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

[Fukiyama]

Agree, it was a road/turn off not easily found.

It was also located along a major interstate highway, so they were probably driving through on a trip.

One thing that I think is interesting and that hasn’t been discussed much is the fact that Locklair Road would be an easy place to quickly kill and dispose of a body, even if someone wasn’t familiar with the area. I can imagine them being held at gunpoint and told to exit I-95, turn on to the next road, and then turn on Locklair with the killer possibly just (rightfully) thinking that it was a secluded road where no one would see what was occurring.

The problem with the idea that they were coming off the interstate is that there is not an exit there. County Road 43-62 goes over Interstate 95, but there are no ramps.

On the other end of Locklair Road is Old St. John Church Road which is not a direct route to the interstate; one would have to turn onto Lynches River Road/341 to get onto I-95.

A person really does have to know where they are going to get to Locklair as it is not a road one just turns onto just off the interstate.

Google Maps

 

[Dragonfyree]

I think everyone should google hitchhiking pictures in the 1970's and you will see that what Pamela was wearing wouldn't have been unusual on the highway. You'd see girls in mini skirts and high heels, they usually weren't planning on walking for miles, but getting picked up.

Im also not buying they met while hitchhiking...huh? I don't think so? How did they meet?

One was at a truck stop waiting to catch a ride and the 2nd one got left off at the same place, they started talking and decided to continue on together. This type of hitchhiking culture that was going on at the time was too meet people, make friends and see the world.

You can see this in the Mostly Harmless (Recently solved) case. Many people met him as he was walking the trail, they talked and some of them spent several days walking with him. Some people actually saw him several times, they met him going and coming from different destinations, so meeting people and traveling together for periods of time is still happening today..

 

[Dee Deforest]

I think everyone should google hitchhiking pictures in the 1970's and you will see that what Pamela was wearing wouldn't have been unusual on the highway. You'd see girls in mini skirts and high heels, they usually weren't planning on walking for miles, but getting picked up.



One was at a truck stop waiting to catch a ride and the 2nd one got left off at the same place, they started talking and decided to continue on together. This type of hitchhiking culture that was going on at the time was too meet people, make friends and see the world.

You can see this in the Mostly Harmless (Recently solved) case. Many people met him as he was walking the trail, they talked and some of them spent several days walking with him. Some people actually saw him several times, they met him going and coming from different destinations, so meeting people and traveling together for periods of time is still happening today..

Anything's possible but I just don't believe they were? It all feels to random to me. They had no bags, they were clean, the clothes and shoes don't feel right to me for hitchhiking.. I'm not sure about James but everything I've read about Pamela it just doesn't fit to me?

 

[Vern]

Hey, it's ok to agree to disagree!

And no one is ruling out hitch-hiking based solely on the shoes. They're fine for wearing if one is hitching a quick ride from home to work/concert etc.

Rather, in this case, it's considered in combination with all the other knowns:

Well-groomed;
well-dressed in clean clothes;
freshly showered;
no other clothing/hygiene items found with them; and
so far from home.

No change of clothes with them, no toiletries, no nada and no-one in the wider-local area having confirmed contact with them or having put them up.

They ate and showered somewhere. They either travelled with someone in a perps vehicle to their execution site or executioner travelled with them in a vehicle belonging to Pam or Jim to their execution site then disappeared with their possessions and ID afterwards.

It's just really hard to believe that they were simply hitch-hiking and galivanting across the US of A without those hygiene items - or access to them given the very state of condition they were found in miles from home and in the middle of nowhere.

Were they staying with at a residence in the general area with someone who turned on them (unknown to anybody else)? Were they actually staying somewhere like Myrtle Beach and driven all the way to their execution site for expressly that purpose of dumping them there and far away? How would one be connected with them in such a manner that they would willingly undertake such a jaunt - on what ruse? Ergo no confirmed reports of them being seen?

Was that actually them in the campground and they left there in a vehicle with someone else ergo they showered etc there? It'd be interesting to know whether the guy who may have had the sighting of them at the campground or fruit-stand ever gave a description of what they were wearing that day - if both of them gave descriptions of clothing: did they match each other? Did they match the clothing Pam and Jim were found in?

