I first talked about the disappearance of Jeffrey Mays and Ted Wallin Episode 120. On November 13, 1980, 21-year-old Harold Jeffrey Mays, who went by Jeffrey, boarded his boat, the Sea Ox, with a friend, 21-year-old Ted Wall, off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.
Jeffrey had grown up in Pennsylvania, the son of a father who ran a successful photocopy business in the 1970s. Eventually, the family sold the business, and they reinvested that money into real estate in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, located on the Outer Banks. They even purchased the Kitty Hawk Coast Guard Station and used it as a summer home. Jeffrey attended East Carolina University in Greenville for a few years before deciding to join Nunemakers Fish Company, a fish market and retail store his family owned.
On the day he disappeared, Jeffrey and his friend Ted Wall visited a commercial fisherman from Hatteras named Edgar Styron who later told the Coast Guard he had helped the two young men repair the engine of Jeffrey’s boat. They were last seen at about 1:30 p.m. on November 13. Jeffrey and Ted had met at Nunemakers Fish Company, where Ted worked as a commercial fisherman. Around 9 p.m. that night, the Coast Guard and vessels with the Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard helicopters began a search in earnest. In all, they searched 211,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean.
A representative with the public affairs department of The Coast Guard said Jeffrey’s Sea Ox, which had a 280-horsepower Volvo engine, was considered “unsinkable,” as it was filled with foam flotation designed to keep the boat just under the surface of water even when swamped. The boat was described as a 23-foot inboard-outboard fishing boat with a fiberglass center console, black outriggers, and beige sides. Soon rumors began swirling that in the wintertime, local commercial fisherman sold drugs to make extra in the off season. People speculated that Ted Wall had been involved in this and possibly Jeffrey Mays was, too. No trace of Jeffrey’s boat or the two men have ever been found.
In November 2004, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ran a lengthy interview with Jeffrey’s mother, Shirley Mays, who explained her theory that her son wasn’t dead.
Did Two Men Orchestrate Their Own Disappearance?
One of Jeffrey’s childhood friends from Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Krieger, was also convinced something nefarious was involved in the disappearance. He said he was visiting Jeffrey’s family home on the Outer Banks about six years after his friend went missing when he saw two interesting figures on the road below the house. The two men were in two different pickup trucks, and strangely, each truck also had a young woman and a dog for passengers. Even though it was summer, the two men were wearing flannel shirts, big boots, and sported long hair. One man pulled out a pair of binoculars to look up at the house, and Krieger could have sworn it was his long-lost friend. Then, the man waved in a funny way like Jeffrey used to, got into his truck, and both vehicles drove off.
Krieger would eventually buy Jeffrey’s family’s summer home and moved to the Outer Banks full-time. In 1995, a commercial fishing vessel named “Mr. Big” arrived in the area’s port from Alaska. A photographer for the local newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot took a photograph of three men standing on the deck of the vessel as it headed into the port. Krieger believes one of the men looked like Jeffrey. Another strange thing happened around the time the ship came into the port. Krieger said someone broke into his home, but they didn’t steal anything. They did not break in through the front door or anywhere from the first floor of the house. Instead, the person climbed up to the second floor of the house and unlocked a door that had a specially-designed lock on it. Krieger said only he and Jeffrey’s family would have known about that lock.
Jeffrey’s mother, Shirley Mays, told the news outlet in Pennsylvania that she believed her son was alive and living in Alaska for reasons probably related to the sales of drugs. In 2004, she published a book titled “Outer Banks Piracy: Where is My Son Jeffrey?” where she discussed money laundering, power, greed, and drugs on the North Carolina coast. You can find that book on Amazon.
At the time the two men went missing, Harold Jeffrey Mays stood five feet ten inches tall and weighed around 175 pounds. He was a Caucasian male with brown hair and hazel eyes. Ted Haywood Wall was a Caucasian male who stood six feet one to six feet two and had sandy blond hair and hazel eyes.
Bill Hollingsworth
A year after Jeffrey Mays and Ted Wall disappeared off the coast of the Outer Banks, November 12, 1981, a torrential storm tore through the coast of North Carolina. Thirty-year-old Bill Hollingworth, an insurance executive from Concord, was canoeing near the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Bill, a Concord native and graduate of the University of North Carolina, where he was a defensive end and linebacker for the football team, was the part-owner of Shuford Insurance Agency in Concord. He traveled with three other friends to fish at Frying Pan Shoals near Bald Head Island. According to witnesses, around 8:25 a.m. on the day he disappeared, Bill was putting out fishing nets when his 12-foot aluminum canoe was carried out to sea. The next day, Bill’s wife Rebecca traveled to the coast as crews continued to search for her husband. A Coast Guard spokesperson told The Charlotte Observer that swells were running four to six feet high with wind velocity at 23 miles per hour. Visibility was at 7 miles. After several days, the search was called off and Bill Hollingsworth was presumed to have drowned.
