Deborah Ann Wolfe: 1985, Fayetteville, NC

   

   Deborah Ann Wolfe was born on June 19th 1957 in Blytheville Arkansas. She was a Girl Scout growing up and eventually became a nurse. She was adventurous and independent. She lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1985. The 28 year old worked at the local V.A. Hospital. She lived in a cabin at 700 McArthur Rd, Fayetteville with her two dogs, Mason and Morgan. 

   On December 26th of 1985 she went missing.  She had worked her usual shift and left work around 4 p.m. The next day she did not show up for work. Her coworkers and family were immediately concerned. 

   Her mother called the police when she could not reach her daughter. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office initially dismissed her concerns, according to Jenny Edwards. The police said they had to wait three days before investigating. (It was actually five days before they began investigating at Deborah’s home.) 

  Deborah’s family was understandably frantic and they went to Deborah’s home and found her car was not parked in its usual place. The driver’s seat appeared to be too far back. Inside the house, Deborah’s work uniform was on the kitchen floor.  Her handbag was under the bed. Deborah normally left things very tidy, according to her mother. 

   Her dogs were outside and had not been fed. The normally well kept place was in disarray. Beer cans littered the yard.  The family said that Deborah did not drink that brand of beer and would not have left the cans all over the yard. 

   A strange message was on the answering machine. A male volunteer from the hospital was expressing concern about Debbie missing so much work. But, at the point he left the message she had only missed a few hours, according to Deborah’s family. (That man left town soon after this incident.)

  Deborah’s mother, Jenny Edwards, knew this wasn’t right.  Her daughter did not miss work.  She wouldn’t have left without her dogs or her purse. Deborah’s mother persisted and after 5 days the police came to search the house. 

  Deborah’s cabin was in a wooded area with a pond. It’s in the middle of the suburbs now. It might have been a little less developed around there in the 1980’s. Today the cabin appears to be gone and people are dumping furniture and other debris on the property. 

  Deborah’s family insisted that the police search the pond. The police claimed that they searched the pond and found nothing. 

  Deborah’s mother asked police if she could get her own divers to search the pond. They agreed and so the family enlisted the help of some friends who were trained divers. Gordon Childress and Kevin Gorton volunteered to get into the icy cold water. Almost immediately they found Deborah’s body in the pond in about 5 feet of water.  Gordon Childress could only see her from the waist down. He thought it looked like her upper half was in a barrel. Childress also thought he saw drag marks and two sets of footprints leading into the pond and under the water. The police were called. 

   Deborah’s body was fully clothed including a jacket and gloves. 

   The barrel was a 55 gallon drum that had been used as a burn barrel on Deborah’s property. It had been in the same place on the property for years. It was rusty and had holes. My family members usually had just such a barrel for burning trash kept out in the backyard. Jenny Edwards and others could see the indentation in the ground where the barrel had been. 

   The investigators took over the scene. When asked about the barrel later the police said that there was no barrel. Gordon Childress was adamant that Deborah had been in a barrel. The police insisted that he must have just seen her jacket ballooning up around her. 

   According to a 2019 article from the Fayetteville Observer, Roger Rushing, a co-worker, had arranged to have lunch with her at work on December 27th. But, Deborah did not show up to work. Marvell Rushing, Roger’s wife, also worked at the Fayetteville V.A. Medical Center on Ramsey Street and was also a friend of Deborah. Marvell mentioned all sorts of rumors and theories flying around the medical center after Deborah’s death. She thought that it was all just speculation. 

  The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation both concluded that Deborah died of an accidental drowning. An autopsy determined that she did not have drugs or alcohol in her system. 

   Gordon Childress, the volunteer diver, said that Deborah did not look like a typical drowning victim. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was sleeping. A drowning victim typically has their eyes and mouth open because they have struggled against drowning, according to Gordon Childress. 

  After the case was closed by investigators; Deborah’s clothes were returned to the family. Her mother claimed that these were not clothes and shoes that would have fit Deborah. She said that the sizes were all wrong and these were not her clothes. 

   

   Deborah’s home was not treated like a crime scene initially by investigators. Sadly, her family members were in the house and on the grounds first. Of course their natural concern took over. They were looking for their loved one. Evidence like fingerprints and footprints could have been lost. Every unusual thing that the family saw in the home was then reported to police. That’s good.  But, police did not see the scene first.  They did not photograph it first. If only the police would have taken the initial missing person report seriously and had not waited 5 days. Today, a police department would not wait such a long time. We know that the first 48 hours are crucial and that investigators should be the first to enter a potential crime scene.

   Was any evidence saved? The beer cans could have been fingerprinted then. The beer cans could be tested for DNA today. Since this was ruled an accident it’s unlikely that any evidence was saved. 

   Did police photograph her car and examine it for fingerprints? If the seat was indeed pushed too far back…was that photographed? 

   Was the recording on the answering machine saved? 

   An autopsy was performed. Did they scrape under her nails? Did they clip her nails? Did they save that evidence? If she struggled with someone that person’s DNA could be under her nails.  Complicating that theory, though, is the fact that she was found with gloves on. If she was murdered and disposed of; would the perpetrator bother to put a jacket and gloves on her body? Perpetrators sometimes dress a victim but putting gloves on a victim seems unlikely. 

