Deep Dive: Faryion Edward Wardrip

Faryion Edward Wardrip was born on March 6th, 1959, in Salem, Indiana. Faryion was the oldest of the children, and had two younger brothers. He dropped out of high school in 12th grade, and at the age of 19, he joined the United States National Guard. He was discharged 6 years later in 1984, under a less-than-honorable discharge.

In March of 1983, he married his first wife at the age of 24, and around that time they moved to Wichita Falls, Texas. Unfortunately, their marriage didn't last very long, due to Wardrip's drug and alcohol addiction. They divorced in 1986. His addictions also caused him to not be able to keep a steady job. After being discharged from the National Guard, he worked as a janitor and then as an orderly at the Wichita Falls General Hospital until February of 1985.

Wardrip committed his first murder in December of 1984. Terry Lee Sims was a part-time EKG specialist at Bethania Hospital in Wichita Falls, while also studying at Midwestern University. She was staying at a friend's place the night of December 21st. The plan was for her friend, Leza Boone, to help Sims study for her final exam the next day. Boone was called into the hospital where they both were employed to work a double shift. The morning of December 22nd, Boone returned home at around 7:30am. Having given Sims her keys, Boone found that she was unable to get into the house. She went to the landlord, got a second set of keys, and let herself in. Inside, she found that her living room had been ransacked. She immediately ran back to her landlord, and the both of them came back to look for Sims. They found her in the bathroom laying in a pool of blood, dead. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. Sims' hands had been bound with electrical cord, and there was evidence that she had tried to fight off her attacker. The investigating officers were able to get a semen sample and a fingerprint from the crime scene. Unfortunately, they did not have the technology at the time to use those pieces of evidence to find the perpetrator.

On January 19th of 1985, a second victim disappeared. Toni Jean Gibbs was a registered nurse (RN) at Wichita Falls General Hospital, the same hospital where Wardrip worked. Gibbs was abducted at around 6 in the morning when she came across Wardrip as he was on a walk. She offered him a ride. He accepted, and as soon as they were in the car, started attacking her and screaming. Wardrip forced her to drive, ultimately turning down an isolated dirt road.

Two days later, Gibbs's car was found abandoned a few miles from the hospital. On February 15th, her naked body was found in a field. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. Her clothing was found nearby in an abandoned school bus, where the attack likely took place. The police were again able to obtain samples of DNA from the scene, but where unable to use them to find the killer. Wardrip quit his job at the hospital four days after Gibbs's body was discovered.

There was someone the police suspected of killing Gibbs before Wardrip was ever brought up. Danny Laughlin was initially accused of killing her, because he rode his motorcycle past the area where her body was discovered, and he had also met Gibbs days before at a nightclub. He was given a lie detector test, which he failed. Laughlin was tried for the murder, even though the police had tested his DNA against the DNA at the scene and it wasn't a match. After two days of deliberation, the jury was deadlocked. Only one of the jurors thought that Laughlin was guilty, so prosecutors decided against trying him again. They released him from custody, though he remained a suspect.

Only two months after Toni Gibbs was murdered, another woman met the same fate. Wardrip went to nearby Fort Worth, Texas, in search of a job. He met Debra Sue Taylor, a married woman, at a bar in the early morning of March 24th, 1985. Her husband, Ken, had gone home earlier after claiming he was tired. Wardrip and Taylor struck up a conversation, and he ended up asking her to dance, which she accepted. Wardrip then offered to drive her home, which she also accepted. Upon arriving to the car, Wardrip made sexual advances which were rejected by Taylor. Angered, Wardrip killed Taylor and left her body at a construction site in east Fort Worth. When Taylor wasn't home the following morning, her husband reported her missing. It wasn't until five days later on March 29th, that her body was found by construction workers.

Again, the police had a suspect other than Wardrip. Ken Taylor was Debra Taylor's husband, and even though he passed three polygraph tests, the police considered him a suspect. Ken claimed that the accusations ruined his life because even members of his own family and his wife's family suspected him, and had turned against him.

Back in Wichita Falls, Wardrip abducted 21 year old Ellen Blau, as she was leaving her waitressing job. It was September 20th, 1985. Blau was a college student at Midwestern State University, just like the first victim, Terry Lee Sims. Wardrip forced Blau to drive to a secluded area outside of town, where he strangled her and left her body. He drove her car back into Wichita Falls, and abandoned it along with her purse. Her body wasn't discovered until October 10th, 1985, and it was already in an advanced state of decomposition. Because of the decay, it is unknown if Blau was sexually assaulted.

Wardrip's final victim was Tina Elizabeth Kimbrew. It was May 6th, 1986, and she was a 21 years old waitress that Wardrip had befriended recently. He ended up at her apartment, where he suffocated her with a pillow. He claims he killed her because she reminded him of his ex-wife. The police connected this case to the murder of Toni Gibbs, but eyewitness testimony ruled out their prime suspect, Danny Laughlin. The eyewitnesses claimed that they saw a white man, around 6 ft 2 in, with dark brown hair and a baseball hat leave Kimbrew's apartment complex. That description did not match with Laughlin, and he was officially ruled out.

Only three days later, on May 9th, 1986, Faryion Wardrip called the Wichita Falls police. He was across the state in Galveston, Texas, and he was threatening to commit suicide. When the police arrived, he confessed to the murder of Tina Elizabeth Kimbrew. He was arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

But the story doesn't end there. Wardrip was paroled in December of 1997, after only serving 11 years, and he moved out to Olney, Texas. While there, he married his second wife, became active in the local church, and got a job at a screen door factory.

John Little was a detective in Wichita Falls in 1999, when he worked on the unsolved murders of Terry Sims, Toni Gibbs, and Ellen Blau. The cases of Sims and Gibbs were connected through matching DNA samples, but sadly, Ellen Blau’s case didn't have any DNA evidence. However, detective Little was able to make a connection between Wardrip and Blau. While on the stand during his trial for the murder of Tina Kimbrew, Wardrip admitted to knowing Blau. The lead was never investigated. Wardrip himself hinted that the police department would have been able to find a suspect much sooner had they "paid a little more attention". Detective Little went on to discover connections between Wardrip and the two other victims; Blau lived one block away from Sims, and Wardrip was an orderly at the hospital were Gibbs had worked as an RN.

The police had no DNA sample from Wardrip, so detective Little had to be clever. While Wardrip was living in Olney, Texas, he worked at a factory. Little approached Wardrip at the factory and asked him for the paper cup that Wardrip had been drinking from. Little claimed that he wanted the cup to spit his tobacco into. Wardrip easily gave up the cup, and Little rushed it back to the lab. The DNA in the cup matched to the sample from the cases of Terry Sims and Toni Gibbs. Wardrip was arrested.

While in custody, Wardrip confessed to the murders of Sims, Gibbs, and Blau, as well as the murder of Debra Taylor in Fort Worth. This brought up his body count to five. Wardrip was then sentenced to death for the murder of Sims, and three life terms for the other murders.

Between 2008 and 2011, Wardrip claimed that he had ineffective council at his trail, and tried to get his death penalty reversed. In December 2014, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Wardrip's claim of ineffective council, and in September of 2020 his request for a new trial was denied and his death penalty restated. He remains to this day on death row at Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas.

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