Post by Joanna on May 27, 2014 16:20:37 GMT -5
1983 Halifax Murder of Pregnant Woman Remains Unsolved
Susan Shearin Clary was 8 months pregnant when she was murdered in her home in Halifax County, North Carolina, on Monday, May 16, 1983. To this day, no one has been arrested or charged in her death, but investigators are breathing new life into the case.
The crime still haunts the small town of Weldon, and Clary’s family is desperate for answers. “The uselessness of it, the waste of two lives, it makes you angry,” said Michael Shearin, the dead woman’s brother. “It makes you hurt. It makes you say, ‘Why?’”
Tim Clary, Susan’s husband, told investigators his 20-year-old wife was still asleep when he left home early that morning to see his father.
But just a few hours later when Mrs. Clary hadn’t arrived at Weldon Town Hall, where she worked in the tax collector’s office, co-workers became concerned and called her father, who went to check on his daughter. “He went up there. Of course, the back door was open, and he went in,” Maurice Shearin, Susan’s mother, said. “He found her lying on the bed, stark naked, with a bra wrapped around her neck. ... When I got there, they were bringing her out of the house, and her hand fell out from under the cover.”
Mrs. Cleary died from asphyxiation and although she was found with a bra around her neck, it wasn’t used to kill her, authorities said. Two guns were found in the bedroom and one of them was right next to her body. Neither had been fired, and neither yielded any fingerprints, an indication they had been wiped clean. “If somebody spontaneously left those in those awkward positions, you would think that they wouldn’t have wiped them clean,” observed Maj. Bruce Temple of the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office.
Temple took over as lead investigator on the case when it was reopened in 2008. He said the placement of the guns was just one of several strange things at the crime scene, adding that it it looked as though whomever killed Clary wanted the scene to look like a typical home break-in.
“[The original investigators] were never able to determine that anything at all was taken,” Temple said. “[That’s] very unusual. We would say that’s consistent with staging a crime scene.” Investigators ruled out robbery and sexual assault as motives for the crime, and there were no signs of forced entry, he added.
Over the years, the case has been handed down from investigator to investigator, but one theory persists: “This may have been something that happened spontaneously that resulted in her death,” Temple admitted. “It may not have been an intended homicide.”
He revealed that many suspects have been eliminated over the years, but some are still on his radar. He said he hopes someone will come forward with the information he needs to make an arrest. “We hope that after all these years, that this case will touch the heart of somebody, and they’re going to be inclined to tell us something now. We hope that after all these years this case will touch the heart of somebody, and they’re going to be inclined to tell us something,” Temple said.
Anyone with information about the murder of Susan Shearin Clary in Halifax County can call NC Wanted, toll free, at 1-866-439-2683 to report an anonymous tip.
Sources: WRAL News.
