Family still waiting on murder trial

A year ago, Shelby Police Lt. Tammy Endicott called Gladys Brown and her two daughters to the police department. Endicott sat the women at a table and told them officers were arresting a man in the 1966 killing of Brown’s daughter, 11-year-old Brenda Sue.

Brown and Brenda Sue’s sisters had waited four decades to hear those words.

Hours later, the three women stood with their arms locked together outside the entrance of the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office. They watched in silence as a Shelby police car rolled into the parking lot. Endicott stepped out of the car and led an old man in a gray sweat suit and handcuffs toward the jail. A reporter asked the man if he had killed Brenda Sue.

The man replied, �No! Lord no!� as the doors closed.

It’s been a year and the Brown family is waiting for a trial.

At church or when they run into a friend at Wal-Mart, they are often asked, �When is the trial?�

�Sometimes they’ll call me on the phone and ask when is it going to happen,� Gladys said. �I say I’m just waiting on the Lord because I don’t know anything about it. It seems like we’ve been waiting so long.�

The man arrested, Thurman �Soupy� Price, 78, was released from jail on a $50,000 secured bond four days after his arrest.

No date for a trial has been set.

And there may never be a trial.

Case hinges on a piece of evidence, but what is that evidence?

District Attorney Rick Shaffer did not return phone calls to his office. He did tell a Star reporter that no date has been set for a trial.

Last December, Shaffer said the case hinges on whether a piece of evidence can be admitted to the trial. He would not say what the evidence is. The next step in the case is an evidentiary hearing. During those hearings, a judge decides to admit, exclude or limit evidence heard in the case. No date has been set for that hearing either.

Shaffer has said that a higher priority is not given to this case just because it is 40 years old.

David Teddy, Price’s attorney, declined to talk about the case. He said Price continues to live in Shelby.

On July 27, 1966, rescue workers found Brenda Sue’s body in a thicket in the woods off South Lafayette Street. Physical evidence, including the rock police said was used to beat her to death and Brenda Sue’s dress found near her nude, lifeless body, are missing.

A confession

A Cleveland County woman came to police after reading The Star’s series on Brenda Sue’s cold case, published in the spring of 2006. The woman said that before her grandfather’s death in 2002, he told her that he and Price had killed Brenda Sue. The grandfather, Earl Mickey Parker, had described to his granddaughter holding Brenda Sue’s legs or shoes to keep her down during the killing, according to court records.

In November 1954, Price and Parker were indicted for the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Patterson Springs. Price was 25 and Parker was 26. In January 1955, both men pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit rape. Neither man served a jail sentence. According to court records, the two men were ordered to keep a job, pay the court $240 and not drink alcohol.

In May 2007, SBI agents and Shelby police exhumed Parker’s body from Sunset Cemetery in Shelby to get a palm print from it. Parker’s body had been buried for about five years.

If the palm print matches a bloody print found on Brenda Sue’s shoe, it would help corroborate Parker’s confession to his granddaughter.

Shelby police and Shaffer have not released any information about the results of the palm print testing.

You can reach Megan Ward at (704) 869-1829

The arrest and the aftermath:

Feb. 12, 2007: Shelby Police arrest Thurman Price, 78, on a first-degree murder charge

Feb. 16, 2007: Price is released from jail on a $50,000 bond.

May 10, 2007: The body of Earl Mickey Parker is exhumed

Nov. 11, 2007: The Brenda Sue Brown story goes national with a television show called "Captured" on the Oxygen Network

These charts show the number of murder cases disposed of from July 1 to June 30 of each year to the following year and the median length of time it took to complete the cases. The number of murder cases doesn’t reflect the number of killings that year. Some years reflect previous murder cases as well.

How we did this report:

We gathered data from the Administrative Office of the Courts in Raleigh, which collects this information from all over the state. We looked at the median amount of time it took to reach a final outcome in murder cases.

We didn’t look at the average amount of time a case takes because a few extreme cases would change the numbers drastically. We wanted to see how long it usually takes.

To put it simply, with a median, we see half the cases move faster and half move slower. The median gives us a look at what happens in the middle.

Number of murder cases disposed of, median age:

Cleveland County

2001-2002

13 cases

0.4 years

2002-2003

6 cases

1.5 years

2003-2004

14 cases

1.9 years

2004-2005

27 cases

1.1 years

2005-2006

15 cases

1.8 years

2006-2007

6 cases

1.6 years

Gaston County

2001-2002

26 cases

2.1 years

2002-2003

18 cases

1.2 years

2003-2004

17 cases

1.6 years

2004-2005

16 cases

1.1 years

2005-2006

7 cases

1.8 years

2006-2007

22 cases

2.5 years

Lincoln County

2001-2002

9 cases

1.1 years

2002-2003

3 cases

1.2 years

2003-2004

7 cases

3.4 years

2004-2005

1 case

0.9 years

2005-2006

1 case

3.8 years

2006-2007

0 cases

Statewide

2001-2002

646 cases

1 year

2002-2003

604 cases

1 year

2003-2004

647 cases

1.1 years

2004-2005

641 cases

1.2 years

2005-2006

618 cases

1.3 years

2006-2007

618 cases

1.4 years

Compiled by Megan Ward