24-Year-Old Double Murder Cold Case Involving Sean Patrick McDuffy Solved

November 11, 2009

Already in a Georgia prison serving time on a first-degree attempted murder charge for trying to decapitate his girlfriend during an argument, Sean Patrick McDuffy, 48, now faces charges in North Carolina dating back 24 years for the first-degree murders of his brother and sister-in-law.  Kelly McDuffy, 24, and Bobbie McDuffy, 20, were found dead on February 21, 1985 inside their home in the 400 block of Squirrel Street in the North Carolina community known as Bonnie Doone.  Both had sustained sharp force trauma to their upper bodies, and according to old news reports there was a butcher knife in Kelly McDuffy's side.

Georgia Department of Corrections records show that Sean McDuffy was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1996 for the attempted murder conviction—the sentencing records also showed that he had been charged with cruelty to children.

McDuffy resided with his brother and sister-in-law at the time of their deaths, and had been a prime suspect after the killings.  However, because a judge had ruled in 1986 that there was no probable cause for his arrest, he was released and the case remained closed until Bobbie McDuffy's father, who was dying, persuaded the police to reopen it.  As a result, detectives began reexamining the case files, sifting through boxes of evidence, analyzing crime scene photos, and so forth, which prompted them to focus on Sean McDuffy as the suspect in the brutal killings.

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Update: Highway Killers

In the bizarre realm of serial killers possibly working as long-haul truckers being looked at by the FBI in literally hundreds of cases, there does not appear to be an end in sight to the horrors being committed along our nation's highways.  Despite the FBI's creation of a database called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative (HSKI) containing information about more than 500 cold cases, some of which date back at least 30 years, the federal law enforcement agency is aware that hurdles still exist in bringing cases together on a local sharing-of-information level.  One of the problems that make solving these cases so difficult is the fact that the serial killer truckers are preying on stranded motorists, hitchhikers and prostitutes, who they whisk across state lines either before or after committing their dirty deeds and dump their vulnerable victims' bodies like rubbish along the highways, according to criminologist Steven Spingola.

"They have that easy access, and they probably would appear to be a friendly face," Spingola said recently.  "They (the victims) get in the vehicle and they can be transported across state lines where, traditionally, departments do not talk to each other."

Spingola, however, says that the HSKI database is beginning to change the way in which law enforcement agencies communicate with one another.  In a nutshell, local cops are now using HSKI as a resource that will, hopefully, connect their cases to other similar cases in other states.

"When you look at what the FBI has done, they've tried to form a line of communication between local, state, and national law enforcement which allows crimes to be compared," Spingola said.  "Hopefully, when one crime is solved in Raleigh, North Carolina, there may be a link to Beloit, Wisconsin."

One of many cold cases that law enforcement agencies hope HSKI will help solve is that of the murder of Crystal Linn Soulier, who left her home in Shell Lake, Wisconsin on October 1, 1996 and disappeared—seemingly without a trace.  Crystal had left home before, but on this occasion it was different in that no one had heard from her after she left, except on one occasion.  In fact, when Crystal's body was found five months later, dumped in a ravine behind an adult bookstore just off Interstate 90 near Beloit, it was a mystery for the Rock County Sheriff's Office that would lay dormant for the next few years all because detectives working the case did not have much to go on besides a dead body.  There was no purse, and no identification on the corpse.

The one occasion in which Crystal had been heard from after she left home was a telephone call she made informing relatives that she was in Madison after having gotten that far by bus and was on her way to visit family members in Beloit.  She had asked if anyone could come to Madison to pick her up, but unfortunately no one had been able to and police now suspect that she had hitched a ride, possibly with a trucker.  Her last words to her relatives were, "I'll see you soon."

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