This is my third and final post on the Superbike quadruple homicides that took place in Chesnee, South Carolina in 2003. I will be discussing persons-on-interest and how the evidence in the murders supports taking a stronger look at some of them and doesn't support overfocusing on certain persons to the exclusion of better suspects.
Before I begin this discussion of what I read on the Internet concerning certain persons-of-interest, I want to state that nothing I am putting forth here is any accusation of guilt; no one has been proven to have committed these crimes and they are innocent in the eyes of the law until proven otherwise in a court of law. However, if certain people behaved in certain ways and said certain things that are concerning, then it is not unreasonable to expect that the investigators from the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Department should have properly and thoroughly investigated these persons, which, from what I read on the Internet, they did not.
There are three main persons-of-interest in the Superbike murders. As in all crimes, the last person to see the victims alive, the first person to see them dead, and anyone who might have had access to the scene in between those times are the persons-of-interest and each needs to be investigated and eliminated.
I want to start with the least likely person-of-interest in these crimes which is the man in the composite the Sheriff's Department has been dogging for almost nine years, claiming straight out that he is involved in the homicides. First of all, from everything I read on the Internet, there is not one shred of evidence linking this unknown man, this customer who was not the last person in the business before the homicides, to the crimes. There is no unknown DNA or fingerprints that can be linked to anyone, so no match is ever going to pop up in CODIS linking some felon to the Superbike murders. Unless this man one day is arrested for the commission of another crime and a firearm is found on his person or in his car or apartment that matches the ballistics in these homicides, then this avenue is pretty much worthless. The only other possibility is that someone rats him out, a warrant is gotten, and the detectives find the gun at his residence. Could it happen? Sure. Not likely, but I am all for a miracle.
Problem is, the man in the composite is the least likely of the three persons-of-interest to have committed the crime. Why? First of all, it is blatantly stupid and hard to believe that this man would go to the business, spend a relatively long time chatting with the people there, sit on a motorcycle, and let all the other customers see his face if he were planning to blow everyone away that day. Furthermore, why would he leave the business and come back to kill everyone? Why not hang around until there were no customers were there or just kill a customer or two if you are psychopathic enough to blow away the others? And since you have let someone see your face, the customer who inspired the composite, why not just kill that man so you don't have a witness left behind to identify you? I find the unknown customer in the composite a red herring of a lead that, yes, should have been followed up but he would not be my top choice of focus.
Let's back up to the last person who was in the business before the murders went down. As I read on the Internet, he was a reasonable person-of-interest and he has not been entirely eliminated. The best reason to look at him was the simple fact he was there right before it all went down and, if he killed everyone and drove off, there would be no witnesses to say it was him. However, his credit card was swiped right before he left, so he would have to be a blazing idiot or extremely angry. Now, the first he was not from what I have read on the Internet; the second was possible. He was a bit annoyed with the shop that day. And, because of this, he needed to be eliminated as a suspect. As I read on the Internet, he certainly had firearms and he refused to take a polygraph. However, it seems, he might have an excellent alibi. As I read on the Internet, his truck was seen going by a convenience store in a video with a time stamp on it that was only two minutes after the last shot was fired. That shot was made at 2:52 pm and his truck was seen going by at 2:54 pm. Now, the drive from the shop to the store is 4.2 miles and supposedly takes eleven minutes according to Google. I test drove that road in a sports car and I was able to cut the time in half.
I was unable to learn from the stuff I read on the Internet whether the detectives had double-checked the accuracy of the clock associated with the video; if the time was off by a few minutes, this could disqualify the alibi of the last customer. However, the time would have to be quite a bit off because it took me around five minutes to drive like a hellion in a small sports car and I had to time leaving the parking lot just before I saw a car coming, so I could pull out in front of it and hope to get a clear road all the way to the store with no slow boat in front of me or anyone pulling on to the road and ruining my speedy run. In fact, it took me a dozen runs to get lucky enough to have no traffic impede me and get my speed down to five minutes. The last customer/person-of-interest was driving an old truck which was pulling a motorcycle, so unless the clock was seriously off (by at least five or six minutes), there is no way he could have made it down the road that quickly. However, the clock should still have been checked so that this man could have been solidly eliminated as a suspect and he wasn't.
Although this would be my second-in-line person-of-interest, I think his alibi could hold, the credit card swipe with his name makes it rather unlikely that he would then commit the homicides, and, although he was a bit annoyed, there is nothing in particular that makes me think he had enough motive to kill everyone there, starting with Beverly Guy.
Now, to my Number One person-of-interest, Noel Lee. Again, I will state that I have no proof from what I read on the Internet that there is evidence to arrest and convict this man. He is only a person-of-interest to me and, in the eyes of the Sheriff's Department, not a person-of-interest at all. How this can be mystifies me. Even if he is innocent of the crime, he should have been investigated and eliminated because he was, as I read on the Internet and you can actually read this on the Internet and even see him say so in Geraldo's video, that he was the one to discover the bodies and make the 911 call. The only reason I mention his name here is because he willingly did so with his appearance on television which means he was not attempting to keep his identity a secret.
