NC NC - Cecil Chacon Jr., 43, teacher, found stabbed and buried in his backyard, Henderson, 8 June 1992

[aThousandYearsWide]

Victim or Case Name and Number: Cecil Lawrence Chacon Jr.

Crime Committed or Inflicted: Murder

Crime Date: 6/8/1992

Time Range:

City/County: Henderson, Vance County

State: North Carolina

District: Capital

Description:

In June 1992, Cecil Lawrence Chacon Jr. was the vocational coordinator at the Vance County schools, an economics and business teacher at Vance Granville Community College, and a park ranger with the Army Corps of Engineers. He was active with the Boy Scouts troop of St. John's Episcopal Church.

On Sunday, June 8, 1992, Mr. Chacon returned from a long trip to Wilmington and stopped to visit his mother on Nelson Street at about 9 p.m. Mrs. Chacon wanted him to stay for the night, even though he lived only a few miles away. Mr. Chacon declined and left alone in his 1976 Buick Skylark about 10 p.m. This was the last time he was seen alive. The Vance County School system did not hear from him on Monday, even though he was scheduled to work. Mrs. Chacon did not hear from him either, although he called his mother almost daily.

Two deputies went to Mr. Chacon's residence around 9 p.m. They noticed an open window on the east side of the house and the spotlight at the rear of the house was on. No other lights were on in the house. The front window's screen was lying on the ground and the deputies thought a breaking and entering may have occurred. One deputy entered the house through the basement window. Upon entering a child's bedroom, deputies noticed furniture overturned and dark stains on the carpet. Mr. Chacon's body was found buried in the backyard of his residence. He had suffered numerous stab wounds. His body had been dragged out the back door and buried in a shallow grave approximately 140 feet from the back of his house. This was no simple task since Mr. Chacon was 6' 4" tall and weighed 295 pounds. A blood luminol test was conducted in the Chacon residence which revealed bloody, bare footprints found inside the residence.

Investigators were not sure if robbery was the motive. Investigators also noted that the criminal(s) made an attempt to clean up the scene by mopping the kitchen floor and vacuuming the carpet. A witness reported seeing a Chevrolet Blazer type vehicle parked near the Chacon residence around 10:30 p.m. Monday night. The vehicle may have been red and black with yellow license plates.

If you have information about this case or any unsolved case in North Carolina, please contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, (800) 334-3000.

NCSBI - Cecil Lawrence Chacon Jr.

Vance man murdered, buried in backyard :: WRAL.com

 

[aThousandYearsWide]

Of interest, the vehicle having yellow tags is interesting. In North Carolina that means the vehicle is owned by the state.

 

[CastlesBurning]

Cold Case files: Henderson man murdered 31 years ago Thursday

HENDERSON, N.C. (WNCT) — On June 8, 1992, Cecil Lawrence Chacon Jr. was on his way home to Timberlake Estates in Vance County from Wilmington. He never showed up to work the next day.

Cecil Chacon made his way to his mother’s house as soon as he got into town that night, according to information from the NC State Bureau of Investigation. He arrived at Bessie Chacon’s home around 9 pm. Ms. Chacon reported she wanted him to stay the night, but Cecil declined.

With his home only a few miles away, Cecil arrived there around 10 pm, officials said.

Chacon was a vocational coordinator for Vance County Schools. He also taught economics and business classes at Vance-Granville Community College. Cecil would call his mother daily, and when Bessie did not receive a call that day, she became worried.

Police were called to Cecil’s home, arriving at 9 pm on June 8, 1992, which was a Monday night. Two deputies saw the front window screen laying on the ground. The window on the east side of the house was open and the backyard spotlight was on. Deputies had to enter through a basement window.

After turning the lights on in the house, detectives were stunned to find furniture overturned and dark stains like dry blood on the carpet in what looked to be a child’s room. Dark, bloody footprints were visible on the floors. It was later determined the suspect attempted to clean the scene. The kitchen floor looked as if it was mopped and the carpet vacuumed.

