Debbie Wolfe ////// 488 | Forensic Files

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and make sure you tell a friend. And Colonel, that is enough of the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab
a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Thursday, December 26th, the day after Christmas, 1985,
Debra Ann Wolf is a 28-year-old nurse at the VA Hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
She worked the first shift as normal. During the shift, she had lunch with Roger Rushing, a co-worker.
She called her mom, Jenny Edwards, around 3:30 asking for gift suggestions for her sister-in-law's birthday.
It was in every way a routine day. Debbie clocked out at 4:00 p.m. and it is presumed that she went
straight home, a 15- to 20-minute drive. The next day, Friday, December 27th, Debbie did not show up for her 8:00 a.m.
shift at the hospital. This was not just unusual, it was totally out of character.
Her supervisors at the hospital called her house and got no answer. Her mom, Jenny, called the hospital at
midday and was told that Debbie never arrived at work. Jenny tried Debbie at her home,
but she did not answer the phone. Jenny sent her husband, John Edwards, and their friend, Kevin Gordon,
over to Debbie's house. When John and Kevin got to the house, Debbie's car was there with her
Christmas presents still inside the vehicle. They found Debbie's dogs roaming outside.
The kitchen door was locked, but the living room door was unlocked. Inside, the electric heater was on.
Articles of clothing lie on the kitchen floor. It seemed that Debbie was nowhere on the
property. John and Kevin assumed that Debbie had left with someone, possibly in a hurry,
and would be back. They fed the dogs, turned down the heater, and left. The next day,
John returned to the cabin again. He found the dog bowls empty and still no sign of Debbie.
Everything was the way John had left it the day before. He walked the property, saw nothing
unusual, and then left. But things were unusual because Debbie was close with her
family, and yet no one knew where she was. To this day, so many questions remain
unanswered. This is True Crime Garage and this is the mysterious case of Debbie Wolfe.
Today, we are going back to just after Christmas 1985 near Fayetteville, a well-populated all-American city in the
beautiful state of North Carolina. Debbie Wolfe lived alone with her two dogs, Mason and Morgan, in a small
one-level home 100 yards off of MacArthur Road, just about 4 miles outside of Fayetteville. This is a
rustic cabin surrounded by tall pine trees and no neighbors. At the time, Debbie was driving a 1975
Pontiac that belonged to her mother. Debbie was at work on December 26th and then, life, as they say, it turns on a
dime because 24 hours later, she does not show up for work and she cannot be located. Her stepfather and family
friend go to check on her and finding one door to her cabin unlocked and the dogs roaming the property.
Note that the dogs were outside dogs. They always stayed outside. They were roped to a stake during the day when
Debbie was at work, and at night, they roamed freely. By Sunday, her family was starting to become
seriously alarmed. John Edwards, Dave Thomason, and Kevin Gordon went to the cabin to take a more thorough look.
Looking under the bed, Kevin located Debbie's purse. It was wedged into a corner of the waterbed. This being an
odd place, in my opinion, to find one's purse. But nothing else seemed suspicious.
There was no sign of any struggle or any type of confrontation. So again, they left the property.
On Monday, Debbie once again did not show up to work. Jenny, her mother, decided it was time to call the
authorities. This is the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. Captain Jack Watts, the Cumberland County Sheriff,
responded to take a report and a photo of Debbie. But he didn't show the level of concern that
Jenny felt was warranted. She gathered a group of friends and they met up at Debbie's cabin and decided they were
going to walk the property looking for clues to where she possibly could be. They hiked through the woods that
surrounded the small retention pond behind the house and found nothing. By 4:30 p.m., Jenny and John were back
home at their house when Detective William Nichols showed up and said that they plan to search Debbie's cabin and
property the following day. Well, it's nice of them to let them know, "Hey, we're going to search
tomorrow." One thing I never understand in these cases here, Captain, and we've seen this
time and time again where, especially when we talk about cases from the '70s and '80s, there seems to be a lack of
concern when someone isn't where they are supposed to be, they're reported missing.
I get that they are waiting for it to become an official missing person's case as
many people often turn up within an hour or a couple hours later. Right. However,
I've never understood why they can't just go, "Okay, we've taken your report. We'll swing by their property and take a
look around." You know, maybe peek in a window or walk the property or try calling the house, anything. I mean,
you're on duty at the time, you have to fill up your day and your hours with task. Why not just go and briefly look
for the person? In the land that this cabin sits on, do you know how much property they actually
own? I think it was a few acres, but for my understanding, Captain, the pond was
quite small. I think what gets a little difficult to understand here, where her property and just how big her property
actually was, is that there are no neighbors surrounding her. So, it's not easy for one to look at the property all
these years later and determine just how big her property was. But also, the pictures and there's only a couple
pictures of the property online. It looks like it's lined with woods, so that would be
make it a little bit harder to decipher. That's correct. And they did This case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries back
in the day. I believe it was season 3, one of the later episodes in that season.
