• Mystery,  True Crime

    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…

  • True Crime

    The 1995 Shooting at the University of North Carolina

    On Jan. 26, 1995, around 2 p.m., twenty-six-year-old University of North Carolina law student Wendell Williamson walked down Henderson Street near campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., carrying a semi-automatic rifle and wearing a camouflage jacket. He opened fire, killing 42-year-old restaurant worker Ralph Walker near his apartment. He continued walking, shooting at bystanders. Twenty-year-old UNC student and lacrosse player Kevin Reichardt was riding his bicycle in front of the Phi Mu sorority house, and he was killed instantly when Williamson shot him. Williamson then shot at police officer Demetrise Stephenson, who was driving by in her police cruiser. Injured, she crashed her patrol car into a curb. Police officers on Henderson Street began…

  • Mystery,  True Crime

    What Happened to Jeremy Grice from Aiken, South Carolina?

    On November 22, 1984, a four-year-old little boy vanished in the rain from his parents’ home. Jeremy Grice lived with his mother and step-father, Donna and Nick Arrington, and his 10-month-old sister Christy. His step-father put Jeremy to bed the night before while his mom worked second shift at a local manufacturing plant that made thermostats. She arrived home from her shift around 1 a.m. and went to sleep. Her husband Nick got up around 7 a.m. to go to work. Around 10 a.m., Jeremy’s infant sister woke her mother up. Donna was surprised her son hadn’t woken her up already by that time. She searched their mobile home and the bedroom Jeremy…

  • True Crime

    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…

  • True Crime

    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…

  • True Crime

    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…

  • Creative Writing,  podcasts,  True Crime,  writing inspiration

    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…

  • True Crime

    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…

  • True Crime

    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…

  • True Crime

    The Craft of Writing on the Strange and Sinister

    In addition to writing about true crime here, I’ve also shared my story of honing the craft over at WOW! Women on Writing. Here are a just a few of the posts I’ve written on the topic, and it’s fun to see my progression go from just a spark to a fully-developed project or idea. How to Write Compelling True Crime. In this post I share how I came up with the idea to start up Missing in the Carolinas, and how it evolved from being just a missing persons podcast to one that mixes in solved cases and reviews of other true crime shows and books. I also used this content to…