Amarillo Police Looking For Suspect In Rape Dating Back 20 Years

Amarillo Police have reopened a 20 year old rape case. After years clues might end up leading to a closed case.

A night of drinking along Amarillo Boulevard turned deadly for a 29-year-old woman after someone sexually assaulted her, cut her, beat her and dumped her nude body in a field, according to police files.

Nearly two decades later, investigators are still searching for the person who ended Tommie Lea Brooks Hartzog's life.

Two women walking in the 3400 block of Northeast Third Avenue found Hartzog's body in the middle of an undeveloped field Aug. 19, 1991, hours after she was last seen alive, Potter-Randall Special Crimes Lt. Gary Trupe said.

When investigators arrived, they found Hartzog's shirt around her neck.

"I don't believe they found any (other) clothing in the area where her body was found," he said. "She was dumped in the field. She was raped. She was cut."

Trupe said investigators pieced together the last hours of Hartzog's life and determined those were likely spent under a haze of alcohol.

He said Friday, Aug. 16, 1991, Hartzog went to a party with her husband, whom she was separated from at the time but later left the party with another man. From there she went to bars in the 2800 block of Amarillo Boulevard before leaving and going to a house with a man about 1 a.m.

About 9 to 10 p.m. Saturday, she visited a north Amarillo home to get some clothes, he said.

Trupe said investigators then determined she went to bars in the 2600 block of Amarillo Boulevard. The bars made her leave because she was intoxicated.