The Murder of Sharon McLane Part Three: The Wrong Man

In December 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane was brutally murdered inside her Bedford, Texas apartment. Two years later, her friend John Earl Nolley was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. The case appeared closed.

But questions never completely disappeared.

Years after Nolley’s conviction, attorneys with the Innocence Project and Tarrant County’s Conviction Integrity Unit uncovered troubling problems with the original prosecution, including undisclosed evidence, unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, and forensic findings that cast doubt on the verdict.

Early in the case, Paul Dennis Reid, a violent serial killer later convicted of seven murders in Tennessee and suspected in several others, emerged as an alternate suspect. But police discounted him despite many witnesses placing him at Sharon’s apartment complex around the time of the murder, among other things.

In the final chapter of Sharon McLane’s story, we examine Reid’s murder convictions, the evidence that pointed away from Nolley, and the extraordinary review that ultimately led to Nolley’s release after nearly two decades behind bars.

While John Earl Nolley eventually regained his freedom, Sharon McLane’s murder remains unsolved, leaving behind one lingering question that has never been definitively answered:

Who killed Sharon McLane?

Part three of three.

If you have any information about the murder of Sharon Lucretia McLane, please call the Bedford police at (817) 952-2127.

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