This story is part of The Dallas Morning News Homicide Project focused on sharing the stories of all the people killed in Dallas in 2024.

Growing up with addicted and abusive parents, Lynette Duerkop lost three family members to suicide before she turned 30. She spent her adult life bouncing from Kansas City to Las Vegas to Dallas in a vicious cycle of triumph and dangerous self-destruction.

Before someone fatally shot her in a south Dallas neighborhood this spring, there were bright spots in the 50-year-old’s life, her friends and family say.

Lynette had a fun personality, a great sense of humor, intense blue-green eyes and a wide smile. She loved fishing, camping and being outside. She adored her three children, even though they had long since been taken out of her custody and were grown.

And she called her late mother’s best friend—her last link to her past, and one of the few people she kept in regular contact with anymore—every year on Mother’s Day without fail.

“She kept in touch with me and she always told me what she was doing — she didn’t lie — because she knew I loved her unconditionally and I never judged her world,” family friend Lou Ann Reynolds, 65, of Kansas City, said in an interview with Dallas Morning News. “She always knew I loved her no matter what.”

She is survived by three grown children – two daughters and a son – four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, as well as nieces and nephews.

Lynette had brief bouts of sobriety and, at times, a vision of a future where she could see her grandchildren grow up.

“Lynette was a beautiful soul — but a very broken soul,” said Reynolds, who Lynette affectionately called her “second mom.”

Reynolds was best friends with Lynette’s mother, Shawnette, as teenagers when Lynette was born. It was a turbulent time for the family. Reynolds recalled that addiction, violence and sexual abuse were rampant in their home in the 1970s and ’80s, when resources for women and children were hard to come by.

It all took its toll.

When Lynette was still a teenager, her oldest brother died by suicide in Kansas City. Eight years later, her mother did. Shortly after that, Lynette’s remaining brother died by suicide, Reynolds said.

Addiction was the chain that connected their troubled lives, Reynolds said, and Lynette was bound by it, too.

“She would get clean, and then she would go back,” Reynolds said. “It was the monkey riding on her shoulder that was pulling her ear all the time.”

According to the last time they spoke a year ago, Lynette was due to arrive in Texas around January 2024 to join her longtime on-again-off-again boyfriend, who Reynolds said also struggled with substance abuse. The couple moved into an apartment building near I-45 in south Dallas.

The plan was to find a job—probably in the restaurant business—and seek support from his family in the Dallas area. She had managed to stay out of prison for a decade. The couple would try to salvage what was left of their future, Reynolds said.

The dream lasted less than three months. Lynette was shot to death in her neighborhood on April 6. No arrests have been made.

“I was very heartbroken to hear that, but deep down I knew the call was coming,” Reynolds said. “I was hoping it wouldn’t, but as long as you play in the sandbox, the bomb might explode.”

In the months since her death, Lynette’s family and friends have managed to piece together memories of her that allow them to relive the good times. Over the summer, about 50 friends and family members gathered to celebrate her life at a Kansas City church, Reynolds said.

“She was a very kind person, loving, giving. A lot of fun. She had a great sense of humor — she was a card,” says Reynolds. “She was really a good person. She really was. She was human. She was a sister, she was a mother, she was a friend and she was a beautiful soul. She was so much more than just what happened to her at the end.”

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential support 24/7. Call or text 988 or chat confidentially online at https://988lifeline.org/.