He Jumped From a Car, Then Vanished. Is There a Serial Killer in Houston? | Kenneth Cutting Jr.

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Houston, the Bayou City. We have about 2,500 mi of waterways.

“Their report going back nearly a decade shows more than 200 bodies recovered.”

“I know Joe’s a serial killer, but the way they’re dealing with these bodies is ridiculous.”

“Today, the Houston Police Department told me the case is closed.”

“But his family believes there’s more to the story.”

Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously with me, your host Annie Elise, and we have another case that we need to dive into together today because this one is so wild. It has like the question mark of is a serial killer involved in this? Someone literally jumped out of a car. Like there are a lot of different details that I feel like, okay, I just need to get on the mic. I need to talk with you guys. I need to break this down together. And I really I’m going to ask you a favor ahead of time. Please give me your feedback in the comment section about what you think regarding this case and what you think like the truth is, the motive, all of the things because I’m a little bit just kind of like not stumped, but like still is that really it? Is it what I think it is? All of those questions that you know start entering your mind. And we talked directly with one of the family members who was heavily involved in this case, and I’m going to share pieces of that interview with you in today’s episode because there are a lot of questions here. So, let me just jump right in so that I can like, you know, give you the backstory here. It took place not very long ago, 2 years ago, in June of 2024. It was Friday, June 28th in the city of Houston, Texas. Now, they were all ready to take on the weekend and as I’m sure you know or can imagine if you’ve never been there, June in Texas, it gets pretty hot. So, while everybody was so excited for the weekend, they also wanted to like duck into little bars and businesses to get some AC, cool off, and just like relax. So, that meant that the downtown bar scene was going to be absolutely buzzing that night. Not just that night, but now if you’ve never been to Houston, downtown is a lot of fun. I want you to think tons of bars, tons of restaurants, tourists in town, hotels, really great happy hour spots, tons of places to then go after dinner and like keep the party going, get a nightcap. And a lot of that is centered just a few blocks away from the Toyota Center, which is it’s this along this long stretch of road called Fannin Street. So, by the time night time rolled around that Friday, Fannin Street was already getting super busy. People were heading from one place to the next, friends were meeting up, people were bar hopping, Ubers were all lining up to shuffle everyone around from one place to the next. And basically, it was your typical Friday night. Now, Fannin Street was home to a popular place called Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar. And this is tucked inside the Green Street Complex, this downtown shopping and entertainment hub that’s kind of like a mall, but like strip mall-y a little bit, too, but not really where it has like all different types of businesses inside. Now, inside Pete’s, it was very, very loud, but not in like a dark, club-y kind of way. It was bright and packed with people, people full of energy, people singing, happy, like good mood. If you’ve ever been to a piano bar or a dueling piano bar, you totally get the vibe, but if you haven’t been to one, let me just describe it. It’s basically two pianists on stage playing back and forth, taking requests from the audience, cracking jokes in between, just very high energy. A song whenever I’ve gone to piano bars in the past it’s like Journey, Don’t Stop Believin’, that one always is a request, a fan favorite. Songs where people are all singing along like Sweet Caroline, like Sweet Caroline, ba ba ba ba, you know what I’m talking about? And so, it’s just like good energy and a great time. And it’s not just a place that you go to to listen to music. It’s almost a place where you kind of become part of the show in a weird way because everybody’s participating. So, Pete’s was a super popular place to go to just hang out, to celebrate a birthday, maybe even a bachelorette party. And on Friday nights, it always filled up super fast. Now, one of the people who was there that night was 22-year-old Kenneth Cutting Jr. Kenneth was known as someone who was extremely creative, expressive, and just full of life. Kenneth’s family said that his creativity was undeniable from very early on in his life. He loved to draw, he was so talented, so much so that he earned a scholarship to the Glassell School of Art in Houston at a very young age. He always found a way to share his art, too. He whether it was his passion for music, for art, for people, whatever it was, he just wanted to share it with the world. Kenneth had a short brown hair that he kept, you know, perfectly cropped on top of his head and buzzed on the sides, and he just had this very kind demeanor about him. And this is how Kenneth’s cousin Lauren described him.

“Kenneth was the son of my mom’s brother and we grew up in an Italian house in Houston, Texas, and we lived in the same house together. Um I was 20 years old older than him, 20 years older than him. Um so, when he was born, I was a senior in high school and I helped raise him. Um Kenneth was just this very vibrant person, had an amazing personality. He was kind, he was loving, he was fun and silly and um happy, and he always wanted everybody around him to be happy. He just was one of those people that when he walked in the room, he lit it up.”

