Murder of Angela Samota

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Angela Samota
Born
Angela Marie Samota

(1964-09-19)September 19, 1964
Alameda, California, U.S.
DiedOctober 13, 1984(1984-10-13) (aged 20)
Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Cause of deathMultiple knife wounds to the heart
Resting placeLlano Cemetery, Amarillo, Texas
Known forVictim of rape and murder

The murder of Angela Samota occurred on October 13, 1984, when she was attacked in her apartment, raped, and killed. The case remained unsolved until DNA evidence surfaced in the 2000s, following which, charges for rape and murder were brought against a convicted, already imprisoned rapist, Donald Andrew Bess Jr.

Background

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Angela "Angie" Marie Samota was born on September 19, 1964,[1] in Alameda, California, the youngest of five siblings, to father Frank Samota, who died almost a year after her birth, and mother Betty Ruth Samota, née Train.[2] She enrolled at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and was a part of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. She was studying computer science and electrical engineering[3] and staying at a condo apartment her parents had bought for her, in which she soon had a close friend, Sheila Wysocki, move in as a guest. They had been room mates at the SMU as freshmen.[3]

Assault

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On the night of October 12, 1984, Samota and two friends, one male and one female, went to the State Fair of Texas. Samota's boyfriend did not join them because, according to the subsequent police report, he was working in construction and said he had to get up early the following morning. The three friends went to the recently opened, popular Rio Room dance club[4] and stayed there until "after midnight." According to subsequent testimony of the male who accompanied the two girls, Samota "was going [from] table to table, talking to people" and seemed like "she knew everyone."

Afterward, Samota drove her two companions to their homes, first dropping off the male at around 1 a.m. at his apartment on Matilda Street, in Lower Greenville, which was a five-minute walk from Samota's condo on Amesbury Drive, and then the female. The man later testified that, when he returned home, "he went to bed and fell asleep."[5]

Samota next went by her boyfriend's apartment to say goodnight and returned to her place.[3] The boyfriend subsequently stated that at approximately 1:45 a.m. he got a call from Samota, who told him there was a man in her condo who asked her to use the phone and the bathroom. He didn't know if the man was already there when she got home or if she allowed him to come in. "Talk to me," Samota reportedly said to her boyfriend, then said she would call "right back" and hung up. When she did not call back, the boyfriend phoned her, and no one answered. He drove to her condo, but there was no response when he knocked on the door, which was locked. He had with him an early-generation mobile phone, provided for his construction job, so he called information, who connected him to the police.[5]

Police officers arrived at 2:17 a.m. and broke through the door. They discovered Samota's dead, bloody, and naked body on the bed. The autopsy showed that the victim had been raped and then stabbed eighteen times in the chest, dying from the wounds to her heart.[3]

Investigation and arrest

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For a long period of time, the police reportedly suspected an architect who was 23 years old at the time and living in a Lower Greenville apartment.[5] He was the man who, the night of the murder, had gone out with Samota and another girl.[6] The victim's boyfriend was reportedly also a suspect.[3] The case remained unsolved until 2008.[7]

In 2006, then-Dallas police detective Linda Crum, tasked with the case, used the DNA evidence from blood, semen, and fingernail samples to try to find a match among persons with a criminal record. In 2008, the results pointed to a Donald Bess who, at the time of Samota's murder, was on parole while serving a 25-year sentence.[3]

Claims by friend

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Sheila Wysocki, the former SMU student and roommate with Samota, subsequently stated that the cold case was re-opened only because she kept "badgering" the police until "they were so sick and tired of" her that they assigned detective Crum to re-examine it. Wysocki credits the fact that she became a licensed private investigator in her desire to assist in solving Samota's murder. The police initially had stated the rape kit collected at the crime scene, which contained the incriminating DNA evidence, had been lost "in the [Dallas] floods."[7][8]

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The defendant in the 2010 trial for the sexual assault and murder of Angela Samota was already in prison, serving a life sentence. Donald Andrew Bess Jr. (born September 1, 1948, in Jefferson County, Arkansas),[9] had been previously convicted in 1978 for aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping. He had been sentenced to 25 years in prison but, since 1984, he was out on parole when, according to the court's verdict, he raped and murdered Samota.

