Clark Perry Baldwin drove trucks across the United States for a living. In May 2020, at his apartment in Waterloo, Iowa, he was arrested and charged with killing three women whose bodies had been found near interstate highways in 1991 and 1992: one in Tennessee and two in Wyoming. Two of the women had never been identified. All three cases had been cold for close to three decades. They were joined first by DNA, then by genetic genealogy, and finally by a bag of trash and a shopping cart in Waterloo.
A jury in Maury County, Tennessee, found him guilty in May 2025 of the first-degree murder of Pamela McCall, who was found dead in Spring Hill in March 1991. He was sentenced to life in prison. Wyoming prosecutors had charged him with first-degree murder in the deaths of the two Wyoming women and were waiting to bring him to trial. He died in a Tennessee hospital in July 2025, before that could happen. In law, then, his record holds one murder conviction. The two Wyoming deaths were charged and never tried, and nothing in the Wyoming cases was ever tested before a jury.
Baldwin grew up in northern Iowa. The Associated Press reported in 2020 that he graduated from Nashua-Plainfield High School in 1979 and that he had lived in Nashua, in Waterloo and in Springfield, Missouri. He worked as a long-haul, cross-country trucker, a job that took him through many states.
He had at least one earlier brush with federal law. According to the AP, Secret Service agents raided his Springfield apartment in 1997 after learning that he was making counterfeit United States currency on a personal computer. He and two women were indicted. He was sentenced to 18 months and was released in 1999.
His family life surfaced in the press only after his arrest. A woman told the AP in 2020 that she had learned about two years earlier that Baldwin was her father, after he bought a DNA test kit, and that the two had been in touch on Facebook. She wrote that she had heard rumors about his "possible crimes" and had always thought they were untrue, and that murder "was NOT on the list of things we thought he had done and gotten away with."
The earliest violent episode in the record is an allegation, never tried. Court documents described by the AP and by Cowboy State Daily allege that in February 1991 Baldwin picked up a young woman who was hitchhiking. According to the account she later gave in a Tennessee courtroom, as reported by Cowboy State Daily, he sexually assaulted her in his truck. She escaped in Wheeler County, Texas, and called police.
Texas authorities interviewed Baldwin and released him pending a grand jury. A retired Texas Ranger, Gary Henderson, later told the Tennessee jury about a typed statement Baldwin gave in February 1991, in which, according to Cowboy State Daily's account of the trial, he partly admitted forcing sex on the woman. The case was never prosecuted. The rape charge was dismissed for failure to prosecute.
This allegation matters to the rest of the story for two reasons. It placed Baldwin's name in a police record in 1991, which investigators found again decades later. And in 2025 a Tennessee judge allowed the jury in the McCall trial to hear the woman's account. The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney General Pam Anderson, argued that it showed motive and noted that it had taken place 20 days before Pamela McCall died.
Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall was 32 and came from Topping, Virginia, according to the AP. She was pregnant. Sources differ on how far along: court documents quoted by SweetwaterNOW in 2020 put it at 20 weeks, an earlier report it cited said about six months, and Cowboy State Daily's account of the trial gave about five months.
On March 10, 1991, her body was found in Spring Hill, in Maury County, Tennessee, south of Nashville. She carried no identification, and the Spring Hill Police Department did not learn who she was until April 9, 1991, nearly a month later.
Officer Ron Coleman of the Spring Hill Police Department was assigned the case. He promised her mother, the department later recalled, that he would not rest until her killer was caught. Cowboy State Daily reported that he kept detailed notes of every interview and lead. Witnesses said she had been seen at a truck stop, and one said she had planned to ride with a trucker who drove a blue truck, which prosecutors later said was like Baldwin's. Investigators photographed skid marks at the scene in 1991. According to the prosecution's case as reported in 2025, the marks showed that an unloaded semitrailer had locked its tires there.
The investigation stalled. Coleman retired as an assistant chief in 2002, and the case went cold.
A year later, in the winter of 1992, two women died in Wyoming. Both of their deaths were later charged against Baldwin, and neither charge was ever tried.
On March 1, 1992, a truck driver found the body of a woman east of Rock Springs, in Sweetwater County. Investigators believed she had been left there weeks before she was found. Autopsy findings described in later court filings and press reports included strangulation. The Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office could not identify her. Her fingerprints were sent to all 50 states without result, and the sheriff's office released sketches of her face and of a rose tattoo, which brought tips but no name. The FBI later said the tattoo had been done in Tucson, Arizona. She became known as "Bitter Creek Betty," for the place she was found.
