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 an area that’s located between Beaverdam Road and the Blue Ridge Parkway, and has always been known as a popular place to watch the sunset because of its beautiful views. But an article in The Asheville Citizen-Times that ran at the time of the murders quoted a nearby local resident as saying the area had developed a reputation as a meeting place for drug dealers. Wesley’s pockets were pulled inside out, and his wallet was missing. There were no signs Bonnie had been sexually assaulted. The couple were parents to an 11 and 6-year-old who were staying with their grandparents while the Mahaffeys traveled to Asheville.
The Buncombe County Sheriff at the time, Thomas H. Morrissey, said eyewitnesses had spotted two vehicles in the area of the overlook between 7 and 9 p.m. on the night of the murder. One was a small red or brown Toyota-like pickup truck and the other was a grey or silver late 1970s Ford Grenda-style automobile. Witnesses also saw a “brushy-headed man” near the area around the time of the shootings. The blue Oldsmobile station wagon belonging to the Mahaffeys was discovered at the scene.
A Black Mountain resident named Roy Lee Fox was eventually arrested and charged with the murders in 1987. Local law enforcement believed he had come across the couple at Buzzard Rock, robbed and murdered them. He had previously been convicted of murdering an acquaintance named Morris Sams in 1986, and an elderly woman named Ovella Jean Lunsford in the late 1960s during a home robbery. But the case was largely circumstantial, and the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Fox died in 1992 while serving time in prison for other charges.
To date, the murder of Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey remains unsolved.