Now, aside from just being artistic and an overall great guy, Kenneth was also pretty open-minded, especially when it came to his personal life and those that he chose to share it with. Kenneth was openly gay, and around January of 2024, he had moved in with two men who were in their mid-30s. And the three of them together were in a polyamorous relationship together. They shared a home, a routine, and a life, which for some of you listening who may not be as familiar with the term polyamorous, it basically means you are in a relationship with multiple people. It’s not the same as polygamy, where somebody has multiple wives. It’s where you’re all in a relationship together, and you have shared experiences, shared routines, you share your life together, and it’s the belief that love doesn’t necessarily need to be or should be monogamous, okay? And just a little bit as a side note, I want to note for the sake of the families involved in this case that due to the current ongoing investigation, I am not going to name Kenneth’s partners in today’s episode. But my point is that from the way his family has described things, this was not at all necessarily anything chaotic or unstable. In fact, Kenneth’s life seemed extremely stable from the outside, at least. Kenneth had a job working as a waiter at a restaurant, and his boyfriends both seemed extremely nice. He had a lot of friends, and it just generally seemed like he had a great life and had things together. So, on Friday, June 28th, Kenneth and his boyfriends decided to go to Pete’s Piano Bar for a group event, hoping to just, you know, have a few drinks, maybe do a little dancing, singing, and just have fun. A totally normal Friday night. And for the first few hours, that’s exactly what happened. Around 8:00 p.m., Kenneth and his two boyfriends arrived at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar, and they stayed there until almost midnight. Now, for most of that time, everything appeared completely normal. They were ordering drinks, they were singing along to the songs, they were just having an all-around good time. But, by the time they decided to leave the bar, something changed. Something was up. The energy between the three of them had shifted. At some point, while they were in the bar that night, Kenneth had realized that he lost his phone. And while he was trying to find it, apparently, an argument broke out. Now, what exactly caused that argument is not entirely clear. It could have been the missing phone, it could have been that they all just had too much to drink and tensions were high, it could have been something maybe that started earlier that day that then carried into the night. We just don’t know. But, what we do know is that at around the time he started looking for his phone, things really seemed to escalate between him and his boyfriends. On security footage from that night, it was clear that Kenneth was seen visibly upset. Until finally, after being so upset, he just headed down the escalator outside the bar and stormed out. He was yelling, angry, emotional, and directing that frustration toward one of his partners. And they followed him, eventually getting into the car that they all had arrived in and making him get in the car as well. And I also want to point out that by the time Kenneth got into the car, he did have his phone with him. So, he must have found it, or maybe one of the boyfriends found it for him, or had it for him, and he never even lost it in the first place. Who really knows? But, a couple of hours later at 1:29 a.m. Kenneth’s dad, Ken Sr., received a text message from one of Kenneth’s partners. And in that message, they described Kenneth as acting crazy, saying that at one point he had gone berserk. Now, in that moment, Kenneth’s dad knew that something was up. Like, that’s a weird text to get in the middle of the night. Your son has gone berserk, something’s gone crazy. He knew something was wrong and that things weren’t right. But he could not have possibly been prepared for just how bad things had gotten. According to that text that Ken Sr. had received from Kenneth’s boyfriends, things apparently started going downhill fast as soon as they left the piano bar, as a matter of fact. Kenneth’s boyfriends went on to tell his dad that Kenneth had gotten extremely drunk, that he was spilling drinks, acting sloppy, being annoying. So, that tipped the boyfriends off to basically be like, you know, it’s time to call it a night. Let’s wrap it up. This is not fun anymore. And apparently when his boyfriends said that they needed to leave and go home, Kenneth freaked out and stormed off. Which if you’ve ever been with somebody who is intoxicated, drunk, having a good time, and maybe doesn’t recognize that they’re sloppy, you may be able to relate. I certainly know I have been not only on the giving end of that, but also the receiving end, where you’re like,

“Come on, it’s time to go.”

“You’re all I’m fine. I’m I’m fine. I’m having fun. Leave me alone. You guys don’t want to have any fun.”

