The Unsolved Murders of Pamela Murray and Beverly Sherman
Thirty-eight years ago, a young woman baked cookies with her aunt and then headed off to a local mall, probably to pick up a gift for her fiancé for Valentine’s Day. The two had plans to celebrate with a dinner out later that evening. But that young woman never made it inside the mall. Instead, she was forced back inside her car by an unknown assailant and found murdered a few miles away just a short time later. Investigators eventually linked her murder with another homicide of a local 17-year-old girl who had a prostitution arrest on her record. While the two victims came from very different backgrounds, it appears only one man was responsible for both murders.
For the purposes of putting together an accurate timeline, this story really begins on January 20, 1987. That’s when a teenage girl named Beverly Sherman was seen getting into a light yellow Camaro behind the Asheville Civic Center. Police later suspected that car belonged to a john, as Beverly had been previously charged with prostitution. After that, she disappeared. A month later, on February 14, 1987, Pamela Murray drove to the Asheville Mall a few hours before she was supposed to meet her fiancé for dinner. She never made it inside. A witness later told police a man had approached Pamela outside the mall around 1 p.m. near the Sears entrance and grabbed her by the arm. The two then left in Pamela’s 1986 grey Oldsmobile Tornado with the man driving. Just a short time later, another witness saw the car near Azalea Road and realized the man and woman inside were struggling. Shortly after that, a motorist called police to report what they believed to be the body of a woman lying motionless on a deserted part of Azalea Road. She was visible to motorists passing by. It was only about 20 minutes from when she was abducted from the mall. Police theorized she had jumped out of the car and her captor then shot her. There were no signs of sexual assault. Her car was found back at the Asheville Mall, in a different area from where she’d been abducted, around 1 a.m. the next morning.
Asheville Residents Stunned by the Murder
The fact that a woman would be abducted from the mall parking lot, in an area of town where people had always felt safe, stunned residents. Pamela Murray was a lifelong resident of Buncombe County who had graduated from Enka High School in 1981 and then attended Blue Ridge Technical College. At the time of her death, she was working as an industrial engineer with Asheville Industries. After her murder, several of Pamela’s friends established a fund in the hopes that they could offer reward money to anyone who had information about Pamela’s case. Various community members and business owners donated to the fund, and it eventually grew to more than $13,000, but produced no solid leads. Detectives eventually questioned more than 50 people, including Pamela’s family and friends. The FBI conducted ballistic tests on the bullets recovered from her body.
Sketch of a Suspected Killer
In an article that ran in the Asheville Citizen Times on February 27, 1987, I noticed a news brief on the same page that read “Parking Lot Flasher.” It said: An Asheville woman has reported that a man exposed himself to her in the Asheville Mall parking lot. The 23-year-old woman said a man in his 30s with brown, frizzy hair drove his automobile in front of her car, pulled down his pants and exposed himself, according to reports at the Asheville Police Department. Captain Will Annarino said he believes this unidentified man committed a similar offense about two weeks ago at the mall. They released a sketch of the suspect to the media.
Pamela’s abduction and murder were still being investigated a few months later on April 26, 1987, when a man was walking a piece of property for sale on top of Vance Gap Road, a location in between downtown Asheville and the mall area on Tunnel Road. There, he came across the remains of what appeared to be a young woman. The victim was identified as Beverly Sherman, the teenager who had disappeared after getting into a yellow Camaro in late January of 1987. She had been shot once in the right temple with a handgun.
The obituary that ran in the newspaper at the time said Beverly was a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and had lived in Buncombe County for the past 11 years. Other than that, there isn’t much known about Beverly other than she was charged with soliciting for the purpose of prostitution on August 14, 1986 in the Coxe Avenue part of town.
A year after both Pamela and Beverly were murdered, the Asheville Citizen Times reported that evidence from the FBI confirmed that both cases were linked. Capt. Will Annarino said, “We can now say without a doubt that the same person who killed Murray killed Sherman.” In the article, he would not elaborate on what the conclusive link in evidence was. He did say “New forensic technology which has been developed recently has made it possible to re-evaluate certain evidence in both cases, particularly Murray’s vehicle. In addition to the physical evidence, the method of operation for the killer seems to be the same for both slayings. Both women were taken to isolated dirt roads in wooded areas and then shot to death. A witness who had seen Beverly Sherman get into that yellow Camaro confirmed the driver of the car looked like the police sketch of the man seen with Pamela on the afternoon she was abducted and murdered. The man was described as a white male in his mid-30s with blondish hair.
If you follow the series of news reports that came out right after Pamela’s murder, you’ll see that the killer was likely visiting the mall in search of his next victim after Beverly Sherman. On Feb. 11, a woman reported a man had tried to kidnap her from the mall parking lot. On Feb. 13, another woman said a man followed her into a public restroom inside the mall and tried to peep at her over the stall. On Feb. 16, a man fondled his genitals in front of yet another woman. These are the only details shared, so I can’t expound on them any further, but the first two definitely give you the sense the killer was using the mall as his hunting ground and stalking potential victims. And then, for some reason, he was brazen enough to abduct someone in broad daylight.
On October 9, 1988, police detective Jon Kirkpatrick told the Asheville Citizen-Times, “I don’t know if the killer’s still in the area. No other victims of similar killings have been found so it might indicate that the killer is no longer there. However, we don’t know what triggered the killer. He might still be here and not have been triggered again.”
If you look at the victimology of the two known victims, they couldn’t have been more different. In fact, I am making a conscious effort to talk about both victims here, because there just isn’t a whole lot of information out there about Beverly Sherman. But she was someone’s child, and she was only 17, and she was clearly struggling in her life. She still did not deserve to be executed in the way that she was and left alone on a lonely mountain road.
It also makes me wonder if the killer left the area and has victims in other places. I hope that these two cases will be solved one day, with the help of forensic or DNA evidence. I believe it’s only a matter of time. If you have any information about the murders of Pamela Murray or Beverly Sherman, please contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 800-334-3000.