In 2021 I discussed several cold cases involving indigenous women and girls, including the murder of 5-year-old Brittany Locklear, who was kidnapped and later found murdered in Hoke County. If you’d like to learn more about that case and more, check out Episode 29 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in North Carolina, Part 1. Episode 32, Missing Teen Girls in North Carolina, included the story of 13-year-old Native American teen Donna...
Listen to an interview with Chris Stonestreet, a North Carolina author and historian who has researched the Lue Cree Overcash Westmoreland cold case extensively.
In 2004, the President of the United States and Congress have dedicated this month for the public and private sectors to work together to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, this initiative has grown into a collaborative effort between government industry to enhance cybersecurity awareness, encourage actions by the public to reduce online risk, and generated...
For many years, before streaming services became the norm, made-for-tv movies were the bread and butter of network television’s advertising revenue. Those networks often relied on true crime books and journalists to help find ideas for their latest projects. In the case of the state of North Carolina, there have been many of these network movie events that have featured crimes that occurred here. In fact, I was reading one article where a...
If you’ll remember, in Episode 29, I discussed the unsolved murders of three different women in Lumberton, North Carolina. These were not isolated incidents, unfortunately. In 2018, the community was shaken when a teenage girl was abducted in broad daylight in front of her home. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Like many junior high students on a weekday, Hania Noelia Aguilar was waiting to get a ride to school from her family on the...
Last week a graduate student entered an academic lab on the University of North Carolina campus, shooting and killing a respected professor, resulting in an hours-long lockdown of the campus. The student was arrested a short time later and the motive for the murder has not yet been revealed. In 1995, a law student at the same university headed towards campus with an assault rifle, shooting at random passersby and murdering two innocent people....
When 20-year-old Lue Cree Overcash Westmoreland retired for the evening at the home of her husband’s family on Jan. 19, 1937, no one expected the young bride of only two months would be murdered by the next morning. Lue Cree’s husband, Herman Westmoreland, lived in an apartment during the week so he could be close to his job at Cascade Mills in Mooresville. Lue Cree was staying at the family home in the Amity Hill area of Iredell County....
Christina Maria Matos Christina Maria Matos was just trying to help out a friend, but the generosity she was so well known for likely caused her death. Matos had just turned 20 and was living in an apartment in Raleigh, N.C. and working as a server in a couple of different restaurants. Last semester she had taken courses at nearby Wake Tech Community College. Her parents spoke to her on her birthday, Fri., April 2, 2021, and she was excited to...
Did you know Mecklenburg County in North Carolina has a cold case featuring an unidentified deceased woman whose loved ones may be missing her? Investigators with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department have given her the name of “Mecklenburg County Doe.” On March 17, 2011, the incomplete skeletal remains of a female were found in a wooded area on Statesville Avenue in Charlotte. The woman, who was estimated to be between the ages of...
She was young, beautiful, beguiling and liked to poison the guests at her boarding house in Charleston, S.C. with oleander tea. For centuries, legend had it that Lavinia Fisher was one of America’s first female serial killers, but have the misdeeds of Mrs. Fisher been greatly embellished over time? If you take a tour of Charleston’s Old City Jail, you can be sure to hear tales of the time period during which Lavinia Fisher and her...
