In 1995, after a 36-year-old Oregon woman was murdered while in town for business, her husband and father came to Charlotte to identify her body and begin making sense of a life cut short.
Before they flew home, one of their last visitors was a CMPD homicide investigator named Garry McFadden. He stopped by to return the victim’s wedding ring. As he reached out to say goodbye, the two men hugged him. “Thank you,” the husband told him. “We’ll never forget what you did for us.”
That is the McFadden Charlotte once knew and admired. A homicide detective remarkably effective at catching killers, and human enough to recognize that a closed case still leaves heartache. He kept a collection of notes from victims’ families to remind himself why he took the job…