On April 13, 1992, Wyoming Department of Transportation crews found the body of a young woman north of Sheridan, in Sheridan County. She was pregnant, about two and a half months along, according to Cowboy State Daily. According to the Green River Star's account of court documents, an autopsy could not determine an exact cause of death. Investigators believed she, too, had been left there in February 1992. The Sheridan County Sheriff's Office could not identify her either, and she became known as "I-90 Jane Doe." In 2014 a University of Wyoming anthropologist estimated her age at 17 to 23.
The two places are about 400 miles apart. For years nothing tied the cases together.
Swabs had been taken from both Wyoming women in 1992. According to court documents filed in Sweetwater County and reported by the Green River Star, the Wyoming State Crime Laboratory produced a full male DNA profile in January 2007 and entered it into several databases. Cowboy State Daily reported that the 2007 profile came from the Bitter Creek case and that the sample from the Sheridan County case was at first too weak for the databases.
In April 2012 the state laboratory matched the two. The same man's DNA was present in both Wyoming cases, which the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) said "conclusively" linked the two deaths to one contributor. The man had no name.
The break came from Tennessee. In 2019, at the request of the Spring Hill Police Department, the McCall case was reopened by Tommy Goetz, an investigator with the 22nd Judicial District Attorney's Office. Goetz sent swabs from the 1991 evidence to the Tennessee crime laboratory. The profile it developed was entered into the national Combined DNA Index System, and in May 2019 Wyoming was notified of a match: the profile from Pamela McCall's case was the same as the profile from the two Wyoming cases. In June 2019, DCI investigators traveled to Tennessee to share information, and the Wyoming State Crime Laboratory, testing the Tennessee evidence itself, found a male profile that matched its own.
Three deaths in two states now pointed to one man. Information from the Tennessee file suggested he was a truck driver.
The investigators turned to investigative genetic genealogy, the technique of comparing an unknown profile with the DNA that people submit to commercial ancestry companies in order to find the unknown person's relatives. According to the court documents reported by the Green River Star, the profile was submitted to commercial genealogy and ancestry laboratories, which produced a list of possible relatives. The AP reported that investigators found DNA in those databases from a relative of the man they were looking for. The leads pointed to Baldwin.
Records turned up his 1991 arrest in Wheeler County, Texas. They also turned up a statement from 1992. During a separate homicide investigation in Chickasaw County, Iowa, that year, his former wife had told police that he once bragged about killing a girl "out west." That statement had sat in an Iowa file for nearly three decades.
A genealogical lead is not proof. Investigators needed Baldwin's own DNA. On April 9, 2020, according to the Sweetwater County court documents, investigators watched him in Waterloo, recovered two trash bags from a dumpster near his home, and took samples from a shopping cart he had used at a store. The AP reported that FBI agents collected the material secretly. The FBI task force in Waterloo sent the items to the Wyoming State Crime Laboratory, which received them in mid-April. The lab reported that the male DNA profile from those items matched the suspect's profile in the Wyoming and Tennessee cases.
On April 22, 2020, Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspe filed a first-degree murder charge in the death of the woman known as Bitter Creek Betty. In Sheridan County, County Attorney Dianna Bennett filed a case in the same period, under seal.
On May 6, 2020, Goetz and DCI Special Agent Loy Young went to Baldwin's apartment in Waterloo. Goetz told Cowboy State Daily that Baldwin took about four minutes to answer the door, let them in and sat on his couch while they stood and questioned him for about an hour. After he was read his rights, Baldwin acknowledged that he might have had sex with Pamela McCall but said he did not remember her. Goetz said Baldwin never asked why they had come. "I think he was expecting that knock to come at some point in his life," Goetz said. FBI agents then served a search warrant to collect more DNA, and Baldwin was arrested. He later asked for a lawyer.
The arrest was announced that day by the Wyoming DCI and the Iowa Department of Public Safety, whose Division of Criminal Investigation had assisted the FBI, the Wyoming DCI and the Tennessee prosecutors. Baldwin was charged with first-degree murder in Sweetwater County and in Sheridan County, Wyoming, and with two counts of first-degree murder in Tennessee, for Pamela McCall and for her unborn child.
He was held without bond in the Black Hawk County jail. At a hearing on May 7, 2020, he did not contest extradition to Tennessee.
Tennessee District Attorney General Brent Cooper praised the investigators, the AP reported, for "bringing this serial killer to justice." He said he was glad to give McCall's mother a chance to see justice and quoted her: "At least I have a grave to visit." Erramouspe called Bitter Creek Betty's death a 28-year-old homicide and credited investigators' persistence and scientific advances, saying that none of the agencies had stopped looking for the person responsible.