And you like storm off or whatever. Been there more times than I care to admit. So, Kenneth’s boyfriend went on to tell Ken Sr. that when they found Kenneth after he had stormed away, he was allegedly screaming and throwing his hands up at a group of black guys. So, at that point his boyfriends started to get worried that things could escalate. So, they decided to get Kenneth into that car to leave and go home. Basically being like,

“Bro, like calm down. Let’s get in the car. Get in the car. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

But apparently when they were driving, they said that’s when Kenneth went berserk. Once the three of them were inside the car, the situation apparently only got worse. According to them, Kenneth started getting physical. I’m talking kicking at the windows, screaming, hitting, biting, hitting one of the other guys so hard that it knocked his glasses off, and they were just like trying to contain him and calm him down as they continued to drive eastbound on Interstate 10. But then, things hit a breaking point. Because Kenneth’s boyfriend said that near Waco Street in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Kenneth suddenly just jumped out of the moving car, and then took off on foot running. According to the boyfriends, he also left his phone and his wallet behind. He just ran straight toward oncoming traffic, just took off, and then just disappeared into the night. And after Kenneth jumped out of that car, there was no way to reach him, no way for him to call for help if he decided that he needed it. He left his phone behind. Now, when Kenneth’s dad woke up and read that text message a few hours later, he immediately thought that what he was hearing did not match up with Kenneth’s behavior at all. This was not like his son. His son has never had any sort of situation like that. It just wasn’t how they knew him to act. And here’s how Lauren described how he normally was.

“So, it it wasn’t normal behavior. Um you know, teenagers, they definitely um go through a period in time where they’re learning about themselves. Sometimes, you know, they get angry. Um but for the most part, like just like any normal human, like he was never um he he didn’t really outburst a lot. I mean, yes, he got upset, but not anything to where he went crazy hitting people, you know, nothing like that.”

Then, around 9:00 to 9:30 a.m. that morning, which would have been around 8 hours after Kenneth allegedly jumped out of that car, Ken Sr. called Lauren and he told her that he thought that something was really wrong. He went on to tell her about the text messages that he had received and about what he had been told the night before. So, Lauren immediately left her home to go meet up with Kenneth’s mom, Tiffany, and with Ken Sr. And when Lauren got there, the three of them immediately started trying to figure out what had happened. Their first stop was Kenneth’s house. They hoped that they would get some sort of answer from his boyfriend, some sort of indication of like,

“He’s fine now, he made it home, he’s sleeping it off, or you know, we don’t know where he is, but we think he might be at so-and-so’s house.”

Just something. I mean, really, any piece of information that they could try and understand what had led up to that moment on the freeway. But, as soon as they walked in, they saw several black trash bags just lining the entire entry hallway. Bags that were apparently full of Kenneth’s personal belongings. When asked about what was in the bags, Kenneth’s boyfriend said,

“Well, that’s Kenneth’s stuff. We don’t want him living here anymore after how he acted last night.”

Now, immediately Kenneth’s family felt like something wasn’t adding up here. I mean, how do you get home at 2:00 a.m. after leaving your boyfriend somewhere alone in a dangerous part of town after fleeing on the freeway, clearly intoxicated, yet then you also come home and have all of their things packed up by 9:00 a.m.? I mean, finding all of his stuff in trash bags less than 12 hours after he disappeared was obviously a pretty huge shock. And as they were talking with Kenneth’s boyfriends about what had happened the night before, they then started questioning parts of their story, things that weren’t really making much sense to them. For starters, there was the whole missing phone thing, right? Remember how Kenneth was looking for his phone when they were at the bar, but then it was left behind in the car once he jumped out of the car and went on the freeway? Well, to the family, that detail felt a little suspicious. Thankfully, Kenneth’s boyfriends did turn his phone over to the family when they went to the house so that they could like have that and potentially contact him or have it for when he contacted them, but the phone wasn’t the only detail that Kenneth’s family thought was a little weird. They also took issue with the fact that Kenneth allegedly had gotten out of that moving car. And to be more specific, exactly where this jumping out of the car moment took place. According to his family, Kenneth lived about 45 minutes in the opposite direction from where he apparently got out of that vehicle. So, at that point, they were really questioning, like,

“Well, what were you doing in the fifth ward in the first place? That’s not even anywhere near your home.”

Plus, there was another really big part in all of this. If the story that they were telling was true, why wouldn’t they have called 911 if they truly thought that Kenneth had gone crazy and was in danger and running into oncoming traffic? I mean, how was that not an emergency? But even with all of those things that didn’t make sense about the timeline and the story, Kenneth’s family didn’t really learn anything that would help them in finding him. And at this point, he was still very much missing. So, his family decided that they needed to fill out a missing person’s report that same morning. And then after that, they immediately started searching for him. Kenneth’s family got in the car and they began driving the streets around where they had been told Kenneth jumped out of the car, near I-10 East and Waco Street. Just going back and forth through that area for the next two to three hours, scanning the sides of the roads, looking for any sign of him, any indication that he had dropped something, a a clue, whatever. They hoped that maybe they would even find him walking somewhere or sitting nearby, and that maybe all of this could just be easily explained as some big misunderstanding. But as time continued to pass and there still was nothing, they knew that they needed to widen the search. So then they started going to hospitals, checking for John Does, walking in and asking if anybody had come in overnight matching Kenneth’s description. Because at that point, they really didn’t even know what to believe, and they didn’t know if the story that they were receiving from the boyfriends was actually the full story and the truth. And shortly after all of that, Kenneth’s story began hitting the news circuits.

