The brutal murder of a young mother from San Leon remains unsolved.

It was Thanksgiving 1986. Shelly Franklin was unavailable. Her family would soon be informed of her murder. Her two children, 10 years old or younger, would be separated and raised by different family members. Life as they knew it would soon be over.

Lieutenant Tommy Hansen is a cold case investigator with the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. “The family tried to contact her, but they were unable to.”

Thirty-eight years later, Franklin’s son Ted Ludwig Jr. is desperately trying to solve his mother’s murder. He reached out to KPRC 2’s Zach Lashway in hopes that Solvable could re-examine the case.

“It’s devastating. That’s the worst thing, not knowing. It’s hard. And sitting here brings back memories,” Ludwig exclaimed. “When I was younger, I didn’t miss her as much as I probably should have, but I had family members of aunts who took me in. So I was surrounded by good people. But as I got older, I started to miss her. So it’s hard. I didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day for a while, and then I thought, well, she would want to. So I celebrate it.”

In 2017, Hansen reopened Franklin’s unsolved case.

He explained: “It (the murder) was a personal matter. There were things at the scene that made it very clear that the perpetrator was probably there because he could have been there, but something went completely wrong and it became very personal. I’ve worked on hundreds of murder cases in my 50-year career and the brutality was pretty unimaginable. It was very, very brutal. Her head was completely trampled in many, many ways. It was obvious that it was purely physical. There was no knife or gun or anything like that used. It was pretty much direct physical contact. She was very small, very petite. There is evidence that she may have been restrained in some way during all of this, which would have further limited her ability to defend herself against what was happening.”

Hansen said there was evidence in this case.

“We have a lot of stuff. We are looking into whether we can process everything with the latest, best technology and hope that we will find some lead in that regard,” Hansen explained.

There is hope that someone will come forward with a tip.

“You just want to go to the family and say, ‘This is what happened and this is the perpetrator.’ ‘Hey, we’re filing charges tomorrow,'” Hansen explained.

If you have an unresolved case you think we should reinvestigate, email us at [email protected].