DALLAS, TX — A Dallas County jury is set to hear a murder case that has stretched across three decades, with Steven Augusta Ridge scheduled to go on trial Monday in the 1996 killing of 15-year-old Tamika Cromer.
Cromer had been missing for four days when her burned body was found in February 1996 in a secluded wooded area near the Trinity River in Southern Dallas. Court records describe a violent scene: her body was found with a bra wrapped around her neck, and a cigarette butt, a bag of cocaine and a gas can were nearby.
Ridge, now 59, is charged with capital murder and sexual assault. Prosecutors say DNA evidence eventually helped connect him to the case after years in cold storage.
How investigators say Cromer was found near the Trinity River
Authorities say Cromer was left beneath a bridge in what is now known as the Cedar Crest Bridge Gateway. The location sits in a wooded, isolated stretch near the Trinity River, which made the crime scene harder to reach and more difficult to investigate at the time.
Court documents say Cromer’s autopsy showed she died from a violent homicide. Investigators found blunt force injuries, strangulation and thermal burns, and the medical findings also pointed to sexual assault by a male.
Those details became the foundation of a case that remained unresolved for years, even as evidence from the autopsy was preserved for future testing. The case file shows that physical evidence collected in 1996 would later play a central role once DNA technology advanced.
DNA from the autopsy led investigators to a possible match years later
Three years ago, DNA collected during Cromer’s autopsy produced a likely match in the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS. That database comparison gave Dallas investigators a new lead in a case that had been cold for decades.
The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences worked with that DNA evidence to narrow the field. The case also benefited from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit and the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which helped move older sexual assault cases forward with modern forensic methods.
Now-retired Dallas County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Barnard had pushed for preserving forensic evidence until technology could catch up. In Cromer’s case, that approach appears to have paid off, allowing prosecutors to build a case that had not been possible years earlier.
Ridge was arrested in 2023 and held on a $1 million bond
Ridge was arrested in October 2023 and initially held in the Dallas County jail on a $2.5 million bond. That bond was later reduced to $1 million.
Earlier in 2023, county records show he was arrested for failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements. He is now scheduled to stand trial in Dallas County for capital murder and sexual assault.
His attorney, Messina Madson, was not available for comment before the deadline for KERA News’ coverage. Dallas County District Attorney spokesperson Claire Crouch said District Attorney John Creuzot and prosecutors could not discuss the case or related circumstances while it is ongoing.
Prosecutors say Cromer was asphyxiated and set on fire
Ridge’s indictment says he caused Cromer’s death by asphyxiating her with a brassiere, ligature, hands and another unknown object, then setting her on fire. Those allegations mirror the gruesome evidence described in court records from the original investigation.
The indictment also alleges sexual assault, tying the homicide to a separate set of forensic findings from the autopsy. Prosecutors have not publicly laid out their full trial strategy, but the charging documents show how they intend to prove the killing.
The case is built on evidence that investigators say survived from 1996 and was later reexamined with newer science. That combination of old physical evidence and later DNA analysis is what brought the case back into the courtroom after so many years.
A long criminal record and several other accusations trail the defendant
Court records say Ridge has a history of drug and alcohol use, along with related arrests. He is also accused in other sexual-assault cases, including an alleged attack on a woman in 1988 and another on his former wife in 1992.
His former wife was the mother of the couple’s two sons, who were killed in a 1997 car wreck while Ridge was driving. Records show his blood alcohol level was .10 in that crash, and he served 180 days in the Dallas County jail for intoxication manslaughter.
Ridge is also accused of assaulting another former wife in 2016. Those allegations are separate from the Cromer case, but they appear in the court file as part of the broader record surrounding the defendant.