And so, the reenactments, I'm not certain, Captain, if they were filmed at the actual location or not, but I've
seen that episode and it certainly just adds more to the mystery. Now, as planned, the next day, the sheriff's
deputies did arrive to scout the house and the surrounding area. They conducted a search of the cabin and property
looking for Debbie, any clues. In their opinion, nothing was amiss. There was no signs of a struggle or
anything concerning to the officers. Bloodhounds were brought into the scene and they didn't find anything as well.
Really? Deputies did not search the pond on the property. They told John, his her
stepfather, that there was no indication that anything would be found in the water.
Now, Jenny was so concerned about Debbie and at such a loss to explain her disappearance that she asked Kevin, this
is a family friend, to help. And Kevin called his buddy, this is Sergeant Gordon Childress, who was an
army paratrooper stationed at nearby Fort Bragg. Anybody that's listened to this show for a while remembers us
talking about Fort Bragg in the past. Childress was a scuba diver. And so, he agreed to assist in the search for
Debbie by diving into this retention pond behind her home. So, he arrives at the cabin, this is
12:30 p.m. on Wednesday. And after helping search the area, he gets on his scuba gear and he enters the
water around 3:00 p.m. Now, by this time, Captain, she's been missing for, I believe it's 6 days if that math checks
out. That's a long time for her to be missing. When he goes into the water, okay, first he says the water's cold,
it's murky water, but he's only in there for a couple minutes and he pops back up
and says he saw a body in the water. Right. But you like you said, it was a small pond. Correct. At 3:30 p.m. on
January 1st, 1986, the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office was called in and the body was pulled
from the shallow pond. The body in the pond was quickly determined to be that of Debbie Wolfe. She was found fully
clothed. The Fayetteville Observer reported that she was wearing Nike white leather shoes, ankle socks, a
and red knee socks, a black t-shirt, a brown checkered shirt, brown corduroy pants, blue underwear, and a new
regulation army field jacket. The autopsy was performed by Dr. William Oliver and it determined that she had drowned
in the pond. This was based on a small amount of water found in one of her bronchial
tubes. According to the Sheriff's Office spokesperson, no marks or other signs of struggle or
violence were found on Debbie's body. There was no foul play, the autopsy ruled.
The Fayetteville Gazette reported that there were some bruising, but nothing to definitively prove she either had or had
not been assaulted. Right. And there was no evidence of sexual assault. A toxicology report found no
drugs or alcohol in Debbie's system. And although no one was sure when Debbie had died, the date of death was fixed at
December 26th, 1985. Now, do we know how deep this pond gets? Yes, I've heard Jenny Edwards describe
the pond. She describes it as a small, but not too small pond. Her Her Her definition of this pond is a little
confusing. It's small, but not too small. It's not deep, but it's deep in spots.
I have one report that states that the deepest spot is believed to be about 5 and 1/2 feet. So, it's possible we have
Debbie on her property by herself. It doesn't make a lot of sense why she'd go into the pond
with her clothes on and a jacket on and shoes on. In December. But it's possible that she
went in for some reason and had an accident and she died in the pond, she drowned.
One thing we're going to find in this case, Captain, is the lack of information. I'm saying lack of
information because I'm hoping that they did, they being the Sheriff's Department, did some more work on the
case than what is publicly available. Now, one thing we've seen in other cases involving water, one thing that they're
quick to do, and mind you, they did this in the West Memphis 3 investigation, which we saw how botched that thing was.
But one thing that they did at least did in that investigation is you take the temperature of the water, okay? When you
find a body in or out of water, you're going to take the temperature of the body, but when you find a body in the
water, you want to know the temperature of the water as well, because that will contribute to the to the state of the
body as you find it. I also want to point out something here as well, Captain, with the date of death. Uh-huh. We need
to be clear here. There was no determination absolutely when this young woman died.
They put the date of death on the death certificate as December 26th. In most states,
the ruling is that it can be up to the family. You can put the date of death when it's undetermined as when the
person went missing or when they were found. So, that, you know, often becomes up to the family. I don't know if they
were asked in this particular case, but that's the date that they gave gave it. Um
This makes me think of the Delphi case, where if you look at the date of death, they
give one day to one of the victims and the next day as the date to the other victim.
And a lot of people point out that that means, "Oh, they know something. They know one girl was killed on this day and
the other girl was killed on the following day." That's not true. It's just the date that was chosen by the
families. A 1988 article, we're going to jump ahead here a year or two and then jump
back. But a 1988 article in the Fayetteville Observer archives that has been largely ignored in this case,
probably because it's behind a paywall and it doesn't come up in any internet searches, contains some what I believe
to be crucial information. And it says the death certificate filed on February 24th, 1986,
list the cause of death as pending and the determination of the death as a murder, suicide, undetermined, or
natural causes also pending. A supplemental report list the cause of death as drowning.
Undetermined is typed in the blank where the medical examiner is required to state whether the death was due to
accident, suicide, or homicide. So, what do all those words mean? What that means is when they first did
the autopsy, it was pending. The determination of death was pending, whether it was a murder, suicide,
undetermined, or natural causes. It was later changed to say drowning. But the drowning was listed as undetermined,
meaning she died by drowning, but could not determine if it was due to an accident, a suicide, or homicide.
