Thanks Shannon, Julie, Shawn and Cyndy,
Losing your mother is hard enough, but to know it was violent - it's hard for a soul to take!  My father was never the same after that.  As the story goes my grandfather dropped her off at a friend's house some blocks away.  He was suppose to pick her up in a few hours and never showed so although it was getting dark, she decided to walk home.  When no one heard from her and she didn't come home, they started looking.  It was a day or so later that we were watching TV (which was a big deal then) and when the news came on, there was a report of an unidentified woman found dead...  they showed the dress and belt she was wearing... my father freaked out - of course.  That was the first time I had seen my father cry.

I added more pictures and have been scanning all day =) so I think I'll store them elsewhere.  I'm hoping someone will see an old picture and think... "that looks like a picture I have." you never know.
I found a few more death certs but the others I'm searching are after 1976 and that's all the site goes to right now.

I'm so new to this any information is great!  I was lucky enough to find a cousin who shared a lot of info with me.  He has my paternal side going back a long way.  I'm so grateful to find cousins who can fill in the blanks.  It really jump starts this whole thing.  There are still a lot of people I need to contact.  I just hope they are still living and are willing to share information.

I'm pretty excited to find a death cert on my paternal grandmother.  I didn't know her mother's name and couldn't find information on her at all.  It's great when you find a piece of the puzzle that makes your day!

It was here (below link), she's the first one on that page.  I was 11 at the time, I knew she was murdered, but reading the cause of death was hard.  What she went through, it's horrible.  They never found out who did it and it was rumored to be her husband, he was abusive but there was no proof.  From what I remember he knew too much and acted weird.  But like I said, I was 11, they didn't even let us go to the funeral.

Her mother's name is listed as "Nannie" and given by her husband so could that be something else like Nancy?  I was wondering if that's just what they called her and that's what he had them put down.

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#givenName=Jesse%20Estelle;p=1;placeId=26;eventPlace=Texas%2C%20United%20States;surname=Garrett;searchType=standard

This also gives me a timeline to find my ggrandfather Jim Thomas.  He died a year or so after her.  They were trying to keep her death from him - which I thought was horrible 'cause he was in a nursing home and didn't understand WHY she wasn't coming to see him.  She was there all the time.  He was deaf and was frustrated trying to communicate with finger spellers.

I'll scan some pictures and add them soon.