The Murder of Theresa Fetter
Theresa Fetter’s disappearance first appeared in Episode 58-Missing and Murdered in Wilmington. At the time the 16-year-old went missing in November of 1998, her father believed she was unhappy with her home life, so the family was unsure if she had gone missing of her own free will. It turned out, that wasn’t the case, and it would be several years before the Fetters could get any sort of justice involving their teenage daughter.
Theresa went missing because someone told her information related to a murder, and the killer was afraid she would go to the police. This story actually begins on September 17, 1998. A 42-year-old woman named Lisa Maves was found deceased on Wrightsville Beach. The mother of four had been visiting the area with her boyfriend and another friend and staying at a nearby condo. When her companions went to the grocery store, she took a bottle of liquor down to the beach. She was discovered later that evening when her body washed up on the shore. She had a deep cut that penetrated her skull and into her brain, as well as bruises on her throat and body.
It didn’t take long for investigators to begin hearing pieces of a story from a circle of friends surrounding a 19-year-old man named Kyle Berry. Berry had a troubled past and was reportedly the member of the Folk Nation gang. One of Berry’s friends, a man named Bobby Autry, had heard firsthand of Lisa Maves’s murder. He was told that Berry and another friend named Jon Malonee met Lisa while she was on the beach, and she mentioned she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. For some reason, Berry decided Lisa seemed very depressed and needed to be, as he said, “put out of her misery.” He and Malonee kicked and beat her, and then Berry stuck a knife in her skull. They then dragged her body into the Atlantic Ocean.
At the time, Bobby Autry had been dating Theresa Fetter and told her about Berry’s involvement in the Mavis murder. When Berry found out she knew this information, he decided she needed to be eliminated to prevent her from possibly going to the police. Autry arranged to meet with Theresa, but it was a trap that also involved Berry, Jon Malonee, and Joshua Whitney. They beat Theresa to death with metal pipes, leaving her in a wooden area behind a daycare center, covered with pine needles and brush. Her body was discovered 20 days later.
In late November of 1998, Jon Malonee, age 16, Kyle O’Brian Berry, age 20, and Joshua H. Whitney, age 17, along with Autry, were charged with Theresa’s murder. Autry was the one who told investigators where they could find Theresa’s body. Malonee, Whitney, and Autry all pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Theresa Fetter and sent to prison.
Kyle Berry was sentenced to death in his role. At first. A North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in December of 2002 raised some questions about sentencing instructions given to jurors who heard the case. He was then given another sentencing hearing. In March 2004, he was sentenced again to death, but that verdict was also successfully appealed by his attorneys. In 2010, the death sentence was overturned by a trial judge who ruled Berry’s defense attorneys hadn’t had enough time to research the man’s history of mental illness. Berry had been adopted as an infant, but at his re-sentencing hearing, his adoptive mother Nancy testified he had seen at least 17 doctors during his teenage years and placed in a number of different schools. He had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and prescribed a variety of drugs including Paxil, lithium, and Dexedrine. Berry had been charged in the murder of Lisa Maves but never tried for it. At his final hearing, he accepted responsibility for his role in her death.
It was a long process for Theresa Fetter’s family, who were finally relieved when the hearings were over. In mid August of 2019, Berry was found unresponsive in his cell one afternoon. He was declared dead about 10 minutes later from an apparent suicide.
Young Chang
In Episode 73, I discussed missing senior citizens from the Carolinas. November is also recognized as Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. A 68-year-old man named Young Chang went also went missing during the month of November in the Asheville area.
On November 6, 2004, Young Chang went missing from Mount Pisgah Family Care Home in Candler, North Carolina. Young had only moved into the home three days prior, November 3, due to the development of the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He had previously lived in the Atlanta, Georgia area. On the same day as the initial disappearance from the care facility, which investigators believed was simply due to Young having wandered off, he was spotted in the Pisgah Valley Market. Officers brought a dog team to the market, where the scent of Chang was located, and followed to a nearby mobile home park. However, he was not there, and the search continued without another solid lead. The biggest concern investigators had at the time was the environment where Young Chang had gone missing. Candler, located near Asheville, consisted of “steep and rough” terrain, according to the chief of the Upper Hominy Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department, Steve Hensley. The temperature was also extremely cold, especially at nighttime. This made searching for the senior citizen more difficult. At the time, the local authorities believed someone may have given Young a ride out of the area, but no one ever came forward with information. He was a native of Korea and spoke very little English.
This case had assistance from five fire departments, dog teams from three police departments, and the North Carolina Highway Patrol. The majority of the search, however, was conducted by the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department. Detective Roger Watson from this department said at the time “We’ve looked everywhere… the airport, truckstops, bus stops, everywhere.” Helicopters searched the area, and police followed various leads that would pop up as the weeks since Young disappeared went on. They investigated every possible sighting and any information they received about what may have happened. Those involved in the case were sure that Chang was driven to the market where he was last seen, and hoped to find whoever may have given him this ride.