Yeah, cuz we don't like you said, we have some bruising, but we don't have any puncture wounds. We don't have
clear-cut indication that she was strangled. Do we have a clear-cut distance between the the cabin and this
pond? From my understanding, it's fairly close to the back of the cabin. Mhm. The thing here that I'm pointing
out with the death certificate, with the autopsy, is that there's no way, given what it states on the report, that the
Sheriff's Office can then say, "Well, we did what we could. There's no homicide to investigate here because it was ruled
an accident." It was It was ruled a drowning, but never determined why the drowning happened.
That article goes on to say that Dr. William Oliver conducted an autopsy and after lengthy delay, mind you, the last
time this woman was seen was on the 26th of December, the death certificate was filed on February 24th,
almost two full months later. Doctor stated that the body had undergone changes characteristic of cold water
drowning or immersion syndrome, in which death is believed to occur from cardiac
arrest. He said he found no evidence of beating, stabbing, shooting, or strangulation on
the body. Now, this is interesting because this is something we've not discussed here in the garage before, but
from what I've been told, immersion syndrome is a phenomenon in which sudden cardiac arrest is brought on by
immersion into icy cold water. It is believed that sudden immersion in freezing water can, in some people,
cause the body to go into shock and possibly even cardiac arrest resulting in death.
Cumberland County Sheriff's detectives ruled Debbie's cause of death accidental by drowning. So, that was the
determination by the Sheriff's office. So, who was our victim? Well, Debbie Wolfe, she was born in June of 1957 in
Arkansas. She had three brothers, Pete, Joseph, and John. The family moved to North Carolina after
reportedly living in England for some time. Debbie's mom, Jenny, remarried John Edwards. And Jenny owned a local bar in
Fayetteville called The Pub. Debbie had been a nurse for about 2 years at the time of her death. She
loved her job and she was known to be dependable, responsible, and dedicated. She was also a jokester with a wicked
sense of humor. She sent her mom a male stripper for her 50th birthday and an inflatable novelty doll for Christmas
just the day before she was last seen. On the day after Christmas, she went to work at the hospital toting a giant
stuffed unicorn that she received as a gift. She was known as a happy person and had no known enemies.
Debbie also had a serious boyfriend. Now, one report we read said that they had recently decided to step up their
relationship. By all accounts, Debbie was a happy person in a good place in her life at
the time that she went missing and then later was found dead in the pond. So, are they saying that they're they're
more than boyfriend and girlfriend that that she might have been this individual's fiance?
I don't know if they were that far, but that's from what I found, it was getting
pretty serious. Mhm. Now, Debbie was found at the bottom of the pond behind her house. Captain, you asked just how
far it was. The pond, from my notes, was about 100 yd from her cabin. But, several publications, including the
Asheville Citizens Times, reported that Gordon Childress, who dove into the pond in his scuba gear
to find Debbie, said that he saw through the murky and brackish water what looked like a body,
fully clothed, protruding from a rusted metal barrel sitting at the bottom of the pond. So, he's the one that finds
Debbie initially in the pond. He says that when he found her, she is inside of this barrel.
And she's in there like headfirst. So, he could only see like a foot or maybe both feet sticking out of this barrel.
Right. He went into the pond and he said without touching anything or disturbing
anything. He finds the body, the Sheriff's office there, deputies arrive on the scene. They're going to put their
own divers into the pond to recover the body, but Childress is going to assist them in this process.
So, he, along with two officers, recovered the body and brought it back to the bank.
I'm guessing at this point rigor mortis has already set in on the body. Yes, that would be correct. Again, we
don't have a time or date of the actual death itself. Now, according to a Fayetteville
Observer's 1988 article, the one of the divers for the Sheriff's office, this is Don Smith,
and I'm going to do a direct quote here. Quote, told reporters he also had seen the barrel. And Smith was filmed by a
television cameraman as saying to Major Charles Smith of the barrel, "Major, I saw that sucker right out there."
He pointed to the spot where the body was found. End quote. And here's a report from the day after
the body was found that said, this was from the Wilson Daily Times, January 2nd.
Quote, Cumberland County authorities are waiting for autopsy results on 28-year-old Deborah Wolfe, whose body
was found in a barrel in a pond near her cabin on New Year's Day. A Sheriff's spokesman says,
"Miss Wolfe, a registered nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital, lived alone in a log cabin near the pond."
Harold Little, spokesman for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department, said today, "Quote, I'm reasonably
positive it will be investigated as a murder, but we're awaiting the results of the autopsy." Little said, adding
there was no official indication of how she died. The woman's fully clothed body
was found in a submerged barrel, Little said. But, he wouldn't comment on reports that footprints had been found
leading into the water. Miss Wolfe's body was discovered by a friend who saw the footprints at the
pond, put on scuba gear, and found the barrel, according to a news report. But, Little said he had no comment on the
report. But, now that we have two officers saying that her body was found in this barrel in this pond be-
behind her house, any idea of an accidental death or suicide, not buying it no more. This barrel being
put into place in the crime scene, this is a direct indication of foul play. All right, we're back, friends. Cheers
to all of you. Cheers, Captain. The day after they removed Debbie's body, deputies returned to the cabin to
retrieve the barrel. In an effort to find the barrel, deputies drained the pond to a level of
2 to 3 ft. No barrel was found. Major Charles Smith, chief of detectives at the time, told the media that there
was no barrel in the pond. "Sheriff's divers never saw a barrel when they went in to retrieve the body," he said.