Continuing to investigate, detectives eventually found Chacon’s body. It was in the backyard just 25 feet from the house. There was a shallow grave covered with plywood. Chacon was found inside with multiple stab wounds.

Chacon, who died at age 43, could not be described as a small man. He was 6-foot-4 and 295 pounds. Law enforcement said the killer dragged him 140 feet to his grave.

The neighbors were questioned by police and one reported that they saw a black and red Chevrolet Blazer with yellow plates parked near Cecil’s residence around 10:30 that night.

Chacon’s three children were not in the home that night. They were staying with his estranged wife.

A $6,000 reward was issued at the time for anyone who had information on the case. If you have information about this case now or any unsolved case in North Carolina, contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at (800) 334-3000.

Information was used from NCSBI and WRAL.com.

 

[asmi106082]

Virginia has yellow don’t tread on me license plates. Just a thought. VA is directly north of NC. MOO

 

[Curious_in_NC]

After 31 years, it doesn't sound like like Vance Co. Sheriff or the SBI is close to solving this. I'm more or less local and this is the first time I have heard about it. Are there any other reports with more details? Any follow up reports from LE? Were there fingerprints or DNA evidence taken?

 

[CastlesBurning]

My big takeaway here is the mom's behavior. Personally I find it a bit odd that she would ask her adult son to stay the night when he's just coming home from a long trip, AND is just a few miles away. I know that when I'm in that position myself, literally all I want to do is get home so I can take a shower and crash in my own bed! Also, the fact that when she didn't get her daily call from him, she immediately called the police? I mean, I usually talk on the phone with my mom each day as well. But if she couldn't get hold of me, or me of her, I'm thinking my mom and I would both first assume that either we were unusually busy that day, or else were having phone problems, etc. And if enough time passed to warrant concern, either of us would most likely drive to the other's house (we also live just a few miles apart) to check things out personally. Did Mrs. Chacon go to Cecil's house herself first? Or did she just go right to calling the police? If it was the latter, combined with asking him to spend the night, makes me think that perhaps she knew something was going on. Maybe Cecil had expressed some kind of concerns or issues in his life at the time.

 

[Curious_in_NC]

The report doesn't mention anything missing from the house or robbery as a motive. With such sketchy information it's hard to tell if this was just incomplete reporting or investigating. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this may have been a targeted killing and LE had an idea what it was about but not enough evidence. It's also possible Mr. Chacon was involved in something that got him in trouble.

Further, it sounds like the Blazer vehicle was seen at his home shortly after he was thought to arrive there. If he interrupted a random burglary, or it was a robbery, it would seem pretty unusual for the criminals to drag him into the backyard and bury him rather than just killing him and fleeing the scene. A meeting between him and the wrong people on his return that went bad sounds more likely than a random crime.

 

[Common Sense Prevails]

My big takeaway here is the mom's behavior. Personally I find it a bit odd that she would ask her adult son to stay the night when he's just coming home from a long trip, AND is just a few miles away. I know that when I'm in that position myself, literally all I want to do is get home so I can take a shower and crash in my own bed! Also, the fact that when she didn't get her daily call from him, she immediately called the police? I mean, I usually talk on the phone with my mom each day as well. But if she couldn't get hold of me, or me of her, I'm thinking my mom and I would both first assume that either we were unusually busy that day, or else were having phone problems, etc. And if enough time passed to warrant concern, either of us would most likely drive to the other's house (we also live just a few miles apart) to check things out personally. Did Mrs. Chacon go to Cecil's house herself first? Or did she just go right to calling the police? If it was the latter, combined with asking him to spend the night, makes me think that perhaps she knew something was going on. Maybe Cecil had expressed some kind of concerns or issues in his life at the time.

She would have been 80 at the time. She passed away 3 years later at the age of 83. She was just an elderly mom, worried about him being tires or herself being lonely. Bessie Elizabeth Guill Chacon.

 

[whinewiththegravy]

After 31 years, it doesn't sound like like Vance Co. Sheriff or the SBI is close to solving this. I'm more or less local and this is the first time I have heard about it. Are there any other reports with more details? Any follow up reports from LE? Were there fingerprints or DNA evidence taken?