   It was very cold out on December 26th. If you were going to kill someone and dispose of the body; would you want to get into an icy pond to do it? Killers are selfish and don’t usually do things that are inconvenient and painful to themselves. 

   Police maintain that they did question all the individuals that the family suggested. 

 

    Then there’s the barrel. Did it actually exist?  Was it dismissed and discarded by police? It was only seen by one diver, Gordon Childress. He said he could only see her from the waist down. He did not remove Deborah from the barrel or from the water. Police divers removed Deborah from the water. If the barrel was there why would they not report it and retrieve it? It is possible that there was no barrel. Gordon Childress could have seen something like the jacket in the murky water that resembled a barrel opening shape. 

   With the passage of so much time, the conflicting information and the fact that no evidence was preserved; there would be no way to prove it if there was foul play. 

   Always apply Occam’s razor. That’s a good rule to keep. Look for the most obvious explanation. December 26th and December 27th 1985 were very cold in Fayetteville.  The temperature had gotten down to 14 degrees both days. The high temp was also below freezing. The pond was icy. Deborah was not found on the edge of the pond but a bit further out.  Was she out with her dogs on the evening of December 26th, walking around the pond and for some reason ventured out onto the ice?  Maybe she was curious about the pond being icy. Maybe she underestimated how thick it actually was. Maybe she knew it was not particularly deep and wasn’t afraid.  As a southern resident she might not have had a lot of experience with an icy pond. It would have been thicker on the edges and would have supported her weight but would have been thinner toward the deeper areas. If she fell in, the cold would have overwhelmed her in just a couple of minutes and she would have succumbed to drowning. That might explain the lack of a struggling look on her face that Gordon Childress described. 

   It was 14 degrees again on December 27th when her family came to the cabin. The pond would have been frozen over again. 

   The police said there was no sign of a struggle inside the house. That’s true. Her uniform being found on the kitchen floor and her purse under the bed might seem odd but it doesn’t indicate a struggle necessarily. Nothing was broken, or overturned. There was no blood. The house had not been broken into. 

  What about the beer cans? We don’t know how long they had been there. We don’t know how many cans were there. We don’t know who drank the beer or when. Her mother felt that Deborah wouldn’t have left the litter there but what if it was something she meant to do but just hadn’t gotten around to it.  She was a nurse and that’s an exhausting job. 

   Deborah had no drugs or alcohol in her system. She had no injuries. She was not tied up.  (If she had had bruises, cuts, scrapes, or signs of injury l feel like that information would definitely have made it into the Unsolved Mysteries episodes. I imagine that her family got a copy of the autopsy.  They seemed very determined to get all the available information.) 

   I think that this probably was indeed just an accidental drowning. She got home from work. The dogs wanted to go out and roam around.  She changed quickly. If you live alone you can change clothes in the kitchen, throw your work clothes anywhere and pick them up later. She headed outside with the dogs.  The pond was icy.  It was dark but the moon was approaching fullness on the 26th.  (December 28th 1985 was the full moon.) Perhaps she was feeling playful and ventured out onto the ice with her dogs. Maybe the dogs were not on the ice but roaming around the woods that partially encircle the pond. It would only take a second to fall through the ice and a couple of minutes for the cold water to overwhelm her. Wet clothes are very heavy. The cold makes struggling very difficult. Overnight the ice would freeze over again. Her family, arriving on the 27th, would see a frozen pond and not immediately suspect that she was in it. 

  Confirmation bias seems to have taken hold of Deborah’s family and friends.  They were worried and grieving. This was the mid 1980’s and young women were getting murdered left and right.  I research and write about these cases. These kinds of crimes were happening a lot. It’s natural for the family to think of murder and want to blame someone. It is always so hard to believe that something so senseless could happen to someone we loved. It would only take one diver to say that he thought she was in a barrel and then there actually was no barrel to set off the conspiracy theories. (It was only one diver who thought he saw a barrel.) It’s understandable to want to blame someone and confirmation bias is very common. 

   I lived in Anchorage, Alaska years ago. A lot of people move there with the military and aren’t always knowledgeable about potential dangers.  When I lived there two young boys went missing. Searchers were out in droves.  Police searched diligently. They went door to door.  Everyone looked in their own sheds and garages. Every little bit of woods was searched. Known sex offenders were questioned. Video surveillance from the airport was examined in case the boys were taken out of the state. Their neighborhood was scoured for signs and clues. People circled the little pond at the end of their street numerous times. Many weeks later the weather warmed up and a shoe floated to the surface of the pond. A lady who walked her dog there nearly every day saw the shoe and reported it. The boys had been in the pond all along.  They had been warned by their mother to stay away from it.  They weren’t allowed to go play that far away. But, for some reason, curiosity got the best of them and they did it anyway. Tragically, it was a quick and quiet death for them both. No neighbors overheard a struggle. 

   I have researched many cases where the police were wrong. I have researched some in which it looks like police were entirely untruthful. I have researched cases in which false confessions were extracted and innocent individuals went to jail. I don’t automatically believe the official versions of these cases. 

   But here, I do think Deborah Ann Wolfe accidentally fell through the ice on the evening of December 26th, 1985 and sadly drowned. 

    However, if there is someone out there who has more information that could indicate foul play please contact the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation at https://www.ncsbi.gov/Contact-Us