 

[Fede]

Why did the killer/s took the time to register both bodies and take their IDs? Just to make things more difficult for identification or was there something more (trophies)?
So many questions, and no answers...

 

[StarrChance]

Here's a link to a post from an earlier thread here in 2008. It quotes a news article about the man, Lonnie Henry, who was caught with the gun used in the murders.

Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #3

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.

Lonnie’s son and another man a 23 year old died in a fishing boat that overturned in March 1973 so not that recent to the murders.

 

[branmuffin]

I looked back at info from DN and it said that James and Pamela had eaten ice cream or fruit before they died. This means they would’ve either bought and eaten fruit or ice cream from 5:00-7:00 PM in August 8.

I was looking when sundown was on Aug 8 1976. It was 8:15 pm. So it's possible 'if' Pamela and James had eaten fruit at a fruit stand it could have been later than 7 pm. It's also possible that they didn't eat fruit at a fruit stand but that they ate fruit and ice cream in a town close to where there bodies were found.

We really have no insight as to where they were going or coming from. North or south, east or west. Let's say they were going south and they passed through Florence SC. Let's say they were in Florence which is about 15 miles away and they decided to have a snack at a Dairy Queen or Tasty Freeze. One of them had a milkshake and the other had a fruit sundae but they shared. Which is why the autopsy report said they had ice cream or ice cream and fruit.

Or they could have been traveling north and stopped in Sumter.

We don't know if they were the couple that stayed at the KOA campsite. We don't even know if they were a couple and not just two people who connected on the road. We don't know if they had their own vehicle. We don't know if they were hitchhiking. We basically don't know much. But if they were found only several hours after their deaths we have to wonder where were they between the time they ate some fruit/ice cream and the time the hermit heard the car, the shots and the car doors slamming. Did they meet some locals and hung out with them? We don't know.

 

[MajorHoople]

At long last, an answer.

@Richard, I believe others will join me in saying a "BIG THANKS" to you for starting this thread way back on Oct 4, 2004!

 

[branmuffin]

In the press conference the other day, the sheriff didn't say one way or another. They're still looking into it. He mentioned something about believing they were riding with someone, but not sure of the details.

JMO, that gave me the impression he thought they were either riding with someone who killed them or they gave a ride to someone who killed them. He said something about how they haven't yet connected a vehicle to the couple. They're still investigating.

He also said he believed it was an isolated incident, that it wasn't a serial killer, etc.

SCSO: New findings in 1976 cold case

As someone mentioned above, the sheriff made a vague reference to having an idea of where the couple were heading, based on something they learned from family or friends.

RSBM

"As someone mentioned above, the sheriff made a vague reference to having an idea of where the couple were heading, based on something they learned from family or friends."

If the family members reported them missing around Christmas 1975 how would they know what their plans were?

I found the sheriff very ill prepared for the PC. He seemed nervous, he didn't appear well versed in the details of the case.

 

[Satchie]

The problem with the idea that they were coming off the interstate is that there is not an exit there. County Road 43-62 goes over Interstate 95, but there are no ramps.

On the other end of Locklair Road is Old St. John Church Road which is not a direct route to the interstate; one would have to turn onto Lynches River Road/341 to get onto I-95.

A person really does have to know where they are going to get to Locklair as it is not a road one just turns onto just off the interstate.

Google Maps

Thanks for the link showing where it was. If the couple had been coming from the north, I might expect it to be on the other side of the highway, presuming a car came off the interstate at highway 341.

I doesn't seem it was that remote a place, since someone found the bodies within hours, almost at first light.

I imagine carjackers would be looking for a dark location with no traffic, so they wouldn't choose a location right at an exit ramp, they'd drive some distance.

So while it might have been a chosen location, I wonder whether it was all that unique, wouldn't there be dozens of equally or even more obscure dirt roads for hiding bodies in that area in South Carolina.

Just speculating.

 

[Vern]

Hey, I've been following this case for a couple of years now and I'm happy to be able to contribute my very first post on this site of what I have found.

I found an un-dated Promotional Photo for the band Sunlending (the bottom of the photo is curled, but it says Sunlending) showing Johny Daly, rocking a Beatles fringed hair-do and wearing the same style circle framed glasses as in the only other band photo I have seen.

