A Suspicious Death
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We’re known for exposing fraud, corruption and injustice. Now we’ve been asked by a mom to investigate the death of her daughter.
Three years ago Catherine McCullough was found dead in her backyard, and what we’ve found has triggered the Pasadena Police to reopen the case.
It is a scene that will be too hard to watch for some of our viewers. A 49-year-old Pasadena, Texas woman is found dead in her backyard by a neighbor.
Catherine McCullough is wearing only a pink blouse and her underwear. You can see there’s a gun in her open hand. Looks cut and dry.
But there is no blood, and where’s the bullet wound?
But police won’t find a bullet wound. And the chamber of this black .40-Caliber Sig Sauer handgun was empty.
You’ve been watching body camera video of Pasadena police. It’s February 24, 2021, here on South Meadow Drive.
Three-and-a-half years later, Catherine McCullough’s family and friends came to us because they believe this is a case of murder.
“I don’t think she committed suicide,” said Uncle Joe Greenwell.
“Do I think she was murdered? Yes. I do,” said friend Deb Glover.
“I just want some answers for the whole thing. Whole thing doesn’t make sense,” said Mom Terri Greenwell.
Catherine’s Mom, Terri, may get the answers she wants. Our investigation turned up enough new information to prompt the Pasadena Police to reopen the case.
“Pasadena Police are reopening the case of your wife’s death. Catherine McCullough.”
“Really,” said husband Alan McCullough.
“You didn’t. You didn’t know? Do you know why they might be reopening it?”
“I have no idea.”
First a little about Catherine. She was a surgical nurse and from all accounts a very good one.
But Catherine had health issues, horrible migraines. And friends and family tell us her 28-year-long marriage had been unhappy for years. Friends knew she had even contemplated suicide. But that was deep in the past.
“She said, don’t worry, Deb, I’m okay. God would never let me kill myself. And I remember that to this day,” Glover said.
On the day her body was found, her husband, Alan McCullough told Pasadena Police about two alleged suicide attempts, and he seemed more mad than sad.
“The first time, she ate enough pills to make herself sick. The second time, she… tried to do an injection with an I.V. but it didn’t hook up. But I’m like, you’re a fucking RN, you can hit a vein if you really wanted to. You know?” Alan McCullough told police.
So maybe it was the power of suggestion that resigned Pasadena Police into quickly deciding this was a suicide.
“I think they took the path of least resistance,” Joe Greenwell said.
From the police report, we learn the original dispatch even broadcast this as a possible suicide attempt.
A search uncovered medications and syringes in the house, but they were all connected to Catherine’s health issues.
It took police seven months to get Catherine’s autopsy. The cause and manner of death was undetermined.
Seven months after that a second toxicology report turned up evidence of Rocuronium, known as Roc, a paralytic used in hospitals to intubate patients.
In a surgery, it will paralyze you in a matter of seconds. So the theory became that Catherine injected herself with Roc to commit suicide.
“What upsets me is where is the needle? Where’s the needle? Where’s the bottle?”
“I believe that case is closed,” Sergeant Skripka said on the phone.
Sergeant Skripka was the Pasadena detective on the case at the time. He has since left the department.
But we wanted to know how was it that no traces of the lethal drug were found in a vial or in a syringe in that backyard? Nothing was found anywhere near catherine.
“You’re going to have to speak with the Pasadena Police Department about that.”
The medical examiner never said just how much of the Roc was found in Catherine’s system.
But to Catherine’s closest friends who worked in the operating room with her, no trace of Roc in a needle or syringe at the scene was a big red flag.
“They would be either right by her body because that kind of fast acting, even if she had time to take the needle out, she wouldn’t have time to go back into the house, throw it away, come back out and die. She’d be dead already,” Glover said.
Another red flag in that backyard was that gun. No round chambered and in her left hand. Catherine was right-handed.
“I haven’t seen this picture.”
“You had not seen this? I’m sorry Terri.”
To her family, it looked like someone just put it in her hand.
“If you have a gun in your hand and you fall forward, arms don’t raise up and the gun doesn’t turn in such a way that it’s pointed at your head. Yeah I just can’t see the physics of that.”
“I couldn’t understand why she didn’t have any pants on. She didn’t have scrubs on. She didn’t have jeans on.”
“She wouldn’t let herself be found like that.”
“Are you the lead investigator? I need to talk to him about the status of this marriage.”
Catherine’s uncle Joe arrived at the scene as soon as he heard the news.
“This relationship for the last year has been tumultuous at best.”
He wanted detectives to know Catherine’s marriage had been on the rocks for years, but that she had finally decided to make the decision to file for divorce.
Three days before her death, Catherine sent texts to her mom and friend Lisa.
“Just talked with Alan about divorcing. He was fairly angry and hateful.”
The day before her death, we know Catherine was working out how much Alan would owe her mother when they divorced. She had loaned them thirty thousand dollars.
Catherine told her mom she planned to leave Texas, walking away debt free, to be with a new guy.
“And when the divorce was finished, she was going to move to live with him. He was adamant that they weren’t getting divorced. I don’t know how many times he told me they were not getting divorced.”
At the scene, Uncle Joe wanted police to investigating the timing.
“And he said no you’re not going. Essentially, it was, and this is not verbatim, if I can’t have you nobody can.”
There is no doubt now that Catherine was planning a divorce.
“She had put down money for retainer. She was moving forward.”
