‘She was fiery, red haired, passionate’: Daughter remembers woman killed in 1997 cold case
Verna Dennis was a vivid woman who loved yellow roses. That’s how her daughter, Rebecka Eggers, remembers her, and how she hopes others will know her, too.
Dennis, 56, was just starting to explore who she was as an independent person when on Aug. 10, 1997, she was found beaten and stabbed to death in her Fort Worth home, Eggers told the Star-Telegram. She was exploring her passion for helping others through her church, from hosting Bible studies and teaching Sunday school to working with a prison ministry reaching out to inmates at the state prison in Huntsville.
When the initial case against the man suspected of killing her mother was dropped in 2009, Eggers told the Star-Telegram it felt like her “insides have been shredded over and over again.” Now, she said she’s glad the case was dismissed if there wasn’t enough evidence at that time. She isn’t sure she could have withstood the trauma a lost trial would have caused at that point in her life.
Police believe that person who robbed and killed Dennis was Michael Puryear, and Eggers said she trusts their judgment.
Everything became fresh again Monday, when police arrested Puryear on suspicion of capital murder for the second time. He was first arrested in 2006, but the charge against him was dropped in 2009, two weeks before he was to go to trial. Prosecutors with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office at that time said they weren’t confident in the evidence.
Now, after a renewed investigation by Fort Worth cold case detectives and more advanced DNA testing, police are confident that Puryear killed Dennis, then stole the jewelry she received as a gift from her husband before his death (jewelry her friends and family in 1997 told the Star-Telegram she held precious) and stole her car.
Puryear remains in the Tarrant County Jail. It’s unclear whether he has obtained an attorney.
‘She was a character’
Dennis grew up with a tough home life and got married at 16, Eggers said. That marriage didn’t work out and she remarried to F. Stanley Dennis. Together, they had three children. Verna Dennis embraced her husband’s hobbies as her own during their marriage, taking up golf and becoming the chairperson of the Colonial Country Club women’s golf association, opened an antique store and later a beauty salon.
But when her husband died, Dennis started exploring her own passions, Eggers said. Looking back now, 26 years later, she imagines her mother was both pursuing her own dreams and processing the grief of losing her husband. Volunteering with the church and in the prison ministry brought her joy.
Eggers has memories of her mother studying her Bible, like one time when she was on the couch in her home, wearing a robe and studiously poring over scriptures. She doesn’t know when she saw that, but the vision of Dennis on that day is something she remembers often.
And Eggers remembers a time a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door at their house and, instead of turning them away, Dennis got excited. She disagreed with the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but not in a way that frustrated or angered her.
“She said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you guys are here. You need to hear the real story of Jesus,’ “ Eggers said. “She was a character.”
When the Jehovah’s Witnesses turned to leave after Dennis said that, she walked out her front door and chased after them to share more about her faith.
And that character went beyond her religious beliefs. While people who knew Dennis knew she could find a way to ecstatically fit her faith into any conversation, they also knew she was playful person who loved to laugh and have fun.
“She was fiery, red haired, passionate. You couldn’t miss this person when she walked into the room,” Eggers said. “I remember the last day I saw her alive, standing in the doorway of her house, she opened the glass door to say goodbye and the light flashed through her red hair and she looked so beautiful and alive that day.”
When Eggers was getting ready to get married, she took her mother to see her fiance perform at a bar where he played the drums. Dennis wasn’t thrilled to be there, but it didn’t take long for her to stand up from the table and start dancing.
“The dancing was very playful,” Eggers said. “It was kind of tongue-in-cheek dancing, like, ‘I’m going to join in even though I don’t really know how to join in.’”
Memories of her mother carry a different weight and meaning to Eggers now. She said that being a mother and being the same age Dennis was has given her a new perspective. She understands things in a way she wishes she’d gotten to with her mother still alive. But there are still questions.
“You can’t truly know your mother through the eyes of a child,” Eggers said. “What kind of grandmother would she have been to her granddaughter? What would the birth of my daughter been like had she been beside me?”
Not everything about who her mother would be today is a mystery. She would still be devoted to seeing her daughter and her grandchildren be well educated. She would still be passionate about helping others, giving of herself to make the world around her a better place for the people she cared about. She would still be praying for people, sharing her faith and volunteering in her church, her daughter said.
But how she would have embraced other hobbies that were purely her own is something Eggers will never get to know.
‘26 years of torment’
That’s one of the things Eggers says hurts the most today — never getting the opportunity to see the woman her mother would become and what it would look like for Dennis to live life for herself and her dreams.
“She was just a multi-dimensional person like anybody, who had strong points and flaws and beauty and difficulty, and someone saw her in a vulnerable moment in her life when she was coming out into the world to become her true self, and they snuffed that out,” Eggers said.
She’s is hopeful the case will result in a trial and conviction this time. Waiting so long for answers hasn’t been easy.
“To put it bluntly, it has been 26 years of torment,” she told the Star-Telegram.
What she’s looking for now is justice for her mother and closure for herself.
Closure to Eggers means finally being able to lay down some of the weight she’s felt for years. Weight spawned from anger and questions that she said led to her marriage not working out and difficulties raising her daughter, who she says has been a cornerstone of support for her.
“For me, there’s the falling away of anger at the people that I previously blamed and there’s a relief of having a place that it looks like I can once and for all settle that anger and relieve it,” Eggers said. “I don’t have to carry it anymore. If this is solid, if it goes forward, if this puts an end to it, then the questions are over.”
She doesn’t expect that a conviction will solve everything, though. She said there’s no way to process what happened. But she hopes resolution of the criminal case would offer relief.
“I think you learn to walk with it,” Eggers said. “You learn to grow with it. And sometimes you learn to walk away from it and then you go back to it. It’s a meandering, lifelong path. Instead of walking with my mother, I’ve walked with the absence of my mother for 26 years. ... I’m sad that I’ll never get to see who she would become, living for herself and her dream.”
This story contains details from the Star-Telegram’s archives.
