In the winter of 1971, in Durham, North Carolina, two young people would go missing in what would prove to be the tragic first chapter of a true Valentine’s Day massacre.
Twenty-year-old nursing student Patricia Mann and her boyfriend, nineteen-year-old North Carolina State University student Jesse McBane, were a happy, good-looking couple who had plans to get married after they both finished their educations.
On the evening of Friday, February 12th, Jesse McBane drove the car he shared with his brother from Chatham County to Durham to pick up Patricia for a Valentine’s Day dance being held at Watts Hospital, where Patricia was working while studying for her nursing degree.
After leaving the dance at approximately half-past eleven, Patricia signed out of her dormitory, and the couple subsequently drove to a popular nearby lover’s lane, which consisted of a yet-to-be-developed neighborhood which had been divided into cul-de-sacs, but still had no houses built on the lots. This was the last place the pair was seen alive.
The following morning, Patricia’s roommates noted that Patricia had not returned by the dorm’s one a.m. curfew, which was very unlike her. They immediately feared that perhaps Patricia and Jesse might have been in a car accident, and phoned around various hospitals, but there had been no reported accidents, and no one had seen either one of the missing young people.
Afterwards, several of Patricia’s co-workers got together and began searching for the couple. It wasn’t long before they thought to check the lover’s lane area, and the moment they arrived, they noticed Jesse’s car parked in one of the cul-de-sacs.
The searchers approached the vehicle, but nothing seemed to be amiss. There were no signs of violence, and both Patricia’s and Jesse’s coats still lay on the back seat. Uneasy with the whole strange situation, the friends contacted the Durham County Police Department.
At first, authorities surmised that the pair had simply run off to elope, but as the days passed, it became very clear that something was wrong. The fate of Jesse McBane and Patricia Mann, however, would not be revealed until nearly two weeks later.
On February 25th, twelve days after their mysterious disappearance, a surveyor working in a wooded area in northwest Durham spotted what he initially perceived to be a mannequin’s leg sticking out of some leaves. Approaching the odd sight, he soon realized that he was looking at two bodies, which were soon identified as the remains of Patricia Mann and Jesse McBane.
Both victims had been left lashed to the trunk of a tree with thick ropes, which had been alternately pulled tight and loosened around their throats several times, as though in the course of some type of torture. Marks in the mud near their feet demonstrated that they had been thrashing around as they were being repeatedly strangled.
Jesse and Patricia had also been stabbed multiple times, and Patricia had internal injuries consistent with having been punched or kicked in the stomach. Patricia had not been sexually assaulted, however, and neither of them had been robbed, leading police to wonder what the motive could have been for such a vicious crime, though the specificity of the killing method and the amount of planning involved suggested that the murderer was someone who knew one or both of the victims.
Detectives developed a decent number of suspects early on, most of whom willingly cooperated with the investigation. But almost all of the early persons of interest were eventually cleared after taking polygraph tests and/or having their alibis confirmed.
One suspect not cleared, though, was an unnamed doctor affiliated with Watts Hospital, where Patricia Mann worked. Whether this doctor was infatuated with Patricia, or whether there was some other connection, was never made public, but authorities did reveal that this individual refused to take a polygraph at the time of the murder. Further, after detectives uncovered a lost box of evidence in 2011 and requested a DNA sample from the still-living suspect, the man likewise refused to provide one, on the advice of his lawyer.
The investigation into the so-called Valentine’s Day Murder remains open, and police are confident that the double homicide will soon be solved.
Crime Immemorial 