Twenty-eight-year-old Debbie Wolfe was a respected nurse, having worked for a year-and-a-half at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her coworkers found it odd when she did arrive for work on December 27, 1985, and did not call to explain her absence. They grew concerned as three more days passed with still no word from her. The concern turned to panic and then devastation on December 31, when Debbie’s body was found at the bottom of the pond outside her home.

Debbie Wolfe’s death was ruled an accident. Although it could not be definitively determined how she had died, her cause of death was listed as drowning. Those findings are still official, but they were never accepted by her family and friends.

Debbie’s loved ones went to their graves believing Debbie was sent to her grave by the hands of another and that the authorities bungled the investigation into her murder.

Debbie Wolfe

The 1985 holiday season had been a joyous occasion for Debbie. She and her two brothers spent Christmas day at the Fayetteville home of their mother and step-father, Jenny and Jerry Edwards. The family had a typical fun-filled gathering of conversation, Christmas dinner, and presents.

A Great Christmas

It was back to work following the holiday. Debbie completed her shift at the hospital at 4:00 p.m. on December 26. She phoned her mother afterward, saying she was on her way home. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Debbie was slated to work the day after, but she did not arrive as scheduled. After repeated calls from her supervisors went unanswered, Jenny and Jerry were notified. Their phone calls were also met with no response.

No Debbie

On December 27, a concerned Jenny and Jerry, along with a friend, Kevin Gorton, visited Debbie’s home, an isolated cabin seven miles outside Fayetteville. Their concern escalated upon arrival.

Debbie was normally neat and meticulous, but her home was anything but upon her parents’ arrival. Beer cans of a brand she did not drink lay littered across the yard. Debbie had two dogs, both large German Shepherds. One was running freely outside as usual while the other was chained to the home’s front door which opened into a bedroom. Neither dog appeared not to have recently been fed.

Debbie’s car was parked in an unusual spot near a pond roughly one-hundred yards from her cabin. Upon inspection, Jenny noticed the driver’s seat was pushed as far back as it would go, making it unsuitable for the five-foot-three-inch tall Debbie to drive.

The inside of the home was also uncharacteristically messy. Several clothing items lay on the floor, including one of Debbie’s nurse uniforms. Kevin found her purse in an odd spot, shoved under her bed.

A message left on Debbie’s answering machine was also strange. A man saying he was from the hospital had called expressing concern about Debbie and mentioned she had missed several days of work. The message, however, had been left earlier that day, December 27, when Debbie had only missed a few hours of work.

Debbie’s Cabin

Jenny called the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office to report her daughter as missing but was told they could not investigate until after seventy-two hours had elapsed.

A full-scale search for Debbie was not conducted until December 31, five days after she was last seen. Investigators searched the cabin and found no signs of a struggle. The edge of the pond was also searched, but Captain Jack Watts says they did not examine the entire pond that day because they were told that Debbie’s friends had done so the day before and had found nothing.

Bloodhounds were unable to track Debbie’s scent.

Captain Jack Watts

Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department

On January 1, 1986, Kevin Gorton and Gordon Childress, another of Debbie’s friends, conducted a separate search of the pond. Both men were experienced divers who had conducted rescue work while Army paratroopers.

As Gordon dragged the pond, he found two sets of footprints pressed into the mud, along with the drag marks. Shortly after going under the water, he found a body submerged head first into what he says looked like a barrel.

               Gordon Childress                                          Kevin Gorton

Cumberland County Sheriff’s officials were recalled to the pond to retrieve the body, which was confirmed as Debbie’s. An autopsy found approximately half a teaspoon of water in her bronchial tube. The coroner found several bruises on her body but deemed them insufficient to indicate a beating. No traces of alcohol or drugs were in her system.

Authorities concluded Debbie Wolfe’s death was accidental. Because ice lay around the edge of the pond, they believe she had slipped into the water and drowned, possibly while playing with her dogs. The Cumberland County Coroner was unable to determine when she had died, but, absent any signs of foul play, concurred with police and ruled Debbie’s death to be an accidental drowning.

Jenny had a second independent autopsy performed on her daughter. This examiner declared the condition of Debbie’s body was consistent with immersion in the water for six days, leading him to conclude she had died shortly after she was last seen leaving work on the afternoon of December 26.

Debbie’s Death Is Ruled a Drowning . . .  

Kevin Gorton and Gordon Childress, who had found Debbie’s body in the pond, do not believe her death resulted from drowning because her eyes and mouth were closed and her arms were in a relaxed state. The experienced rescue divers say a drowning victim’s eyes and mouth are usually wide open and their hands and arms are in a clawed state. The men also say Debbie showed no signs of bloating and discoloration typical of drowning victims.

The pond was dirty and full of silt, but Debbie’s clothes and body were clean. In addition, the water was only one-to-two inches deep at the edges and at its deepest point was five-and-a-half feet. Debbie, a good swimmer, was found approximately thirty feet from the bank. Friends believe she would have been able to get out of the pond if she had fallen into it.