She had scheduled her first appointment with the Banks and Banks law firm. You know when? On the day she died.
That’s why she didn’t show up for her appointment. You know who did? Alan like they were agreeing to get the divorce he so often claimed they weren’t.
“What time was it that you first tried to get in touch with her and she wasn’t responding?”
“It must be at the lawyer’s. I sent her a text at 3:37 to ask if she was coming.”
“And then you called her.”
“At 4:15.”
“And when she didn’t answer and didn’t answer, I was like, did she actually, successful this time?”
At 4:46 p.m., Alan texted their neighbors.
“He called over here because he couldn’t reach her for nothing, and her car is here. So, he called us to see if we can go over there. I just got home and I went in there.”
It was the neighbor who found Catherine’s body in the backyard, notified Alan, and then at 5:03 p.m., Alan called 9-1-1 as he was driving back to the house.
“Anytime there’s a death that’s not attended by a medical professional we have to treat it as a homicide,” the police said at the scene.
Pasadena police told Alan that at the scene, but there really wasn’t much of a homicide investigation.
“What do you know about how she died? What will you tell me? Can we talk to you?”
“She committed suicide.”
“How?”
“Muscle relaxers. That’s what the M.E. told me.”
“Alan was able to provide his whereabouts during the time the decedent is believed to have passed.”
“Her family had asked us to look into it a little bit. Can I just get you to step out and talk to me a little bit?”
“No.”
“Where were you the afternoon that she died?”
“I’ve had enough.”
But this grieving mom began her own investigation, and says she talked to Anika Banks, the so-called lawyer who was waiting for Catherine when her husband showed up instead.
“Which she thought was strange because she did not have an appointment with him. She only had an appointment with Catherine,” Terri Greenwell said.
We say so called because look at this Texas State Bar ruling. Anika and her husband were later busted for being fake lawyers.
Here’s another bizarre twist. You would assume Alan would be grieving the day after his wife of decades killed herself. But he found the time to go back to the Banks Law Firm.
“And told Anika when he got home. He found her dead in the living room. Then he immediately changed his mind and said, I found her on the driveway when I got home.”
But neither of those things are true.
Terri was paying for Catherine and Alan’s phone bills at the time, so our investigators had access to critical phone records that raised more questions than answers.
We found those calls with Anika Banks, but we also found multiple calls with the woman answering phones for the law firm.
“He said I was supposed to come in and pay my half for my, but for my, divorce. But my wife committed suicide last night, and I said, oh, my god. I said, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry to hear that.”
And she remembers Alan asking for his money back now that his wife was dead.
“So I’m wondering if there’s anything you know you all can do as far as getting me a refund for the money that I’ve already paid. And for him to say she committed suicide so there won’t be a divorce now, that whole conversation was weird to me.”
Memories fade, but there was something else weird about the phone records.
The only time we see a phone call between Alan and the person at the office was two hours before Catherine was found dead. And her mom recounts the shocking suggestion from the Banks law firm.
“Anika told me she thought that Alan was using her as an alibi. And she did say she was very surprised that the detective had not been knocking on her door.”
Catherine’s friend Lisa says she tried to tell Pasadena police that Catherine was not suicidal.
“The conversation we had was she was excited. She was like, I’m going to do this. I’m going to leave. I’m going to be on my own,” said friend Lisa Ray.
Lisa called Pasadena detectives twice.
“They didn’t contact me. They didn’t follow up on things.”
Joe told detectives that night to simply take a look at the electronics.
“The first thing you need to do is get her personal laptop.”
“I knew that he was abusive to her through the phone. And through emails.”
Police did take them, but did not look because there were no signs of physical trauma.
“Due to the fact that the decedent did not show any visible signs of physical trauma, and no signs were found during autopsy, the laptop was not forensically analyzed.”
But the autopsy did reveal scratches, a 1-and-a-half-inch purple bruise on her forehead and broken blood vessels in her eyes.
“Normally when you have petechia in the eyes, you have a lack of oxygen. Strangulation, something like this, that will cause the blood vessels to perforate and explode. That can be a sign of strangulation. It was in both eyes. And that concerned me.”
All these questions have haunted the family, in part because of how Alan acted after catherine died.
“The overwhelming thing for me was how Alan was avoiding us. I have never seen such a shift in somebody ever in my life,” said Terri Greenwell.
Alan refused to give mom Catherine’s ashes and several other personal items, even items he was legally required to return by the probate settlement.
“What about a life insurance policy? She had one, right?”
“She did. She had two. She had one for $300,000.”
And it’s why this family is happy Pasadena police are reopening this case, to ask questions to the husband left behind.
“Where were you the afternoon that she died?”
“I’ve had enough,” Alan McCullough said.
“He’d grown to the point in his life where he despised her. And he wanted her gone.”
Her family deserves to know just how catherine died
Why would she put a gun in the wrong hand and then not use it?
If it was the presence of Rocuronium, how could she have injected it when there was no syringe near her body? Even visible in the house?
Another weird thing. The family claims Alan even told them after Catherine died that she had shot herself.
Pasadena Police Sergeant Raul Granados tells us:
“As part of this renewed investigation, we will be conducting a forensic extraction of her electronic devices and plan to interview the witness you previously referenced in your emails.”
He is talking about the witness we found by scouring the phone records.
“I think what she’d say is, mom, thank you for digging into this.”
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