40-year-old unsolved triple murder still haunts law enforcement

Forty years ago, in a howling snowstorm that covered tracks and swallowed screams, three members of a family were killed in a brutal case that's still unsolved.

Not long after the owner of Boone's Buick dealership left a Rotary meeting, picked up his wife and son at the car lot and arrived home, he was strangled and then drowned in the bathtub of his home, as was his son. His wife was strangled to death.

The three bodies were found crowded side-by-side, clothed, leaning across and into a filled bathtub, their heads in the water. There were rope marks around the necks of all three victims: Bryce Durham, 51; his wife, Virginia, 44; and their son, Bobby Joe, 18.

The bodies were discovered by a son-in-law and his neighbor.

The son-in-law told authorities that his wife's mother had called from the house and said three black men were beating Bryce and Bobby Joe Durham. Then the phone went dead.

Within weeks of the crime, authorities arrested four men — all white — who were later released for lack of evidence. The son-in-law later told investigators that he and his wife were listening to music when he answered the phone, and that Virginia Durham spoke in such low tones he could not be sure what she said.

Some of the primary investigators have since died. People have moved. But the case remains a keen interest of a number of local and state investigators, including the former attorney general of North Carolina, a retired State Bureau of Investigation agent and the sheriff of Watauga County.

For years the Watauga County Sheriff's Office and SBI have run fingerprint searches periodically to see if they can match fingerprints found in the home. A few months ago, an investigator with the sheriff's office attended a cold-case seminar and used the Durham murder case as part of a class.

The sheriff's office has combed through the evidence — more than 200 people have been interviewed over the years — and plans to re-interview some of the key people, who may or may not be suspects, said Watauga Sheriff Len "L.D." Hagaman.

"You develop a list of people you want to talk to," Hagaman said. "There's a lot of people who went through the scene."

'Virginia, is that you?'

It was Feb. 3, 1972, a Thursday, and it started snowing about 3 p.m. The Durham family had lived in Boone for about 18 months. Bryce Durham was a Wilkes County native who had moved to Mount Airy in the car loan business and then to Boone to open his own dealership, a dream come true for the hard-working family.

He had a Rotary meeting that evening at Appalachian Ski Mountain in Blowing Rock, where Green Berets training in the area were to give a demonstration to the club. Conditions were so bad — with snow blasting into frozen faces on winds up to 40 mph — that just a dozen members of the club showed.

When they left, one of the Rotarians drove behind Bryce Durham, following him to the Buick dealership on East King Street. He estimated Durham arrived there about 8:30 p.m.

Virginia Durham was working late at the dealership. Authorities believe that the parents had told their son, Bobby Joe, a student at Appalachian State University, to meet them there and ride home with them because of the weather. A four-wheel drive vehicle called a Jimmy had just arrived at the dealership that day, and Bryce Durham told an employee to gas it up. He would borrow it to get his family home, including up the short, steep dead-end road off N.C. 105 Bypass.

Several neighbors saw the vehicle go up the hill. One noted it was about 9 p.m. because the 9 o'clock movie was coming on.

The family was apparently eating a snack in the living room when they were surprised, investigators said.

The couple's daughter and her husband, Ginny Durham Hall and Troy Hall, also both students at ASU, lived in a mobile home about 4 miles away. Their trailer was in the area behind where the Walmart in Boone is now.

Troy Hall told his wife he'd gone to the ASU library to study at about 5 p.m. that day, according to Charlie Whitman, a retired SBI agent who worked the case from the beginning.

Whitman said Hall checked out a library book that evening, although the time isn't known. A friend saw him stepping outside to take a break at about 8 p.m. and they had a short conversation.

Hall arrived back at the trailer at about 10 p.m. The Winter Olympics were on television and the couple had watched for about 10 or 15 minutes when the television quit working. They put a record on a stereo and were listening to music.

That's when Troy Hall answered the phone.

"Virginia, is that you?" he said.

He got off the phone and told his wife that her mother had said that three men were beating Bryce and Bobby Joe Durham in a back room. The call was abruptly cut off, and when he tried to call back he got only a busy signal.

Hall couldn't get his car to start and asked a neighbor, Cecil Small, to drive them. Small, who is deceased, was a private investigator and drove the young couple to the house.

Ginny Hall waited in the car while her husband and Small walked up the hill and went inside the Durham's split-level home.

The lights were on inside. The home had been ransacked. The phone was ripped from the wall.

