What happened to Mary Catherine Edwards in 1995 didn't just scare the people of Beaumont, Texas. It haunted them. She was a beloved 31-year-old schoolteacher, the kind of person who everyone in town seemed to know or have a connection to. When her parents found her body in her townhouse on Park Meadow Street, the scene was horrific. She was in her bathtub, handcuffed behind her back, and had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
The case stayed cold for nearly three decades.
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Then, the show Mary Catherine Edwards 48 Hours episode (titled "Tracking the Killer of Mary Catherine Edwards") aired, and it brought the details of this "ghost story" back into the light. It wasn't just a random act of violence. It was a betrayal by someone she had once considered a friend—someone whose wedding she had actually stood in as a bridesmaid.
The Clue That Terrified the Cops
From the very start, investigators were looking over their shoulders. Why? The handcuffs.
Mary Catherine had been bound with professional, police-grade Smith & Wesson handcuffs. In 1995, those weren't exactly something you just picked up at a local gas station. They had serial numbers, but they were untraceable at the time. This led the Beaumont Police to a terrifying theory: was the killer one of their own?
Detective Aaron Lewallen told Natalie Morales on 48 Hours that it felt like a campfire story that wouldn't go away. Cops were looking at each other. They questioned law enforcement officers and security guards. They even looked at an ex-boyfriend, David Perry, but the leads just kept hitting dead ends. Honestly, the town just kind of settled into a long, painful silence while the case gathered dust for 26 years.
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Genetic Genealogy Changes Everything
The breakthrough didn't come from a confession or a lucky tip. It came from a lab.
In 2020, the Texas Rangers and Beaumont PD teamed up with a lab called Othram. They used forensic genetic genealogy—basically the same tech used to catch the Golden State Killer—to build a massive family tree from the DNA found at the crime scene. We're talking about a tree with nearly 7,500 names on it.
Eventually, that tree narrowed down to one branch. One name.
Clayton Bernard Foreman.
The twist? Foreman wasn't a stranger. He had gone to high school with Mary Catherine and her twin sister, Allison. More than that, he was married to their friend, Dianna Coe. Mary Catherine and Allison were actually bridesmaids in his 1982 wedding. It’s wild to think about—the person who took her life was someone who had photos of her in his wedding album.
The Trash Pull and the Arrest
To prove it was him, investigators had to get his current DNA. By 2021, Foreman was living in Ohio. Detectives and the FBI literally went through his trash to find a sample. When it came back as a perfect match to the 1995 crime scene, they didn't just go to arrest him. They wanted to send a message.
Texas Ranger Brandon Bess and Detective Lewallen worked it out so they could use the exact same handcuffs found on Mary Catherine at the crime scene to arrest Foreman. Putting those cuffs on him 26 years later was, as Bess put it, a way to finally do something physical for Catherine.
The Trial and the 1981 Secret
When the trial finally happened in March 2024, some pretty dark stuff came out. Foreman’s ex-wife, Dianna, testified that he had a weird obsession with police gear—billy clubs, handcuffs, the whole nine yards.
But the real kicker was a "signature" crime from 1981.
The prosecution brought up a previous assault Foreman committed where he used a belt to bind a woman and held a knife to her throat. The Ninth Court of Appeals recently upheld his conviction in early 2026, specifically citing that these "twelve specific similarities" between the 1981 attack and Mary Catherine's murder were too close to be a coincidence. It showed a pattern. It showed intent.
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Basically, Foreman had been a predator hiding in plain sight for forty years.
What This Case Teaches Us Now
It’s easy to look at cold cases and think they’re hopeless once the decades start piling up. But the Mary Catherine Edwards 48 Hours investigation shows that the "perfect crime" doesn't exist anymore because of DNA.
If you're following cold cases or interested in how these are solved today, here are the real takeaways:
- Technology is the ultimate witness: Even if the original investigators missed something or lacked the tools, biological evidence doesn't age the way memories do.
- The "Circle of Trust" is often where the killer hides: In many cold cases, the suspect was interviewed early on or was a known associate who just didn't "seem" like a killer at the time.
- Genetic Genealogy is the future: Labs like Othram are clearing backlogs that were once considered impossible.
Clayton Foreman is currently serving a life sentence at the West Texas Hospital facility. He won't be eligible for parole until 2061, which, considering he's in his 60s now, means he's likely never getting out. For the people of Beaumont and Mary Catherine’s twin sister, Allison, it’s not exactly a "happy" ending, but it's finally a finished one.
To stay informed on similar cases, keep an eye on the Texas Department of Public Safety's Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program, as they continue to use these new DNA methods to revisit other "unsolvable" Texas mysteries.