“Houston police say they are looking for a 22-year-old man who has been missing for days after a night out with friends. That man’s parents are speaking exclusively with Matt Doherty tonight. Matt?”

“Yeah, Houston police say they were told the last place the 22-year-old Kenneth Cutting was seen was here in downtown early Saturday morning. Since then, nobody who knows him has seen him.”

“22-year-old Kenneth Cutting’s parents tell us the video you see here are the last known images of their son. They say he had taken this video with friends at Pete’s Piano Bar in downtown late Friday night into early Saturday morning and texted the video to a relative. His father tells us he filed a missing person’s report with HPD after getting a text from his son’s friends saying he’d had too much to drink that night. And that at one point he jumped out of a friend’s car along I-10 East near Waco. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

“I’d like to tell you right now, my son’s not out partying. He doesn’t know anybody near there. He’s not a streetwise kid. He always had a place to live. He always had a place. He was never been on the street, never ran away, never disappeared.”

“Now, his parents have been enlisting the help of friends, family members, and volunteers to help put out flyers with the 22-year-old’s face, hopeful somebody out there might know where their son is tonight.”

By the time 24 hours had passed since Kenneth was last seen, his family wasn’t just concerned anymore. They were scared. They still had no answers, and even worse than that, there had been no contact and no sightings of him anywhere. There was absolutely no context for where he could have gone after getting out of that car. I mean, he didn’t know anyone in that area. He also didn’t have his phone with him, if you remember. His family also said he didn’t even know the area well enough to know where he was. So, they continued their own search efforts, and they were doing everything in their power to get all eyes on Kenneth’s case. They were speaking out, raising awareness, posting flyers in the area, all over social media, too, trying to do anything that they possibly could. Now, things at this point started to kind of become a little bit of a blur for them. Although, one thing did become very clear. The family was receiving a ton of support from strangers in the community and friends and family. But, they also realized that there were two people noticeably missing from all of this. Missing from the search efforts, from the support, from you know, everybody looking for Kenneth. And that was Kenneth’s boyfriends. During all of this, they were practically nowhere to be found. They weren’t helping look for him. They weren’t checking in. It was just silence. Then, at some point right around that 24-hour mark of Kenneth being missing, his family learned another detail that was incredibly strange. Apparently, his boyfriends claimed that they did try to file a missing person’s report. They said that on June 30th, they had attempted to report Kenneth missing, but that when they called, “No one was listening to them.” So, they requested that an investigator call them back saying that they had additional information and photos from the night that he was last seen, but for whatever reason, the police never called them back. Now, this detail also struck the family as odd, and once again, the story that the boyfriends were telling, it just was not lining up. Because when someone files a missing person’s report, law enforcement is required to take that report. There’s no waiting period, and reports are supposed to be documented when a person is believed to be missing. So, why wasn’t there follow-up, and why wasn’t there a report? So, the family called to find out if another report had in fact been made. And based on the records that the investigators had, there wasn’t anything. Which, if a report truly was attempted earlier, why wasn’t it officially documented at that time? And sure enough, as more news outlets began picking up Kenneth’s story, theories started to emerge. And with them, a wave of speculation about what may have happened to him. And there were lots of questions, you know, how does someone get out of the car on a freeway and then just disappear? Why would he even go there? Why was he even in the area? Why didn’t his boyfriends follow him when he tried to run away and, you know, leave? And then, all of those questions started taking on a life of their own and turned into something far more sinister. Police began pointing out other cases that were eerily similar to Kenneth’s situation. It turns out that there had been several young men who had gone out, you know, for a night of fun out in the area, who were last seen near the bars and the nightlife areas, and then later, they were each found dead in waterways in both Houston and in Austin in Lady Bird Lake. Different parts of Texas, but within a 3-hour drive of one another. And the circumstances between the cases and what was known about Kenneth’s at the time were eerily similar. Which, if you didn’t hear that episode, we did cover all of the theories related to Lady Bird Lake in Austin in a previous deep dive. I will link it in the show notes for you. Definitely check that out. But, while we’re here, I do want to take a quick look at a few of those cases to just understand the bigger picture a little bit better. The first story that had popped up that was similar to Kenneth’s was that of Alejandro Torres. He was a 29-year-old man who went missing in late November 2022. He had gone missing after last being seen at a bar on Washington Street in Houston. His truck was found in Buffalo Bayou 2 days later by a hiker, but his body was nowhere to be found. Then, a week after his truck was found, his body was discovered downstream. His death was ruled as an accidental drowning. Less than a year later, it happened again. This time, it was 33-year-old Jonathan Honey. He was last seen on Rainey Street in April of 2023 in Austin, Texas. And that was when he suddenly disappeared from a taco truck. His body was later found in Lady Bird Lake, and his cause of death ruled an accidental drowning. Then, there was Delano Burks, a 26-year-old man who disappeared after a night out in November 2023 in Houston Heights neighborhood, only to have his body found in the Houston Ship Channel about 15 miles away. His cause and manner of death both ruled as undetermined. So, pretty quickly, people started realizing that all of those disappearances sounded pretty similar to Kenneth’s. And that’s when people started asking a much darker question. Was there somebody targeting these men? Because a lot of people watching this unfold in real time, I mean, to them it didn’t feel random. It felt like a pattern. So, a theory started spreading online. A theory about a possible serial killer in Texas who was preying on younger men after having nights out, somehow then ending with them in the water. Now, like I mentioned, some of these deaths were ruled as drownings, but many others were ruled as undetermined. But now, since Kenneth was still missing, his case started getting pulled into this conversation. Now, part of what was fueling that theory was exactly how many bodies were being recovered in Texas waterways. I know I quickly ran through three cases, but the actual number is incredibly shockingly high. In 2022, there were 20 bodies recovered from Houston’s bayous. In 2023, that number climbed to 22. And then, in 2024, it rose even higher. By the end of the year, 35 people had been found in Houston’s waterways. And overall, since 2017, there have been over 200 bodies found in the Houston waterways alone.

