Strangled flight attendant’s family reaches out

This week, the family of a murdered flight attendant reached out to me. Two years ago, Bayou Justice recounted her murder. Next week, I’ll be recounting the bizarre events from her family’s perspective.

In 1962, Trans-Texas Airways flight attendant Donna Janell Kimmey worked from the airport hub in Dallas, flying into Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. TTA advertisements that year depicted their attendants as the most courteous and most attractive “angels” in the air. Donna, a 22-year-old former beauty queen, wore the wings on her cap with pride.

Shortly before Christmas that year, someone strangled Donna in a luxury motel in Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. Now, more than half a century later, police remain clueless about who killed her.

Donna Kimmey graduated high school in Huntington, Texas, in 1958. That year she worked as editor of the school newspaper and manager of the basketball team. Her classmates voted for her “the most beautiful girl in Angelina County.”

When Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, Donna bleached her brown hair in tribute, never dreaming her own death would soon follow.

The 310-room Hilton Inn faced Airline Highway, across the street from New Orleans’ Moisant International Airport. At 10:00 a.m., December 17, 1962, a bellhop at the posh motel unlocked the door to a room in a connected suite of 12 leased by TTA for employees between flights.

Ordinarily prompt, Donna Kimmey missed her morning flight to Little Rock, prompting airline officials to investigate. When no one answered the door, TTA District Manager Ralph Murphy contacted the motel manager to open her room.

Donna joined Trans-Texas Airways two years after graduation.

Jo-Ann Gentry—the Houston stewardess who replaced Donna on the Little Rock flight — said Donna loved her job and life. Jo-Ann told police she and Donna had planned a European vacation for the fall of 1963. She dated whomever she wanted, Jo-Ann said, and had “friends everywhere.”

Inside the motel, TTA staff found Donna’s room in disarray.

Police said later the disorder did not appear to be from a search for valuables. Investigators theorized that a scuffle had taken place in the room.

On the still-made bed, a letter lay, half-completed, with a ballpoint pen just below an unfinished sentence. Donna had been writing to a naval officer who sailed from San Diego for duty in the Pacific a few days earlier.

In a tiny bathroom, searchers found Donna’s body partially submerged in a tub of water, the top half of a two-piece nightgown bunched beneath her shoulders. The crew backed out of the room and phoned the sheriff’s office, who contacted the Kenner Police Department and the parish coroner.

Captain Richard Morris of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office told reporters that police could not locate the bottom half of Donna’s nightgown or any undergarments. They found her purse near the bed, but no wallet or luggage anywhere in the room.

Captain Morris said both of Donna’s wrists appeared broken. “There are bruises on her face and neck like she had been choked,” he said. “At this time, we believe robbery was the motive, but the coroner is testing for rape.”

The following Wednesday, Dr. Charles B. Odom, Jefferson Parish coroner, said tests found no evidence of a sexual assault. He said an autopsy indicated the cause of death to be asphyxiation due to strangling.

Based on the autopsy findings, Dr. Odom reset the probable time of death at near midnight, Sunday evening. Two days earlier, he told Captain Morris her death could have come before seven that evening.

Five motel employees who saw Donna that Sunday passed polygraph tests, including a restaurant waiter who delivered a cold plate lunch to her at 5:30 that evening. The police released four of the five, holding the black waiter “because he was the last person to see the stewardess alive.”

When Dr. Odom revised Donna’s time of death, police released the waiter, who had spent three days in jail.

Dr. Odom found bruises on Donna’s throat. Her left hyoid – a horseshoe-shaped bone in the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage – had been fractured. The autopsy also found blood inside her windpipe.

Dr. Odom said Donna did not drown, although water filled both lungs.

“We think the killer strangled her and then tried to cover up. He drew water in the bathtub and placed her body inside to give the appearance of drowning,” Odom said.

“Judging from the damage to the tissues, her attacker must have been an extremely powerful man,” he added. “She had no chance to cry out. The killer apparently grabbed her at the throat the minute the door opened and didn’t let go until she died,” Odom said.

“There was no flesh or hair under her fingernails to indicate that she scratched or clawed her assailant. The attack was so swift and so violent that she was unable to resist. It would take a strong person to accomplish this.

“Death comes only a matter of minutes when something cuts off the air to a person’s lungs, and unconsciousness comes even more quickly,” the doctor said. “She probably was unconscious within 60 to 80 seconds of the moment the assailant grabbed her by the throat.”

The police found no new clues in the case until Friday, January 11, 1963.

That evening, Kenner City Marshal Salvadore Lentini told a press conference that two young boys had discovered Donna Kimmey’s wallet. The wallet lay in a drainage ditch just off the Airline Highway in Kenner.

Inside, he said, police found Donna’s TTA employee identification card. However, someone had taken the 50 dollars Jo-Ann Gentry said Donna usually kept on her.

Captain Morris also joined the press conference, saying that police believed Donna’s assailant tossed the wallet from a passing automobile as he escaped. He also said finding the wallet provided the first new evidence since the bellhop found Donna’s body. Unfortunately, finding the wallet also marked the last time police made progress on the case.

In May of 1963, Jefferson Parish Chief Criminal Deputy George Gillespie told reporters, “We have nothing new, but the case is still very much open.”

“We’ve spent a fortune on the case, and we’re still spending,” he said. “Four men have traveled to ten states, and we’ve given over fifty lie detector tests. Still nothing, but we’re not willing to give up.”

In May 1993, Tom Cavanaugh, a retired New York City detective, wrote a book naming Charles E. Terry as one of two Boston Stranglers, confessed serial killer Albert DeSalvo being the second.

Under interrogation in June 1963, Terry told Cavanaugh that he visited New Orleans in December 1962. This information led Cavanaugh to believe that Terry killed Donna Kimmey, but he never found evidence to support his theory.

I do not believe Charles E. Terry strangled Donna Kimmey. Next week, the victim’s family talks.