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What Happened to Peggy Carr in Wilmington, N.C.?
Peggy Carr grew up in Toledo, Ohio and subsequently moved to Wilmington, N.C., to be with her fiancé and plan their wedding. On April 18, 1998, 32-year-old Carr left home to run a few errands. She left a note for her fiancé on the refrigerator that read, “Be back soon.” But she would not be back soon, and it wasn’t until seven months later that her remains would be found. After she disappeared, her mother Penny Carr Britton, along with other family members, traveled to North Carolina to begin searching for their daughter. In an article that ran in the Wilmington Star News, Britton credited CUE, or the Community United Effort Center for…
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The Deaths at Trails Carolina
On Nov. 10, 2014, a 17-year-old young man named Alec Lansing went missing after he left a group from Trails Carolina, an organization in Western North Carolina that offers wilderness therapy for young adults and children. At the time, Lansing, who was from Atlanta, Georgia, had been camping with a group off NC 107 in the forest near Heady Mountain Church Road. A search for Lansing involved the U.S. Forest Service, the North Carolina Highway Patrol, the local sheriff’s office, the Glenville-Cashiers Rescue Squad, Jackson County Emergency Management and Cashiers Fire Department. Authorities had received reports that Lansing was seen at a gas station in Cashiers on the evening he went missing from…
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What Happened to the Dorchester Three in South Carolina?
On April 3, 1987, Linda McCord, age 33 and her friend Sarah Boyd, age 32 drove to a gospel concert in Waltersboro, South Carolina. They were traveling in a blue Lincoln owned by Linda’s husband and also took Sarah’s 2 ½-year-old daughter Kimberly along with them. Around midnight, Sarah’s husband returned home from work and was surprised that his wife and daughter weren’t back home yet, but he assumed they had stayed over at Linda’s house and would be back the next morning. When they didn’t return, he filed a missing persons report with the police. Linda’s husband found the car abandoned in Dorchester County two days later. Upon further examination, he discovered…
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Book Review of Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults
Several years ago, I watched an episode of the series “People Magazine Investigates: Cults” about a church in Spindale, North Carolina called “Word of Faith.” I was astonished at what I learned, and could see why the church is being considered called a cult by former members and other people who learn about it. The church was founded in 1979 by Sam and Jane Whaley. While Sam had formal training as a minister, Jane, who went to college to study education and eventually worked as a high school math teacher, did not. It didn’t take long before Jane declared herself a prophet and took over as the leader of the Word of Faith.…
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Year-End Review of My Writing, Podcasting, and Freelance Projects
Every year I try to take an inventory of my writing productivity and progress. It helps me stay motivated in reaching my writing goals and gives me ideas for future content. This past year has seen me writing daily, whether I’m working on copy, podcast scripts, book reviews, or revisions on my suspense/thriller novel. Yesterday I sat down and crunched some numbers to see what I accomplished in 2023, and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Here’s a look at what I worked on this past year: For my true crime podcast, Missing in the Carolinas: I made the decision this fall to go from a bi-weekly production schedule to a weekly…
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Review of “Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty”
“Blood on Their Hands” is a memoir that journalist and podcaster Mandy Matney wrote after four years of reporting on Alex Murdaugh, his family, and their numerous related crimes. It details how she first became aware of the Murdaughs after Mallory Beach went missing as a result of the boat crash on Archers Creek, the mysterious death of Stephen Smith that many people felt was connected to the Murdaughs, the death of the Murdaughs’ housekeeper, and finally, the deaths of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. With dogged reporting, Mandy Matney and a few other diligent South Carolina reporters would realize how everything led to the fact that Alex Murdaugh had been abusing narcotics and…
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The Unsolved Murder of Virginia Olson in North Carolina
The University of North Carolina at Asheville will always have a special place in my heart, because it was at that small college that I came into my own as a journalist. The small class sizes afforded me the ability to work closely with other students and talented professors who wanted me to succeed. For three years I worked on the campus newspaper, The Blue Banner, honing my reporting skills, interviewing students and administrators, working late nights at the office with only my jumbled notes and a miniature coffeepot to keep me company. I eventually became the features editor and then the news editor, assigning stories to reporters and perfecting my copy editing…
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Did Jeffrey MacDonald Murder His Family?
One of the most intriguing cases from North Carolina involves a man named Jeffrey MacDonald. MacDonald had attended Princeton University on a scholarship and then Northwestern University for medical school. He married his high school sweetheart, a woman named Collette Stevenson, before becoming a surgeon in the 6th Special Forces Group in the United States Army stationed at Fort Bragg in 1969. On the night of February 17, 1970, MacDonald, who was 26 at the time, awakened to a real-life nightmare. As he later told the military police, around 2 or 3 a.m., he woke up from where he was sleeping on the living room couch to the sound of screams. There, he…
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Ghosts of Davidson is a Tour Steeped in History
This article originally ran in Lake Norman CURRENTS. As a true crime fan and person who is intrigued by ghost tours, I love checking them out whenever I’m traveling. Several years ago, I got the chance to stay at the Omni Grove Park Inn, where the mysterious story of “The Pink Lady” is shared by the staff. I’ve also taken ghost tours in Asheville and in Charleston, S.C., where I’m pretty sure I captured some paranormal activity in one photo of a church. The LKN area is also home to rich history, so when I heard about Ghosts of Davidson, I reached out to the student who owns the tour company to learn…
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What Happened to Angela Hamby of Wilkesboro, N.C.?
What happened to a young woman named Angela Hamby, who went missing from Wilkesboro, North Carolina on October 29, 1982, remains a mystery. By all accounts, Angela was a homebody. She had graduated from West Wilkes High School in 1980, and was living at home with her parents and working at a job in data processing at the local NCNB Bank. She was also enrolled at Wilkes Community College, with the hopes of eventually transferring to Appalachian State University. On the day she went missing, Angela had errands planned for the morning, and then she and her mother and sister were going to drive to nearby Elkin to do some shopping. She left…