When the men went to look for the sound of running water, they found all three victims in the bathroom, they told investigators at the time. Autopsy results would show Virginia Durham died of strangulation, while her husband and son had been strangled and drowned. Bryce Durham had a cord tied loosely around his neck.

Hall and Small went to a nearby house and called police. When authorities arrived, they found the three bodies, all across the lip of the tub. The water was running, flowing through the overflow drain.

The four-wheel drive Jimmy — the one the Durhams had borrowed from the dealership and used to reach their home that evening — was found abandoned a mile away on Poplar Grove Road, lights on, windshield wipers slapping, doors closed, motor still running. Silverware from the home was found inside a pillowcase in the car, but a bank deposit bag and other valuables had been left behind in the ransacked house, causing investigators to wonder if robbery really was a motive.

'Nothing left to say'

The late Wade Carroll, who was sheriff of Watauga County and one of the first officers on the scene, told the Winston-Salem Journal in a 1982 interview near the 10th anniversary of the crime that he did not believe the phone call to Troy Hall ever happened.

"In my opinion, Mrs. Durham never made that phone call," he said. "When some people come into your house to kill you, they are not going to let you make a phone call."

Whitman, the retired SBI agent, said he believes the phone call did happen. The description of the call and what she and her husband were doing that evening comes from what Ginny Hall told him. She has cooperated with him in the investigation over the years, and he once took her to someone who put her under hypnosis and she alluded to the phone call, he said.

Troy and Ginny Hall moved to Wilkes County not long after the murders. They divorced in Yadkin County in 1976.

He became an attorney and owns a construction company in Georgia. He didn't respond to an interview request left at his company.

Ginny Hall married Steve Mackie, then of Yadkin County. She's known as Ginny Durham Mackie now. The couple moved to Washington state, but own a home in Elkin.

Steve Mackie said his wife did not wish to talk, but that she'd cooperated with the SBI and it would be great to find out who did it, if they are still alive.

"After all the time she spent in the past with the State Bureau, being put under hypnosis, there was nothing she knew to help," he said. "I can tell you right now she has nothing left to say."

'Searching eyes'

In Washington 40 years ago, Boone native Rufus Edmisten, a young lawyer on the staff of Sen. Sam Ervin, who would soon become famous for the Watergate hearings, heard about the killings in his hometown. Edmisten called Sheriff Carroll, who told him, "We got us a big 'un."

After Edmisten gained prominence as the deputy chief counsel to Ervin during the Watergate hearings, he was elected as North Carolina attorney general in 1974.

He made the case a priority for the SBI. He activated a murder squad to look into it, and continued to assign agents to it during the 10 years he was attorney general. The SBI would sometimes assign agents with no knowledge of the case, and tell them to look at it with fresh eyes.

Bryce Durham's parents, Coy and Collie Durham, lived in Wilkes County, and Edmisten said people would ask him about the case anytime he got within 50 miles of Wilkes or Watauga counties.

Edmisten, who now works at his law firm in Raleigh, said he spent more personal time on the Durham case than any other during his career and it was more baffling than any other.

"I kept it in my mind all the time," Edmisten said. "I saw those unbelievably searching eyes of Mrs. (Collie) Durham who wanted this solved. I would have given anything to solve that."

Bryce Durham's parents died without ever knowing who killed their son, daughter-in-law and grandson.

When he was still attorney general, in the early 1980s, he traveled to Winston-Salem to talk to Ginny Durham, the sole survivor of her family and someone whom law-enforcement agents had questioned.

"I was satisfied she knew nothing (about who killed the family)," Edmisten said.

He said he believes it would have taken more than one person to kill the family. Bobby Joe Durham, an Eagle scout, was athletic, young and strong, and the two men were held under water while they were still alive, according to the autopsies.

"I still maintain this was a professional hit job," Edmisten said. "You don't go out on a snowy night like that in Boone, if it was someone driving down 105 (Bypass) who said, 'Let's go rob the place.' "

On Friday, the 40th anniversary of the murders, Whitman said he still doesn't know who killed the family. "I don't have the slightest idea," he said.

Whitman has questions still. Was there some reason the killings had to be done that night despite the snowstorm? Why was there no sign of struggle in the bathroom, where not a drop of water was on the floor, despite the full tub?

Steve Mackie said it's difficult to go through these anniversaries. He said his wife wants to see the case solved.

"Every minute that goes by, every hour that goes by, makes it harder to solve," he said. "Everybody wants closure."