DNA solves 1988 Silsbee murder of Caroline Bolen after decades

Caroline Susan Bolen’s killing in Silsbee was the kind of case that never left a town alone. Nearly four decades after her body was found in her home on Cooks Road, investigators said modern DNA work and forensic genealogy finally identified the man they believe killed the 26-year-old mother.

Police said Bolen was discovered on July 28, 1988, at 1280 Cooks Road by a friend who went to the house and found her dead. The killing was especially brutal. Investigators said Bolen had been sexually assaulted and murdered, and her six-year-old son was left alone in the home with her body after the attacker left.

Chief Shawn Blackwell said the case was reassigned in 2019 to Silsbee Police Department investigator Justin Holt, while Texas Ranger Brandon Bess was reviewing the file through the Texas Rangers Company A Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program. By August 2022, the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory had developed a usable DNA profile from biological evidence recovered at the scene, including blood under Bolen’s fingernails. That profile did not immediately produce a CODIS hit, but the case kept moving through additional analysis and cooperation between agencies.

Police identified the suspect as Allen Wayne Mosley, who was 27 at the time of the murder. Mosley later died by self-inflicted gunshot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2006, long before the case could be publicly closed. A funeral-home obituary says Mosley, a native of Port Arthur, was 56 when he died on August 22, 2006, after living in Tulsa and working for the city of Tulsa and Tulsa International Airport.

The new identification gives Bolen’s family a name to attach to a case that haunted Silsbee for generations, even if it cannot end in a courtroom. Texas Rangers had publicly reopened the investigation in August 2023 and asked anyone who knew Bolen to call 409-385-3714. The Texas Department of Public Safety says its cold-case program considers a case solved only when the offender has been arrested and turned over for prosecution, but in Bolen’s case, the DNA answer arrived years after the suspect’s death.