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The Murder of Sandra Coulthard
On July 9, 1988, 30-year-old High Point, North Carolina resident Sandra Coulthard passed away at Duke University Medical Center. She’d been sick for about six months with vomiting, diarrhea, vomiting, and numbness of her feet and fingers. Doctors had diagnosed her with Guillain-Barre syndrome and had been treating her for it, but her symptoms never improved. Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that causes a person’s immune system to attack their nervous system. It often begins suddenly and as symptoms increase, can cause weakness and paralysis. While there is no cure for Guillain-Barre, treatments such as plasma exchange and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy can be administered for relief of symptoms. Sandy, a married…
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Updates on the Writing Life
I don’t want to discuss how this is probably the last summer we’ll have both of our young adults at home (they are entering their sophomore and senior years of college). Our time with them is winding down, and while I’m sad, I’m also grateful for their desire to live out in the world on their own and reach for their personal and professional goals while in college. I can’t wait to hear about what adventures lie ahead for them in the coming school year! I’m continuing to write, podcast, read books, exercise, immerse myself in foreign language, spend time with my husband, and anything else I can think to do to keep…
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Create Vivid Settings In Your Writing This Summer
I often struggle to find my writing groove in the summer. This past year, I officially became an “empty nester” with two kids away at college from August through May. Their absence has given me more time to write. When the kids were younger, I had a hard time balancing my summer schedule with pool time, enrichment activities, and work. I’ve been freelancing or working remote for most of my career, so this is nothing new. But among the juggling, I embrace the opportunities for new ideas I always find during my summer breaks and travels. Last summer, we rented a home in the Boone/Blowing Rock area of North Carolina to help my…
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The Disappearance of Tyler Doyle from South Carolina
On January 26 of 2023, 22-year-old South Carolina resident Tyler Doyle went duck hunting off the coast of North Myrtle Beach with a friend in a 16-foot jon boat and has been missing ever since. It was a rough day on the water and there was a small craft advisory out that afternoon. He dropped his friend off at the north jetty on the Intracoastal Waterway and traveled further out in the boat to put out some duck decoys, staying in contact by phone. The friend lost sight of Doyle as he went around the south jetty. Not long after, Doyle called the friend to say the boat was having mechanical issues and…
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Celebrating Five Years of Podcasting!
When I started my true crime podcast Missing in the Carolinas five years ago, I thought I would be focusing solely on missing persons cases in North and South Carolina. My creative muse had other ideas. Little did my muse know that scanning old newspaper archives would lead me to intriguing crimes from the past (many with no digital footprints) and inspire me to broaden the context of my storytelling. I’m not going to lie–it’s been a labor of love. I don’t have a team, other than a few family members (you know who you are!) and I don’t make a profit off the podcast. I believe that I could make money off…
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Who Murdered Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey in Asheville, N.C.?
In 1986, a free vacation getaway turned into a nightmare for an Ohio couple visiting Asheville, North Carolina. Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey, ages 33 and 29, respectively, had traveled to the area from Hanover Township, Ohio, after winning a three-day trip to Asheville through Wesley’s job. The couple had been staying at a nearby hotel, the Great Smokies Hilton, and a member of the maid service saw them come out of their room as they left for a day of sightseeing on May 18, 1986. Their bodies were found early the next morning by a group of teenage boys. They had both been shot multiple times with a .38-caliber handgun. Buzzard Rock is…
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Who Murdered Pamela Mitchell Hoy?
On July 25, 1990, 41-year-old Pamela Mitchell Hoy had dinner with her husband Fred Hoy at a Burlington restaurant, and then went home and packed her gray Dodge van with her clothes and grooming tables, exercise runs, and crates. Pam raised and showed Italian greyhounds and was preparing for a trip that would take her to South Carolina the next day to a competition. She had plans to take her 11-year-old daughter on that trip. She went back inside the house to give her oldest daughter a magazine before leaving. She was expected at her parents’ home later that evening around 10:30 p.m., but never arrived. Pam Hoy grew up in the Greensboro…
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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…
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When Nancy Cooper Went Missing in Cary, N.C.
October is the designated month for bringing awareness to Domestic Violence, but it is a topic I believe we should be talking about year round, as it still remains a prevalent issue in our society. I’ve discussed several cases tied to domestic violence in this podcast, including Patty Jo Pulley from Episode 45, Across State Lines, Maryann and Elaine Boczkowski in Episode 48, Two Wives, Two Deaths, and Shelby Wilkie from Episode 85. Many other missing persons cases likely have ties to domestic violence but just don’t have the solid evidence yet to back that up. On July 12, 2008, 34-year-old Nancy Cooper from Cary, N.C., went missing while out on a run.…
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The Drowning Death of Brenda Anderson in South Carolina
On the afternoon of June 19, 1965, a little girl playing on the shore of Folly Beach, South Carolina came across the deceased body of a woman wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Because there were no personal belongings found on the beach, authorities began questioning nearby residents to see if anyone could identify the young woman. When 24-year-old John Paul Anderson, a Polaris Submarine crewman from Massachusetts, returned home from running errands early that evening, he was unable to locate his wife, 20-year-old Brenda Lee Minton Anderson, who lived with him on Folly Beach. That’s when neighbors told him about the woman who had been found on the beach and he was able…