This past Monday our country celebrated Veterans Day, which is the federal holiday created to honor military veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces. A sad note is that according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, approximately 21,000 veterans still await burials, some dating all the way back to the Civil War. In 2007, a nonprofit called the Missing in America Project began working to provide those burials.
There are numerous remains that end up unclaimed at funeral homes and morgues for a different reasons, such as a veteran’s family might not be able to afford a burial or the body hasn’t been positively identified yet as a veteran. Volunteers with Missing in America look through lists of unclaimed remains at funeral homes and morgues, verifying veteran statuses of those who might have served in the military. Once a veteran is discovered, volunteers then begin the search for the family. Then, they offer the family the right to claim the veteran or let the nonprofit provide military honors.
In June of 2014, the remains of 15 Veterans were interred at the Salisbury National Cemetery in North Carolina with full military honors. They were all soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who served during World War II and the Vietnam and Korean wars.
In 2016, two veterans who had not received a proper military burial were honored in the Florence National Cemetery from South Carolina. One veteran was from Horry County and the other was from Charleston. Earlier this month, the remains of 28 Civil War veterans found in a funeral home and cemetery in Seattle were laid to rest with honors. These remains were in the storage facility in copper and cardboard urns marked with the name of the soldiers. Missing in America took on the project, using a team of volunteers to confirm war service through genealogical research. Volunteers uncovered some interesting stories tied to the soldiers remains. Several fought in the battles including Gettysburg, Stones River, and the Atlanta Campaign. Another man was held in a Confederate prison known as Andersonville. And yet another man survived a gunshot in the war due to his pocket watch, which he kept until his death. Some of the remains had been discovered after they died in battle or by Civil War re-nactors searching old graveyards.
Most of the veterans were buried in Washington’s Tahoma National Cemetery. They received a traditional service offered to veterans of the Civil War, with the historical 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment dressed in Union uniforms, firing musket volleys while the group sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Anyone interested in volunteering with the Missing in America Project can visit their website at miap.us.
I’ve talked about people who have gone missing near bodies of water on this podcast before. If you haven’t checked out Episode 55 of the podcast yet, I encourage you to do that. I discussed two young men who decided to take a last-minute trip to the South Carolina Coast and disappeared, along with a boater who went missing from the Myrtle Beach area in 2023. Residents in Sherrill’s Ford were also surprised last year to discover a woman who had gone missing in 2008 beneath the surface of Lake Norman in her car.
Jeffrey Mays and Ted Wall Go Missing Off Cape Hatteras
In 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 decided to reinvest 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, 1980. 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.
A Theory About the Two Missing Men
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.
Mysterious Visitors
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.
What Happened to 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.
Sammie Bruce “Chip” Davis Murdered in North Carolina
In late 2020, a 51-year-old man named Sammie Bruce “Chip” Davis was reported missing from a town outside of Gastonia. Local Charlotte area news reported in January of this year that authorities began digging on a property in Lowell, North Carolina, later revealing that had uncovered human remains. Those remains were later identified as those of Chip Davis. Police gave no clues as to why they decided to search the property at that time. The family that was residing in the home on South Church Street had only recently moved in and were not connected to the investigation.
When Chip went missing, he was sharing house on South Church Street in Lowell with two other people, 53-year-old Robin Adair and 55-year-old Kenneth Johnson, Jr. Investigators traveled to Ocala, Fla., where the arrested Robin Adair and charged her with felony concealment of death and felony obstruction of justice. Kenneth Johnson has been charged with the same thing, and police arrested him was arrested on Nov. 18, 2023 in Ocala according to a news release. He was homeless at the time, police said. In February of this year, was due in court facing charges of obtaining property by false pretenses.
At the time of this reporting, Chip Davis’s body was being sent to the medical examiner’s office for further investigation. Authorities did not know if he had died of natural causes or was murdered.
Neighbors who spoke to the media said they never noticed anything suspicious going on at the house and were shocked when investigators in hazmat suits showed up to the property. I’ll keep you updated on this story as it develops. Anyone with information on this case is asked to call Detective T.D. Pilkington at 704-866-3329 or Crimestoppers at 704-861-8000.
Show Sources:
Missing in America Project
https://www.miap.us/media-links-2007-2013
Jeffrey Mays and Ted Wall
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/software/mp-main.html?id=1785dmnc
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/software/mp-main.html?id=5484DMNC
https://archive.triblive.com/news/mother-continues-search-for-missing-son
The News and Observer
November 18, 1980
Fishermen still sought off Hatteras
https://www.newspapers.com/image/653883390
Latrobe Bulletin
November 19, 1980
Former Ligioner Man Lost
https://www.newspapers.com/image/449017448
Sammie Bruce “Chip” Davis
https://www.newsobserver.com/article284477505.html#storylink=cpy