The report doesn't mention anything missing from the house or robbery as a motive. With such sketchy information it's hard to tell if this was just incomplete reporting or investigating. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this may have been a targeted killing and LE had an idea what it was about but not enough evidence.

If it was the latter, combined with asking him to spend the night, makes me think that perhaps she knew something was going on. Maybe Cecil had expressed some kind of concerns or issues in his life at the time.

Snipped

The WRAL feature linked above in the OP and which I will link to below answers some of these questions (collection of evidence, anything missing, what Cecil's mother may have been thinking in terms of his safety).

The full reason for police actually going to Chacon Jr.'s house the evening of Monday the 9th was because, in part, his car had been found abandoned around 4am that morning in an odd place. That, the phone call from his mother, and the fact that he hadn't picked up his children (reported by someone other than the wife or her family), led police to his door.

The video interviews the deputy who found the car, his cousin, a former county prosecutor, and a former NC SBI agent. They reiterate the reports of a poorly mopped trail of blood, but don't mention the footprints, sometimes called "small," or the vacuuming of the carpet. They do acknowledge they swabbed the house, collected fingerpints, hair, fibers.

The feature also confirms the obvious theory, the estranged wife and the remarkable coincidence of a violent death at the home where all three children lived but were fortunately, miraculously, not actually there at just the right/wrong time. The cousin says life was hard for Cecil after the estrangement and that the separation had prompted him to take on extra work.

The narrator of the news feature refers to a local and persistent rumor about two men "loyal" to the wife suspected of being involved. WRAL reached out to her and claim to have received a reply, but if you examine the letter they received in return, it purports to be from the couple's children, and dodges the question of who had the opportunity that evening, claiming "we" in the "whole family" were all "together" that night, awaiting Cecil. Whether the loyal men are actual relatives who might have been expected to be there, too, is not mentioned. But the failure to produce enough probable cause from hair and fingerprints now makes sense, if the crime scene was regularly accessed by extended family. Those things being present can't, alone, suggest any guilt.

The letter urges the television station to not cover the case. There is no appeal to find their father's killer, at least in the portion of the letter shown.

Two more interesting details from the letter. The news feature appears to have aired in 2011, but the letter purports the murder to have occurred "almost fifteen years" ago, so it was sent sometime around 2007. So local news had been digging into this for awhile.

Secondly, the timeline needs altering or refining, it would appear. The children were apparently not expected to stay overnight on the 9th. They stayed awake waiting for Cecil, strangefully sad and fearful.* Nobody in the wife's family appeared to have reported that he didn't pick the children up, but his mother had wanted him to stay with her after his daytrip on the 8th. Which means the children spent that Monday, the day after Cecil's mother asked him to stay overnight, either with their mother or at school and then back at the mother's. We do not know whether that had been pre-arranged because of his daytrip (arriving too late to collect them) or was a usual part of the routine, where the children often spent three or more days with the mother. Again, all reports indicate their actual permanent residence was at Cecil's.

I wonder what the point was in making a perfunctory attempt to clean the scene, leave the body where it was ostentatiously covered and would obviously have been found right away, and then take and dump the car. Since we know about the second vehicle potentially being involved, these measures really didn't seem to delay the report of Cecil being missing, nor the discovery of his body, nor assist the killer(s) in leaving the scene. He missed work, didn't check in with his mother, and if you knew him and killed him, you'd know both of these anomalies would be reported to police. Perhaps the killer(s) anticipated someone concerned enough to visit the house early on the 9th, notice the car gone and presume he was gone with it, maybe glance in a window, but not persistent enough to check the property or note the window screen left out in the open.

*the letter says this anxious waiting game happened "the night he was killed," but his death is listed as 8 June, so shortly after he left his mother's and arrived home but before his car was found at 4am on the 9th. They mention being awakened to be told he was dead, but, again, this can't have happened before very late on 9th or early on the 10th

Vance man murdered, buried in backyard