Episode 102: Pamela Hoy, Jennifer Patterson, Cecil Chacon, Jr., KC Johnson, and Operation Artemis

On July 25,1990, 41-year-old Pamela Hoy had dinner with her husband Fred Hoy at a Burlington restaurant, and then went home and packed her gray Dodge van with her clothes and grooming tables, exercise runs, and crates. Pam raised and showed Italian greyhounds and was preparing for a trip that would take her to South Carolina the next day to a competition. Pam had plans to take her 11-year-old daughter on that trip. She went back inside the house to give her oldest daughter a magazine before leaving. She was expected at her parents’ home later that evening around 10:30 p.m., but never arrived.

What Happened to Pamela Hoy?

Pamela Mitchell Hoy grew up in the Greensboro area and graduated from Grimsley Senior High School. She was the only daughter in a family of five sons and her parents said she doted on her brothers and loved being a big sister, babysitting them when they were young and then later, driving them all around to their various activities. She was outgoing and funny, an avid Girl Scout, volleyball and softball player, and rescuer of stray animals. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a B.S. degree in health and physical education, Pam took a job after graduation with the Greensboro Veterinary Hospital. She met Frederick Martin Hoy, or Fred, when they ran into one another on the campus of UNC-Greensboro. He was originally from Maine and attended Elon College, where he received a B.A. degree in education. At the time they were married, he was pursuing a master’s degree and working at Burlington City Schools. They married in June of 1971 and had two children together.

In 1990, after being together for 19 years, the couple had decided to separate and she moved in with her parents in Greensboro temporarily. Pam was still employed with the Greensboro Veterinary Hospital. Fred Hoy told investigators and the local media that the two were still on good terms and talked every day. When she went missing everyone in her life was confused, from her family to her employer. It was completely out of character for her, and she loved traveling to the dog shows. The Alamance Kennel Club promptly put together a $10,000 reward for information leading to Pam’s safe return.

Her van was very recognizable because it had a wire dog cage strapped to the front and had a vanity plate that read “AHOY.” Police in the area received calls from people claiming to see the van in South Carolina, Virginia, the coast of North Carolina, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Pamela’s Van Found

A week later, on a Sunday, authorities found the van backed into a parking space at the back of a Days in Motel on Randleman Road in Greensboro, but there was no sign of Pam. It was clear the van hadn’t been to any of the places the tipsters believed they saw it. Inside the van police found Pam’s purse and her clothes and gear just as she had packed them.

Five months later, a woman and her daughter discovered the remains of Pam Hoy wrapped in a pink comforter off Mt. Hope Church Road in Guilford County. What’s interesting is that Pam’s family had hired a few different psychics to aid in their search and they kept bringing up sites that ended up being near Mt. Hope Church Road. Pam was also found about 500 yards away from the body of another woman named Kathy Clark Fogleman. Twenty-eight-year-old Kathy was from Burlington and was discovered nude. An autopsy revealed she had been killed when a vehicle drove over her chest, but the medical examiner couldn’t pinpoint Pam’s cause of death right away. He did say it appeared Pam had died at a different location before being left on Mt. Hope Church Road.

Police quickly zeroed in on a suspect in Kathy Fogleman’s murder. They found he was a taxi driver for the Red Bird cab company in Burlington, and had picked Kathy up shortly after 11 p.m. on November 3, 1990 to take her to the Best Western Cocktail lounge. They issued a warrant for Keith Allen Brown’s arrest and soon learned he had fled the area via the Durham bus station. He was eventually arrested and confessed to the murder, but said he had nothing to do with Pam’s death. Police didn’t think he had any reason to lie about that, so he was ruled out in the Pamela Hoy case.

An article that was published in the Greensboro News and Record on September 26, 1998 revealed a lot more information about the relationship between Pamela Hoy and her husband Fred. They moved to Alamance, a small village on the outskirts of Burlington in 1982. Fred was elected the mayor. While they enjoyed many happy years together taking trips on their motorcycle and attending NASCAR races, and Pam established herself in the world of champion dogs, things weren’t always what they appeared. Her trips with her dogs caused marital strife, according to quotes Fred shared in the article. Pam’s father, Bill Mitchell, said Fred had been abusive towards Pam, and colleagues had seen her with bruises occasionally. Fred denied the abuse and there were no records of 911 calls from the Hoy residence.