In 1985, in a case unrelated to and after Samota's murder, Bess was sentenced in Harris County, Texas, to life imprisonment for one count of aggravated rape, one count of aggravated kidnapping and one count of sexual assault.[10]

During the punishment phase of the Samota case trial, in 2010, various women came forward and testified that they had also been raped by Bess.[11] The defendant's ex-wife testified that he had physically abused her and their child during their marriage. They had wed in 1969 and divorced three years later.[12] Against Bess testified also the two women who had survived his assaults in 1978 and 1985, respectively.[13] After the witnesses' testimony, Bess suffered a heart attack and was temporarily transferred to and kept under guard in the hospital, which paused the proceedings by three days.[13]

On the basis of the DNA match, Bess was found guilty by the jury for first degree murder, rape, and all the other charges, and, on June 8, 2010, he received the death sentence. On March 6, 2013, the appeal filed by Bess was rejected and the judgment of the trial court was affirmed.[12][14] On August 13, 2013, a certiorari petition was filed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and was denied on January 13, 2014.[15] In April 2016, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal submitted by Bess, thus upholding irrevocably the findings of the Dallas County trial court.[12]

Donald Bess was transferred to the Allan B. Polunsky Unit death row,[10] where, a few years later, on October 8, 2022, he died from a heart attack,[13] while awaiting execution.[16]

Angela Samota's mother, Betty Ruth, had died in 2021, at 96 years old, having witnessed the capture and sentencing of her daughter's killer.[2]

Aftermath

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The true crime series Dateline NBC produced an hour-long program covering the Samota case. Τitled In the Middle of the Night, it originally aired on NBC on June 8, 2012.[17]

In 2016, the Dallas Police Department re-established a unit dedicated to researching cold cases.[12] In a 2021 Investigation Discovery episode, titled "Betrayed: Co-ed Killer", the case and the subsequent identification of Samota's murderer were re-enacted.[18]

Samota's body is buried in the Llano Cemetery, Amarillo, Texas.[19] Sheila Wysocki lives in Tennessee and is still a practicing private investigator.[20]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Angela Samota, 1964–1984". MyHeritage.com. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Angela Marie Samota". Ancestors Family Search. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 2021. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Bever, Lindsey (June 29, 2016). "Her friend's brutal murder was unsolved for decades. This is how she helped find the killer". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  4. ^ Hopkins, Daniel (January 26, 2012). "Party Like It's 1983". Dallas Observer. Retrieved August 6, 2025.
  5. ^ a b c Wynn, Cristopher (October 15, 2017). "From the archives: Architect suspected of SMU sorority student's murder cleared in surprise twist". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  6. ^ "Murder case followed neighborhood resident for decades". Lakewood Advocate. October 3, 2012. Archived from the original on June 29, 2018. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  7. ^ a b "My best friend's killer got away – until I made police try again". BBC. June 26, 2018. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  8. ^ "Dallas Floodway Timeline 1908-203" (PDF). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 2014. Retrieved June 29, 2018.
  9. ^ "Donald Bess Death Row Information". Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
  10. ^ a b "Donald Andrew Bess, Jr". The Texas Tribune. April 2018. Archived from the original on June 29, 2018. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  11. ^ "Woman testifies that she was raped by convicted killer years before SMU student's brutal death". The Dallas Morning News. June 15, 2010. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  12. ^ a b c d Steele, Tom (April 13, 2016). "Man on death row for 1984 rape, murder of SMU student loses appeal". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
  13. ^ a b c Torralva, Krista M. (October 11, 2022). "Man on Texas death row for murder of SMU student dies of heart attack". Dallas News. London. Archived from the original on October 14, 2022. Retrieved August 4, 2025.
  14. ^ "Donald Andrew Bess, Jr., appellant, v. the State of Texas" (PDF). The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas. March 6, 2013. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  15. ^ "Donald Andrew Bess, Jr., Petitioner v. Texas". Supreme Court of the United States. 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
  16. ^ "Death Row Offender Information: Bess, Donald Andrew". Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  17. ^ "In the Middle of the Night". Dateline NBC. February 12, 2020. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  18. ^ Mehrotra, Kriti (January 28, 2021). "Who Killed Angela Samota? Where is Donald Andrew Bess Now?". The Cinemaholic. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  19. ^ Angela Samota grave at Llano Cemetery, The U.S. Cemeteries Project
  20. ^ Dodd, Johnny (July 9, 2016). "Solving My Best Friend's Murder: How a Stay-at-Home Mom Became a Private Investigator to Crack a Cold Case". People. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
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