Gone With the Night

Dennis Thurl Dowthitt and his teenage son, Delton, were on a car repo run on a sticky June evening in 1990 in the sprawl north of Houston when they got sidetracked.Delton knew that his girlfriend Gracie Purnhagen was hanging out that night with her younger sister at a bowling alley off Interstate 45 in Oak Ridge North, near The Woodlands.The Dowthitt's decided to get a 12-pack and pay the girls a visit.Delton Dowthitt, 16, had dropped out of ninth grade that spring and moved out of his mother's home in Oak Ridge North.He was a troubled kid - "bad news," one friend called him.It probably was genetic. The Dowthitt family was a petri dish for pathologies, including one monstrous secret that would be revealed in time.Dennis Dowthitt, 45, ran a shabby used car lot in nearby Humble. He took his son in. They hadn't lived together since the parents split up while Delton and his two sisters were toddlers.By contrast, Gracie Purnhagen, 16 and sister Tiffany, 9, came from a stable home.Their parents and two brothers went to watch the stock car races that June night. The girls were not fans, so the parents allowed them to walk four blocks to the movies at The Woodlands Mall, across I-45 from the bowling alley.At about 8:45 p.m., Dennis Dowthitt's white pickup truck cruised into the bowling alley parking lot and witnesses saw the Purnhagen girls get in.Encounter quickly unravelsThey parked at a remote wooded spot a few miles away. Delton and Gracie went behind the truck to neck, leaving Dennis Dowthitt alone in the cab with Tiffany, an innocent moppet at just 4-foot-8 and 60 pounds.Soon Tiffany screamed, bolted from the truck and ran to her sister. The child whispered to Gracie that Dowthitt had touched her in places he shouldn't have.The frolic had taken a turn and Delton looked to his father for guidance on what should happen next.Should they abandon the girls there in the woods and deny it all? Drive them home and ask them to keep a secret?No. Dennis Dowthitt slid out of the truck and said, "I messed up. Man, we gotta kill 'em."Delton and young Tiffany stood watching as Dennis Dowthitt pummeled Gracie to the ground, unsheathed his buck knife and cut her throat.He then turned to his son, pointed at Tiffany and demanded, "Do it! Do it!"Delton wrapped his mitts around the girl's neck and squeezed until she fell unconscious. He got a rope from the truck and finished his work with a garrote.