Police said they couldn’t confirm Fred Hoy had been at home in his garage from 10:30 p.m., when Pam supposedly left in her van, to 11:45, when Pam’s mother called him to ask if he’d seen her daughter. They reasoned he could have murdered Pam and driven her to the location where she was later found and left her van at the Days Inn in the time period, but he would have needed an accomplice.

According to others in Alamance who knew and worked with Fred, they didn’t believe he was involved. He was re-elected as mayor. He stopped cooperating with police and focused on raising their daughters. In 1998, a new investigator ordered scientific tests on the maggots found with the dirty quilt Pam’s body had been wrapped in, hoping they could tell whether Pam had been poisoned or drugged before her death. I didn’t find any information on whether or not those tests turned anything up. But in 2006, a news report on WFMY, they revealed information found in search warrants served on the home of Fred Hoy. They seized paperwork related to insurance and attorneys, and other things they said showed Fred had motive of financial gain in the event of his wife’s death. Authorities were suspicious that Fred had doubled a life insurance policy on Pam three years before her death, taking it from $50,000 to $100,000. They took items out of his garage, including rope, debris, a paint sample, and a partial bag of absorbent to see if it matched something found at the crime scene. They named Fred’s live-in girlfriend in the warrant, and said they believed he had given her earrings and a necklace belonging to Pam and then reported them lost or stolen. Pam’s family said she believed Fred was running an illegal chop shop out of his garage and had threatened to go to the authorities about it before she died.

Despite this information, it appears the Alamance and Guilford County District Attorney’s Office has never moved forward in indicting Fred Hoy in the murder of his wife Pam. He and his daughters have maintained they believe Keith Allen Brown, who murdered Kathy Fogleman, is also responsible for the death of Pamela Hoy.

If you have information about this case, call the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department (336) 641-3694 or the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 800-334-3000.

Jennifer Nicole Patterson

In 1991, a 7-year-old girl left her home to go play with some neighborhood children a few doors down. She has been missing ever since, and her family holds out hope that she is still alive somewhere at the age of 40. On Sunday, June 23, 1991, Jennifer Nicole Patterson was living at the Holly Hills Mobile Home Park in Spring Lake, North Carolina. Jennifer’s mother Ginger said she last saw her daughter around 1 p.m. when she left to visit some boys who lived about four houses down in the same trailer park. She was barefoot and wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit with orange, yellow, pink and turquoise squares and a squiggle designs. When she didn’t return that evening by around 6:15 p.m., her mother alerted the authorities.

A Massive Search for Jennifer

Over the following days, approximately 200 police, military, and civilian volunteers searched the wooded areas around the Lower Little River, located not far from the Patterson’s home on Bragg Boulevard. Spring Lake is located in Cumberland County, North Carolina and is adjacent to both Fort Bragg and the Pope Air Force Base. The Police Chief at the time, a man named Gil Campbell, told the local media that they were searching every area a young girl could have gotten into—vacant houses, sheds, bridges, holes, etc. He said they had no idea whether Jennifer had gotten lost or was abducted. One eyewitness came forward and said she had seen a young girl matching Jennifer’s description talking to man in the parking lot of a convenience store that was less than a mile from the trailer park. This sighting was on Sunday afternoon, when Jennifer would have already left her home, and the man was described as “shirtless, scruffy, and wearing stained blue jeans.” Police were not able to confirm this sighting was actually Jennifer Patterson.

Three days after Jennifer disappeared, authorities called a halt to the ground search for the seven-year-old. They said at the time they planned to continue following leads and speaking with family members about the case.

A Disintegrating Marriage

Police interviewed Jennifer’s parents, and learned that while her mother Ginger and her father Alan were divorced, they had continued to share the same residence and co-parent their daughter. But authorities soon learned there was a dispute going on in the home. Alan Patterson was due to take a paternity test that would have caused him to owe thousands of dollars in back child support. This test never happened because Jennifer went missing. He also failed a polygraph test, but was allegedly at work when his daughter disappeared.

Alan told police at first that Jennifer had gone missing as a result of this custody dispute, and that she was alive and being cared for. Then he backtracked and said he was speaking hypothetically and did not mean those statements to be taken as fact.

