FORT WORTH, Texas  - The retesting of DNA evidence in a 1987 slaying helped lead to the conviction of a man already serving life in prison for a 1994 killing.

Jurors in Fort Worth on Wednesday found 54-year-old Roger Eugene Fain Jr. guilty of capital murder in the rape and slaying of Linda Sue Donahew of Arlington.

Fain received another life prison term, to be served consecutively. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Murderer convicted again

Man who killed in 1994 named in Arlington death

December 31, 2007

Former Round Rock resident Roger Eugene Fain - convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison for a 1994 murder in Williamson County - has gone to trial again, receiving a capital murder conviction and another life sentence.

On Dec. 19 Fort Worth jurors convicted Fain of capital murder in the 1987 sexual assault and murder of Arlington's Linda Sue Donahew.

Fain, 54, still has a minimum of 18 years left on his Williamson County sentence (from an original 30-year minimum). Based on parole laws in place in 1987, Fain must serve a 15-year minimum for Donahew's murder.

The judge in Fort Worth "stacked" Fain's life sentences, meaning he must finish one before he starts the other.

Based on that, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said this week it is a virtual certainty Fain will die in prison.

"That really puts the nail in the coffin," Bradley said.

According to published reports, Doanhew, 41, was stabbed to death and strangled in her Arlington home, where her body was found on June 1, 1987.

Fain was linked to Donahew's murder through DNA evidence, after the Arlington Police Department's Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation in 2005.

Fain's Williamson County conviction stems from the 1994 disappearance and death of Sandra Dumont, 39, who was an Austin resident and card dealer in an Austin nightclub.

"Both of the women, they did have relationships with him," Bradley said.

The bodies of Dumont and Anderson were found just a couple of hundred feet apart on Aug. 12, 1994. They were discovered on private property - what was then a cow pasture - off the intersection of Louis Henna Boulevard and County Road 169.

"There's a bunch of apartments there now," said Mike Davis, Fain's court-appointed defense attorney for the Dumont murder case. "Louis Henna has changed 10,000 percent."

A search on horseback

Louis Henna Boulevard isn't all that's changed in Round Rock and Williamson County since 1994.

Although the city's population now approaches 100,000, Round Rock was home to only about 35,000 people in 1994.

That was the year computer giant Dell opened its doors in Round Rock, eventually becoming the city's largest employer.

The year was marked nationally by O.J. Simpson's arrest and locally by a school board squabble over what literature high school students should or should not be reading. The book in question that year was Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

On July 4, 1994, the Round Rock Leader reported authorities and concerned family members were on the lookout for Darlene Anderson, who lived in the Round Rock Ranch subdivision - off Gattis School Road - with her 12-year-old daughter.

She had last been seen the afternoon of June 27. Those who knew Anderson described her as "very punctual" and her co-workers at Austin Semiconductor became concerned when she did not show up for work.

"This is just too damned weird," said her former husband, Dan Anderson, who lived in Midland at the time.

By mid-July more than 700 volunteers - some of them on horseback and coming from as far away as San Antonio - would take part in a two-day search for Anderson.

One of those search participants was Roger Fain, then a 40-year-old construction worker who lived in a duplex about one-half mile from Anderson's home.

Davis said two pivotal events led to Fain's arrest.

First - in early August - Austin Police Sgt. Michael Phillips found the remains of Anderson and Dumont. Both women were identified through dental records.

Phillips had learned a gray 1980 Toyota Corolla, belonging to Dumont, had been found in the area.

Phillips found Anderson's body under a pile of debris and Dumont's uncovered remains were found nearby.

Like Anderson, Dumont had been reported missing. She had last been seen at an Austin nightclub - where she was a card dealer - on July 25.

Davis said that was crucial, but it was Fain's decision to participate in the horseback search that really did him in.

Davis recalled why Round Rock Police Department investigators Dan LeMay and Mary Ryle found good reason to become suspicious of Fain.

"Everybody that participated in the search, they took their name and did a search of their criminal history," Davis said.

$5 million bond

Fain's criminal record was long and about to grow longer.

