Statewide Vigil Held for Murdered Texas Couple

The lesbian couple who was found dead near a convenience store dumpster outside of Galveston, Texas was memorialized in vigils across the state on Wednesday.

The vigils for Crystal Jackson and Britney Cosby were held in Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Williamson County, and were organized by Get Equal in conjunction with local activists.

"We want to celebrate the way Britney and Crystal lived and not the way they died," C.D. Kirven, LGBT activist and city of Dallas LGBT Taskforce member said in an announcement earlier this week. "They were a part of a community, an LGBT family, that mourns their loss."

Jackson and Cosby, both 24, had been in a relationship for two years, as reported previously. The couple lived at Cosby's great-grandmother's home in Houston, and Jackson was a mother to a five-year-old girl. They were in Galveston for Mardi Gras.

Shortly after the couple was found dead, police arrested James Larry Cosby, the father of Britney Cosby, in connection with the death of the women. The elder Cosby was charged with two counts of tampering with evidence in relation to the double homicide. Galveston County investigators told KTRK they interrogated Cosby after he attended a Wednesday night vigil for the two women, which led them to search the south Houston-area he shared with the couple.

"His house was a secondary crime scene, from the evidence that we saw when we went to interview him," Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset said last week. "And we did recover certain parts of evidence that are here at our sheriff's office now to be sent to the lab."

Detectives said they believed the women were killed in two different ways, and then their bodies were left at the site. Neither Jackson nor Cosby appeared to have been sexually assaulted, or tortured before being murdered. The women's vehicle, a 2006 Kia Sorento, was stolen.