Who is Bernard Sharp, suspect in 1985 murder of UT Arlington student Terri McAdams?
Nearly 40 years after the brutal murder of a 22-year-old UT Arlington student, authorities have identified her suspected killer, who’s been dead nearly as long as the victim.
On Wednesday, Arlington police and the FBI announced that Bernard Sharp killed Terri McAdams. DNA testing done on an out-of-state relative confirmed Sharp’s identity.
On Valentine’s Day 1985, a maintenance worker found McAdams’ body inside the apartment she shared with her fiancé in the 2500 block of Walnut Hill Circle. McAdams had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death with a blunt instrument.
Nine months later on Nov. 3, 1985, in a double murder-suicide, the 30-year-old Sharp fatally shot his estranged wife and her best friend and critically wounded his wife’s cousin. Then he turned the gun on himself, according to police. Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office records identified the victims of the shooting as 29-year-old Denise Sharp and 25-year-old Deborah DeLaTorre.
Denise Sharp’s wounded cousin ran to a neighbor’s house for help. “She just said Bernard had gone berserk and shot everybody,” the neighbor told the Star-Telegram in 1985. Police said Sharp had forced his way into the home and waited to ambush the women, according to the newspaper’s archives.
No arrests were ever made in connection with McAdams’ murder in spite of a thorough investigation at the time, police said.
In 2021, investigators were able to build a DNA profile for a male suspect using physical evidence collected at the scene of the crime. No matches were found in a national database of convicted offenders, so detectives decided to try another technique involving DNA and genealogy research.
After several months, investigators identified Sharp as a potential suspect. A DNA sample recently provided by one of his relatives clinched the identification, police said.
“Getting that call, to me, it meant everything in the world,” Arlington police Detective Devon Coffer said at a news conference Wednesday.
Sharp and McAdams apparently didn’t know each other. Police believe Sharp killed the 22-year-old student at random after gaining access to her apartment through a sliding glass door.
Sharp lived nearby and had at least one unrelated arrest and a criminal history of sexual assault involving two victims other than McAdams, police said. Police said Wednesday that investigators at the time questioned him in McAdams’ case because of his history and proximity, but there wasn’t enough evidence then to link him to the killing.
Authorities said they will continue to investigate whether he may have been responsible for any other unsolved crimes.
“Over the years, it would be easy to lose faith and accept that this case might never be solved,” said Chief of Police Al Jones at the news conference. “But Terri’s family never gave up hope and our detectives never wavered. Now, we get to provide answers that this department has wanted to provide for nearly four decades.”
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