Twenty-one-year-old Suellen Evans was majoring in home economics at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 1965, she had just enrolled and signed up for several summer classes, and on the morning of Friday, July 30th, she had two of them: sociology and education. After classes were over for the day, she was planning on packing up and going back to her hometown of Mooresville, North Carolina for the weekend.
At around twelve-thirty p.m., Suellen got out of class and, as she usually did, took a short cut through the campus arboretum to get to her dormitory. The pleasant, tree-covered path was often used by students going to and fro, or simply looking for a shaded picnic spot, and the thick foliage formed an almost solid arch over the walkway.
As Suellen strolled through the arboretum, a man jumped out from between the trees and grabbed her from behind, dragging her into the bushes while tearing at her clothes. Suellen fought him viciously, screaming and struggling against his iron grip, and in the melee, the man pulled out a large switchblade, slashed at his victim’s neck, then plunged the knife into her heart before fleeing the scene.
Another student nearby heard Suellen’s cries and came running. She would later state that she saw a dark-skinned arm around Suellen’s legs and then saw a shadowy figure darting off into the trees. The student summoned another young woman and a nun who were passing by, and they managed to get Suellen to her feet, asking if she was hurt.
“No,” Suellen answered. “I think I’m going to faint. He tried to rape me.” Suellen then collapsed into the nun’s arms and lost consciousness, dying before the women’s very eyes.
Police arrived at the college campus within minutes, approaching from three directions in an attempt to box in the killer before he could escape. Officers also brought bloodhounds to track the murderer’s movements, but the dogs failed to pick up a scent, and it appeared that the perpetrator had slipped through the authorities’ net.
Detectives were first searching for a black male assailant, as a few witnesses claimed they had seen a slender, light-skinned black man running from the direction of the arboretum at around the time of the murder. To this end, half a dozen persons of interest were questioned, though none were detained.
One man in particular who was held for four hours had been identified through a phone tip. He was a janitor at the college, and his wife was employed there as well. However, as he did not have any cuts or bruises on his arms, as police suspected the killer would have due to the struggle with the victim, he was summarily released.
Strangely, other witnesses reported having seen a red-haired white man fleeing from the arboretum around the time Suellen was killed. This individual supposedly had blood on his shirt, and was seen to jump into a 1961 or 1962 Rambler which had been parked near the planetarium. This man was never identified.
Though the investigation continued at a fever pitch over the next few years, the murderer was never found. Detectives at one point examined over two-hundred suspects, of which they managed to eliminate all but three, though it seems that this was as far as they could take it.
The case was reexamined in 1997, and there were suggestions that one of the prime suspects from the original investigation bore closer scrutiny, but unfortunately, this individual had since passed away, and the case went cold once more.
The murder of Suellen Evans remains one of two unsolved murders on the University of North Carolina campus, the other being that of Faith Hedgepeth, which would occur more than forty years later, in 2012. Nineteen-year-old Faith was raped and beaten to death with a liquor bottle in her apartment.
In Faith’s case, however, the crime appears to have been cracked. In September of 2021, a twenty-eight-year-old man named Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares was charged with her murder after his DNA was found at the scene. The investigation is still ongoing as of this writing.
Crime Immemorial 