Shout out to Anne for this case!
This week, our case takes place in 1993 in Windsor, North Carolina.
At 409 West Granville Street stood a grocery store, called Be-Lo, which was part of a regional chain of grocery stores based in Virginia Beach. When the store opened in July 1990, it became the local hub for residents to go and chat as they shopped.
About 20 miles south of Windsor, in Bear Grass, is Cherry’s Cupboard, which served hot food and was a locally owned convenience store. On May 30, 1993, owner Jerry Cherry was working with his only employee, Audrey Leggett.
Leggett was a single mother to three, her husband passing away a couple years prior. Cherry left to run some errands, and 65-year-old Leggett stayed to man the store. Her daughter called the store to ask a question about a recipe she was making, and Leggett said, “Hold on a minute.” The line clicked and the call ended.
A short time later, a customer entered to find the store unattended. Leggett was eventually found in the cooler of the building, having been murdered, shot multiple times by a .22 caliber weapon. About $200 dollars was missing from the register.
There were no cameras, no witnesses, and no real evidence pointing to anyone possibly being the murderer. That wasn’t the end of the tragedy that would affect this area of rural North Carolina.
On June 6, 1993, Grover Lee Cecil, known as “Bud,” got ready for work. The 47-year-old man left his family of wife and five children from his house in Ayden and drove the hour it would take to get to Be-Lo. He had been the manager there for about eight months.
That night – a Sunday on Memorial Day weekend – the store was scheduled to close at 6 PM, but there was a cleaning crew scheduled to come and strip and wax the floors.
Joy Reason was 36 and a single mother to two, but after finding herself divorced, was excited to have met someone with plans to marry a few months later. She was looking forward to an early closing time to spend the rest of the evening with her family.
That day, business was slow but steady. The employees began their daily cleaning tasks when not helping customers. The cleaning crew consisting of four men – Johnnie Rankins Jr, Sylvester Welch Jr, and brothers Jasper and Thomas Hardy – arrived at Be-Lo.
Amidst the patrons parked in the lot of the store was a two-door coupe with two occupants. A man exited the passenger side and wandered inside, then found a hiding place inside the store and waited.
The cleaning crew arrived right around 6 PM, while Cecil and Reason were finishing up helping the last few customers and began setting up their tools. When the last customer left, Cecil locked the front door while Reason tidied up the register area in preparation to leave.
As the cleaning crew began working, Cecil walked through the store, leaving Reason at the front. The unknown man emerged from his hiding place, pointing his gun at her. He did nothing to conceal his identity and he appeared to be calm and focused.
The man told her to summon her manager, which she did. Cecil came to the front, and the offender pressed his gun to his back, forcing him to the cash office. Cecil opened the safe and emptied the $3,000 in cash and money orders into a canvas bag.
From there, the suspect began walking the two employees toward the back of the store. Jasper Hardy was alone when he encountered the three of them and recalled the staff having strange expressions.
As they came closer, Jasper noticed the man holding a gun on the manager, and Cecil calmly told him, “Do what he says, he means business.”
The suspect moves them down the pet supplies aisle and gathers a handful of leashes, then approached two more members of the cleaning crew and held them hostage as well. The man knew there was one more of the cleaning staff around and had them summon him to join them.
The suspect told the group that he was a former police officer who’d been fired from his department, and that he had nothing left to lose.
The gunman also had a roll of duct tape, and along with the leashes, had the group bind one another. He bound the last hostage himself. He said, “I don’t want to have to kill anybody.”
The staff, at this point, believed that the man would take his meager money and leave them. However, despite his words affirming that he didn’t want to kill them, they were not safe.
The gunman ordered the hostages onto the floor, piling them one on top of the other, in three stacks of two people each. Cecil, Reason, and Rankins were at the tops of the piles.
The man didn’t say anything for a time, then finally said, “I hope God forgives me for what I’m about to do.” Then, he pulled the trigger on the gun, firing into one of the stacks. Three shots rang out, one into each stack of people. He pulled the trigger a fourth time, but it simply clicked.
He separated the stacks, placing everyone face–down in the pools of blood forming, and noticed that two people were uninjured – Thomas and Jasper Hardy. They remained still, initially thinking that the man was leaving.
However, he came back with a knife from the meat cutting department. He approached the men and asked if they would identify him to the police.
