Irving Carwash slaying suspect leads authorities to body

Dental records will reveal Thursday whether a decomposed body found Wednesday is that of Sandra Gaye Scott, an Irving woman who disappeared in late November and was believed last seen with Mr. Harris.

"He had to own up to one more," said Jessie Estes, Ms. Scott's stepmother, surrounded by relatives and friends Wednesday afternoon. "He did not say it was Sandy but that he had to come clean."

Later in the day, in a brief telephone interview with KXAS-TV (Channel 5), Mr. Harris said he had admitted to police that he killed Ms. Scott.

Irving police found the body about 11 a.m. after interviewing Mr. Harris, who they say has been cooperative. The 28-year-old remained jailed in Irving, where a judge ordered him held without bail.

The body was beside a ditch in the Trinity River floodplain, just north of Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie and inside the Irving city line. It was not readily visible from nearby Hunter Ferrell Road, which cuts through an area choked with weeds and litter.

"All the time she's been missing, I've wondered if she was out here," said longtime friend Lana Todd, who clutched an old snapshot of Ms. Scott while watching officers comb for clues.

Some friends and relatives had searched the region before, on foot and horseback.

"We came to this area because we knew it had ditches and lakes and would be an easy-access dumping ground," said Barbara Preston, another friend of the missing woman's.

Tearful family members, fearing the worst, lamented that the body was found so close to the home of Ms. Scott's father.

"I really wanted him to come clean so we could find out, after 3 1/2 months, what happened," said 13-year-old Michael Wright, Ms. Scott's son. "He's a psycho. . . . He's going to pay for what he did."

Mr. Harris was arraigned on one count of capital murder, a crime potentially punishable by death.

Monday shootings

Killed in the Monday morning shootings at the Mi-T-Fine carwash on MacArthur Boulevard were assistant manager Dennis Lee, 48, of Irving and employees Rhoda Wheeler, 46, of Irving; Agustin Villasenor, 36, of Arlington; Benjamin Villasenor, 32, Agustin's brother; and Roberto Jimenez Jr., 15.

Funeral arrangements for Mr. Jimenez have been scheduled for this week in Mexico. Officials with Brown's Memorial Funeral Home in Irving said the body would be flown to Mexico City on Saturday, with burial to follow in Puebla.

A sixth carwash employee, 36-year-old Octavio Ramos of Irving, remained in critical condition late Wednesday at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

Mr. Harris' brother, who revealed late Tuesday that his brother confessed to the carwash slayings, said reports that Ms. Scott's body may have been found "are good."

"I am glad there is some closure to that," said William Harris, 29.

He said that he spent five to 10 minutes visiting his brother Wednesday and that he appeared contrite and cooperative.

William Harris also seemed resigned to the fate that his brother probably faces.

"He is going to be tried on these charges, and he can only die once," William Harris said. "He can only give his heart and ask for forgiveness from those whose lives he tore apart."

'Eye for an eye'

Others who know Robert Harris are similarly disposed toward his punishment.

"In the Bible, it says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," said Jon Harvey, a former Mi-T-Fine employee who lived with Mr. Harris for two months in late 1999. "He ought to lose his life the same way those people lost theirs."

Mr. Harvey also was questioned about the disappearance of Ms. Scott because he moved out of Mr. Harris' Rock Island Road apartment about the time the 37-year-old woman disappeared. He said the only time he met Ms. Scott was the night she bought a couch from one of Mr. Harris' friends.

Mr. Harvey said he later passed a lie-detector test that showed he had no connection to Ms. Scott's disappearance. He said he told police in December that Mr. Harris kept a handgun in the apartment. Police executed a search warrant at the home in January but found no weapon.

Mr. Harvey, 29, said he had limited contact with Mr. Harris after moving out and was little more than suspicious about his former roommate. Mr. Harris later failed three key lie-detector questions inquiring about the missing woman's whereabouts.

"He never came across to me as being violent or anything like he was," Mr. Harvey said, describing Mr. Harris as a casual drinker who thought of himself as a ladies' man. "Apparently, I did not know him all that well, because I was living with a damn killer."

Wanted man

Marie Noble, a childhood friend of Mr. Harris', opened her home to him Monday night and said she didn't know he was a wanted man. The night before he was captured, Mr. Harris watched the movie Face/Off with childhood friends at her Far East Dallas home, she said.

"He didn't talk. He just sat there smoking cigarettes back to back and moving his fingers," she said Wednesday. "Whatever was going through his mind, he didn't tell us about it."

Ms. Noble, who grew up calling Mr. Harris "stuttering Bobby," said she was watching a rerun of the nightly news when she found out police wanted to talk to Mr. Harris. She learned that a man she believed was a reformed convict was in fact accused of Irving's worst crime since a gunman killed three men and a pregnant woman in January 1991.

Mr. Harris told Ms. Noble he would surrender to police, although he preferred to be accompanied by his brother. She said he then told her, "I'm dead, regardless what happens."

Mr. Harvey, a former carwash service manager, spent Wednesday morning at a Mi-T-Fine on Belt Line Road, where owner Luke Ramsey arranged for police and counselors to talk to friends and colleagues of the shooting victims.

"Those people will be loved forever because they brought a lot of people a lot of joy," he said.

Staff writers Brooks Egerton and Connie Piloto and Arlington Morning News staff writer Gene Abrahamson contributed to this report.