WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – The families of Martha Maxwell, Tera Tracy, Michael McIntyre, Beverly Ennis Moore and Kris Bryant have one thing in common. Someone took the life of their loved one in a violent crime. Their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters and brothers have waited years, even decades in some cases, to see someone held accountable through the criminal justice system. To this day, there is a missing piece of evidence that has eluded investigators in police departments and sheriff’s offices across the Cape Fear region, and kept them from solving these murders.
Martha Maxwell’s murder happened January 20, 1994, and remains one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in the state of North Carolina. Martha’s husband Johnny found her stabbed to death inside her home on Blue Street in Elizabethtown. Martha’s children believe the killer is someone Martha knew and was comfortable enough with to allow them into her house.
“She unlatched that screen door, she got ready to turn and that’s when he attacked her,” Mona Cromartie said as she described what she and her sisters believe happened in the living room of Martha’s home. “That’s why the vases and the flowers are knocked down. He attacked her and that’s when they struggled right here.”…