Well, this seems a little strange. There were at least two officers with the Sheriff's
office quoted talking about the barrel. The man who found the body before Sheriff's divers were brought in, Gordon
Childress, said, "Quote, there was no doubt in my mind, I am 100% positive that it was an old burn barrel or
something of that nature. You know, metal, rusted, 55-gallon type drum that the body was in. End quote." Jenny
Edwards says, "Quote, my diver said there was a barrel, the Sheriff's diver said there was a barrel. Not only that,
Debbie had a barrel in her yard. It disappeared. End quote." This is Jenny recalling that Debbie had a 55-gallon
drum type barrel on her property sitting right near the cabin. Well, this is going to start making you think if
you're the family, what the hell is wrong with the police officers? Why are they lying about this item?
So, Chief Sheriff's Detective Jack Watts says this. This is verbatim in the Unsolved Mysteries episode. Quote, in my
opinion and the opinions of some of the investigators, what appeared to be a barrel to some of the divers could have
been Debbie's jacket, which may have ballooned out as she was lying at that angle in the bottom of the pond. There
was never a barrel touched by any of the divers, according to their statements. Uh, most definitely by none of our
divers did we ever touch a barrel. End quote. Even though we have two statements about a barrel. Okay. Yeah,
so something doesn't add up here. He's pointing out that no one touched a barrel. And that would go along with all
of the statements and everything that was quoted before. No one has ever said that they touched a barrel, only people
saying that they saw a barrel. He's pointing out that it could have been an optical illusion.
Right. Now, Gordon Childress, the man who originally found the body, admitted that
his visibility was limited as the pond was quite dirty. But, he does say on record time and time again, "I
thought I saw a barrel." This was the theory that was adopted by the Sheriff's office investigators,
where they're saying, "Hey, the pond was dirty, so they concluded that the barrel was an optical illusion
caused by Debbie's large, unfastened jacket floating around her in a semi-circle in the dark murky waters of
that pond. Here's a couple things I wonder. Okay, one, if there was just a body in this pond,
wouldn't the body then at some point go to the surface because of the gases and stuff inside
the body? But, if you have this barrel, maybe the barrel would be helping to keep the body
down. She was wearing a good amount of clothing. I don't know if Here's some difficult things about this
case. Mhm. First, we don't know when she went into the water. Regardless of how she got
there, we don't know when she went in. Right. And I would imagine the bloating, the gases, that stuff, it takes a bit of
time. And of course, you're right. Most of the time a body will rise to the top.
I don't know if all of this clothing, the heavy clothing, if it absorbed the water, if it became heavy enough to
weigh her down. We don't have any statements, however, of anybody saying that she was, you know, tethered to
anything in the pond or in this barrel to keep her underwater, to keep her submerged. So, that part's all very
difficult. The other thing that's super difficult, and I you know, people might get crazy with me here, but
we're going to hover around this barrel a lot during this episode because to me,
this is the centerpiece of the case. Because no matter whether people saw a barrel or not, everyone agrees that when
the detectives The The detectives returned to the scene on Thursday, the day after, to retrieve a barrel. Right.
That's agreed upon. When they get there, there is no barrel to be found anywhere. That's also agreed
upon. Now, you wonder, is there somebody at the scene that's responsible for this murder that
believes that this barrel is a a vital piece of evidence and takes the barrel. Why they wouldn't take it the first day
doesn't make any sense to me. But then, to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt, we don't have a
great understanding of this pond, and we know that they're draining it 2 to 3 ft.
Is it possible that when they were searching for the barrel, they just weren't capable of finding it? Okay, so
you bring up several good points, and you brought this up before we went to the break.
Well, that's what I do on this show as I bring up these amazing points. Your point being before the break that
if there was a barrel, if she's found inside the barrel in the pond, it has to be murder or foul play.
She doesn't commit suicide, put herself into a barrel. She doesn't accidentally drown and magically end up inside of the
barrel. Well, even without the barrel, I think me and you would both lean to this
looks more like a homicide. If there were no barrel present, I could be easily convinced that this was an
accidental drowning. Mhm. Now, with the barrel present, I go back to what you said before the
break. It has to be some type of foul play. So, then the thought is, well, did someone come back and retrieve the
barrel? And that's exactly what her mother, Debbie, has insinuated over the years, that someone who murdered her
daughter came back to the property and removed the barrel so that it could not incriminate them. So that maybe it would
be determined to be an accidental death, and there would be no homicide investigation. Right.