In February 1992, The News and Observer reported that Spring Lake Police Detective Kevin Motter got a call that a girl matching Jennifer Patterson’s description was living in nearby Fayetteville. She had told a friend that her name was Jennifer and she had lived in Spring Lake before she moved to town. The detective went to the neighborhood and showed residents there a picture of Jennifer, and they agreed the photo looked like the girl who was living near them. He went to the home where the girl was living and was finally able to confirm it was not Jennifer Patterson. He said he needed to see the girl in person before closing off the lead.

Jennifer’s father still lives in North Carolina and a 2014 segment on WRAL reported Ginger was in Kentucky. They have not spoken publicly about their daughter’s case in years.

When Jennifer Patterson went missing, she stood about four feet five inches tall and weighed 59 pounds. She has sandy brown hair and brown eyes. She has scars on her right temple and between her eyes and a freckle on the tip of her nose. Anyone with information is asked to call the Spring Lake Police Department at 1-910-436-0350.

Cecil Chacon, Jr.

Forty-three-year-old Cecil Lawrence Chacon, Jr. was the industrial education coordinator for the Vance County Schools and worked for the Army Corps of Engineers as a federal law enforcement officer at Kerr Lake. Cecil resided in Henderson, North Carolina. He was divorced and had three children at the time, all under the age of 16. He had taken a vacation day from work on Friday, June 6, 1992. to visit nearby Wilmington. He visited with his mother around 9 p.m. on his way back into town Sunday night, June 8. She wanted him to spend the night, but he preferred to head back to his house a few miles away and did so around 10 p.m. While his children normally lived with him, they were staying at the home of his ex-wife while he had been out of town. Cecil did not report to work that Monday, nor did he call his mother, which he normally did every day to check in.

An Unusual Crime Scene

On Wednesday, June 10 local police found Cecil’s car, a 1976 Buick Skylark, abandoned in some undergrowth about a half mile north of the Henderson city limits. They then went to Cecil’s home in the Timberlake Estates subdivision to do a welfare check and noticed the front window screen lying on the ground. A window on the east side of the house was open and the backyard spotlight was also on. Police had to enter the home through a basement window. Once inside, they came across pieces of overturned furniture and stains that looked like dried blood on the carpet of a child’s bedroom. Luminol tests later revealed bloody footprints on the floors and it looked like someone attempted to clean up a crime scene.

In the backyard, they noticed a section of plywood placed over a mound of fresh earth about 25 yards from the house. Upon further inspection, they discovered the body of Cecil Chacon wrapped in a quilt and buried in a shallow grave underneath the section of plywood. He had several stab wounds in the check and back area. An autopsy later revealed more than 25 stab wounds from a knife.

At the time, Sheriff R. Thomas Breedlove said he believed more than one person was involved in the murder. Cecil stood six feet four inches tall and weighed more than 295 pounds. It would have been difficult for just one person to move his body from the house to the backyard. It appeared he had been attacked in his bedroom. Authorities could not pinpoint a motive for the murder back in 1992, but they were considering robbery since Cecil’s car had been moved from the home and his wallet was missing.

When police talked to Cecil’s neighbors, they said they saw a black and red Chevy Blazer with yellow plates parked near Cecil’s residence around 10:30 p.m. the night he arrived back home from his trip.

An Educator Who Made an Impact

Cecil Chacon was a native of Vance County, and along with his work at Vance County Schools, a business teacher at Granville Community College and active with a local Boy Scouts troop. An article that ran in The News and Observer a month after his death highlighted the impact he made on his students. As the industrial education coordinator for Vance County Schools, he set up career-day seminars at high schools, arranged field trips to area companies, and invited business leaders to talk to students. He was passionate about making sure girls were exposed to careers traditionally dominated by their male counterparts. With the help of a federal grant, he started the Gender Equity Program at Northern Vance in 1988.

Local residents speculated Cecil’s estranged wife and a few of her acquaintances were involved with his murder, but police were never able to provide concrete evidence to substantiate those claims.

A $6,000 reward was issued at the time for anyone who had information on the case. If you have information about this case now or any unsolved case in North Carolina, contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at (800) 334-3000.

