left she always transferred the phone to the answering machine.
She decided to call the police, who she met a little later in front of Jill's house, along with another customer. The officer climbed in through a window and made a gruesome discovery in the house. He found 41-year-old Jill on her bed, dead. It was clear that she had been the victim of a heinous crime. The killer had smashed her skull.
About Jill Bound
Jill was the daughter of Jane and Philip Bounds and grew up in Rockwall with a younger sister, Joy. Her parents were a well-known couple in town because of their purchase of the only local newspaper. Jill and her sister were raised Christian and the family were members of the First Christian Church of Rockwall. She had a large social circle and attended East Texas State University, where she graduated with honors in business administration. She fell in love during her studies and married him shortly after graduating. However, the marriage did not last long, lasting only a year untill 1970.
She had since moved to Dallas and briefly got a job as a teacher. After her marriage, she worked as a secretary for a number of companies and lived in an efficient apartment. During that time, she had a number of successive relationships, mainly with men who did everything for her. She had developed into a real man-eater. She eventually got engaged with Dick Grote, whom she had met in 1973. According to him, Jill knew exactly which buttons to push in people to get the reaction she wanted. During that period Jill had become increasingly interested in metaphysics and invested a lot of time in tarot cards. She was also interested in astrology and the supernatural world.
Due to the growing disagreements, the engagement to Dick was eventually broken off. Jill was not without a ring for long, because at the end of 1974 she met Jim Truitt, a lawyer to whom she became engaged shortly after meeting. Jill began teaching yoga during that time and became a member of the First Unitarian Church. However, Jill also developed a growing interest in the supernatural world, and increasingly argued with her new fiancé. After a while, Truitt realized that Jill was someone completely different from what he thought. Instead of being a sweet, gentle woman, she could be incredibly harsh and have aggressive tantrums that came out of nowhere. All together this caused another relationship breakdown. Jill decided to go back to school and took psychology courses, after which she worked as a school psychologist and started her own counseling practice.
The career switch made Jill make many personal discoveries. Her life slowly but surely changed, and she became very close to her stepfather, whom she continued to support even after his divorce from her mother. Meanwhile, Jill worked at her frame house on Lakeshore Drive, earning about $75,000 a year. Her business was a success. She received many patients who were especially interested in personal growth, and was adored by them because of her tightness. However, they had no idea of the personal problems their therapist was experiencing. According to her relatives, Jill mainly struggled to find her own meaning in life.
In the 1980s, Jill had a number of successive relationships, all of which ended for different reasons. One thing is clear, Jill had serious anger issues and few men could handle it. One of the few men who stuck around in her life was Bob Jones. He still looks back on the good bond he had with Jill. But Bob had not turned out to be the love of her life. For a period Jill was in love with one Adam Schubert, but he also had to succumb to the many personality problems Jill developed, who now also believed in black magic and was heavily influenced by cultleader Terri Hoffman, who led a spiritual movement called Conscious Development of Body, Mind and Soul Inc. Hoffland had many followers who she took on spiritual journeys inside their own minds. The purpose of her classes was to help achieve a higher consciousness. The lessons always started light-heartedly, but soon turned to spiritual wars against black lords and other dark spiritual fantasies that the followers accepted as real. At one point Jill belonged to Hoffland's inner circle. This contact ultimately led to the breakup between Jill and Schubert, who had done everything he could, but had not been able to ensure that Jill went further and further in her beliefs. During the last weeks of her life, Jill felt depressed, and searched harder than ever for meaning in her existence.
During the last weeks of her life, Jill felt depressed. According to her friends, she was seriously seeking overtures from men, and in the days before her death she reportedly reconnected with old lovers such as a man named Bob Hargrove and someone she called the Fireman. In fact, it was Hargrove who met Jill at her house the night before the murder. In her diary she wrote around 9 pm ''BH is late. I don't trust him... I should get rid of him but I'm too afraid without him."
Police Investigation
Dallas police found Jill lying on her blood-soaked bed. She was severely beaten and her skull was crushed. The killer had pulled the sheet up to her forehead after the murder, as if he did not dare to see the result of his brutal act. According to investigators, the blood splatter was almost everywhere in the room, and traces of blood were also found in the bathroom on the carpet and on various washcloths. According to a doctor, the murder weapon may have been a tire iron, and Jill was not awake during the attack. According to the investigation, Jill had been hit seven times on the head.
The police did not reveal much about what they had found in the house. It is known that Jill's mother found an occult drawing in her daughter's bedroom a few days after the murder. She also found a toy robot whose body had been mutilated. Whether the police overlooked this or deliberately ignored it remained unknown. According to police, the front and back doors of the home were locked and the security system was armed. The perpetrator therefore had to have a key to the house and have knowledge of the system. It could also be that the perpetrator was lucky and escaped through one of the three windows that were not connected to the alarm. Jill had once saved $120 on the purchase, settling for leaving three windows unsecured. In the house, the police found two Winston brand cigarette butts, coincidentally on the floor near one of the three windows that were not set to the alarm. Was it a diversion or a real lead? That was the question.
Although the police did not suspect a robbery motive, it turned out that the perpetrator had indeed taken a number of things from the home. According to Jill's relatives, several pieces of jewelry were missing and even a gun had been taken from a drawer. However, he had left other valuables behind, including her Cartier watch on her wrist, so the real motive did not point to robbery, according to the police.
Suspects
Soon after the murder, police began looking at Bob Hargrove as the prime suspect. He was the one in Jill's diary, and the last person to see her alive. Bob was interrogated several times and indicated that his sexual relationship with Jill had ended years ago. Although Jill actually wrote in her diary that they had sex that night, she also wrote afterwards ''new level of love and emotion. I love him dearly. He was so sweet and loving.”
Bob Hargrove took a polygraph test to prove his innocence. But although he passed the test according to his attorney, Detective Johnson said the test was inconclusive. According to the police, former lover Adam Schubert also failed his polygraph, and unlike Bob who only knew the securitycode of the alarmsystem, Schubert reportedly had access to the house. However, he said that he had previously returned the key to the house to Jill. Adam cooperated with the investigation and also turned in his car phone records to detectives. The possible suspicions of the two ex-lovers were overshadowed when police took a closer look at Terri Hoffland, the cultleader Jill used to be close with for many years.
Terri Hoffland
Jill's relatives told the police that Jill was a very fanatical supporter of Hoffland's movement, especially in the 1970s, and she took her infamous 'Conscious Development' classes, which we talked about earlier in this article. Around 1982, according to her relatives, Jill distanced herself from Terri Hoffland after she was linked to several suspicious suicides and deaths, two of which were her husbands. Most of the victims had once come into contact with her movement and had turned their backs on Terri after a while. Terri's role in these deaths would be investigated by detectives in the early 1990s, involving at least ten deaths.
The police gradually suspected that Jill Bound's murder was related to Terri Hoffland and her movement. However, despite research and rumors, it has never been confirmed. Hoffland would eventually receive a long prison sentence for fraud, but would be acquitted of involvement in the suicides and deaths of her ex-members. She died in 2015 as a result of a serious illness.
Tips and Information
And so the murder of Jill Bounds is still unsolved. The woman led a rather unusual life, and met a gruesome end. Her relatives still miss her, because underneath that thick skin was a very kind woman who was always there for her family and friends.
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