Texas Police Find Bone in Cold Case After 5 Years

Police in Lubbock, Texas, found a bone related to the case of a Texas teen who disappeared in 2013.

Investigators with the Lubbock Police Department’s crime scene investigation team and other units found a bone that they said was related to the missing-person case of Zoe Campos. Campos was last seen on Nov. 17, 2013.

Campos, who was 18 at the time, was last seen by her sister. The pair went to the Copper Caboose Restaurant near Avenue Q in Lubbock where they were recorded by a security camera. They left and returned to the sister’s apartment at nearby.

According to Disappearedblog, the sisters watched a movie and then Campos’ sister was reported to have gone to bed around 11:30 p.m.

Campos sent a text to her mother around 2:20 a.m. on Nov. 18 which said she was leaving to pick up her mother from a job on East 34th street—about a ten-minute drive away.

But Campos never arrived.

Campos’ mother called but the call went straight to voicemail. Campos’ mother called her sister the next morning to learn that Campos and her car were gone from her sister’s apartment.

Campos apparently had already left the apartment when she sent the text, which showed her location to be in the area of Lowery Field, which is about a mile-and-a-half away from the apartment. Her exact location could not be ascertained as cell location is only accurate to within a mile, KCBD reported.

A missing person report was filed on Nov. 19.

Stranger in Her Car

Three days after Campos went missing, her aunt said she spotted an unknown male driving her Campos’ car. Her aunt tried to follow the man but lost sight of the car.

However, the car turned up in the parking lot of the Driftwood Apartments at 5501 Utica Avenue, about two miles from Campos’ apartment. The driver was never found.

However, a man’s sweatshirt was found in the back seat, along with a roll of duct tape.

Zoe Campos’ mother, Melinda Campos, funded private investigators to search everywhere within the radius of where the text could have originated.

Those searches came to naught. No evidence was discovered, no clues were uncovered, and the mystery of the disappearance of Zoe Campos remained completely unsolved.

A Facebook page, Missing Zoe Campos, was created to help keep the case and its young victim fresh in people’s minds.

Mystery Bone

Acting on a tip, police investigators brought cadaver dogs to search the backyard of a home in the 1900 block of 70th Street, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported on Nov. 13.

That home, just west of Lowery Field, was within the mile radius from where Campos’ final text had been sent.

Lubbock Police investigators announced that the search had yielded a piece of bone on Nov. 7.

While police have stated that the bone is related to the case, they have not released any more information as the investigation is still active.

According to KCBD, the Lubbock Police Department’s crime scene investigation team, an LPD forensics specialist, and the Lubbock County Medical Examiners are all involved in the investigation.

Police are urging anyone with information to call Crime Line at 806-741-1000.

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