AUSTIN, Texas – The case of an Austin woman who went missing 40 years ago is still a mystery. She’s one of many on a site designed to collect information about unsolved cases called “Solve the Case.”

Sharon McCully disappeared on December 11, 1984.

She was doing Christmas shopping that day and had left lunch with her husband. She dropped him off at his job and drove away, last seen going east on Howard Lane towards I-35.

Her car, an off-white 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, was found two days later, unlocked and abandoned at an apartment complex on the 8600 block of Research Boulevard, about five-and-a-half miles from her last known location. Her keys and purse were gone. 

“Sharon was not believed to have had any connection with that apartment complex,” “Solve the Case” founder Aaron Benzick said. “There’s just no information to be concerned about the husband or anyone close to her at that point.”

MISSING IN TEXAS

When her husband got home from work, she wasn’t there. After waiting and calling her friends, he reported her missing the next day. 

“Really speaks to there being an unknown factor that gets involved in this,” Benzick said. 

McCully’s story is one of many on “Solve the Case,” a place where all the facts of a case can be aggregated. 

“With the Solve the Case platform, we’re opening up for missing persons, unsolved homicides, unidentified persons, even fugitives that are on the run, have warrants out for their arrest and haven’t been found for many years,” Benzick said.

Benzick’s day job is a homicide detective in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He got the idea to create the website after he got a bulletin about a decades-old case of someone who went to the same high school as him. 

“Family had expressed some frustration, ‘we’ve been trying to promote our son’s missing person case, bring awareness of the case, and some of the things we’ve shared haven’t been updated, and we don’t really know what to do with that.’ That kind of inspired me to create this home page for victims,” he said. 

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Cases on the site can come from law enforcement or families. 

“When you create the case page on Solve the Case, we’re going to walk you through. Here are the things that should be happening in your case, during a missing person investigation,” Benzick said.

For McCully’s case and so many others across the nation, “We want to build out a database of where known offenders were operating at that time,” Benzick said. “At minimum, we want to tell Sharon’s story.”

The hope is that the community can work together to solve mysteries. 

“Through creating this platform, we’re hoping to open up this information nationwide, get families, victims, law enforcement all on the same page in a consistent way so that we can do the most good on these missing person cases,” Benzick said. 

AUSTIN, Texas (KBTX) – Social media and influencers are now being more closely scrutinized when it comes to campaign spending. When you see a political ad on TV or in the newspaper, you know it was financed by someone. But what about your online feed?

This week, the Texas Ethics Commission voted to require social media personalities to disclose when they are paid to post or repost political advertisements.

Joining KBTX to discuss the topic is Daron Shaw, a Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics at the University of Texas at Austin.

He says the requirement is taking care of a loophole that social media left in the political sphere for elections.

“The key distinction is actually one that is actually derived from federal election campaigns, but it has an application at the state level and that is what we call an in-kind contribution. If I perform a service for you, you are a candidate for office and I perform a service for you, that constitutes an an in-kind contribution, something for your campaign. But those laws have not been specified or updated, to take into account, how do we think of an influencer who is paid to say, ‘Hey go to this guy’s event, it’s happening in Austin this next weekend, it’s going to be great, it’s going to be lit, it’s going to be so awesome.’ Well, if you pay that person to do that, then essentially they are performing a service for you which is in kind to an in-kind contribution. So what TEC is trying to accomplish here, is to close what I think is increasingly seen as a loophole to state-wide campaign finance regulations,” said Shaw.

Watch the entire interview in the video above.

Shaw says campaign finance law is always evolving, and that there are two extremes on this issue in the public policy debate going on right now.

“There are people who think that we ought to have much more regulation, that we should really kind of curtail and monitor the existence of money in politics. There are other people who believe money will find its way into politics, and what is critical is disclosure, and making information about these connections, who is paying what, making that transparent to the public so that people can make a judgment,” said Shaw.

Copyright 2024 KBTX. All rights reserved.

The 6,461-square-foot c-store was purchased by a Virginia-based 1031 exchange buyer.

By Kevin McIntyre | June 20, 2024

TXB, which stands for Texas Born, has completed the sale of one of its Austin, Texas c-stores for $9.11 million. The 6,461-square-foot location was one of TXB’s 48 locations throughout Texas and Oklahoma. The recipient was a Virginia-based 1031 exchange buyer.

Situated on 4.52 acres of land, the site is located just outside of Austin in Kyle, Texas.

The sale comes just a week after the chain announced a new initiative in central Texas, through which TXB will open two new locations in the region and refurbish 12 more. The chain also added electric vehicle (EV) charging capability at all remodeled locations.

The new locations will feature a variety of fresh-made food items, including hand-breaded chicken tenders, handmade quesadillas and more private-label offerings.

“It’s been an incredible honor to see TXB growing so rapidly in Central Texas,” said Kevin Smartt, CEO of TXB. “This rebrand is more than just a different logo or name; this is a true reflection of who we are as a company. We’ve become famous for our freshly made, restaurant-quality food items that we prepare on-site, as well as our line of private-label products including salsa, jerky, tea, water, coffee and more. We want our guests to have the absolute best experience every time they visit one of our locations.”

The new and remodeled sites are located in the following cities:

• Bee Cave
• Georgetown
• Cottonwood Shores
• Kyle
• Bryan (one existing store and one coming next year)
• College Station (opening next year)
• Marble Falls
• Johnson City
• Wimberley
• Spicewood
• Buchanan Dam

TXB was represented in the recent sale by SRS Capital Markets’ Executive Vice President and Managing Principal Patrick Nutt and Senior Vice President William Wamble. SRS is a Southeastern U.S.-based private developer.

Year to date, SRS Capital Markets has completed approximately $731 million in deal volume comprised of 182 transactions in 34 states. SRS currently has in excess of 698 properties actively on the market with a market value surpassing $3.7 billion.

TXB was named the 2023 CStore Decisions Convenience Store Chain of the Year.