Identified! Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - Pamela Buckley & James Freund #9

[wary]

It would have had to be prior to 76 but we know his history with the gun. The article above says that LE was able to recover the serial number (a separate part of the gun?) and trace it to the brother, BUT, it had been sold, stolen, etc over the years, which makes no sense.
I think LE put way too much faith into the polygraph results. In an article I seen in PSY Today, the assoc that functions to promote the use of this science concedes that they fail 13% of the time and a team of unbiased scientists puts that at more like 25%. I’m curious too of how they were so positive that Henry was at this hospital?

I wonder if his wife could have been in Intensive Care, with controlled admission, so they even had a written record.

I do agree about polygraphs. They’ve been proven inaccurate so many times.

 

[worldwatcher]

-SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.-

So, the theft of the gun was in 1971,or '72??
Surely, the gun wasn't the only thing that got stolen and, imo, the gun passed through many hands, before the murders took place..

Is there anything known about the theft and possible arrest?
Was it stolen from a gun shop, or so?

 

[worm]

-SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.-

So, the theft of the gun was in 1971,or '72??
Surely, the gun wasn't the only thing that got stolen and, imo, the gun passed through many hands, before the murders took place..

Is there anything known about the theft and possible arrest?
Was it stolen from a gun shop, or so?

I read something somewhere that mentioned “a group” being involved in the gun theft in N.C.? If SLED tracked it back to the brother then he must have signed paperwork on it. Henry tried to tell LE that he bought it from some truck driver without knowing about the numbers and then admits to grinding the digits himself. These stories are all over the place and LE couldn’t believe much of it.

 

[Triss]

I'm about 80% sure that they did receive neck wounds. In the post mortem photo of Pam you can see what appears to be gun powder burns or stippling on the lower side of her face near the presumed neck wound.

Yes, it looks like they were shot in their necks to me too. Then I read that they did not receive any gunshot wounds to the neck and I've been confused ever since. Is that not a neck wound I'm looking at in their crime scene picture? I have no idea anymore.

 

[Warwick1991]

-SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.-

So, the theft of the gun was in 1971,or '72??
Surely, the gun wasn't the only thing that got stolen and, imo, the gun passed through many hands, before the murders took place..

Is there anything known about the theft and possible arrest?
Was it stolen from a gun shop, or so?

The gun was described as a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver in early posts. Those revolvers can fire .38 ammunition as well as .357 magnum. It would be informative to know the model of the revolver, the model series number, and the serial number. That could tell us a lot about the history of the revolver. Smith & Wesson has excellent records of its serial numbers and model variations, and the original buyer can likely be traced, along with the date of manufacture. Some of these revolvers were sold in lots to various LE agencies. LE must know the serial number if it was revealed by the FBI or SLED. I think there are LE “holdbacks” about the revolver used.

 

[worm]

Yes, it looks like they were shot in their necks to me too. Then I read that they did not receive any gunshot wounds to the neck and I've been confused ever since. Is that not a neck wound I'm looking at in their crime scene picture? I have no idea anymore.

Just my guess is that neck wound being an exit from the head shot. The blood is clearly running towards the ground. Somewhere the reports mention shots to he back area of the head. I can only think they were at a downward angle to not cause severe face damage, like if they were shot at a more level plane.

 

[Betty P]

I read something somewhere that mentioned “a group” being involved in the gun theft in N.C.? If SLED tracked it back to the brother then he must have signed paperwork on it. Henry tried to tell LE that he bought it from some truck driver without knowing about the numbers and then admits to grinding the digits himself. These stories are all over the place and LE couldn’t believe much of it.

Well, according to Henry. that gun has been all over the place. First given to him by his brother. Then it was stolen by someone. Then it ended up back in his car somehow?

JMO, it's relevant to know if he or his brother or their friends had friendships with anyone who worked in law enforcement. The method used to execute JP and Pamela was very similar to that of trained LE officers. It was a very distinctive way of committing murder - counting shots.

It could also explain why JP didn't have any defensive wounds or try to help Pam escape. As an Army vet, he would have had some combat self defense training that he probably would have used in another situation.

It was such a quick, organized way of killing people, in a spot most likely known only to locals. Just over the county line.

 

[worldwatcher]

Yes, it looks like they were shot in their necks to me too. Then I read that they did not receive any gunshot wounds to the neck and I've been confused ever since. Is that not a neck wound I'm looking at in their crime scene picture? I have no idea anymore.

If they werent shot in the throat, why were they turned over on their backs?
I did read, that's why the killer turned them on their backs, does dit make sense?
Turn them over first, before you can shoot their throates?? Could be, because it was dark, or so??!

