In April of 2019, the Spring Hill Police Department contacted Criminal Investigators with the 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office (DA’s Office) and asked for assistance in reopening an investigation into the 1991 Murder of Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall. Since 2014, the DA’s office has tasked its Criminal Investigators with investigating unsolved homicides in the 22nd Judicial District. Since that time, five cold case homicides have been solved, resulting in indictments against five individuals. Two remain pending and three have resulted in convictions.
DA Investigator Tommy Goetz reopened the case and his investigation showed that, on March 10, 1991, at approximately 12:30 p.m., the Spring Hill Police Department responded to a report of a body located on Saturn Parkway at the off ramp for Port Royal Road. The body of a deceased white female was located at the wood line approximately 100 feet from Saturn Parkway adjacent to the westbound lane. The body was of a white female and had torn clothing, undergarments and obvious injuries to the face and neck. The body was later identified, by fingerprints, to be that of Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall, 33, of Topping, Virginia. Other evidence and witness statements indicated that McCall may have been traveling with a semi-truck driver at the time of her death.
An autopsy later revealed that McCall had been killed by strangulation and that she was 24 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. The unborn child was also deceased.
Investigator Goetz submitted evidence recovered in 1991 to the TBI Crime Laboratory for DNA analysis. That analysis resulted in the development of a full DNA profile of a white male. The profile was then submitted to the CODIS DNA database where it resulted in a match to DNA recovered at two more unsolved homicides in Wyoming. The two Wyoming homicides occurred in March and April of 1992, just over a year after the McCall homicide. Those homicides were also similar in nature to the McCall homicide with a truck driver possibly being the suspect.
With the McCall killer’s DNA matching DNA from two more homicides in Wyoming, investigators from DCI Wyoming and the 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s office teamed up and began working their investigations simultaneously. Those investigations have, since then, benefited from assistance from state and federal agencies, including the ATF, FBI, US Secret Service, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigations ( DCI Wyoming) and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations (DCI Iowa).
Ultimately, the investigation resulted in Clark Perry Baldwin, 59, a former truck driver and resident of Waterloo, Iowa being identified as the suspect in the murder of Rose McCall and the two homicides in Wyoming. Within the last two to three months, investigators were able to retrieve items from Iowa that contained possible DNA samples from Baldwin. Subsequent analysis has established that the DNA left at all three murder scenes was that of Clark Perry Baldwin.
On May 6, DA Criminal Investigators Tommy Goetz and Jeff Dunn, assisted by agents from DCI Iowa, DCI Wyoming, and the FBI, arrested Baldwin at his home in Waterloo, Iowa. Baldwin will be extradited from Iowa to Tennessee to face two charges of First Degree Murder. One count for the murder of Rose McCall and another for the murder of her unborn child. Baldwin has also been charged with the two homicides in Wyoming. He will face those charges once the Tennessee charges are resolved.
“I would like to thank the Spring Hill Police Department for never forgetting about Rose McCall, and all of the investigators and agencies that have assisted in bringing this serial killer to justice. I am also very happy to be able to give Rose McCall’s mother a chance to see justice for her daughter’s and granddaughter’s murders. As she put it in a recent phone call, ‘At least I have a grave to visit, some Mom’s don’t even have that.’ Now, thankfully, she has more than a grave to visit. As promised, my office will always attempt to bring those to justice who have taken innocent life; no matter how long it’s been since the crime,” writes Brent Cooper, District Attorney General 22nd Judicial District, Tennessee.