Interestingly enough, though, you also point out something that just seems outwardly bizarre. Why wouldn't they
just take the barrel with them on the day that they recovered the body? The sheriff's office. Why not just take
it with you? Well, I can I can give them a little leeway here and say, all right,
well, maybe they didn't have proper equipment to drain the pond, and maybe they decided that the easiest way to
remove the barrel was to in fact drain the pond. However, you are responding to a call where someone is telling you,
we have located a body of a person We've located a body on the property of a person that was
previously reported as missing inside of a pond. You're not going to bring any kind of
any kind of equipment to drain the pond with you? Or at least call it in and say, "Hey, we're going out to the scene
to see if we find a body, could you get to work on bringing in this draining equipment?"
Well, they didn't take her serious when they said that she was missing. It So, that part seems like a big misstep by
the sheriff's department. Here's the other thing. Okay, maybe you decide that tomorrow we have to come back tomorrow
to drain the pond, retrieve the barrel. Put a freaking officer at the scene and guard the damn scene. Yeah, cuz well,
one, what do you a body in a car, and you couldn't determine if it was a homicide or an
accident or what have you, you would remove the vehicle that day with the body, or at the very least put an
officer at the scene so you could retrieve it later. None of this was done. Well, and John Douglas would tell
you, "Look, this is a remote scene. So, the fact that it's a remote scene, I'm I'm putting some officers around this
area to see if any body comes by to see if we found the body yet. Because like we know, killers will return to the
crime scene from time to time. When we're working on the show, we do this a lot where we go, 'Oh, well,
sometimes if if one of us is is not feeling up to the work that day, we'll go, 'Oh, well,
we'll just get that tomorrow.' And normally, the best work we do is when we just push through. No, no, let's not
wait till tomorrow. Let's get it done today. And that's what it seems like this law
enforcement did was like, 'Oh, well, they handled her missing person case so in such a lazy fashion. And then to come
back and go, 'Okay, well, now that we found her, but okay, well, we'll just clean up this area tomorrow.'
It makes zero sense to me. And if this pond is not that deep, why aren't you just removing this
barrel? And maybe it's 50 lb, but it's not it's not 500 lb. It Well, it seems obvious to
me that whatever the situation, they determined the easiest way to or the best way is what I think I should say.
The best way to remove the barrel would be to drain the pond. And again, that's fine. That's well and
good. Put an officer at the scene in a car and just sit by the pond for the night. It's very simple, easily done.
If If they also came back and said, "Look, we we're going to come back tomorrow to
drain the pond for two reasons. One, to get that barrel, but two, we're going to
see if we can find any other evidence within the pond." And that would make a lot more sense to me, but it doesn't
even seem like they were looking for other instruments that could have been used in the in the death of Debbie.
Per the investigation, investigators were not able to locate anyone who saw Debbie after she left work on the 26th.
So, this helped them to fix her date of death on that particular day since she failed to show up for work the next
morning. It's not at all clear whether they processed her car and her house for fingerprints. We don't know if they
checked into her phone records or interviewed her coworkers and friends. There's also no discussion of whether
there was any suspicion of her boyfriend or whether he was looked at at all. Either very little investigation was
actually done in Debbie Wolf's case or very little was made public about what was done. Right. And you would think
they would have maybe We have the family questioning law enforcement, so we would think that we
get some more information from her mother saying, "Okay, well, maybe they didn't publicize that they
they searched her house, but they did search her house." Well, it's going to be basically just a
straight-down-the-middle disagreement between the two sides, between Debbie's family and the sheriff's department.
Now, we mentioned earlier footprints or possible footprints. Gordon Childress said he saw two sets of footprints on
the bottom of the pond. He says they led to the direction of the body. Keep in mind, though, he's also said that the
pond was very dirty. It was It was very, you know, murky water, dirty water. He had a hard time seeing. Uh now, bear in
mind that this pond is about 5 and 1/2 ft deep at its deepest point. So, this is This is where you go, all right,
someone could walk into the pond and reach the spot where Debbie was found. So, she could have easily been placed
there. But if there were two sets of footprints on the bottom of the pond, you have to wonder, what does this mean?
Does this mean that there were two perpetrators placing her and the barrel in the pond?
Or was this one perpetrator placing these items in the pond, and then the second set is the footprints
back out of the pond? Right. But hold your questions because none of this is straightforward, and it's about
to get even more confusing. The sheriff's office spokesman, this is Harold Little, told the Asheville
Citizen Times that a sheriff's deputy at the scene asked Childress to show him the footprints, and Childress could not
find them. And Little went on to say that the bottom of the pond was not actually mud
or silt that would show footprints, but moss, on which footprints did not make an impression. So, footprints would not
be possible at the bottom of the pond. So, law enforcement 100% does not back up the existence of these footprints.
Now, Childress says Debbie was in the barrel. He's the first diver, the friend of the family.
