At 9:15 pm on April 3, 2017, 911 gets a call for a fire in an abandoned building in Columbus County, North Carolina. It’s very rural, the perfect place to hide a body. In that fire, firemen find a human head in the debris. Housefires do not dismember bodies. So they call the State Bureau of Investigation.
Nick Deming, SBI, has been a detective for ten years. This becomes his case.
Arms and legs are found scattered around the debris along with a second torso. Police canvas the neighborhood but there are no close neighbors. This is very rural. No one saw or heard anything.
Deming scans missing persons cases and comes across two women missing from Wilmington, NC since April 2. Eva Jo Jones and her daughter Tiffany Cartwright lived together and were reported missing by Pastor Blevins. Eva and Tiffany never missed church. When they didn’t show, the pastor and his wife went to check on them the next day. No answer. Very unlike them. They didn’t answer their phones either. And when the pastor and his wife went inside, it smelled heavily of disinfectant. So the pastor and his wife reported them missing.
Dental records confirm the body parts belong to Amy and Tiffany.
Eva was a 60 year old legal secretary. Tiffany was a 35 year old school custodian. Neither of them had enemies. But Eva’s other daughter Sara had recently moved to Ohio to escape her husband, Jeffrey Harmon, who she was divorcing. Jeff was fixated on Sara and wouldn’t let her go.
The pastor and his wife call Sara, getting her to drive to Wilmington so they can tell her in person. She tells them Tiffany has an ex-boyfriend, Ben Chapman. Ben is actually a nice guy. He has no criminal record.
The autopsy reveals that they could have died in a myriad of ways because the crime was so brutal. There’s blunt force trauma, dismemberment, decapitation, and they were tortured in multiple ways. Their deaths were horrific, in the top 10 of the most horrific murders Joe Kenda has heard of.
Police still have no crime scene yet. The burned building is a body dump. So they go to Eva and Tiffany’s apartment where they find Eva’s purse and phone. There is blood on the carpet. When they spray the apartment with luminol, it lights up with blood everywhere. The bathroom and tub are particularly bloody. There are hacksaw marks on the tub and there’s a new shower curtain. No forced entry means they let him in. They knew him.
Police subpoena Tiffany’s cell phone records. Eva’s phone last pinged in her apartment. Tiffany’s last pinged in Myrtle Beach, SC. Sara used to live in Myrtle Beach. Her husband, Jeffrey Harmon still lives there. They share two kids and Jeffrey wants Sara back. He becomes their prime suspect, even though he’s a scout leader and has no history of domestic violence.
Police speak to Jeffrey who claims he hasn’t seen Eva or Tiffany since Christmas. They didn’t want to get involved in the divorce. But the Pastor’s wife, Harriet Blevins, has a different story. Eva and Tiffany were afraid of Jeffrey. Eva told her he was evil.
Police return to Jeffrey’s house. He’s not there. Then at 2 am, Deming gets a phone call. South Carolina police inform him that Jeffrey Harmon killed himself with a gunshot. He was found fully clothed in the bathtub. They find the victims’ jewelry in his neighbor’s trash. He had multiple handguns and left a suicide note.
On March 31, Jeffrey purchases duct tape and drives to their apartment. He talks his way inside and kills Eva. He drags her to the tub and chops her up. Tiffany comes home. There are photos in Jeffrey’s phone of Tiffany tied up and duct-taped. He kidnaps her, takes her the 200 miles to Myrtle Beach, where he tortures her. Then he kills her and chops her up. He takes the body parts to the abandoned barn and sets it on fire. Then he returns to their apartment to clean up.
Bibliography
Homicide Hunter: American Detective, Season 4, Episode 6 Torso.
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