It began in 1970, when he was 16 and accused of raping a 33-year-old woman in his native Florida.

As an adult in Florida - during the 1970s and '80s - Fain racked up felony convictions for burglary, robbery and kidnapping.

Fain remained in Florida until 1990.

In May 1991, he was arrested in Cameron County - which includes the Brownsville area, on the southernmost tip of Texas - on charges of kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Fain was convicted on a lesser charge of false imprisonment.

Fain went into the Texas prison system in 1991 and was out on parole in 1992, due to prison overcrowding.

"Fain was a direct result ... of there not being enough space to keep him in long enough," said Georgetown's Chris Mealy, who from 1987-90 served on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Round Rock police arrested Fain in mid-August of 1994 in northwest Austin - off Pond Springs Road and McNeil Drive - at the home of his estranged wife.

Justice of the Peace Jimmy Bitz set Fain's bond at $5 million, which is believed to be a record-high in Williamson County.

"The community was justifiably concerned," said District Judge Ken Anderson, who was then Williamson County district attorney. "When you have two women who disappear [and] get murdered ... it was disconcerting."

The 'boxer's fracture'

Fain had a reputation as a smooth-talking ladies man, but could not convince a jury how it happened that Dumont had a broken jaw - and the day after she disappeared he was treated for a fractured hand.

Judge John Carter (now a U.S. representative) had moved the trial to Tyler, in East Texas, because of pre-trial publicity in Williamson County.

"It's almost like the Henry Lee Lucas level of publicity," Davis told the Leader in 1994.

According to medical evidence, Anderson was killed by a blow to the head with a blunt object. Dumont was shot in the head and also suffered the broken jaw.

Investigators Ryle and LeMay uncovered evidence that Fain had been treated on July 26 - one day after Dumont was last seen alive - for a broken bone in his right hand.

Fain received treatment at Seton Hospital in Austin, for what doctors later described as a "boxer's fracture," similar to what prizefighters sometimes incur when punching opponents.

Davis and Bradley said it did not help Fain's cause, that he at various times offered conflicting explanations for how his right hand came to be broken. Sometimes he said he'd slammed the hood of a pickup truck on it. Other times it was a toolbox lid that was to blame.

Davis said last month's jury in Fort Worth only deliberated about one hour. In the Tyler case - prosecuted by Michael Jergins (now a district court judge) and Jana McCowan - jurors were out for about 12 hours.

"I gave Jergins nothing to do for three months but prepare for this case," Anderson remembered.

"From a technical standpoint it was a very interesting case [in Tyler]," Davis said. "Up in Fort Worth, they had DNA evidence. Here, it turned on the broken hand."

Fain maintains innocence

For reasons still unclear to Bradley and Davis, Fain attracted an entourage of female friends and admirers, who followed his courtroom proceedings from pre-trial in Georgetown up through the Tyler murder trial itself.

A photograph from Fain's 1994 arrest shows him shirtless - deep-chested but with the beginnings of a belly - and Fabio-like long black hair.

"There was something charismatic about him [to some women]," Bradley said.

"He had this entourage of women who followed him all the way up to Tyler," Davis recalled.

Fain has maintained his innocence throughout, acknowledging he knew Anderson and Dumont but denying he killed either of them.

"I'm not crazy or insane," Fain told the Leader in a September 1994 interview from the Williamson County Jail. "I'm not a psycho killer, or a kidnapping rapist from hell."

'No emotion ... no motive'

Anderson, Bradley and Davis said they see Fain as a man who is calculating and remorseless.

"It does not sadden me to see this [Fort Worth conviction] Davis said. "I certainly have no obligation to him anymore."

"I would put Fain and Michael Moore together," Bradley said, referring to the man who in 2006 was convicted of killing pregnant Forest Creek resident Christina Moore (no relation) and who has been suspected in the 2002 disappearance of Georgetown's Rachel Cooke, 19.

Michael Moore received a life sentence last year for Christina Moore's murder.

"I think they would probably be in the same category," Anderson agreed. "People who either need to be executed or put in prison for the rest of their life.

"There's no emotion ... no motive ..." Anderson said. "Those are the scary ones."