Reports were that a barrel was seen by two divers, sheriffs divers. Then it's reported to the media by the
sheriff's office investigator that there was no barrel. Of course, the key question is what did the law enforcement
divers who went down and got Debbie out of the pond actually see? Because whether or not there was a
barrel really changes everything in this case. The Asheville Citizen Times reported,
"Quote, it was possible Debbie was playing with her dogs and accidentally fell into the
pond. She was wearing an army field jacket and it may have become waterlogged causing her to sink below
the surface. Investigators also say she may have been standing on ice when it gave way causing her to enter the water
or she may have fallen into the pond and panicked." Chief Detective Charles Smith
said, "We have no idea how she got into the water." Smith also stated that Debbie could have suffered some other
kind of accident. Once she was in the pond in the dark in the freezing water, she became disoriented and moved away
from rather than toward the pond's edge. So, the sheriff's office couldn't come up with a great reason that Debbie would
have entered the pond. But, once she was in there, they believed that she became frightened and
disoriented in the water and instead of moving toward the shallow edge, she went
out deeper where she became a victim of this immersion syndrome. So, there's still a lot of questions
in regards to this explanation, right? Yeah. The pond is only 5 and 1/2 ft deep. You could walk into it and out of
it. And a better description of the pond is as follows. The water at the edge of
the pond is only about an inch or 2 deep. The bottom gently slopes and the pond is only knee-deep 5 ft from
the edge. Debbie was found 30 ft from the bank. So, given the gentle grade, she would
have been able to stand up and walk out of the pond if she fell in. Unless this is a Ray Rivera situation where
God only knows how she fell and she magically fell into the center of the pond. Right.
Knee-deep at 5 ft in. Inches deep around the the very edge of the pond. So, if she fell in by
accident, I don't know. I It just makes very little sense to me how one could end up working their way deeper
rather than just standing up or even getting on your hands and knees and crawling out.
Yeah, it's it's such a bad explanation. That makes this also very difficult is the 26th of December, it was reported
that it was only 25° or so that day. So, frigid for North Carolina. This will also provide a possible
explanation. The sheriff's office maintained that it was possible that she was playing with her dogs, perhaps
running with them or she tried to help one of the dogs and stepped onto very thin ice. Maybe she thought it was
thicker ice and fell through and then drowned in the pond. Yeah, it's possible that you would let your dogs out and
maybe they get into a situation where you'd have to help them. So, I could see that being an accidental
death. But, again, the the size of the pond like you said it at some point you can
just stand up. Well, of course, the family contends that Debbie was murdered. They don't
agree with the sheriff's office. They challenge the autopsy findings. The family says it was murder and a
bumbling, inept, or maybe even corrupt investigation got it all wrong. Jenny Edwards was not happy with the sheriff's
office and she let them know it on the public front. The Fayetteville Observer said, "Quote, unanswered questions,
contradictions, and the victim's mother's adamant refusal to accept theories voiced by law enforcement
authorities have shrouded the death in mystery." Well, we bashed law enforcement enough, so let's give them a
little credit because even they knew they were outmanned, so they called in the SBI.
Yeah, I don't know if it's so much a question of being outmanned or just doing due diligence, a little checks and
balances. If you watch the Unsolved Mysteries episode, keep in mind, it's a great show, Captain loves it, Colonel
loves it, everyone loves it. It's a shame we're not hosting the show on Netflix. However,
it's a it's actually pathetic that we're not the the co-hosts. That's still one of the great unsolved
mysteries of our lifetimes. Maybe next season. However, keep in mind when you watch that show,
specifically the ones from the the '80s and '90s, you when you view a case for the most
part, you're getting the 9 or 10-minute version of the case. That's why you step
into the garage to get the rest of the story. Something that was not covered in the
Unsolved Mysteries episode was the sheriff calling in the SBI. So, on January 5th,
note that date, January 5th, it was reported that Cumberland County Sheriff Otis
Jones requested the help of the State Bureau of Investigation. Specifically, he requested that the SBI look into his
department's handling of the Debbie Wolfe investigation. This is extremely unconventional, especially given that
the investigation was only days old at this point. Sheriff spokesman Harold Little said the
department was bringing in the SBI assistance. The Fayetteville Observer reported that SBI agent Marshall Evans
was given the case review assignment. He talked to county detectives, family members, and others. He visited the
scene several times and although Evans wasn't able to determine exactly what happened to Debbie, he told the Observer
that he does not believe that the death was murder. Interesting find there by SBI, but
I go back to her personal life. Do we have any indication that there's violence in any relationship that she
had or or that or do we know of any questionable questionable suspect that lives in that area that would know that
she was out there living alone? So, that's an interesting point there, Captain. As far as her relationship goes
with her boyfriend, serious boyfriend, whatever label you want to put on it, there seems to be zero suspicion by the
family, friends, the sheriff's office, and the media regarding the boyfriend. There does seem to be a little suspicion
from family and possibly the media regarding one or two of her co-workers. And we'll get into that, but we all
before we get into that, I want to go through some more of the family's allegations, specifically Jenny's, her
mother's. So, these are the things that Jenny Edwards has alleged were hinky about her
daughter and the scene and the way the investigation was going down. You know, when they went through Debbie's home,
these were some things that they found that they thought pointed more towards foul play.
