39 Years Unsolved: The Murder of Glenda “Dixie” Trucks

Jacksonville knew her name.

Glenda Dixie Trucks — Dixie to everyone who knew her — was 37 years old and a mother of three when she was found shot to death beside her car near 2410 Silver Street in Jacksonville’s Springfield neighborhood, on the night of Sunday, September 20, 1987.

Thirty-nine years later, her murder is still unsolved.

The night of September 20, 1987

She was found shot in the head and neck in an alley at 2410 Silver St., lying next to the driver’s side of her 1977 Delta 88 Oldsmobile. According to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, she had been shot from behind.

A witness at 10:30 that night heard yelling — and then two gunshots.

Her husband, James, later remembered knowing only that she had left. She didn’t come home after a whole day. That is when the police came and told him what had happened.

An investigation that ran out of road

Police did conduct interviews. They recovered fingerprints, including one partial palm print that could not be confirmed to be hers. But no specific suspects ever emerged, and on October 9, 1987 — less than three weeks after she was killed — the investigation was closed for lack of evidence.

That was the official end of the active case. It was not the end of the story. A closed file is not an answer, and for Dixie’s family, the questions have been open for nearly four decades.

The woman the file can’t hold

The case file knows her as a victim. Jacksonville knew her as more.

She and her husband sang together in a band. She was an avid piano player — music ran through the marriage the way it ran through the house. They met, in fact, while James was playing with a band at a restaurant where she worked. “I was playing with a band at a restaurant that she worked at, and that’s where we met,” he remembered.

The family business was Auto-Radio Service Inc. on Philips Highway, started by James in 1974. Today it is run by Dixie’s son and his wife, Tara Trucks — the business her family built still standing, still serving Jacksonville, still carrying her name forward through the people who loved her.

She was more than a case number. She was a wife, a mother of three — Samantha, Jason, and Sammy — and, the family would later make sure the record showed, a grandmother.

What 39 years does to a family

Jason was 10 years old, growing up around the Marietta neighborhood on Jacksonville’s Westside, when his mother was murdered. He never really got to know her the way most children get to know their parents — and the family kept the details from him. “Details were kept from me,” he said. “Anytime it would come up, I had to leave the room.”

He remembers riding with her through the area where she was killed, and people recognizing her as they drove. Thirty-one years old when he told the story, he was convinced of one thing: “Somebody knows something.”

His wife, Tara, took up the work of keeping Dixie’s memory alive. It was Tara’s idea to submit the case to Project: Cold Case, after she saw a story about the organization on the news. That submission led to the 2018 profile of Dixie’s case — part of a collaboration between Project: Cold Case and a University of North Florida journalism class — and it is why the public record on her case is as complete as it is.

“I never got to meet her,” Tara said, “but I take my son to her grave, and we bring flowers and keep the site neat. It’s to keep her memory alive and to let my son know that he had a nana.”

Jason Jr. never met his grandmother. He brings her flowers anyway.

What we know, and what we don’t

The discipline this case demands is the one Deadly Duval brings to every case: we know Glenda “Dixie” Trucks was found shot beside her car in an alley at 2410 Silver St. on the night of September 20, 1987. We know a witness heard yelling and two gunshots at 10:30 p.m. We know investigators found no suspects and closed the case on October 9, 1987. We know her family never stopped carrying it.

What we do not know is who killed her, or why. Thirty-nine years of silence has not produced an answer — but it has not produced an ending either. As long as the case stands unsolved, someone out there may still remember something: a face in that alley, a voice raised before the shots, something seen on Silver Street that September night.

If you know anything about the murder of Glenda “Dixie” Trucks, contact the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at 904-630-0500.

Still unsolved. Still loved. Still waiting for someone to say the thing that breaks it open.

— Deadly Duval. Verified facts only. Every claim in this post is drawn from the public record on the Glenda “Dixie” Trucks case — the Deadly Duval caption approved for her feature and the Project: Cold Case profile of her case (published August 27, 2018, retrieved live October 22, 2026) — nothing here is invented, and no cause of death, suspect, or legal outcome beyond what is publicly established has been stated.