Thomas Hardy spoke first, saying that they wouldn’t. The man became enraged and screamed that he didn’t believe him. He slashed Thomas’ throat, then stabbed him hard enough to break the knife handle, leaving the blade embedded into his back.
His brother Jasper listened to the exchange but couldn’t see it. The man turned his attention to him and asked the same question.
Jasper said, “No, man, I don’t know you.”
The gunman paused and finally said, “Okay, big man, I’ll let you live.”
Then, the stranger turned, threw the broken knife handle in with his bag of money, and took Cecil’s car keys off his body. As simple as that, he left.
Tony Welch managed to free himself once the duct tape became so saturated with blood that it became loose. He left a bloody trail behind him as he crawled his way to the front of the store and used the phone there to call for help.
When Windsor police arrived, they found the store locked, cleaning supplies still sitting on the ground next to the entrance. They tried to call the store, but no one answered, and they eventually gained entry to the building.
Windsor Chief of Police Freddie Brown said, “Everything was deathly quiet. There was nothing in the store other than the hum of the cooler compressors in the background.”
Cecil and Reason, both shot in the head, and Rankins, shot in the back, were pronounced dead on scene. Welch and Thomas Hardy were in critical condition, and were transported to Pitt Memorial Hospital, 42 miles away in Greenville. They both survived, as did Jasper Hardy, who was not physically injured.
Law enforcement found cartridge casings nearby and determined forensically that they came from the same gun. They also found shoe prints that were eliminated as those of first responders, and the empty cash safe. There was one non-victim fingerprint found on the duct tape, as well as unknown DNA that likely came from a cut when the man attacked Thomas Hardy with the knife.
Later on, a white sedan was seen with two occupants speeding and driving erratically. It headed to the US-17 Bypass and turned northbound onto the highway. Two different witnesses called to report the driver, and police suspected that the passenger may have been the Be-Lo killer.
Survivors from the store described the attacker as a Black male with medium complexion, around 30-35 years old. He had a slender, solid build, military-style haircut, light brown eyes, and a narrow nose bridge as if he’d sustained an injury there.
The police initially received many leads, but none panned out. Other law enforcement agencies from different states provided lists of recently terminated employees, but there was not a match.
However, some questioned the validity of him being a recently fired police officer, especially as he only seemed to bring the one magazine for his gun and many times, police or military personnel have more than one magazine. No one in the surrounding businesses heard gunshots that night, so there were no witnesses in the immediate vicinity.
A police sketch was created and postered in the area, and in the months following the murders, there was a marked uptick of over 130 people signing up for firearms classes with the Bertie County Sheriff’s Department.
Five days after the attack, the Be-Lo reopened, but business struggled due to the citizens associating the store with the events of June 6. By the end of July, the store was permanently closed and boarded up.
The authorities offered a reward, which others then donated to, and it grew to $30,000. However, no insight led to the capture of a suspect. And while the store had surveillance equipment, it wasn’t functioning at the time, so it was also useless.
The fingerprints and DNA led nowhere, and the cartridge casings couldn’t be linked to any other crimes. Even the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit studied the case and created a profile. They believed that the murderer had likely served time in prison for a serious felony, but that while he was in prison, he would have been a model prisoner who was cooperative and non-confrontational. They also stated he may have fallen in with a religious group while there.
The profile also pointed to him being charismatic, someone who would be able to manipulate people easily. He was composed during most of the incident, which led them to believe that this was not his first crime, and in fact, served to boost his confidence. They also said that he likely confided in someone, probably a woman, who was close to him.
Even a company based in Texas offered an interesting proposal – they wanted to see if a satellite was orbiting above Windsor on the night of the attacks, and if one was, could it have seen the suspect vehicle in the parking lot? The town of Windsor paid a $300 fee to determine if there was a satellite but found, to their disappointment, that there was not one.
A few months after the attack, it was September 19, 1993. At a North Raleigh Food Lion, Kris Ray arrived to see her husband, John, who worked there. However, he didn’t come outside, and when she knocked, he didn’t answer. She then drove to the rear of the store where there was a delivery buzzer, but still received no response.
She called 911, and the police arrived. He looked through the store’s windows and saw that several cash registers had their tills scattered on the floor, and that the safe had its door ajar.
The officer waited for backup, along with the store manager, and they entered the building. They first found employee Michael Truelove near the rear of the store, then John Ray inside the meat locker. Both had been shot to death.
There was about $2300 missing from the store, and no signs of forced entry, meaning that, like the Be-Lo murders, the assailant must have hidden inside the store before closing.
