Investigators not giving up on 20-year-old cold case murder
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- It's one of the oldest cold cases in the Capital City, but Raleigh police investigators say they refuse to give up on solving it.
Now, on the 20th anniversary of the week Beth Ellen Vinson went missing and was found murdered, detectives are asking for your help in finally bringing the killer to justice.
They were joined Thursday afternoon by Vinson's uncle with a heartfelt plea for information.
"We still live with the pain of losing her, and being without her for so long," Russell Vinson told reporters gathered at Raleigh police headquarters.
Beth Ellen Vinson was a headstrong 17-year-old dancer and beauty queen when she left her family's home in Goldsboro to come to Raleigh on a quest for the stars.
"I remember the little girl who was pretty much the light of our family, and the excitement she showed when she entered dance competitions", her uncle recalled.
Although her parents weren't happy with the arrangement, they felt the experience might make her realize the difficulty of getting ahead.
However, just days after she arrived, her car was found abandoned along Capital Boulevard.
It was later learned, much to her family's disappointment, that Vinson had gone out in the early morning hours of Aug. 16, 1994 to meet a client of the escort service for which she was working.
Several days later, about a mile from where her car was left, a man found her badly decomposed body underneath a piece of cardboard between two industrial buildings on Wicker Drive just off Atlantic Avenue.
Police interviewed people close to the teenager and even the escort client she was going to see, but no lead panned out.
They continued to put in countless hours on the case in the next few years, but never got that one good tip they need to make an arrest.
Today, there is a new, young detective on the case. Jerry Faulk believes it will take only one tiny lead to solve this decades-old mystery.
"It is a solvable case. There is evidence in the case but we just have not been able to link that evidence to a particular person", said Faulk.
Faulk says what may seem like the most insignificant detail to one person may be the information that breaks the case wide open.
"If I had to go through a thousand frivolous phone calls to get one good one it would be worth it", Faulk said.