 

[wary]

Let’s not get too focused on the idea that LE did it. To me, it sounds like the 2021 version of: “They’re from Argentina!”

 

[Susikatze]

I would think that many criminals would know how to efficiently shoot a victim, too (time is money if youre a criminal, no?). Not only LE. The perpetrator could also have had a hunting and/or military vet background.

Let’s not get too focused on the idea that LE did it. To me, it sounds like the 2021 version of: “They’re from Argentina!”

 

[onceuponadecember]

Here’s a collection of all the photos from this thread and my research of Pam and James:

 

[worldwatcher]

James was a mechanic, when he was stationed in Germany, don't know if it was required to be trained in, other fighting technics/skills as well??

 

[onceuponadecember]

James was a mechanic, when he was stationed in Germany, don't know if it was required to be trained in, other fighting technics/skills as well??

I’m no military expert, but I’m sure he had basic fighting/tech skills.

 

[Betty P]

If they werent shot in the throat, why were they turned over on their backs?
I did read, that's why the killer turned them on their backs, does dit make sense?
Turn them over first, before you can shoot their throates?? Could be, because it was dark, or so??!

They were most likely turned on their backs to make sure they were deceased and to allow the shooter to take their wallets and ID's.

As for the theory of a bullet wound in the neck is concerned, I still don't understand how that's relative to figuring out who the killer is.

 

[onceuponadecember]

Irrelevant idea, but what if this case was profiled on the revival of UM on Netflix? I know it’s getting pretty popular on there, and considering Netflix subscriptions are increasing. (Yes, I am aware it was on the original Unsolved Mysteries as well)

 

[Betty P]

Let’s not get too focused on the idea that LE did it. To me, it sounds like the 2021 version of: “They’re from Argentina!”

They were shot quickly, with great accuracy in a dark, shady area in the middle of the night. The shooter was counting bullets, putting the exact number of bullets in each victim. As LE are trained, they began with shots to the mid/upper body, then administered killing shots to the head of each victim.

That indicates professional training with a handgun in how to disable and kill someone quickly and accurately.

Highly unlikely a drunk local could pull that off. Possibly someone who had prior LE training, but was no longer an officer. Maybe a prison guard, but they weren't as plentiful back then as they are today.

 

[worldwatcher]

Hi @phenolred!
Interesting post of you found, about the fruitstand!
You are a long time poster!!


Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #3

 

[Awsi Dooger]

Re-post from previous threads (2007/2008)
Unfortunately, without link or found on the net.
------—-----------------------------------------------
"I don't know if you've already seen this article, it's pretty interesting."



Dead end?

By Brian Ray
Staff Writer


Photo by Jim Shine




SUMTER ' It will be 28 years Monday since a young man and woman were found shot to death beside a dirt road in Sumter County.
The couple lie side by side now in plain graves at a country church in Oswego.
Their headstones read simply, 'Female Unknown' and 'Male Unknown.'
No parents have come to pay their respects. No killer has been convicted ' though authorities once had a prime suspect. Their murder remains a mystery that piques minds and touches hearts.
'They were somebody's kids,' says Patricia Riddle of Oswego. 'You just don't want to believe their parents don't care.'
Like others in the community, Riddle is drawn to the graves when she comes into the churchyard at Bethel United Methodist Church. The graves are well kept, and visitors ' she is not sure who or when ' sometimes bring flowers.
The two young people were buried Aug. 14, 1977, but their story begins a year earlier.
The crime
On Aug. 9, 1976, a man living in the sticks between Sumter and Florence heard a car scuttling down a narrow frontage road connecting Interstate 95 to S.C. 341. Someone climbed out. Gunshots echoed in the early morning, then the car raced back onto the highway.
As the sun rose, a truck driver pulled off to rest and found the bodies.
They were riddled with bullet holes, the girl's green eyes still wide with shock, her mouth open as if giving a final cry for help. She was in her late teens; her companion was in his mid-20s.
Sumter County Sheriff I. Byrd Parnell and his deputies arrived minutes later. Crouching over the corpses, they noticed a pair of tire tracks. There was nothing else.

The investigation
After making a plaster cast of the tire tracks and scouring for evidence, Parnell shipped the bodies to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for an autopsy, which turned up little more than the obvious.
As weeks passed, the sheriff made phone calls and wrote letters to law enforcement agencies from Florida to New Mexico in an effort to identify the bodies. Nothing turned up.
A forensic dentist in Spartanburg charted the young man's mouth and the American Dental Association published his findings, hoping a dentist somewhere would recognize the work. The dead man had undergone extensive dental work, including fillings, root canals and crowns. No dentist ever came forward.
A funeral home displayed the bodies for a year in airtight, see-through caskets.
Relatives of missing persons traveled from as far away as New Jersey, but all left with unanswered prayers.
After a year, the bodies had decayed and hardly seemed human any longer. So the young man and woman were laid to rest at the Methodist Church in Oswego.
More than 100 people attended the ceremony.