Because Baldwin had driven a truck across the country, his arrest drew interest from investigators in other states. Mike Krapfl, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, told the AP that detectives were "looking at any connections" to cold cases from the period. "Obviously there are several cases that need to be followed up on," he said. The operator of the Iowa Cold Cases website gave investigators a list of more than two dozen killings since 1980. Police in Springfield, Missouri, told KY3 that they were looking at whether he could be connected to any Springfield case.
The most widely reported of these was the 1992 death of Tammy Jo Zywicki, 21, a college student who was abducted after her car broke down on Interstate 80 near La Salle, Illinois, while she was driving from Evanston, Illinois, to Grinnell College in Iowa. Her body was found in Missouri days later. On May 8, 2020, two days after Baldwin's arrest, the Illinois State Police said that "at this time, Baldwin does not appear to have been involved with the murder of Tammy Zywicki," and that the case remained under investigation. The police did not explain how they reached that view.
Prosecutors in the two states agreed that Tennessee would try him first. Erramouspe told the Green River Star in May 2020 that the decision rested on the fact that Tennessee had "a known victim, and known victim's family." After a Tennessee trial, he said, Baldwin would come to Wyoming to face charges, and any Wyoming sentence would follow any Tennessee sentence. Erramouspe added that, as he understood Tennessee law, a life sentence there might not be the full-life sentence that first-degree murder carries in Wyoming. SweetwaterNOW reported that a Wyoming conviction could carry the death penalty or life in prison.
The trial did not begin for nearly five years. Cowboy State Daily reported that the COVID-19 pandemic was among the causes of delay. During those years Pamela McCall's mother died. Coleman, the officer who had made her the promise in 1991, told her about the arrest before she died, according to WSMV.
While Baldwin waited for trial, investigators kept working to identify the two Wyoming women, using the same genealogy methods that had found him.
In 2022, investigators identified Bitter Creek Betty through family-tree DNA companies, Cowboy State Daily reported. DCI Special Agent Loy Young found her half-sister, who confirmed her name: Irene Vasquez. Her half-sister had not heard from her since 1990. Erramouspe filed a new affidavit naming her on May 17, 2022.
On July 17, 2025, the Wyoming DCI announced that I-90 Jane Doe had been identified, through a DNA match with her biological mother, as Cindi Arleen Estrada. She was 21 when she died. She was born in Torrance, California, and may also have lived in Long Beach, according to DCI Commander Ryan Cox. Cowboy State Daily noted that little about her life could be found in public records, because she died before the internet era. The Wyoming News Exchange reported both women's names on July 18, 2025.
Baldwin was tried before a jury in Maury County in 2025. Pam Anderson, an assistant district attorney general in the 22nd Judicial District, led the prosecution.
The jury heard DNA evidence, including testimony from the Wyoming side of the investigation: Scott McWilliams, director of the Wyoming DCI crime laboratory, and Special Agent Loy Young testified. The judge excluded details about the two Wyoming deaths, so the jurors were not told why Wyoming investigators were involved. The woman from the 1991 Texas case testified, and Henderson, the retired Texas Ranger, laid the foundation for Baldwin's 1991 statement. The jury also heard a 1991 statement from a witness who had seen the skid marks; it was admitted as hearsay because that witness now has dementia. The defense, which Anderson described as vigorous, argued that the presence of a man's DNA on the victim could be coincidence.
Prosecutors had charged two counts, one for McCall and one for her unborn child. According to Cowboy State Daily, the second count was not carried forward, because testimony was not conclusive enough to show that the baby could have survived outside the womb.
The jury found Baldwin guilty of the first-degree murder of Pamela McCall. The Spring Hill Police Department and WSMV give the date of the verdict as May 2, 2025; Cowboy State Daily's later report and a Wyoming News Exchange story give May 5. He was sentenced to life in prison immediately afterward.
Goetz told Cowboy State Daily that Baldwin smiled during the trial and smiled as he was led away in handcuffs. The woman from the Texas case said she was "so happy I was a voice" and that Baldwin "can no longer hurt anybody else."
Coleman, by then a retired assistant chief, said in the department's statement that he had been able to put the cuffs on Baldwin, "ending my 34-year search," and told WSMV that he was at peace for the first time in 34 years. McCall's brother and son, WSMV reported, thanked the community and the agencies involved for not forgetting their mother and sister, and said the conviction brought them some closure.
