5-year-old murder case of UNT student turning cold, but Corinth police say ‘it’s nowhere near being closed’

He misses his daughter dearly every day, and the questions surrounding her death haunt him year-round. But they especially come to the forefront of his mind around Nov. 19, the anniversary of her murder.

It has been five years since 21-year-old Amanda Clairmont, a student at the University of North Texas, was found slain in Corinth — the first murder in the city in over a decade.

While the case is anything but closed, Corinth’s police chief said it’s close to turning cold. In fact, the department recently sent the case off to an attorney general cold case unit to exhaust all investigative options.

“Sometimes you just run out of things to look at,” Chief Jerry Garner said. “We’re very near that point.”

Amanda’s loved ones are still holding out hope that some justice will come for her. But as the years have passed, her father feels there are too many questions they’ll “just never know the answer to.”

“We’ll never understand why or what happened. We’ve just been devastated. It’s just hard to deal with our broken hearts and trying to deal with it. It’s ruined a lot of people’s lives,” Jeff Clairmont said. “… It’s hard, period. But to not have any closure just makes us in the family feel like we’re in limbo.”

Nov. 19, 2017

Just a few months before she was set to graduate from the University of North Texas, 21-year-old Amanda set out for the Fry Street bars. Amanda was like a campus celebrity and loved to go out dancing, her best friend said.

“We’d spot her at parties, and we would only see her big curly hair and … she was always dancing. She was impossible to miss,” Meagan Kohn said. “It was like a game we would play when we’d go to parties like, ‘Oh, there’s that curly-haired girl dancing.”

When they hit it off at one party, Kohn learned there was more to Amanda than being the life of the party. She could be shy and soft-spoken, she was creative, curious, compassionate and forgiving, but steadfast in her convictions.

“She really taught me about living life to the fullest. Her mom died when she was 9. So she really understood how fleeting life was,” Kohn said. “… I just never had a friend like her, and I may never have another friendship like hers. She was so significant to me.”

Both Kohn and Jeff Clairmont said Amanda was always looking to lend a hand where she could. She worked as a makeup artist in Frisco and used her passion to give back.

“She worked at Nordstrom’s, and she loved helping people out,” Clairmont said. “I remember somebody was getting married, and they didn’t have enough money to get makeup done, and Amanda did it for free.”

Amanda was so beloved, they said. So what happened to her the night of her death just doesn’t make sense.

When Amanda left the bars on Nov. 19, 2017, she didn’t make it home that night. Her body was found with gunshot wounds in her car around 6 a.m. in the 5700 block of Interstate 35E near Church Road in Corinth.

Video footage showed Amanda had stopped at a vacant parking lot next to a Nissan dealership off of the highway. She was seen interacting with a person or persons in what police previously suspected to be an older-model Chevrolet or GMC truck but now believe is a red Toyota Tundra from between 2007 and 2013.

“It was a young woman who was passing through who, at the moment, didn’t have any connections in Corinth at the time,” Garner said. “So it’s just kind of odd for people that it could have happened to her anywhere. She could have pulled off in Denton or Hickory Creek. But whatever reason she pulled off the road and talk, it appears, to people in this red vehicle.”

Amanda’s car had dented a nearby chain link fence. She was found with multiple gunshot wounds and pronounced dead at the scene. Police said her murder occurred sometime between midnight and 1 a.m.

A nearby resident said at the time she heard four gunshots in the area, but she didn’t hear any vehicles speed out of the area.

The news of her death sent her loved ones reeling.

“I struggle accepting that sometimes life takes people away at completely unfair times in horrific ways,” Kohn said. “But I’m trying to remember that she was a beautiful person, and I was so lucky to be able to have experienced her.”

Nearly cold but not closed

Murder cases in Corinth are a rarity. Amanda’s death was the first homicide Corinth police had handled in nearly two decades. Detective Carson Crow, who has been with the Corinth Police Department for almost 18 years, said the case was hard off the bat because there was no clear motive. Nobody disliked Amanda, and she wasn’t doing anything that typical college students don’t do, he said.

“This is not an easy case just because she was liked and loved by a lot of people,” he said.

There have been suspects in the case, he said, some of whom have not been cleared because police don’t have an affirmative motive for her death yet.

“Initially, there was suspicion that an ex-boyfriend had involvement, so that was the main focus and what we looked deeply into,” Crow said. “Ultimately, we weren’t able to rule him out. But we also didn’t find anything that showed him to be involved.”

Crow said when police released footage of the suspect vehicle four years after the murder hoping it would bring about a tip from the public, there wasn’t much response. Crow provided the Denton Record-Chronicle with images of the vehicle that have been digitally enhanced in the time since the initial images were released.

Additionally, there’s still a $20,000 reward for any information about the case that might lead to an arrest or conviction. Those with information may call 1-800-388-TIPS (8477) or visit the Denton County Crime Stoppers website. But there’s been nothing so far, Crow said.

There was a time where Corinth’s detectives were working the case on a daily basis. But as the years have gone by, Police Chief Jerry Garner said that isn’t the case anymore. They also had the assistance of the FBI and Texas Rangers at the start, but both agencies have moved on.

“The passage of time makes it harder because, as you say, people potentially having information can spread to the four winds,” Garner said. “And if you had somebody that has been troubled by conscience, as time passes, maybe it doesn’t trouble them so much anymore, especially if they’re states away.”

While the Corinth Police Department is nearing the end of its rope with existing evidence, Garner said they still want to find answers as much as ever. It sticks in people’s mind because it just doesn’t happen in Corinth, Garner said.

“It bothers everybody that works here. We don’t want to leave this case unsolved,” Garner said. “All of the U.S., there’s unsolved murders that are never going to be solved. But you don’t want yours to be one of them. If you’re in our business, hopefully you have a strong sense of justice. Justice hasn’t been delivered here, and that bothers me.”

The Texas Attorney General’s Office’s new cold case unit, made up of former homicide detectives who have thousands of homicide cases under their belt, has agreed to take a crack at the case.

“They will look at your case and say, ‘Here’s one more thing you might try,’ or ‘Here’s one more lead you might want to follow,’” Garner said. “We’re waiting to see if they have any recommendations. But if they don’t or any leads they give us play out, then we’re pretty much at a cold case.”

While they hope something comes to light soon, Corinth police will wait decades if they have to provide Amanda’s loved ones with answers.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the case,” Crow said. “It’s definitely not something I just put on the shelves and shut the door and forgot about. … I’m hoping one day I will have that answer and be able to bring some closure to her father and family. I just want it to be known that this case is not closed. It’s nowhere near being closed.”