Now this is the part I'm unsure of:

The female in the picture, who I'm assuming is Pamela, has her hair similar also to the other band photo where it's parted in the middle and with the front bangs tucked under to the side of her face. On her index finger you can see some sort of elongated ring that she is wearing, which I would imagine to be one of the 3 rings when they found her body and as seen in the evidence photos.

Absent from the photo is Anthony Matthews the third band member, who died in a hang-gliding accident on August 1st 1975, so I would assume this photo was taken between then and until December 1975 of that year when Pamela disappears from Colorado Springs, CO.

I read a post in another thread from user fred&edna who found an article from: Volume LIV, Number 7, Alabamian - University of Montevallo - January 26, 1977

Where it stated that another female singer named Mary MacGregor, at some point being the lead singer for Sunlending:

"Mary Macgregor was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and completed her early musical training with ten years of classical piano and theory, two years of vocal training and one year on the violin. During high school and college she sang and played in a fourteen-piece dance band and then worked as a folk singer around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Later she sang, danced, and played electric piano, organ, and electric bass in R&B and folk-rock bands, winding up as the lead singer in a country-rock band called Sunlending. Mary is now working on her own, commuting from her home which is 35 miles from civilization in the mountains near Steamboat Springs, Colorado."

But I can't imagine this being her, as she appears to always be rocking the Farrah Fawcett bangs blowout hair-do and I can't find any picture or video of her with straight hair or no bangs covering her face, but then again look at Johny Daly and his completely different hairstyle looks. The only thing I can vision this to be her would be the fact that the article matches up to her being able to play an electrical bass guitar and the female in the picture is playing a guitar.

And after scouring through Mary's wikipedia page, it mentions that after graduating from the University of Minnesota, she toured the country with various acts, but no where on there does it mention that she replaced or that she was the lead singer of Sunlending at some point.

What do you guys think ? I created a collage of Pamela where you can see her hair darker and eyebrows more visible compared to the washed-out newspaper clipping. And I enhanced the rings evidence photo that Unsolved Mysteries aired and rotated the middle coral & turquoise ring to be vertical to match up with the index finger wearing the elongated ring.

Pam is not Mary.

I'll bring this post forward from days ago. Pam went by her name Pamela Buckley as a band-member. See this news-clipping on them:

View attachment 280754
20 Dec 1970, Page 62 - Star Tribune at Newspapers.com

It's from 1970. If you go back to the posts from the days before the identifications were made public, this bit was already picked up on. There's also details back there, though not much, on the band. Her leaving a beauty Queen role early so that she could join Sunlending etc. That happened in 1970.

The photos with the guitar seems to be from the mid-to late 60s perhaps given his Beatles style shag. In the photo of the trio with "confirmed-Pam" in it, he has the longer hair popular with guys in the later 60s and 70s.

There's also a bit about John having founded Sundlending and there being numerous other members in the trio over the years. That tells me the other two members of Sunlending did not remain constant. We know by the newspaper that Pam was going by her name "Pamela Buckley" while one of those members.

Occam tells me that Pam and Mary are not the same individual. The hair colour (though it can be dyed)is different. The eyes seem different coloured too.

The jewellery was very popular in the 60s (when the band was founded) and the 70s especially on the folk scene and they were a folk band. Janice Joplin wore one on every finger I think. The hairstyle was very popular and extremely common in the 70s (check out the photos of Ted Bundy's victims for example). Beehives in the 60s, long parted-in-centre hair in the 70s.

 

[Packersfan96]

The problem with the idea that they were coming off the interstate is that there is not an exit there. County Road 43-62 goes over Interstate 95, but there are no ramps.

On the other end of Locklair Road is Old St. John Church Road which is not a direct route to the interstate; one would have to turn onto Lynches River Road/341 to get onto I-95.

A person really does have to know where they are going to get to Locklair as it is not a road one just turns onto just off the interstate.

Google Maps

They were killed closest to Old St. John Church Road. They would’ve exited at Lynches River Rd., made an immediate right on Old St. John then the first road they would’ve come to would’ve been Locklair on the right. Their bodies were placed at the entrance, as if they’d turned in quickly and then left. Obviously I could be totally wrong but based on how close I-95 is I just can’t imagine it not being involved.