After the verdict, prosecutors expected Baldwin to be moved to Wyoming within a couple of months. His lawyers had filed a motion for a new trial in Tennessee, and it had not been heard. No extradition hearing had been scheduled.
Baldwin died in a hospital at 8:50 a.m. Tennessee time on Friday, July 18, 2025, two days after a heart attack, the day after Cindi Estrada's name was released. Anderson confirmed the death. He was 64, according to Cowboy State Daily. Prosecutors said the Wyoming extradition was now moot.
Erramouspe said he was disappointed that the case would never be tried in Wyoming, and he criticized the five years it had taken to bring the Tennessee case to trial. "I wanted to bring justice to this family," he said. "We know what happened to Irene. And we know who did it."
His words are a prosecutor's view. No Wyoming court ever heard the evidence, and Baldwin was never convicted of either Wyoming death.
Clark Perry Baldwin was convicted of one murder, that of Pamela McCall in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in 1991, by a jury verdict in May 2025. He died while a motion for a new trial in that case was still pending. He was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Irene Vasquez in Sweetwater County and Cindi Arleen Estrada in Sheridan County, Wyoming, in 1992, and was never tried for either. Investigators in Wyoming said DNA from the same man was found in both of those cases and in McCall's. A 1991 Texas sexual-assault case against him was dismissed without prosecution. Illinois police said in 2020 that he did not appear to have been involved in the killing of Tammy Zywicki.
The two Wyoming deaths. Baldwin was charged with both and never tried. Prosecutors and the DCI said the DNA evidence linked him to both. These remain charges, not convictions.
The Texas allegation of 1991. The woman testified in Tennessee and Baldwin's 1991 statement partly admitted the assault, according to trial reporting, but the Texas charge was dismissed and never tried.
His former wife's 1992 statement. It is a report of a boast, relayed through investigators in court documents. It does not name a victim or place, and no source ties it to a particular case.
Other cold cases. Iowa, Missouri and Illinois investigators examined possible links in 2020. Illinois police said he did not appear to have been involved in the Zywicki case.
The date of the verdict. The Spring Hill Police Department and WSMV give May 2, 2025; Cowboy State Daily (July 2025) and the Wyoming News Exchange give May 5, 2025.
How far along Pamela McCall's pregnancy was. Reported figures range from 20 weeks to about six months.
His age. Reported as 58 (AP) or 59 (Wyoming outlets) at his arrest in May 2020, and 64 at his death.
1979: Graduates from Nashua-Plainfield High School, Iowa (AP).
February 1991: A woman hitchhiking with him reports a sexual assault in Wheeler County, Texas; he is interviewed and released; the case is later dismissed without prosecution.
March 10, 1991: Pamela McCall, 32, found dead in Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee.
April 9, 1991: McCall identified.
March 1, 1992: Body of a woman, later identified as Irene Vasquez, found east of Rock Springs, Sweetwater County, Wyoming.
April 13, 1992: Body of a young pregnant woman, later identified as Cindi Arleen Estrada, found north of Sheridan, Sheridan County, Wyoming.
1992: His former wife tells Iowa police he once bragged about killing a girl "out west."
1997 to 1999: Federal counterfeiting case in Springfield, Missouri; sentenced to 18 months; released in 1999.
2002: Officer Ron Coleman retires; the McCall case goes cold.
January 2007: Wyoming State Crime Laboratory produces a full male DNA profile.
April 2012: The same male DNA is found in both Wyoming cases.
2019: McCall case reopened by investigator Tommy Goetz; in May, a national database match links it to the Wyoming cases; genetic genealogy points to Baldwin.
April 9, 2020: Investigators collect his trash and a shopping-cart sample in Waterloo, Iowa; the Wyoming lab reports a match.
April 22, 2020: Sweetwater County first-degree murder charge filed; a Sheridan County case is filed under seal in the same period.
May 6, 2020: Arrested in Waterloo; charged in Wyoming and Tennessee.
May 7, 2020: Does not contest extradition to Tennessee.
May 8, 2020: Illinois State Police say he does not appear to have been involved in the Tammy Zywicki killing.
2022: Bitter Creek Betty identified as Irene Vasquez; amended Sweetwater County affidavit filed May 17, 2022.
May 2025: Found guilty by a Maury County jury of the first-degree murder of Pamela McCall (May 2 or May 5); sentenced to life.
July 17, 2025: Wyoming DCI announces I-90 Jane Doe's identity as Cindi Arleen Estrada.
July 18, 2025: Dies in a hospital, two days after a heart attack; the Wyoming charges are never tried.