HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Kelly Siegler successfully prosecuted more than 60 murder cases while serving as an assistant district attorney for more than two decades in Houston’s Harris County.

Known as a tough courtroom fighter, Siegler once re-created the scene of a husband stabbing his wife to death in the bedroom by straddling and mock striking a colleague on the couple’s blood-stained mattress.

Now, as the star of the reality TV show “Cold Justice,” Siegler and her team of investigators helped convince Huntsville authorities and a Walker County grand jury to charge Larry LeFlore, 60, a former Texas Criminal Justice Department employee, with the first-degree murder of his wife 26 years after her mysterious death.

The June 29 indictment said LeFlore “intentionally and knowingly” killed Mary Jane LeFlore, then 33 and also a Criminal Justice Department employee, “by strangulation and by manner and means unknown to the grand jury.”

Siegler said her “Cold Justice” team resurrected the case by interviewing witnesses and law enforcement officials involved in the original investigation. Siegler said their testimony built the case against Larry LeFlore without uncovering new DNA or any other forensic evidence that typically reopens cold cases.

“I think this case is strong,” Siegler told The Huntsville Item. “The really unique thing is that so many of the witnesses come from the world of law enforcement. Probably that’s the reason everybody was so cooperative and so helpful, and even had such great memories.”

“That’s the funny thing about cold cases,” Siegler added. “Sometimes as time goes on, people are more willing to open up and they appreciate things in a different way, from a different perspective. Maybe they see things more clearly. It’s funny sometimes if you give people more time that ends up helping the case. You never know which way it’s going to go, but in this case, it seems like people with hindsight saw things clearer.”

Jimmy Ardoin, a veteran criminal defense attorney from Houston representing LeFlore, disputes that line of thinking.

“Mr. LeFlore is innocent of the charge against him,” said Ardoin. “We look forward to confronting the newly discovered recollections of these witnesses and showing a jury that Mr. LeFlore is not guilty of murder. I have yet to see any case where after 26 years people’s recollections get better. Unlike fine wine, memories do not get better with age.”

LeFlore’s son, Marcus LeFlore, who was 12 at the time of his mother’s murder, is convinced his father is innocent. An educator who now lives in Houston, Marcus LeFlore believes Siegler’s “Cold Case” crew uncovered no new evidence.

“I did some research into the show and it is pretty unethical,” said Marcus LeFlore.  “It is for entertainment purposes. They present the facts in a skewed way in order to frame their narrative. I didn’t think it was a good platform to tell my mom’s story.”

“Reality TV is driven by ratings, not solving cases,” the son added. “They are not looking for the real person who did this. I want to know what happened to my mother.”

Siegler’s team of investigators visited Huntsville last November at the urging of Jack Choate,  former Walker County assistant district attorney, to take a fresh look at the LeFlore case. The “Cold Justice” squad spent about two weeks going through the files, talking to investigators here and interviewing people who are familiar with the crime, including the lead investigator from the DA’s office at the time and a Texas Ranger who had been assigned to the murder case for several years.

“You talk to every single witness, ask them all the questions again, and if a new name comes up, you follow that name and follow that lead,” said Siegler. “That’s basically what we did. It’s not real glamorous, it’s not real unique, but it works. That’s what we did here.”

District Attorney David Weeks and Huntsville police have been working for the last quarter century to find the answers to Mary Jane LeFlore’s unsolved murder. The DA said her husband has been a prime person of interest from the outset, but authorities could never come up with enough evidence to charge him.

Siegler said local authorities were glad to have outside help.

“The Huntsville PD was willing to say, ‘Hey, anything you can add to it, anything you can do to put a different perspective on it, we want to solve our case.’ That was always a priority,” said Siegler.

Weeks said he welcomed the “Cold Justice” team’s assistance. “When you’re in our business,” he said, “it’s always good to bounce things off other prosecutors and see what they think.”

Weeks has been working on the Mary Jane LeFlore case since Mary Jane went missing in July of 1991. Weeks and his first assistant, Stephanie Stroud, described the case against Larry LeFlore as a “people-driven case,” not a “modern-day, science-driven case” after his arrest last month. 

Siegler, who has known Weeks for 30 years, agrees with the district attorney’s assessment. She said there’s not a lot of damning forensic evidence in the LeFlore case, but what it lacks in science, it makes up for in witness recollections of the crime.

“Like Johnny Bonds, a cop who works on the show, says, we sure were solving murders back in the ’70s before they even had DNA,” said Siegler. 

Authorities declined to discuss details of the new witness information that breathed life into the old murder case. Information the DA presented to the grand jury remains confidential.

The “Cold Justice” presentation of the case will occur July 22 on the Oxygen cable television network at 8 p.m. eastern time. 

Larry LeFlore filed a missing person report about his wife July 21, 1991, two days after he says he saw Mary Jane in the passenger seat of a strange man’s car leaving Huntsville’s West Hill Mall and heading south on Interstate 45. He told police he thought she was having an affair.

Police investigated her disappearance but found no evidence of what happened until February of 1993. Her badly decomposed body was found scattered in a rural area off State Highway 30 west of Huntsville. Dental records confirmed the remains were Mary Jane LeFlore’s.

Larry LeFlore, who retired from Texas Criminal Justice Department years ago, stayed in Huntsville and has recently been managing a retail clothing store. He obtained a divorce and remarried before her body was found.

Siegler admits it’ll be tough to prosecute the case against him, but she’s confident it can be done.

“Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s a cold case, and there’s no such thing as a slam dunk, easy cold case,” Siegler said. “If it was, it would’ve never gone cold in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that you sit around forever as a prosecutor doing nothing or waiting for some miracle to happen.”

Siegler, said DNA evidence was “never going to solve this case. It doesn’t solve most cold cases, truly. They’re always going to be all about the little bitty pieces, the things that people saw or heard or know and you have to put it all together to make it into one big puzzle.

“It takes more time, it takes more preparation, it takes more patience and it takes more attention. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less of a compelling case.”

Siegler said “Cold Justice” investigators have worked with local law enforcement agencies across the country on cold murder cases that contributed to 16 convictions.

Featured for several years on the TNT cable network, “Cold Justice” moved to Oxygen this year. The show’s producer is Dick Wolf, best known as the creator and producer of “Law and Order,” the police and courtroom drama television show.

“These kind of cases, the unsolved murders, are the most important cases,” Siegler said. “They’re also the most challenging cases, they’re always going to be the most difficult and they’re the ones you should try your hardest and focus on, and never give up on.”

Tom Waddill is the editor of the Huntsville, Texas Item. Contact him at tomwaddill@itemonline.com.