On February 12, 1971, a young couple went missing in the Durham area after attending a dance at a local nursing school together. Patricia Ann Mann, age 20, was a junior at the Watts School of Nursing, and Jesse Allen McBane, 19, was then a freshman at North Carolina State University studying textile technology. They had met while they were still in high school—Patricia was from Sanford and Jesse from Pittsboro.
Patricia stood around five feet tall and weighed 100 pounds. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, and was wearing a white and pink plaid dress and navy shoes. Jesse stood six feet tall, weighed 175 pounds, and had brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a burgundy shirt and plaid pants.
Witnesses reported last seeing them around 11:30 p.m., when they left the dance and headed out in Jesse’s 1968 English Ford. Patricia signed out of her dorm and planned to be back by the curfew of 1 a.m. Her friends assumed they were heading to a local parking spot away from the dormitories.
Watts Hospital, established in 1895, was Durham’s first city hospital, operating between the years of 1895 and 1976. It was a private, 22-bed facility dedicated to the care of Durham’s white citizens and offered free care to those who couldn’t pay. The Watts School of Nursing was formerly known as The Watts Hospital Training School for Nurses and is North Carolina’s second oldest nursing school.
It became public in 1963 and closed in 1976. The grounds and buildings of the hospital’s campus eventually became the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which opened in 1980. The Watts College of Nursing is now affiliated with the Duke University Health System.
The Couple Disappears
Patricia’s friends from Watts grew worried when they still hadn’t seen a sign of her by the next day. They took their own cars and went to the area they suspected the couple had gone. Sure enough, Jesse’s car was found on a paved road at the Croasdaile Golf Course, locked and with Patricia and Jesse’s coats clearly visible through the windows. A box of Valentine’s candy Jesse had purchased for Patricia was also still in the car. There was no sign of the couple in or near the vehicle. The car was actually located about three blocks from the neighborhood where Jesse’s older sister, Gail, lived in the Croasdaile area, his father later told the media. Gail said she had not received a visit from the couple that night.
By early the following week, the couple’s families had joined together to offer a $500 reward for information leading to their whereabouts. Three small planes based at the Raleigh Durham Aviation and Durham Skypark began a search from the air. A team from the Durham Fire Department and Rescue Squad searched Lake Medford, located near the Croasdaile subdivision but turned up nothing.
While the police at first asked family members if there was any way the couple had left town on their own to elope, the answer was a resounding no. Patricia and Jesse had been dating for about three years and had discussed getting married in the future, possibly the next year after Patricia graduated from nursing school. But at the time of their disappearance, they were both committed to their studies and had no immediate plans to wed. Besides, their families were supportive if they had wanted to get married. There was no reason to disappear for that reason without telling anyone. Besides, wouldn’t they have eloped in Jesse’s car, not walked off into the cold, February night without their coats. Suicide was also not considered a possibility. Police checked with Patricia and Jesse’s roommates at Watts and N.C. State and none of their clothing or belongings seemed to be missing.
Jesse’s roommate at N.C. State, a young man named Ray Womble, said Jesse’s younger brother came to pick him up at their dorm and drive him back to their home in Pittsboro. Jesse didn’t have a car at the school full-time. Jesse said he was going to go home and then drive to Durham to take Patricia to the dance that night.
As the days passed with still no sign of the couple, police told the media that the possibility of Patricia and Jesse meeting foul play was becoming more of a possibility. There was one sighting of a young woman matching Patricia’s description in Henderson, North Carolina, the Sunday after the couple went missing. This was around midnight at a restaurant, and the young woman was with a young man, and they left in a gold or lime green Mustang. This did not turn out to be connected to Patricia and Jesse.
Patricia and Jesse are Found
On February 24, 1971, a surveyor working in a heavily wooded area on the Orange and Durham County lines saw what he thought was the leg of a mannequin off in the distance. After some hesitation, he moved closer, then realized what he was really viewing was a human leg partially covered by leaves. He called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to let them know what he had found.
The Sheriff of Orange County at the time, C.D. Knight, said the couple’s bodies were found tied to a tree and covered up with leaves. The area was three miles from where Jesse’s car was found, and about a half-mile from Carolina Motor Court, a mobile home trailer park. Patricia and Jesse were on opposite sides of an oak tree measuring about a foot in diameter. Their hands were tied in front of them with a rope, and rope tied around their necks. The rope that tied their wrists was a single strand of common half-inch hemp. Shorter ropes of the same kind were used in the strangulations. Both had bled profusely from their mouths, and Patricia also had blood on top of her head, possibly from a cut or a blow. Based on marks the couple’s shoes had left in the dirt, police theorized the two were tortured slowly, being strangled and brought back to consciousness several different times before their final deaths.