The first reason Noel Lee must be a person-of-interest is because he was the one to discover the bodies. As we have seen in many crimes, often the perpetrator shows up on the scene to "find the bodies" because that way. he can have an excuse for being seen there in case he was indeed seen there (or his vehicle was seen there or in the area) and, if he is worried his fingerprints are there or he has blood on his clothing, he can say he touched things when he arrived or he touched the bodies in an attempt to check on their condition or do CPR. To be clear, from what I read on the Internet, Noel Lee, who discovered the bodies, did not have blood on his person or clothing and he did not touch the bodies. He only touched the phone in the business and there is no information available as to whether his fingerprints were found anywhere (supposedly only the fingerprints of the victims were found which is a bit odd considering this is a place full of customers). However, it is unlikely the killer touched anything anyway as this all went down very quickly. The only places he might have touched would have been the outside door and the swinging doors between the front showroom and the back work area. He may have been wearing gloves.
The second reason Noel Lee should be a person-of-interest is because he has no alibi that I know of (from what I read on the Internet). He phoned the business from his home phone and spoke to Beverly Guy about picking up some tickets. As I read on the Internet, that call was placed at 2:25 pm. The shootings took place around 2:50 pm with the last shot being fired at 2:52 pm. Lee placed the 911 call at 3:12.
Noel Lee's home is 11.4 miles from the shop. Again, Google states a rather slow drive with nearly thirty minutes required. Considering I halved the drive to the convenience store in my sports car, I find it highly likely Lee could drive the distance to the shop in his BMW in half that time or less considering he states, as I read on the Internet, that there were no other cars at all on the road on his way to the shop. If he left the house directly after hanging up the phone, he could have been in the store by the time the shootings went down.
From what I read on the Internet, Noel Lee's story changes from his first to his second interview and he says a number of things which are rather peculiar and raise red flags; this is another reason he should have been looked at more closely.
As I read on the Internet:
In his first interview he states: He tells Beverly Guy he is on his way to pick up the tickets, arrives at the store, and thinks his friends are playing a joke on him by lying in blood on the sidewalk in front of the store; then he stated, "I’m calling 911 and immediately went to the phone inside the
front show room on the wall and called 911. She asked me if they was anybody
down and I told her I see his mom down in the back showroom and she said is
there anybody else down? I said I don’t know. I’m not walking into the back of
this place. She said well go back outside and wait on 911 to arrive. So I
walked back out front and waited on you guys to get here." He also states he hadn't been around the business within the last two weeks.
In his second interview, two years later, he states: " For some strange reason, I decided to take a shower instead
of just throwing my clothes on and going up there." And he is talking to his girlfriend the entire time while he is driving. In fact, she tells him not to call 911 from across the street (or to use his cell phone) but tells him to go inside the business (where the killer might still be) to make the phone call. He claims she told him that "if you leave and somebody sees you leave, they are going to think you did it." So he steps over his friend's body that is blocking the door and goes in to make the 911 call. This time he claims he said something totally different to the operator, "I said I need to go see if the fourth person is here because
they were normally four people here and she said do not go into that back room because you do not
know who else is there." He also states he was at the business the previous weekend.
From what I read on the Internet, Lee states that he went inside without a gun because he wasn't thinking and thought if he could get help there quickly, he could save their lives. Yet, in his 911 call, he doesn't get around very quickly to requesting medical assistance; in fact, his whole demeanor is rather breezy. He also states that he looked to see if Brian Lucas's chest was moving up and down and he was going to give him CPR. Apparently, he never does and he says he never saw his chest move up and down during the time it took for the news helicopter to fly overhead.
There was twenty minutes from the time the last shot was fired until the 911 call leaving Noel Lee enough time to leave the scene, ditch a weapon and wash his hands (he had moonshine available in his vehicle and water is available nearby) and come back. A GSR test was listed (as I read on the Internet) but the results were not. Likewise, there was something about a polygraph but further details were not available. Lee has told others he passed one. No tickets were noted to be found inside Superbike nor on Lee (but it was not stated that his clothing or pockets or wallet or vehicle were examined). Lee states he could see the hands of Scott Ponder, yet this would have been impossible by the time he arrived as Ponder's hands were not visible due to the position he was expired in.