Sole suspect
About four months after the murders, police in the Darlington County town of Latta arrested Lonnie George Henry for drunk driving. Under the seat of his car they found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with the serial number filed off.
Police sent the gun to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's forensic lab for tests and later concluded that Henry's revolver had killed the mystery couple. Bullets taken from the bodies matched with the weapon.
When officers asked Henry point blank if he was the killer, his polygraph said he was telling the truth. No, he hadn't pulled the trigger. But several other lie detector tests implied he was lying about something, at least, maybe covering up for somebody. Investigators wondered if someone had stolen his gun and whether a relative or friend of Henry's had killed the couple in Sumter.
But case files say Henry did lie about how he'd obtained the gun, first telling officers that he'd bought it from a truck driver. Days after the purchase, Henry told investigators, he discovered the serial number had been filed off. By then, it was too late to return the item for a refund.
SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.
The gun had been bought, stolen and resold several times before falling into the hands of Henry's brother. But he said the serial number was still there on Christmas Eve.
When confronted with the new information, Henry confessed to filing the serial numbers off himself.
It remains unclear why Henry lied if he was innocent. And it also remains unclear if he really was. Case files say Henry was a recovering alcoholic and had also gotten in trouble with the law for a slew of minor offenses.
At the time, his son had recently drowned in the Pee Dee River. He'd also accidentally killed one of his co-workers, by backing a dump truck over him.
Investigative psychologists even wondered if he'd killed the Sumter couple and simply couldn't remember doing it.

But despite his incriminating profile, Henry had an alibi. 'I can prove where I was at on the dates that you said this happened,' Henry told investigators. He said he was at a hospital in Monroe, N.C., where his wife was staying. 'I suppose you will take my word.'
'Mr. Henry,' replied one of the officers, according to the files. 'Right now I don't believe I would take your word for anything.'
In an effort to corroborate his alibi, cops timed the drive from the hospital to the crime scene and concluded there was no way Henry could have raced back in time to see his wife. Even with knowledge of his mental health and lying twice about the gun, they set him free.
Now dead, Henry will never have the chance to erase the suspicion or to confess.
Passing through
Evidence says the young couple weren't from South Carolina.
'If they were from around here we would have found them by now,' says Sumter County Coroner Verna Moore. In 1976, she was deputy coroner and also worked for the local paper, The Sumter Daily Item.
Moore persuaded 'Unsolved Mysteries' and Court TV to run specials on the case, but still no one came forward. For the past year she's been working with a cold case investigator in Virginia to sift through evidence for new leads.
She hasn't given up yet. 'Somewhere out there they've got family still looking for them,' she says, 'and hitting all the wrong places.'......... "

Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #5
Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #5

That was the same material I was going to post, after reading it a few days ago while sampling thread #3 for info on Locklair Road.

They key aspect seemed to be that Lonnie Henry originally presented one story, then changed it once investigators spoke to his brother, the former owner. All of the changing hands was apparently before it came into possession of the Henry brother. If the below info is true then only Henrys owned it during the 4-5 years preceding the murder, and Lonnie Henry is the one who felt need to ruin the serial number:

"SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.

The gun had been bought, stolen and resold several times before falling into the hands of Henry's brother. But he said the serial number was still there on Christmas Eve.
When confronted with the new information, (Lonnie) Henry confessed to filing the serial numbers off himself."

 

[worm]

James was a mechanic, when he was stationed in Germany, don't know if it was required to be trained in, other fighting technics/skills as well??

I’ve never been in but have close friends/relatives that have and continue to. All of them get an advanced infantry course in the basics so he would have had that regardless of what his regular job was.

 

[wary]

That was the same material I was going to post, after reading it a few days ago while sampling thread #3 for info on Locklair Road.

They key aspect seemed to be that Lonnie Henry originally presented one story, then changed it once investigators spoke to his brother, the former owner. All of the changing hands was apparently before it came into possession of the Henry brother. If the below info is true then only Henrys owned it during the 4-5 years preceding the murder, and Lonnie Henry is the one who felt need to ruin the serial number:

"SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.

The gun had been bought, stolen and resold several times before falling into the hands of Henry's brother. But he said the serial number was still there on Christmas Eve.
When confronted with the new information, Henry confessed to filing the serial numbers off himself."

I wonder if he could have messed with the serial numbers because he learned that the gun had a questionable history—not realizing that removing serial numbers was a Federal crime.

After all, removing serial numbers might seem to be a defense against theft charges, but would not defend against ballistics testing and murder charges.