Jesse was identified by his wallet and Pittsboro High School class ring. Around $4 in cash, his watch, and jewelry were still with his body. Robbery did not appear to be a motive.
The autopsy at North Carolina Memorial Hospital revealed the cause of death for both was strangulation, and that they had been dead about 12 or 13 days. The Medical Examiner said there was no evidence Patricia had been sexually assaulted, but there was some injury to her liver, possibly caused by a fist blow to the abdomen.
Durham Detective Captain E.C. Atkins told the press, “I don’t want to analyze the case now, but I feel that more than one person was involved.” There was an interesting article that ran in The Durham Sun in the days following the discovery of Patricia and Jesse’s bodies. Police said a man came to them and said that he didn’t have many dreams, but when he did, they always came true. He said he’d recently dreamed a young couple had been approached by a man dressed as a priest, and that their bodies were located near Croasdaile. The reporter, James Wicker, spoke with a Dr. J.B. Rhine of Durham, who was an expert in extrasensory perception at the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. Dr. Rhine said people frequently have ESP experiences through dreams, but dreams can be a mixture of things, and there can be a lot of misinterpretation. I believe this man’s dream might have been on to something, and I’ll discuss that a bit later in this episode.
A Profile of the Killer
In April of 1971, then Governor Bob Scott offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of those responsible for Patricia Mann and Jesse McBane’s deaths. In late October of the same year, a reporter for The Durham Morning Sun, Cordelia Olive, wrote an article about what a well-known New York-based psychiatrist believed about the killer. Durham detective M.T. Bowers traveled to New York City to interview a Dr. James A. Brussel. Dr. Brussel had consulted on the Boston Strangler murders in the mid-1960s, the Mad Bomber Explosions in New York in 1956, and other highly-publicized crimes. Dr. Brussel had never visited Durham or the actual crime scene, but Detective Bowers showed him crime scene photos, other evidence, and descriptions based on the observations of other investigators.
The psychiatrist told Detective Bowers that he thought Patricia and Jesse were the victims of a grudge killing. He described the killer as:
A loner, a neat, precise man with an average or above average education. He was clean-shaven, with no record, does not wear flashy clothes, wants to avoid attracting attention, may have suffered rejection from his mother in childhood, and considers himself above others.
The killer would have been prepared at the time of the killing and taken no risks.
The investigation into Patricia and Jesse’s disappearance indicated someone had called the emergency room at Watts Hospital the night the two disappeared. The voice appeared to be that of a man and identified himself as Jesse McBane’s father, calling to inquire if his son was there. This would have been before anyone knew the two were even missing. Dr. Brussel believed this caller was the killer, expressing excitement over what he had done.
The Long Dance Podcast
In 2018, two journalists who had been intrigued by this case for years, Eryk Pruitt and Drew Adamek (ADAM-AK), began their own investigation, approaching members of Patricia and Jesse’s surviving friends and family and reviewing all the investigative records they could get their hands on. Their research led them to narrow leads down to four suspects, and when they approached Captain Tim Horne with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, he discovered he had the same narrow list of suspects as Eryk and Drew. He agreed to collaborate with them on the podcast. The podcast, titled “The Long Dance,” gives listeners an insightful look into the lives of Patricia and Jesse, and highlights how they were truly the most innocent of victims. While I do feel like some of the interviews in the podcast could have been edited for length, I don’t want to discount the hard work of the podcasters and the dedication of the investigators involved in this case. In fact, Captain Horne kept putting off his retirement in the hopes of finally solving the case.
A side note on Captain Tim Horne. His determination helped finally identify Robert “Bobby” Adam Whitt, a 10-year-old boy whose body was found deceased underneath a billboard along Interstate 85 back in 1998.
While I won’t get into a lot of the details from the “The Long Dance” podcast because I encourage you to take a listen yourself to reward the creators for all their hard work, I will say I was stunned to learn that two of the primary suspects in the murder were doctors that had also taught courses at the Watts School of Nursing. One of them is still living, and refused to provide a DNA sample or take a polygraph test when investigators talked to him. (Side note: his DNA was eventually collected without his knowledge). This doctor did agree to an interview with the podcasters, which is very interesting. These suspected doctors, who investigators could never completely cross of their lists, had crossed paths with the pretty, blonde, petite Patricia Mann at the school. One allegedly pursued Patricia, even after she told him she had a serious boyfriend. Another suspected doctor had been accused of impersonating a police officer in another case. Both were known to carry handguns on them, and didn’t hesitate to threaten colleagues and other innocent bystanders with them.