 

[branmuffin]

The yearbook photo of him, which is in the senior section of the 1964 yearbook, said a birth date of 1948, which would be a few years younger than James. But we know that this photo is him. It's on his page from the DNA Doe Project. The birthdate given on Ancestry is most likely a mistake. He's in the senior section of the 1964 yearbook, making his age a solid 18 and his birthdate in 1946. It also said that he played football, perhaps that's where the scars came from.

Are we making an assumption that the scars on James' back are related to his time playing high school football? His high school days were ten years prior to him being found. I would presume if James was still living at home during the time he played football, his family would be able to verify whether he had those scars on his back. We haven't received any such verification.

They could be related to something completely different. I've known a lot of guys who played football in high school but I don't know any that have numerous scars on their shoulders. Maybe something that happened to him in the military, an accident related to his job.

 

[Satchie]

I think that one essential thing here is to know what happened with the gun. the one that was found in early in 1977 in Lonnie George Henry´s vehicle . That story is still very confusing and obscure.

Seems to me they relied far too much on the lie detector test. LE would never do that today.

 

[branmuffin]

I want to apologize if i sounded "not victim friendly" to some of you. I do believe that someone was after JSP for some very specific reason, that ended up with him dead. Is this not victim friendly? It never crossed my mind that this would offend you, when all i want is the killer to be found and justice to be served.
There is not a single post of mine on WS (nor anywhere) that could be considered not victim friendly! Again, my apologies, especially to JPF's family and some of the members of this thread.

Happy sleuthing to all of you.

Pat


MOO JMO

ETA missing word.

I don't think they were referring to you.

 

[Vern]

RSBM

"As someone mentioned above, the sheriff made a vague reference to having an idea of where the couple were heading, based on something they learned from family or friends."

If the family members reported them missing around Christmas 1975 how would they know what their plans were?

I found the sheriff very ill prepared for the PC. He seemed nervous, he didn't appear well versed in the details of the case.

The report perhaps then came from friends?

It was both family that reported both of them missing and last contact dates in December 1975.

Perhaps friend(s) had later contact with either one of them them?

 

[Betty P]

RSBM

"As someone mentioned above, the sheriff made a vague reference to having an idea of where the couple were heading, based on something they learned from family or friends."

If the family members reported them missing around Christmas 1975 how would they know what their plans were?

I found the sheriff very ill prepared for the PC. He seemed nervous, he didn't appear well versed in the details of the case.

Yes, he was kind of nervous, but I got the feeling his answers were vague because he was trying not to give away too much information. He seemed to be holding back on some things, but he was frank in saying there were still a lot of things they're not sure of.

He mentioned other agencies helping investigate. I wonder if LE from the home states of the victims are helping? Maybe FBI? Did they ever go to the FBI for help on this case?

ETA: Also adding to the shout out to @Richard. He always finds the most compelling cold cases, the really important ones that somehow were forgotten over time.

 

[branmuffin]

Daphne, the point is: you're getting close to crossing the line. It's been two days and your theory, with all respect, is a little bit too far fetching. We've just had an admin come and tell us to tone our private investigation down.

It would be helpful if you used the Reply button when responding to a poster. Then we know who you are talking to.

 

[Satchie]

Bringing this forward from an earlier thread, it appears that Lonnie Henry, who owned the gun, died in 1982.

Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #3

 

[Vern]

I want to apologize if i sounded "not victim friendly" to some of you. I do believe that someone was after JSP for some very specific reason, that ended up with him dead. Is this not victim friendly? It never crossed my mind that this would offend you, when all i want is the killer to be found and justice to be served.
There is not a single post of mine on WS (nor anywhere) that could be considered not victim friendly! Again, my apologies, especially to JPF's family and some of the members of this thread.

Happy sleuthing to all of you.

Pat


MOO JMO

ETA missing word.

I think your post was fine. It's a plausible theory. Better to discuss theories and see what can be confirmed/denied rather than get bogged down in ... say ... "he's Jacques from Canada," and put too much focus on a possibly-wrong area that narrows searching down to a wrong focal point.

I'm glad that people still continued to discuss/debate other possibilities with this case rather than focus wrongly as we now know on "Jacques" being the answer here. Great Lessons Learned with this case.