Gossip & Brain Bashing

Cherryville is a small town in south-central western North Carolina, about 45 minutes from Charlotte, south but west of the city and nowhere near the coast. In 1991 it had roughly five thousand residents, a median household income of about $51,000, almost $20,000 below the national average, and a median home price of $230,300. It grew out of tobacco farming and, from the late nineteenth century, textile mills; the Washington Post described it that year as uncommonly close knit and impervious to the world at large.

William Fred Davis, 68, and his wife Margaret Shuford Davis, 67, had lived there all their lives. Fred had served in the Army Air Corps in the Second World War, worked as a mechanic for the North Carolina Department of Transportation and farmed; Margaret had worked at Jenkins Food, the local sausage plant. Their daughter Ruth had married Joey James Melton, known as Joey Jimmy, a 29-year-old high school dropout whom the Davises had opposed her marrying and had supported financially, setting the couple up in a mobile home about 150 yards from their own house and later in the house Margaret grew up in.

On Sunday, 28 July 1991 the Davises went to church and were given a ride home. A neighbour borrowed a vacuum cleaner at about six that evening and, finding nobody home, let herself in through the unlocked back door. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He beat Margaret in the kitchen and then Fred in his recliner in the den, where the television was loud and Fred, who was hard of hearing, never heard him coming. He took Margaret's pocket book and dress, burned the purse about three miles away, came back for it because it held identification, and threw it and the axe handle into a creek. Ruth found the bodies the next morning, her seven-year-old son walking in first.

Only the purse was taken and there was no evidence of sexual assault, though Margaret was found partly undressed. Suspicion fell at once on Joey Jimmy Melton, the only person in town with any friction with the Davises. Police camped outside his house for weeks, but found no physical evidence and no way to make him crack, and the pressure eased. this part of the story is covered for now

On Sunday, 8 September 1991 an intruder climbed through a bedroom window at the farmhouse of E.Z. Willis, 71, and his wife Sarah, 67, on Flint Mill Road. E.Z., who walked with a cane, got in a few blows with it before both were beaten to death with a tire iron in the kitchen. Their daughter Sheila, who lived next door, found them on the Monday morning. Nothing was taken. Both houses were rural and about a mile from the Cleveland County line, both couples were over 65, both had been at home on a Sunday evening, and in both houses the television was left blaring.

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now He said he liked the Davises, had no quarrel with either couple, and had learned only after the killings that E.Z. Willis was his third cousin. He said he would have killed again.

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now He said he was going to heaven and that he forgave everyone, and died at 2.14. details of the account remain covered until revealed