Friday marks 30 years since Rhonda Hinson was fatally shot while returning home from a Christmas party.
The same question investigators had Dec. 23, 1981 still lingers today — who killed 19-year-old Hinson?
Capt. Becky Weatherman, the current investigator working the Burke County Sheriff’s Office most investigated case, says the biggest hindrance in solving this murder is that it happened 30 years ago.
It was six years before DNA was first used in a courtroom, Weatherman said, and procedures for criminal investigations were far simpler than today.
“If it had happened today, it would be solved,” she said.
Three decades passing has also affected the case. Witnesses die, memories fade and evidence falls through the cracks.
But Weatherman said the sheriff’s office remains determined to find Hinson’s killer.
She hopes this will be the last anniversary of Hinson’s deaths that her parents spend without knowing who shot their daughter or why she’s dead.
Hinson’s death
Hinson was last seen alive at a friend’s house on Dec. 23, 1981. The two had left Hickory Steel’s employee Christmas party, and Hinson left her car at the house when she went to the party.
Investigators say after leaving the friend's residence, Rhonda drove her beige Datsun 210 west on Interstate 40 and exited onto the Mineral Springs Mountain/Highway 350 off-ramp.
She turned right and began traveling up a steep hill toward her home when a high-powered rifle projectile was fired into the vehicle. The bullet entered the Datsun through the trunk and continued through the back seat and driver's side seat, entering Rhonda's back and piercing her lung and heart.
Hinson was found lying dead in a ditch beside the open driver's side door of her Datsun that was still running.
She was less than a mile from her home.
Investigators believe someone pulled her from the car after she died. They do not know if that person was the gunman.
‘Best lead’ yet
Investigators have received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tips in this case, according to Weatherman. The case files fill two filing cabinets and investigators have eyed more than 100 possible suspects.
Each new lead was tracked down, but none have led to an arrest.
“It’s frustrating,” Weatherman said.
But in 2007 Weatherman and SBI Agent Marc Sharpe stumbled on what she said is “probably the best lead” investigators have in the case.
The pair was at an SBI-sponsored seminar on “touch DNA,” the genetic fingerprint people leave on items they touch.
Weatherman and Sharpe realized one of the few pieces of evidence kept at the sheriff’s office, Hinson’s sweater, likely contained DNA from the person who pulled her from the car.
They sent the sweater to an SBI lab and found DNA in the armpits that did not belong to Hinson.
A DNA profile is logged in state and national DNA databases, and the sheriff’s office is just waiting for someone to enter a match.
New DNA samples are entered into these databases daily, including samples from every person in North Carolina charged with a felony and many convicts, and Weatherman is hopeful this is how investigators will crack the case.
Weatherman said she’d trade the forensics for a confession, or for a witness who saw what happened.
“Someone knows,” she said.
Weatherman asks that anyone with information on Hinson’s death call the Burke County Sheriff’s Office at 438-5500. A $20,000 reward is offered for information that leads to a conviction in this case.
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