“First tonight, new numbers from the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, providing the most comprehensive look yet into all of those bodies found along Houston bayous.”

“Their report going back nearly a decade shows more than 200 bodies recovered, and the deadliest years are this year and last.”

“News you may recall sparked fears and questions about a possible serial killer. Arondre Trevino looking at these newly released numbers tonight. Ron?”

“Uh Len and Mia, at one point this year, seven bodies were found in less than a month. It did have a lot of people questioning the safety around bayous. Well, now the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office has provided numbers going all the way back to 2017.”

“Houston, the Bayou City. We have about 2,500 mi of waterways. And since 2017, more than 200 people were found dead along those bayous. Let’s look at the numbers from the Medical Examiner’s Office showing that the deadliest years on this chart are 2024 and 2025 with 35 cases last year and 31 cases this year so far. When you look at the bayous themselves, the ones with the most cases this year, Buffalo Bayou with 10, Brays Bayou with seven, and White Oak with three. Many cases in the downtown area and east of downtown. And looking at the manner of death this year, 18 are still ruled undetermined, nine accidental, two sides, one homicide, and one pending.”

Now, I will say this. Not all of these bodies found fit the theory of this crazed serial killer targeting the same type of person. Most of the bodies that were found were, yes, men, but not all of them. And the people found weren’t always younger, either. Some of the bodies that had been recovered were into their 60s. So, it did start to beg the question, was there really a pattern here, or is this more of a coincidence? Some said that it was obvious, but others weren’t so sure. For Kenneth’s family, though, this wasn’t a pattern or a theory. It was the reality that they were dealing with, because they were still searching, still calling, and still trying to piece together what had happened in those final moments. Because at that point, they didn’t have a bigger theory. They just had one question. Where was Kenneth? And, more importantly, could he still be alive? As the search moved into its second day, and then third day, finding Kenneth became even more urgent. As you know, the first 48 hours are incredibly important. And at this point, it was 3 days after Kenneth had allegedly jumped out of that car. And with all the talk of Kenneth’s case possibly being connected to other young men who had turned up in bodies of water, the investigators thought that they may need to start searching similar places and some waterways. So, while the cops were carrying out their own search for Kenneth, across the city, his family was doing the same thing. His cousin Lauren was sitting with Kenneth’s parents, Tiffany and Ken Sr., in a hospital waiting room, just doing what they had been doing for the last 3 days, checking for John Does, asking questions, hoping for anything that may tell them where Kenneth was. And while they were waiting, Kenneth’s dad got a phone call. It was the missing persons detective that they had been in contact with.