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Part of road in Ashe is dug up in search for missing man's remains
Authorities suspect he was killed by his uncle, who's now in prison
Journal Photo by Monte Mitchell
A track hoe digs up part of Smithey Road in Ashe County in a search for Jimmy Blevins' body.
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Published: June 23, 2009
CRUMPLER
Investigators looked on as a track hoe dug up a portion of Smithey Road beside the North Fork of the New River yesterday in a search for the remains of an Ashe County man missing since Feb. 24, 2007.
They didn't find Jimmy Blevins' remains, but plan to be back at the scene today, said Ashe County Sheriff James Williams. He said that yesterday they had dug a hole about 13 to 14 feet deep and about 70 feet long.
Authorities say they suspect that Blevins was killed by his uncle, Freddie Hammer. Hammer is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole in Virginia after pleading guilty May 22 to killing three men on a Grayson County Christmas tree farm on Jan. 24, 2008.
"Since Mr. Hammer has been sent away for good now, as we hoped, we had folks come forward with information that led us to this spot," Williams said, standing in the road beside the North Fork of the New River.
When Blevins disappeared from his trailer beside N.C. 16, he left the television on and chicken cooking in the crock pot. A witness said she saw Hammer pick up Blevins and drive off in Hammer's truck. That's the last time Blevins was seen.
Hammer has denied killing his nephew.
At the time Blevins disappeared, Smithey Road was a dirt road and the state was widening it and paving it. Heavy construction equipment was parked nearby.
A witness reported seeing Hammer in the dark, aboard one of the pieces of equipment, which was running.
"(Hammer) was seen on a track hoe here late in the night, on or about the day Blevins went missing," Williams said.
Hammer, who ran a firewood business and worked as a handyman, was an experienced heavy-equipment operator.
"Freddie's good at running them," Williams said. "In a few scoops he could have been 15 feet deep."
Investigators are working on a theory that Hammer buried Blevins under the dirt road and then let the Department of Transportation pave over the site.
On Friday, investigators with the Ashe County Sheriff's Office and the State Bureau of Investigation were along Smithey Road with a professor from N.C. State University who operated ground-penetrating radar looking for anomalies in the soil. Searchers formed a grid pattern and used those results, along with the witness's description, to target an area to dig. The spot is near where the road starts to run beside the river.
A cadaver-finding dog was at the scene yesterday, occasionally sniffing around the expanding hole.
But even with the tools and information they had, investigators are looking through tons of earth over a large area.
"It's kind of a needle in a haystack," Williams said.
A small track hoe was digging at the scene yesterday morning. A larger track hoe arrived in the early afternoon and by 1:40 p.m. was scooping up big chunks of earth. They stopped digging at about 2:40 p.m.
The spot where they were digging is less than 2½ miles from the Riverside store where Jimmy Blevins' mother, Janet Blevins, works. Soon after Jimmy Blevins disappeared, Hammer came to visit Janet Blevins in the store. He walked past the missing persons flyers for Jimmy, and handed her $200 he had owed Jimmy.
Just before Christmas that year, Hammer visited Janet Blevins again, this time at her home. She said she begged Hammer to tell her where Jimmy Blevins was, but he would not. But he said something that chilled her.
"I watch Court TV," he told her, "and they've been looking for a man for 10 years, and the law had walked all over his grave looking for him."
Hammer escaped the death penalty in connection with the Grayson County Christmas tree murders after entering a plea deal after investigators dug up the murder weapons and missing cash inside a barn at a private campground where Hammer had a trailer in Cripple Creek, Va. Hammer had told a fellow inmate where the items were buried.
He responded to questions from the Winston-Salem Journal with a letter he wrote from jail on Jan. 31.
"I like your biggest question, ‘What happened to Jimmy Blevins'" Hammer wrote. "I'm so glad someone out there is still searching for him and the truth. It's my understanding that the police have practly(sic) given up on him. This should not happen to anyone…. Jimmy is out there somewhere and somebody knows what happened to him. Questions still need to be asked."
It appeared that most of the digging yesterday was in the travel lane closest to the river. Today, workers will use heavy equipment to fill back the hole and compact the soil so the road can be repaved, but they will also expand the search to both travel lanes along a stretch of the road.
"We don't want to dig up half of it and wonder the rest of our lives if he was under the other," Williams said.
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.
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