Investigators reason, however, that Debbie, who suffered from back problems, became disoriented by the shock of cold water and did not think clearly.

. . . But Inconsistencies Are Found

Jenny said that after Debbie’s body was lifted from the pond, the Sheriff told her they would drain the pond and retrieve the barrel seen by Kevin and Gordon.

When authorities drained the pond, however, no barrel was found. They say none of the divers who retrieved Debbie’s body reported seeing a barrel and did not believe one had been in the pond. They believe what appeared to have been a barrel to Gordon and Kevin could have been Debbie’s field jacket ballooning out as she was laying at an angle in the bottom of the pond.

Was A Barrel In The Pond?

Gordon and Kevin are certain, however, that Debbie’s body was in an old burn barrel or something similar such as a metal-type drum.

Jenny said her daughter had a round fifty-five-gallon metal oil barrel outside her home, the type often used by farmers for burning trash. Debbie instead used her barrel for storing firewood and for target practice. It was riddled with bullet holes, and Gordon and Kevin say they saw holes in the barrel in the pond. Jenny says by the time Debbie’s body was pulled from the pond, the barrel was no longer on her property. It has never been found.

A few months later, more red flags were raised regarding the death of Debbie Wolfe. Jenny did not recognize any of the clothes authorities say Debbie was wearing when she drowned. She says the pants, shoes, and bra were all too large for her. Jenny says she knew most of Debbie’s non-work clothes because virtually all of them were hand-me-downs from her.

Jenny also said Debbie was wearing her brother’s field jacket when she was pulled from the pond but that a different, much smaller, jacket was returned to her. In addition, a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt was among the clothing returned; neither Jenny nor any of Debbie’s friends had ever seen her wearing it.

Furthermore, Jenny also did not recognize the glass beads and Indian necklace which were among the items returned.

Jenny Edwards

Debbie’s Mother

The nurse’s uniform Debbie was last seen wearing is also shrouded in mystery.

While having lunch at the hospital several hours before she was last seen on December 26, Debbie was wearing a long-sleeved uniform. She spilled both coffee and peas on it, leaving stains. This uniform was not the one found lying on the floor of Debbie’s home the following day. That outfit was a lighter short-sleeved summer uniform; because it was winter, Debbie is not believed to have worn that uniform in several months.

The stained long-sleeved nursing uniform Debbie was last seen wearing was not among the clothing items returned to her mother, and it has also never been found.

What Happened To The Uniform?

Debbie Wolfe’s family and friends believe she was murdered. Two men have been mentioned as possible culprits, both of whom worked with Debbie at the hospital and had sought romantic relationships with her.

Among Debbie’s responsibilities at the Veterans Administration Medical Center was overseeing the volunteers. Two of the male volunteers had asked Debbie for dates, but she rejected them both because she was seeing another man who had no connection to the hospital. Both of Debbie’s pursuers continued to pester her to the point of making her feel uneasy.

The first volunteer had a history of mental troubles; Jenny says Debbie told her he had called her at home and harassed her. This man refused to take a polygraph test, but he gave police an alibi which checked out. Shortly thereafter, he quit his volunteer work at the hospital and moved out of state.

Jenny believed the second volunteer who sought a romantic relationship with Debbie was the man who left the message on her answering machine the day she disappeared. Following her ordeal with the first volunteer, Debbie obtained a new, unlisted phone number but, Jenny believed, this other man somehow learned it. Investigators could not confirm the claim and found no evidence he was involved in Debbie’s death.

As far as I could determine, neither of these men has been publicly named. I also could not find any source mentioning the name of Debbie’s boyfriend or the degree to which he was considered and investigated as having involvement in her death.

Romantic Pursuers

In 1991, five-and-a-half years after the death of Debbie Wolfe, Hollywood private detective Robert Frasco was commissioned by TV Guide to look into the case. He concluded her death was not an accident.

Frasco believes Debbie was abducted from her home and forced into her car by a kidnapper who killed her at an unknown locale. He then returned to Debbie’s home where he disposed of her body in the water in an effort to make the murder look like an accidental drowning.

Jenny Edwards concurred. She died in 2002, still believing her daughter had been murdered and that sheriff’s officials had not conducted a thorough investigation, beliefs shared by Debbie’s stepfather and brothers, who are also all now deceased.

Cumberland County investigators disagree, refusing to amend the ruling of Debbie Wolfe’s death as accidental.

 

Debbie and Jenny

All of the principal officials involved in the investigation into Debbie Wolfe’s death are now either retired or deceased. Current authorities say they have received nothing to warrant re-opening the case.

If Debbie Wolfe was murdered, the most likely and perhaps only way her killer will be identified is via a guilty conscience.

Accident Or Murder?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62612604/deborah-ann-wolfe  

SOURCES:

• Burlington Daily Times
• Charlotte Observer
• Fayetteville Observer
• Kannapolis Daily Independent
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Wilson Daily Times
• Winston-Salem Journal