These doctors would have known where the popular parking places for students would be—it was no secret at Watts. This made me think back to what the New York psychiatrist had said about the killer. A doctor would be of above-average intelligence, have a calm air of authority, and would likely be capable of such a cold and clinical torture and killing. I’ve often wondered why a man of Jesse McBane’s size and stature would not have fought back. If a doctor that Patricia recognized had knocked on the door of their car, told them they were in trouble, and then pulled out a gun, they would have complied and maybe gotten into his car. If the doctor or killer was impersonating a police officer, the same could have happened.
After the podcast was released, the News and Observer ran a few follow-up articles discussing updates on the case and potential new leads. I was surprised to learn a similar attempted kidnapping to Patricia and Jesse’s happened in Duke Forest not long after in 1971. Investigators kept hearing about it over the years but couldn’t find much concrete information about it. Captain Horne heard from the couple involved after the podcast was released.
The Couple Who Survived
They said they had pulled off at a known “lover’s lane” at the intersection of N.C. 751 and Kerley Road in Durham when a man tapped on their window with a gun. The young man tried to jump from the backseat of the car into the front seat, but the car wouldn’t crank. The abductor got in the front passenger seat and directed the young man to drive. They crossed into Orange County and parked on what is now known as Sunrise Road. The armed abductor told the young man to get into the truck, but he refused. The abductor struck the man with the butt of the gun and then drove away in the car, abandoning it later in Durham. The two victims gave a description of their abductor to the police, who even drew up a composite sketch of the abductor. Eryk Pruitt said the sketch favored one of the main suspects in the case, and said they feel this is probably what happened to Patricia and Jesse, except they may not have fought back.
One of my favorite television shows of all time is “Cold Case,” not to be confused with “Cold Case Files.” “Cold Case” ran on CBS for seven seasons and featured the work of cold case detectives in Philadelphia. The show was fictional, but many of its storylines took cases from real life, such as The Boy in the Box (who has now been identified) and the Martha Moxley murder from Greenwich Village. A lot of the unsolved murders featured on the show took place many years ago, such as this one. In those episodes, viable physical evidence was often scarce and relied on deathbed confessions a lot of the time.
But real life isn’t a television show. The murders of Patricia Mann and Jesse McBane took place many, many years ago. There wasn’t a lot of physical evidence that would have linked to the killer. Fingerprints found in Jesse’s car mostly belonged to Jesse, and anyway, if the profile of the killer is accurate, I’m sure he would have been wearing gloves at the time of the murders. Captain Horne did try a new form of technology called an M-Vac retrieval to try and get tiny pieces of DNA off the rope used in the murder, but it did not provide enough evidence to link to one specific person. The primary suspect has made it clear he is not confessing, even retaining a lawyer when the heat on him gets turned up. The case remains open.
Asha Degree Update
I often receive e-mails asking me to cover the 2000 disappearance of Asha Degree from Shelby, North Carolina. Those people may not realize I covered it back in Episode 54, where I also discussed the unsolved 1987 Valentine’s Day murder of a young woman abducted from the Asheville Mall. That’s probably my fault, because I didn’t promote the episode enough or put Asha’s name in the title of the episode. I need to go back and do that. But because I’m discussing a February murder cold case in this episode, and there have been new updates this past year in the Asha Degree case, I thought I would share some of that news today.
To get you caught up, Asha was a nine-year-old girl who went missing from the apartment she shared with her family on the night of February 13, 2000. The power had gone out earlier that evening due to a car accident involving an electrical pole. According to the family, the power came back on around midnight. Asha’s father said he checked on his daughter, who shared a bedroom with her brother, around 2:30 a.m. and found her asleep.
But investigators believed that shortly after that time frame, Asha packed a few things in a backpack and left her home. Around 3:15 a.m., nearby drivers saw a girl matching Asha’s description walking along Highway 18. She ran into the woods when one motorist tried to turn his car around and ask her if she was okay. Police later found items that may have belonged to Asha in those woods. When her parents realized she was missing the next morning, a large-scale search ensued. After 10 days, it was called off with no sign of the little girl. In August of 2001, developers clearing a property in Burke County found a child’s backpack labeled with Asha’s name. A search of the area turned up no other sign of Asha.