Five days after the murders, police arrested brothers 23-year-old Robert and 25-year-old Elmer Ray McNeill. Witnesses stated that Elmer Ray had planned to rob a different Food Lion back in May, which he had worked at, at the time. He was then transferred to the new location where the murders took place.
Since there was not enough evidence at the time to support them being the murderers, they were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. However, a friend had supplied the police with additional evidence, which included ballistic evidence against Elmer. Even his brother testified that he had confided in him, and he was sentenced to death. He served 16 years on death row before he was re-sentenced to life in prison.
Although there were similarities in the two cases, one of the main discrepancies is that the McNeill brothers were white, which goes against survivor witness reports.
Another incident also happened at the Hertford Be-Lo 35 miles away, though the perpetrator wore a mask. He robbed the store, tied the employees with duct tape and leashes, but didn’t attempt to harm any of them. And while witnesses described him as a Black male, he had a stocky build and was taller than the Windsor killer.
In June 1994, about a year after the attack, the town held a memorial for the victims in the parking lot of the Be-Lo. Over 200 people came to show support, though the survivors opted not to appear.
As for the current location of the Be-Lo market, it has been repurposed by Martin Community College, as an outreach campus for Bertie students. The $30,000 reward is still being offered. If you have any information, please contact the Windsor Police Department at 252-794-3111 or the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 800-334-3000.
Sources:
https://www.witn.com/2023/06/06/today-marks-30-years-since-be-lo-murders/
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1994/940607/06070332.htm
Bohn, Jeb (2021). Closing Time. Independently Published.
https://ncsbi.gov/Divisions/Cold-Case-Investigation-Team/Unsolved-Homicides/Be-Lo-Murders-(1)
This week, we will look at the missing person case of Aidan Jerome Clune, age 19, at the time of his disappearance.
Clune was last seen by friends and family on April 27, 2022. He had traveled from California to Utah on April 26, 2022, then drove to Nevada immediately to check into a hotel in Wells.
He spoke with his mother Amy over the phone, early in the morning. She believed he may have been suffering from a mental health episode and he would not tell her his location. He checked out of the hotel at 6:23 that morning.
Traveling down US Highway 93, Clune parked his red 2007 Nissan Frontier on the shoulder of the road near mile marker 23. At 8:50 AM, a Nevada State Trooper found the vehicle abandoned.
Investigators stated that the passenger side door was open. His wallet, clothes, laptop, and other belongings were in the passenger seat. They began the search on April 28, finding tracks leaving the area where they found his truck.
They were able to track him for more than 10 miles into the wilderness, until the North end of the Cherry Creek Mountain Range. Sometimes, the tracks were made with his bare feet as he had evidently taken off his shoes sometimes. Snow prevented further searches.
Bill Dohse, the founder of Find 911, used search dogs and confirmed a possibility of Clune making it out of the mountains. They also used drones and artificial intelligence to search the area.
In Salt Lake City, a woman claimed to have seen Clune boarding a downtown train. She took a picture of him, but it was blurry so it could not be confirmed.
On June 13, 2024, Clune’s shoes were located about 10 feet apart from one another, in an area of the Cherry Creek Range. It had been previously searched, but the area was rugged and vast, including limited sight ranges due to how rocky it is.
On June 14, volunteers along with law enforcement executed a grid search around the area where the shoes were found. However, due to soaring temperatures and the terrain, nothing was found, and the search ended.
The search efforts did reveal bone remains in the area, but they were determined to be animal and not human. Another search has been planned, but no date has been released for that.
Clune is white, about 5’8” tall, 125 pounds, with brown eyes and hair. He was last seen wearing a black NorthFace jacket, a black “Gucci” belt, jeans of unknown color, black Nike high-top shoes, and possibly wore a heart-shaped pink quartz necklace along with a small earring.
He has medium-length hair that is longer in the front and shorter in the back, and it may be dyed black. He has a large tattoo on his torso depicting a smiley face with ants for eyes and a centipede for the mouth. There is a yellow and green “Oakland A’s” logo tattoo on his ankle. He has some body hair on his mid-chest and calves, as well as what is described as “scraggly” hair on his chin and upper lip.
If you have any information pertaining to Aidan Jerome Clune, please contact the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department at 707-565-2569, ask for the Missing Persons Unit, and provide case number SD220427001.
Murderosity 
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