My family is from this area and I've heard about this crime all my life, hence my interest in this crime. To me it's one of those cases you can't and don't forget--why has no one ever looked for these people?
But let's clear up a few things here. The crime was very well-publicized at the time--from hearing my family talk about it, I know the locals were shocked and they were upset about it.
It wasn't as if no one cared about their deaths and as if it wasn't covered in the media at the time.
I was really, really young at the time, and my parents no longer lived in the
Sumter area by then but it was very well-covered in our area of the state at the time.
It was a shocking crime for its time and it's still revisited in the SC media from time to time as being one of the state's great, unsolved mysteries. If it happened today I'm sure it would be a national story.
Drugs were also very well-established in that area by the 70's. Hello? It was the early 70's--drugs were pretty much everywhere and had been since the 1960's, yes, even in "backwards", rural SC. It's not like the state was a suburb of Mars or anything. Don't forget that Sumter Co. is traversed by I-95 AND I-20 and was then and still is known for being THE drug highway from S. Florida to the Northern states. And many a South Carolinian has made a tidy sum growing and selling pot--and other illegal substances, then and now. Lots of available farmland and rural areas to hide illicit activity.
I won't deny that corruption in LE didn't go on then and still does today.
But I also know this much---to be fair to them, they did not have the tools then that exist now. There was no internet, there were no DNA databases, there wasn't even an organized missing person's database. Perhaps if they would have had those tools THEN this still wouldn't be an open case. And I hate to insult or implicate anyone specifically, but remember, this was the dark ages in terms of LE sophistication. Most of the LE in those days were the old school. Some didn't even have high school degrees. My grandfather used to say that if no one else would hire you, LE would. He did not mean that as a compliment to the LE agents of SC. Even today, the education requirements are low, the training to get a badge is very brief and the pay is lousy, and most agencies are under-staffed and over-worked. A 30-year old murder case is just not going to be a high-priority for them. And never forget, Sumter County is still largely rural, and has never been awash in cash, resources are still limited.
I wish that they would turn it over to SLED or to the FBI but for whatever reason, they never have.
Maybe it doesn't meet the qualifications to be turned over to those agencies. Or maybe it is them covering for someone.
In Sumter County, to this day, there are people convinced that the true story was never told about who really killed Margaret Cuttino (another fascinating Sumter Co. crime). But there are also times when LE knows who did something and can't arrest them because they don't have the proof they need to make a case stick. And I think they hit a lot of dead ends in this case. I think Lonnie Henry knew who killed this couple. But he wasn't talking and no one else has either in all these years. It still baffles me to this day why no one has ever come looking for this couple.
And one more item for thought: I know that LE did write down license plate nos at the funeral that was held for the couple. When their burial arrangements were announced, my aunt & uncle decided to attend the funeral b/c they reasoned that someone needed to mourn this couple, and they had seen the couple while they were at the funeral home. (Long story short, the owner was a long-time family friend, and while they were there to see someone else, he showed them the couple's bodies).
They have always said that LE was there and that they were writing down the license plate numbers of everyone attended. So I wonder if those records are still in the files somewhere?....