Killing of Brenda Sue Brown

On the morning of July 27, 1966, Brenda Sue Brown, age 11, was asked to walk her 6-year-old sister Patricia two blocks to a Head Start class in Shelby, North Carolina. This was the last time she was seen alive. When Brenda Sue did not return, her mother Gladys Brown began a door-to-door search around 10:15 a.m., and a search team from the Shelby Rescue Squad was later formed. At 6:45 p.m., Brenda Sue's nude body was found in a wooded area near South Lafayette Street, not far from her home. Her body was covered with freshly cut tree limbs and brush, and her folded dress was placed atop the brush. A bloody rock was found nearby.

Authorities determined Brenda Sue had been beaten to death with the rock, her skull fractured in twelve places. Police reported she had not been raped despite being found nude. Investigators believed the killer was on foot, given heavy traffic on South Lafayette Street. Suspects at the time included an unidentified man who had exposed himself to Brenda Sue's sister days earlier, and a 13-year-old boy, Robert Roseboro, who lived near where the body was found. Roseboro was questioned but gave no answers; police lacked sufficient evidence to charge him, and the case went cold.

In 1968, Roseboro was arrested for the murder of Mary Helen Williams, a Shelby business owner found beaten and stabbed. He was convicted in May 1969 and sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison. Because of similarities to the Brown case, many locals believed Roseboro was responsible for both killings, though he was never charged in Brown's death and denied involvement when questioned by detectives in 2005 and again during 2010 testimony.

In 2005, Brenda Sue's sisters pushed for the case to be reopened; missing case files were eventually located, though key physical evidence had been lost. In May 2006, her body was exhumed and later reinterred following a public memorial. A 2006 newspaper series on the case's 40th anniversary prompted Lori Lail to come forward, stating her late grandfather, Earl Mickey Parker, had confessed on his deathbed in 2002 that he and Thurman Price killed Brenda Sue. Records showed Parker and Price had a prior joint conviction for assault to commit rape of a 12-year-old girl in 1954.

On February 12, 2007, police arrested Thurman Price, then 79, on a first-degree murder charge. He was released on bond and denied involvement. Parker's body was exhumed in 2007 to compare palm prints to a bloody print found on Brenda Sue's shoe, but results were inconclusive due to deterioration. In February 2010, a judge ruled Parker's deathbed confession and Lail's testimony admissible at trial. Price maintained his innocence until his death on August 4, 2012, while still awaiting trial.