MCKINNEY, Texas-Sharon Trimble and Earlene Warrell were both co-workers of Temmie Cooley-Trimble at a Dallas hospital and Warrell, at a suburban Dallas diner.
Detectives say Trimble and Warrell both decided to become romantically involved with Cooley and both were strangled to death and dumped partially clothed beside a country road. Trimble was killed in 1989 and Warrell in 2001.
Cooley has now been sentenced to 80 years in prison for Trimble's killing, to be served concurrently with a 35-year term assessed in 2004 for the Warrell murder.
Trial testimony showed Trimble told her husband she was going to a club with a friend the Friday night after Thanksgiving 1989 when she told her baby sitter she was going to put an end to something, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Her body was found the next morning beside a rural road in Plano in Collin County, north of Dallas. Like Warrell 12 years later, she was dead of ligature strangulation. Collin County Medical Examiner William Rohr testified that he had seen only two other such cases in more than 30 years as a medical examiner.
"They're not common in any medical examiner's career, but they are easy to identify," he said.
Cooley had confessed to the Warrell killing and admitted having sex with Trimble but denied killing her. That's where thing stood until January 2014 when Plano police detectives interviewed him. This time, his statements were inconsistent with his previous accounts and he was indicted in late 2014.
Trimble's children said the killing had a profound effect on them.
Chevera Blakemore-Trimble, who was 5 years old when her mother was killed, now works as a lawyer helping the mentally ill.
Jacoby Trimble, who was 3 at the time of his mother's death, is now a sheriff's deputy, which he said is due in part to his desire to keep other children from enduring what he and his sisters have.
He said Cooley's sentence "won't take the pain away, but it will help heal the scars."