KC Lee Johnson

KC Lee Johnson went missing from Wilmington, North Carolina in early January of 2023. KC was a 27-year-old transgender woman who lived with her partner, Bulla Brodzinski. She worked as a manager at a local Domino’s Pizza franchise and loved anime and manga. She told Bulla that she was going out for about an hour on Friday, January 13 but never returned to their home. Bulla grew worried and filed a missing persons report with the police the next day.

Bulla told the local media that she and KC had bonded over their shared experiences of being transgender women. She said KC motivated her to get her life back together and get on a sober path.

On January 18, a body was discovered on the banks of the Savannah River in Georgia near a sugar refinery. It was later determined to be that of KC Johnson. Authorities arrested William Haven Hicks, age 26, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He was extradited to North Carolina and charged with first-degree murder, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and kidnapping in the death of KC Johnson. Investigators believe KC met Hicks online shortly before her murder and his arrest warrant stated he allegedly held her hostage, transported her without her consent, and caused her death with a hammer on King Street in the Love Grove community. He then stole her purse, ID, and financial cards. William then transported KC’s body to Georgia.

KC’s remains were positively identified a few months after they were discovered.

A Suspect with a Long List of Previous Crimes

WECT News 6 reported that William Haven Hicks has been charged multiple times since 2018 with misdemeanor third degree assault and battery, felony ill treatment of animals and torture, 1^st degree burglary, three counts of misdemeanor malicious injury to animals, trespassing, unlawful entry, and much more. It was unclear if he was convicted on any of these charges or if they were dismissed.

At the time KC was murdered, she was reported as the second known transgender American to die by violence after Jasmine “Star” Mack was stabbed to death in Washington D.C. on January 7 of 2023.

After KC’s body was discovered, members of the Wilmington LGBTQ community held a vigil on the City Hall steps, praising KC for her courage and integrity to “live authentically,” as noted by Pastor Kelly Finch of Mosaic United Methodist Church.

“So many of you are chosen family that saw KC for everything that she was,” Finch said to the group. “And we’re all grateful that you gave her the opportunity to be who she was. She did not deserve this. This was hate coming in a vicious form. She deserved so much more.

The local media outlets reported William Haven Hicks would receive a court-ordered attorney and he was held without bond. I’ll keep you posted when there is more information about his trial

Operation Artemis

On May 28-30 of this year, the Mooresville Police Department carried out what they called Operation Artemis, a sting that led to the arrest of 15 different people for various crimes against children. These arrests included people ages 25 to 78 who thought they were meeting up with minors for sexual activities that were 13-15 years of age.

Operation Artemis began in December 2023 and utilized a variety of methods including Doublelist, Skip the Games, Facebook, Discord, Grindr, ChatApp, and Sniffles. Doublist is a classifieds website that includes dating and personals, Skip the Games is site that lists escorts and adult entertainment providers, Facebook is Meta’s social networking site, Discord is an instant messaging site that is popular with gamers and people searching others with shared interests, Grindr is a dating app for those in the LGTBQ community, ChatApp is a digital platform allowing users to chat in real time, and Sniffles is a map-based app for gay, bisexual, and bicurious men. Those arrested were caught making arrangements to meet boys and girls for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities. Operation Artemis employed the use of two dozen “chatters” who visited the various online platforms, where they connected with adult men who were interested in sexual activity with underage boys and girls. The suspects arrested included an active-duty military service members and a former school bus driver. It’s notable that none of the suspects arrested had a record of being charged with sex crimes previously. The Mooresville Police Department worked on preparing the operation after noticing an increase in tips from other agencies that individuals in the Mooresville area were accessing child exploitation materials online. The individuals arrested were from Mooresville, Clayton, High Point, Cornelius, Taylorsville, Concord, Charlotte, Cherryville, and Gretna, Virginia.

Show Sources:

Pamela Hoy

https://ncsbi.gov/Divisions/Cold-Case-Investigation-Team/Unsolved-Homicides/Pamela-Mitchell-Hoy-(1)

https://www.newspapers.com/image/53580099

https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/pamela-hoys-mother-is-still-waiting-for-answers/83-403372935

News and Record

https://greensboro.com/scientific-advances-may-help-find-killer-sadness-and-frustration-have-marked-the-eight-years-since/article_50bfcad2-a258-5a0f-9275-db7f8827ee1b.html

News and Record

July 30, 1990

Missing woman’s van found

https://www.newspapers.com/image/943784372

News and Record