Tip exposes Beaumont mother's 1999 killing after 25 years

A tip from a reliable informant in April 2024 broke a quarter-century stalemate in Beaumont when investigators unearthed human remains beneath a bedroom slab at a home in the 1600 block of Lindbergh Drive on June 13, 2024. The remains, found wrapped in a blanket after a multiagency search, led to the arrest that same day of Terry Lee Rose Sr., then in his late 60s. Authorities secured search warrants and executed a focused excavation between June 10 and June 13, 2024.

Kimberly Ann Langwell had been missing since July 9, 1999, when the 34-year-old left work after calling her 15-year-old daughter, Tiffani McInnis, to confirm dinner plans. Langwell told Tiffani she would be home by about 6:30 p.m. but never arrived. Police and family discovered Langwell’s abandoned car the following day in the parking lot near the Eckerd pharmacy at Dowlen Road and Phelan Boulevard; her purse and keys were reported left inside the vehicle and there was no obvious sign of a struggle.

The breakthrough combined human-source intelligence with modern recovery tools. Beaumont detectives, assisted by Texas EquuSearch founder Tim Miller, Ground Penetrating Radar Systems, cadaver dogs and the FBI Houston Evidence Response Team, used GPR and canine alerts to target the concrete slab where remains were eventually recovered. Beaumont Police leaders credited the informant tip and those tools for enabling the recovery after 25 years.

Scientific testing later confirmed the remains were those of Kimberly Ann Langwell, a determination Beaumont police announced July 23, 2024. Jefferson County magistrate Marc DeRouen set bond at $1 million after Terry Rose was indicted on murder charges; the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted the case. In July 2024 Langwell’s daughter, Tiffani McInnis, filed a wrongful-death suit against Rose through the Provost Umphrey law firm seeking to secure assets tied to the defendant.

At a December 2025 plea and sentencing, Rose pleaded guilty and on December 16, 2025 Judge Raquel West sentenced him to 40 years in prison under the plea agreement, with the judge ordering he serve at least half the term before parole eligibility. Witness David Wiley, who worked as a tow truck driver for Rose in 1999, testified about a 1999 admission that Rose had shot Langwell in the back of the head and buried her beneath the slab at his home; the judge described the crime as cold-hearted.

The human toll was immediate and personal. McInnis delivered victim-impact testimony about “agonizing uncertainty” and after the 2024 arrest said, "It's a long time coming and I'm so very grateful to have my mother back," adding, "Not in the way I wanted her, but to know that she's no longer being held is a great feeling." The case underscores how coordinated investigative persistence, witness courage and technological advances like GPR, refined DNA testing and organized volunteer search teams can resolve long-unsolved homicides, and it highlights patterns noted in national data showing a substantial share of female homicide victims are killed by current or former intimate partners. The resolution closed an anguished chapter for one family while drawing renewed attention to how cold cases can be solved when evidence, expertise and persistence converge.