Lee's behavior following the murders was considered odd by a number of people who felt he showed little sadness or concern over his friend's deaths. He claims in the second interview that I read on the Internet that he is on medication to keep him from "wigging out" and he has had seizures since the stress of his first marriage and short-term memory problems which causes him to forget things. Also, I read on the Internet, a curious bit of questioning about Lee having left the scene and come back which he said he was 100% positive he didn't do and "would put his hand on a Bible" to attest to that fact. As to his statement that he "for some strange reason" decided to take a shower, statement analysis of this wording indicates deception; first of all, it is odd Lee would decide to take a shower just to go pick up some tickets and take one at that time for no reason, which is exactly why he has to say "for some strange reason;" it is behavior that doesn't make sense. The only good reason a shower would be useful at that time is to delay his arrival at the shop until after the murders go down.
One more strange statement is useful to analyze; that Lee thought his friends were playing a trick on him by pretending to be dead on the sidewalk and he saw them and told them, "Joke's over." In many crimes when a guilty party gives an odd statement in explanation of what they did or thought, what they are doing is using a previous event (because it did happen and then speaking of it is a sort of truthful thing) and moving it forward to another time or situation. My question would be, "Did someone tell Noel Lee, "Joke's over." And if so, what joke did they think it was?
One more strange statement is useful to analyze; that Lee thought his friends were playing a trick on him by pretending to be dead on the sidewalk and he saw them and told them, "Joke's over." In many crimes when a guilty party gives an odd statement in explanation of what they did or thought, what they are doing is using a previous event (because it did happen and then speaking of it is a sort of truthful thing) and moving it forward to another time or situation. My question would be, "Did someone tell Noel Lee, "Joke's over." And if so, what joke did they think it was?
A number of people state Lee had a falling out with Scott Ponder and Brian Lucas and was told not to come around the shop. Yet, he is supposedly picking up tickets that day from Scott. Just before the last customer leaves, that customer overhears Beverly Guy having a heated conversation with someone, he believes she is on the phone with because he doesn't hear another voice or see anyone else. This is exactly the time Noel Lee made his call to Guy. Twenty-five minutes later, Guy is the first one shot in the quadruple homicides.
I want to point out to those who think this might have been a professional hit: there was nothing particular professional about it. Eighteen rounds were fired to kill four people, a number of them completely missing their target. The shots were fired at relatively close range so an average person would have little trouble hitting their target (and, in spite of this, as I read on the Internet, the shooter missed Sherbert and the two escaping men a couple of times). The victims were capped in the head only after they were immobile, so this didn't require much talent either. The killer left all the shell casings on the floor which meant he left evidence. This is not a brilliant crime nor an overly skilled one. It was simply opportunistic. No one saw the killer commit the crime and he got away with it.
I want to point out to those who think this might have been a professional hit: there was nothing particular professional about it. Eighteen rounds were fired to kill four people, a number of them completely missing their target. The shots were fired at relatively close range so an average person would have little trouble hitting their target (and, in spite of this, as I read on the Internet, the shooter missed Sherbert and the two escaping men a couple of times). The victims were capped in the head only after they were immobile, so this didn't require much talent either. The killer left all the shell casings on the floor which meant he left evidence. This is not a brilliant crime nor an overly skilled one. It was simply opportunistic. No one saw the killer commit the crime and he got away with it.
From what I read on the Internet, there was no follow-up on Noel
Lee, no phone records checked to see if he was on the phone with his
girlfriend during the drive to Superbike, no serious interrogation, nothing of substance that indicates the detectives considered Lee a serious person-of-interest or even attempted to eliminate him through aggressive investigation.
Noel Lee just may be an oddly behaving fellow with the bad luck to come upon his friends just as they had been shot. But in almost nine years from the very first day, obvious persons-of-interest like Lee were ignored while one questionable person-of-interest got all the attention. This is an egregious failure of the Sheriff's Department to handle the case properly, if one can call this handling the case at all.
Almost no case so mishandled from the start has a prayer of making it to prosecution. Evidence that should have been located and confiscated early on is likely long gone. For a case with no DNA or fingerprints, the loss of time may be a justice killer. All we can hope now is that by my going public with all the information I have read on the Internet, someone with information and evidence will come forward and, by the miracle all the families hope for, justice can still be served.
And, if it can't be, we need to work to make sure our law enforcement agencies receive better training, more funding, and have criminal profilers in place when the case is fresh so that egos and politics don't squash the input of these profilers or of private investigators who come in years later and find the case has been wrongly pursued. We need to insure that the families and citizens have the right to hold their police agencies accountable for their work product, that new laws are instituted - "Sunshine Laws" -laws that require cases to be reviewed by an independent panel after a specific number of years in order to ensure oversight of case handling and police honesty and professionalism.
Something needs to be done. The failure of the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Department to solve a solvable crime for nearly a decade is not an anomaly in the world of criminal investigations. Cold case after cold case get shelved for similar failures and we are not doing a thing to change a system that is clearly not working.
See also: Criminal Profilng Topic of the Day: I Read it on the Internet: Superbike Murders - Part Two, Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: I Read it on the Internet: Superbike Murders - Part One
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
May 19, 2012
Pat
Brown’s ONLY THE TRUTH
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