Christine was a wonderful person. Towards the end of her life she became very involved with Faith in Practice - a non-profit some of my friends started about 17 years ago which organizes faith-based medical mission trips to Guatemala to provide much needed medical care. FIP is now a major force in Guatemala and it is wonderful to think of Christine's legacy at FIP.
When we lived in Houston, we saw Gay and John often at MDPC. They are special, remarkable people. Christine's brother, Carl, is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Barre, Vermont.
Christine Van Osdall had dinner with her parents the night of Feb. 4. It was a happy occasion - the following day was her mother's birthday.
But John and Gay Van Osdall never saw their daughter alive again.
Christine Van Osdall's body was found late the next day in a spot off the 1500 block of Eldridge that was so remote and densely wooded, the fishermen who found her and ran to call police could not find it again before dark fell.
Police found her the next morning. The 33-year-old had been shot in the head. And her car was missing.
The slaying stunned her family, friends and hundreds of people whose lives she had touched as a schoolteacher and as a member of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church.
A graduate of Memorial High School and Texas A&M University, Van Osdall had taught in the Dallas-Fort Worth area before coming to the Spring Branch Independent School District in 1992.
From 1992 to 1997, she taught English as a second language at Spring Oaks Middle School, where she also established a Girl Scout troop for her students. She had been voted Teacher of the Year at both districts for which she had worked.
She served on the board of Faith in Action at her church, traveling to Guatemala with a group of doctors and helping to establish two hospitals there.
No one could understand why anyone would want to hurt her.
Van Osdall's friends said she had been dating a 39-year-old security guard for a short time, a man she met through a computer dating service.
John Van Osdall said although the family did not know it at the time, his daughter had called the man about an hour before having dinner with her family that night in February.
The call was to break off the relationship, but John Van Osdall said his daughter agreed to the man's request that she come to his apartment later that night and talk to him in person.
Houston Police Department homicide Sgt. Jim Binford said Van Osdall went to meet the man at his apartment in the area of Westheimer and Beltway 8, about five miles from where her body was found.
"We spoke to him," Binford said of the man, "and he chose to leave the area right after that."
The search for Van Osdall's car occupied investigators in the following weeks, finally ending when a tipster who received a Crime Stoppers flier about the vehicle spotted it in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 700 block of Greens Road on March 20.
A canvass of the area around the northeast Houston apartment complex turned up a witness who had seen a man parking the champagne-colored 1999 Honda Accord EX at the apartments.
The witness described that man as black with a dark complexion, in his mid-20s, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall and stout.
The same man was later seen in the same area, driving a light green or blue-green 1984 Buick LeSabre, police said. The description is not that of the man Van Osdall was meeting the night she disappeared.
At a news conference Tuesday, Crime Stoppers Executive Director Kim Ogg announced that Van Osdall's family and friends had helped to increase the reward for information in the case to $20,000.
Anyone with information in the case may call homicide investigators at 713-308-3600, or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Callers may remain anonymous.
The Van Osdall family and police said Tuesday that neither Christine Van Osdall nor her slaying have been forgotten.
In a ceremony last week, Van Osdall's 1989 class ring was placed in a memorial case at Texas A&M University, alongside the rings of students representing every class year.
Binford summed it up: "We're not going to forget this case. The family will never forget their daughter, and there is no statute of limitations on murder."
Betty Kerr (Hewell)
Christine was a wonderful person. Towards the end of her life she became very involved with Faith in Practice - a non-profit some of my friends started about 17 years ago which organizes faith-based medical mission trips to Guatemala to provide much needed medical care. FIP is now a major force in Guatemala and it is wonderful to think of Christine's legacy at FIP.
When we lived in Houston, we saw Gay and John often at MDPC. They are special, remarkable people. Christine's brother, Carl, is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Barre, Vermont.
Betty Kerr (Hewell)
From the Houston Chronicle on 8/14/00
Christine Van Osdall had dinner with her parents the night of Feb. 4. It was a happy occasion - the following day was her mother's birthday.
But John and Gay Van Osdall never saw their daughter alive again.
Christine Van Osdall's body was found late the next day in a spot off the 1500 block of Eldridge that was so remote and densely wooded, the fishermen who found her and ran to call police could not find it again before dark fell.
Police found her the next morning. The 33-year-old had been shot in the head. And her car was missing.
The slaying stunned her family, friends and hundreds of people whose lives she had touched as a schoolteacher and as a member of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church.
A graduate of Memorial High School and Texas A&M University, Van Osdall had taught in the Dallas-Fort Worth area before coming to the Spring Branch Independent School District in 1992.
From 1992 to 1997, she taught English as a second language at Spring Oaks Middle School, where she also established a Girl Scout troop for her students. She had been voted Teacher of the Year at both districts for which she had worked.
She served on the board of Faith in Action at her church, traveling to Guatemala with a group of doctors and helping to establish two hospitals there.
No one could understand why anyone would want to hurt her.
Van Osdall's friends said she had been dating a 39-year-old security guard for a short time, a man she met through a computer dating service.
John Van Osdall said although the family did not know it at the time, his daughter had called the man about an hour before having dinner with her family that night in February.
The call was to break off the relationship, but John Van Osdall said his daughter agreed to the man's request that she come to his apartment later that night and talk to him in person.
Houston Police Department homicide Sgt. Jim Binford said Van Osdall went to meet the man at his apartment in the area of Westheimer and Beltway 8, about five miles from where her body was found.
"We spoke to him," Binford said of the man, "and he chose to leave the area right after that."
The search for Van Osdall's car occupied investigators in the following weeks, finally ending when a tipster who received a Crime Stoppers flier about the vehicle spotted it in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 700 block of Greens Road on March 20.
A canvass of the area around the northeast Houston apartment complex turned up a witness who had seen a man parking the champagne-colored 1999 Honda Accord EX at the apartments.
The witness described that man as black with a dark complexion, in his mid-20s, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall and stout.
The same man was later seen in the same area, driving a light green or blue-green 1984 Buick LeSabre, police said. The description is not that of the man Van Osdall was meeting the night she disappeared.
At a news conference Tuesday, Crime Stoppers Executive Director Kim Ogg announced that Van Osdall's family and friends had helped to increase the reward for information in the case to $20,000.
Anyone with information in the case may call homicide investigators at 713-308-3600, or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Callers may remain anonymous.
The Van Osdall family and police said Tuesday that neither Christine Van Osdall nor her slaying have been forgotten.
In a ceremony last week, Van Osdall's 1989 class ring was placed in a memorial case at Texas A&M University, alongside the rings of students representing every class year.
Binford summed it up: "We're not going to forget this case. The family will never forget their daughter, and there is no statute of limitations on murder."
Betty Kerr (Hewell)
Information on the arrest of her killer
http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/txcn/houston/stories/khou060510_ac_coldcasearrest.2a7b971c.html