Families Search for Answers 39 Years After Murders of Two Weatherford Teens

Nearly four decades after the murders of two Weatherford High School students rocked the entire city, the victims’ families are still looking for justice. 

On March 25, 1983, the flags in front of the high school flew at half-staff after the students were killed in a parking area off Tin Top Road where young people often hung out.

Freshman Shelly Colliflower, 14, and sophomore Vincent Tijerina, 16, were both shot in the head.

"You know, I've had people tell me I need to move on. But I can't," said Johnnie Nitcholas, Shelly’s mother. "I want justice."

The last image she has of her daughter – when she dropped her off at school that day – still haunts her.

"She got out of the car and she looked down at me and she said, 'Bye momma, I love you,’” she said. “And that was my last memory of her."

So who would have killed two young high school kids? And why?

The motive for the murders is as much a mystery today as it was back then.

"I don't know. I just can't imagine,” Nitcholas said. “These were two good kids."

Theories run the gamut. Shelly's mother thinks it might have been another student who had a crush on her.

"It wasn't random. It was someone who knew them well,” she said.

She said police told her years ago about one possible clue.

"There was a note left in her purse the last period of class,” she said. “It told her she was too beautiful and that he wanted her but that she was so beautiful he knew he couldn't have her and one day he would have her."

As for the other victim, Vincent Tijerina, he has few family members still around.

We talked to his niece, who lives in Atlanta.

“Somebody knows something and please, for the sake of my family, for the sake of me, just say something,” Ashley Spellman said. “Help us."

The families said they still have faith the murders will be solved.

"I'll always have hope as long as I'm breathing,” Nitcholas said. “I have to have hope."