Now, this item was not in any of the original reports, but Jenny says that drag marks
were found down into the pond. These apparently were observed by Childress, the diver,
and reported by Jenny or reported to Jenny by Kevin Gordon. This is interesting to me. When we were
talking about the footprints earlier, I'm thinking, "Okay, if there's a barrel, these footprints, if they existed at
all, are only good in my mind if they are accompanied by drag marks." These alleged drag marks have become
part of the narrative of Debbie's case, but have never ever been mentioned by law enforcement or anyone other than
Debbie's family and friends. Jenny also points out that the driver's seat in Debbie's car was pushed all the
way back. Debbie was only 5 ft 3 in tall, so she would sit with the seat pulled forward to drive.
And her mother says that Debbie would never adjust the seat because it was sticky and it was hard to move.
She goes on to state that Debbie was found wearing clothes that she and her family did not recognize,
including a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt that her friends, her boyfriend, and family says they had never ever seen.
Jenny said that the clothes that that she was wearing were the wrong size for her daughter. The jacket she was wearing
was a men's size small field jacket and looked brand new, but had no tags on it.
This field jacket is a weird thing because Debbie's boyfriend, former Army Criminal Investigation Division agent
Steve McDonald, said he did not give this jacket to Debbie and he had never seen it before.
And he goes on to say that he is positive he would know if anyone else had given
the jacket to Debbie. So, no one knows where this jacket came from or why she would be wearing it or
need it at all as she had a field jacket of her brother's on the hook inside of her
cabin when her body was found. This is equal to the barrel to me where it points to homicide. Almost where if you
could go, "Okay, regardless if there a barrel or not, maybe I could get on board and believe that this jacket
ballooned out and caused some kind of optical illusion." Right. But then again, where the hell
did the jacket come from? Yeah. The and again, we don't know what the search of the house
presented. I I would think he even if the cops searched the house, but there was definitely a struggle, there's
evidence in there that the family would be able to come forward and say, "Look, there's a struggle inside the house."
I don't even know if that's the case. I you this this crime could have taken place somewhere else and this individual
could have known where she lived and just said, "Hey, I'm going to dump her in her own pond. That's where I'm
going to get rid of the body." Now, this next item are a pair of brown corduroy pants that Debbie was wearing.
Um again, the family says these pants were way too big. That they would have fit somebody
approximately 6-ft tall. They go on to say that she was wearing a bra that was way too large for her.
Uh both in cup size and around the the body. These next two items, I really think we can toss these out.
You know, um I'm throwing in my own little opinion as we go through some of these. One is is the pair of Nike tennis
shoes that Debbie was wearing. The family says these were too big. That they were at least a size, if not two
sizes too big. We do have the the sheriff's office investigator Jack Watts who is on camera, on record saying, "We
do know for a fact that the tennis shoes we had on were her tennis shoes." He says, "We have
photos of her with those tennis shoes on prior to her death." I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and
believe the officer Watts there. I don't believe he would go out of his way to be on
camera, on mic and say, "We have pictures of her wearing these shoes." The next item was It stated that Debbie
was clean. That there was no noticeable dirt on her sneakers or shoes or clothing.
Um and they question how could she have been in this dirty pond for 6 days without being dirty. That the divers
that found her were their their articles, their diving gear, everything was extremely dirty when they
recovered her and brought her to the edge. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to prove. That that whole
statement really confuses me because we know she was in the water. Right. The water was dirty or it wasn't dirty,
whatever. How How she was clean, I don't know. But we one, we know she was in the
water and two, we know she was in the water longer than the divers were. So, I I don't know what that is supposed to
to point out here. Yeah, and again, but like I said, if if you start thinking, you know, a little outside the box and
you go, "Well, what if Yeah, what if she went home with a one of her coworkers? The the
the murder, the attack happens there. Then she's in their house for who knows how long
and then they start searching for her, maybe they go out to the property, but maybe she's not in the pond at that
time. And she's not in that pond until the day that they they discover her. Well, it's it's possible. Another item
of concern is a what is called a summer weight uniform. So, remember she was a nurse, so these are scrubs. A summer
weight uniform was found lying on the kitchen floor inside the cabin. One, of course, an odd location to just
find, you know, pants and a shirt lying in the middle of the kitchen floor. But the family says that she would have
been wearing a long-sleeve shirt and not lightweight uh uniform in the winter months. And
this is kind of backed up by the coworker. Remember we mentioned she was having lunch with a Roger Rushing.
He backed this up by saying that she was definitely wearing a long-sleeve shirt at work that day.
Whatever this uniform was that the family and Roger Rushing believes that she was wearing on the 26th
was never found at her cabin or in her home. Mhm. So, either they're wrong and she was in fact wearing the uniform
that was found on her kitchen floor or there's something terribly wrong with this whole crime scene.
One thing that I think is is maybe a big deal here, Captain. It is reported and this seems to be agreed upon by both
the family and the sheriff's office. So, let's examine this thing here. It's reported that beer cans littered the
yard of Debbie's yard. And the family says and points out that Debbie was neat, tidy, clean. She
wouldn't have littered in her yard. She She wants to live out in the beauty of nature.