Chang’s son, Charles Chang, was on military deployment at the time of the disappearance. He was stationed in Korea, where Young Chang was originally from. Charles, a major in the Army at the time and an Iraq war veteran, was only home for a month and spent the entire 30 days looking for his father. When interviewed by Asheville Citizen-Times on November 8, 2004, Charles said “There is no word to describe the feeling of knowing that he may be out there somewhere cold and hungry.” Charles and his family set up a $50,000 reward for the location of Young Chang. Unfortunately, the missing 68-year-old was never found. What happened to the Alzheimer’s patient after he wandered off is still a mystery to this day, and 19 years later, it is likely to remain a cold case. At the time he went missing, Young Chang was wearing a gold-nugget patterned Seiko watch on his left wrist and possibly white pants, a white short-sleeved polo shirt, a blue denim pullover or sweatshirt, and house slippers or loafers. Anyone with information is asked to call the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department at 828-255-5555.
Joseph Matthew Johnson
In Episode 55, I shared missing cases related to water. On November 22, 2021, 44-year-old Joseph Matthew Johnson, a Carolina Beach resident, was seen leaving Federal Point Yacht Club on his 19-foot SeaCraft Center Console fishing boat around 11 a.m. He resided on a larger boat which remained docked at the club. Because he lived alone, no one noticed right away when he didn’t return. Before he left, he’d asked a few different friends if they wanted to go out on his boat fishing with him that day, but all were busy due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so he went out alone.
On November 27, a friend of Johnson’s who had previously made plans to fish with, realized his boat wasn’t at Federal Point. He made a few calls and realized Johnson must have been gone for several days, and reported him missing to the local authorities.
His brother told authorities he’d had a pre-arranged phone call with his brother scheduled for the day he went fishing, so Johnson had planned to return that evening. There was also food set out in the kitchen for his dinner that night.
The Wilmington Star News reported that police discovered Johnson had recently purchased equipment to repair the motor on his boat, they presumed he got the boat in working condition, headed out for his day trip, and possibly had engine trouble while out on the water.
The U.S. Coast Guard conducted a search for Johnson that used five different vessels and covered nearly 7,500 square miles. They noticed his cell phone stopped pinging around 5:15 p.m., when he was near Bald Head Island, an area he favored for fishing. The search was suspended after three days when no signs of Johnson, or his boat, were found.
His friend that reported him missing, fellow Army buddy Stan Cook, said this case was a reminder that you should never leave and go out fishing without letting someone know where you’re going and when you should be back.”
Seven months after Joseph disappeared, his boat was found on an island about 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, and more than 2,800 miles from Carolina Beach. He was not on board, and the boat had a heavy buildup of barnacles and algae, indicating it had been capsized at sea for quite awhile. According to Namus, Portuguese officials conducted an examination of the boat and a search of the area and were unable to locate Johnson or get any clues to his whereabouts.
In an article that ran in the Wilmington Star News right after Johnson’s boat was found, his mother said that she and the rest of the family remained confident he will be found alive. At the time he went missing, Johnson was a retired U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who served with tours in Afghanistan and South America. His family believed his training provided him with the skills he would need to survive tumultuous elements and other dangerous conditions. “It’s not just hope,” she said. “We know he’s alive and are praying for his miraculous rescue.”
At the time of his disappearance, Joseph Matthew Johnson stood six feet two inches tall, had strawberry blonde hair, and weighed around 215 to 222 pounds. He was wearing a black t-shirt, black shorts, and a black baseball cap. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the Carolina Beach Department at 910-458-2540.
Myrtle Beach John Doe Identified
This past week the Myrtle Beach Police Department announced they had discovered the identity of a man they’d been referring to as Horry County John Doe. In February of 2016, a man drowned in a pool at Ocean Creek Plantation in North Myrtle Beach. The man was not a guest of the hotel at the time. Police didn’t see any local missing persons reports matching the man’s description. He was a black male in his mid-20s. He was wearing basketball shorts but had no signs of injuries on his body. He had clothes and personal belongings found near his body on a chair, but no room key or anything that could identify him. The coroner’s office ruled his death to be an accidental drowning. Investigators took his fingerprints, but the case soon went cold.
In 2023, the Horry County Coroner’s Office submitted a DNA profile from the young man to Othram in The Woodlands, Texas to determine if forensic geneology could help identify the young man. Because of this process, a forensic geneology team located potential relatives of Horry County John Doe. A follow-up investigation led to a positive identification of Malquan Tyreek Hawkins, who was 22 years old at the time of his death. He was last believed to have lived in the New Hanover County area.
Malquan’s biological mother currently lives in North Carolina, but she had given Malquan up for adoption when he was an infant. He ended up in the state’s foster care system, where he aged out at 18. Officials say they will continue to investigate what brought him to Myrtle Beach, why he was at the hotel pool, and what happened to him.