In 2016, the FBI and Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office released a photo of a car they believed she might have gotten into the night she went missing—a 1970s era, dark green Lincoln or Ford Thunderbird.
Six months ago, investigators in Cleveland County initiated search warrants on several properties there. These were related to evidence found with Asha’s backpack in August of 2001. The DNA evidence linked those items to a woman named AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez, as well as Russell Bradley Underhill. Underhill died in Lincoln County in 2004. The warrants stated items seized from the properties belonging to a Roy and Connie Dedmon included a car, journals, cameras, film, a black trash bag, a human tooth in a Ziploc bag, children’s clothing, computers, and laptops. One of the cars seized matched the description of the vehicle released by police in 2016.
An article that ran in The Charlotte Observer shed more light on the investigation. Police had found items buried at that construction site in 2001, and they included Asha’s backpack, a Dr. Seuss book, a New Kids on the Block concert t-shirt. Asha’s parents had told police the t-shirt didn’t belong to Asha when it was found. A hair on the shirt had DNA pointing to three people: Asha, AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez, and Russell Bradley Underhill. AnnaLee was 13 when Asha went missing. Medical records indicated Underhill stayed at Cleveland Health Care Hospital a few different times between 1999 and 2002, and listed Roy Dedmon as his emergency contact. Underhill had lived in an assisted-living facility operated by the Dedmons when Asha went missing. Connie Dedmon helped administer medication to Underhill.
The warrants named Roy and Connie Dedmon, parents of AnnaLee, as suspects, and four of the five properties belonged to the couple, who are now separated. Investigators revealed they believe Asha was murdered and her body hidden. No arrests have been made yet. An attorney for Roy Dedmon has said he has cooperated with police and had no involvement with Asha’s disappearance.
The Cleveland County community recently held an event to mark the 25th anniversary of Asha’s disappearance, and Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman said the investigation remains ongoing, but he can’t disclose everything about it at this time. I think the most perplexing part of Asha’s case is we all wonder why she would have left her apartment, in the early morning hours, during a rainstorm. Was she planning to meet someone? Asha didn’t have access to a cell phone or a computer at that time. Plus, she was only nine years old. Based on the most recent findings, I think my next question would be if there is any evidence Asha knew Russell Underhill or the Dedmon family at the time she went missing, or if she disappeared during a moment of opportunity.
Anyone with information on the Asha Degree case is asked to call 704-484-4756.
Show Sources:
Patricia Mann and Jesse McBane
The Durham Sun
February 15, 1971
Couple Still Missing
https://www.newspapers.com/image/786694153
The Durham Sun
February 16, 1971
Hunt From Air Begins-Reward Up for Couple
https://www.newspapers.com/image/786694204
The News and Observer
February 17, 1971
Durham Police Look for Missing Couple
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The Durham Sun
February 17, 1971
‘Another City’ Checked
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The Durham Sun
February 19, 1971
Hunt for Couple Spreading
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The Durham Sun
February 20, 1971
Hunt for Pair Still Futile
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The Durham Sun
February 23, 1971
Police Continue Hunt for Missing Students
https://www.newspapers.com/image/786694857
The Herald-Sun
February 24, 1971
Public Asked for Clues on Missing Pair
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The Daily Times-News
February 25, 1971
Bodies of Couple Located
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The Durham Sun
February 26, 1971
‘Strangulation by Rope’ Killed Couple; Found in Orange County
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The Durham Sun
February 27, 1971
Prints Are Found on Car
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The News and Observer
Young Couple Said Strangled to Death
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The Charlotte Observer
April 10, 1971
Scott Posts Rewards in 4 Killings
https://www.newspapers.com/image/622006040
Durham Morning Herald
Mann-McBane Slayings: N.Y. Crime Psychiatrist Suggests Male ‘Out to Cleanse the World.”
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Durham Morning Herald
May 16, 1972
Deputies, SBI Seek Kidnaper of 2 Students
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The Durham Sun
August 30, 1980
https://www.newspapers.com/image/786995531
Durham’s Mystery Murders
https://www.newsoforange.com/news/article_b9e5fb30-377c-11e8-89de-2f9c73bd334f.html
Couple’s abduction, torture, murder remains a Valentine’s Day mystery in Durham almost 4 decades later
The Herald-Sun
November 2, 1977
SBI Making Assault on Old Crimes
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The Long Dance Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-long-dance-podcast/id1401500880
Asha Degree:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article292563214.html
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article292626279.html