So, she's not just going to willy-nilly throw beer cans out in the yard. She's not going to be a giant piece of
[ __ ] that litters. These were found around the area where her vehicle was parked. The other thing that the family
points out is, "Okay, if you want to believe that she threw them there, well, that's not the kind of beer that she
drank." So, they're they're kind of doubling down on this idea that she wouldn't have thrown these beer cans in
the yard. Well, now that you're not able to click the barrel, you have a bunch of
extra space in your evidence locker. Collect these cans so one day that we can test them. Well, the tox Remember
the toxicology screening on Debbie came back as clean. Yeah. So, she wasn't drinking or doing
any type of drugs leading up to her death. So, these beer cans are all another big
part of the mystery. Of course, her family says that this all adds up, plus the barrel, all adds up to pointing to
foul play and murder in this Well, in going through my research, you know, we we we share outlines and stuff
and and on your outline, you have the hat, which I did not find. Can you tell me about this hat?
Yeah, there was another potential clue found, according to the family. A friend of Debbie's, this is Fran Schoff,
who went to feed the dogs after Debbie died, after she was found. This person found a wool stocking cap
that everyone says belonged to Debbie and found this hat in the mud at the opposite end of the pond.
So, you have the cabin, you have uh a little bit of distance, then you have this pond. She's found
kind of in the middle of it. On the opposite side of the pond is where this hat was located. So,
I don't know what this could possibly point to. We don't know how or where she got into the water from,
but I think at least this begs the question, how thorough was the pond and the property searched if this hat was
still lying there more than a week after Debbie was located. So, I I mean, the hat could
go either way, right? She She possibly was wearing the hat, took it off, or it floated away.
Or it fell off when they were taking her body to the water. Exactly. But again, it also it to me it just brings up the
idea that it wasn't an extremely thorough search of the property or when things were found, they weren't noted or
taken in as evidence. Again, again, we don't know the exact size of the pond, but if you're able to
drain it a few feet, you think that we're at least have an officer walk around the pond to see if we find any
more evidence. It just seems like a very, like you said, lazy like you said, lazy
investigation, not a thorough investigation. And I almost think they only called in CBI
just to kind of save their hide. It's possible, but I'm still going to give them credit for doing so. I think that
Look, I I've reviewed a lot of people who have posted comments online on other people's message boards regarding this
case and a lot of people seem to believe that the This is Look, maybe in some cases I can
believe it, but I can't believe it here. And in most cases I don't believe it, Captain, this this following statement.
The sheriff's office know who did this and they're covering it up. Most of the time that is just freaking
false. It's not true at all. That These Collectively as a department, we're all going to put our asses on the line
because somebody we know killed somebody? Bogus. The other thing, too, is we have the
coroner's report. The autopsy states it was a drowning. Cause of drowning, undetermined.
So, the coroner's corrupt, too? Knows who did it and choosing to cover it up? They brought in
this other the state investigative bureau to double-check their work when they were covering up for a friend of
the department's? It just That doesn't make any sense. If you think that the sheriff's office got
it wrong, it's just because they got it wrong. Not because they are covering for
a buddy of the department. And again, one of the reasons why I think they could call in CBI is there's somebody
that they knew that used to work in the department. So, we're going to call this
guy in. He's going to act like he's double-checking us, but he's really going to be um
essentially our our our friendly alibi to say that well we didn't do anything wrong here even though they were just
lazy about the whole investigation. That's possible and and I don't I don't have any reason to firmly disagree with
that. I just think we have a situation where the sheriffs being incredibly responsible in saying
look this woman and her family are challenging our findings and our investigation.
Let's bring in a you know a state agency to at least take a look at this thing. And
if we're wrong maybe they can find something we didn't find. Or if we're right she's going to get the same answers that
we already gave her and hopefully that will give the family some kind of satisfaction some kind of closure. Look
there if the family's wrong, you know, we're beating up on the sheriff's office here
a lot but there's a chance the family could be wrong. If the family's wrong in the situation they're grieving people
that are trying to understand the bizarre mysterious death of a loved one. It's a very difficult thing to process.
On the episode of Unsolved Mysteries besides the barrel probably the biggest mystery in this
case would be the phone call or message that was found on Debbie's answering machine.
I love these. That's why one of the reasons why uh I miss answering machines. So Jenny
later told this story to the Fayetteville Examiner. It says when John and Kevin went over to Debbie's to look for her
they noticed that there was a message blinking on her machine. For those that have never experienced the wonder
of an answering machine that's how you knew you had a message when you came home the little light would be blinking
and you go oh boy somebody called me. And you'd hit the button and it would play the message.
Jenny says that quote what they heard was a stranger's voice on the tape. The two then really became concerned.
The message had been left earlier that day. The voice was a man calling from the Veterans Hospital.
This would be where Debbie worked to see how Debbie was doing. The man's message
indicated that Debbie had missed many days of work. This struck Jenny Edwards as odd because
she knew this was not true. At the time of the message that the message was left Debbie had only missed
she had not missed days of work only a few hours at best. All right, let's dissect this a little
bit here because one could the meaning of the message be misconstrued by these two individuals?
You've missed a lot of days. No, by the time we're listening to this message she's only missed one day. She didn't
show up today and she's only missed a couple of hours. Is it possible that the person calling
and leaving the message is referring to her work history? You've worked here for 2 years is what
our records indicate. Did she work there 2 years? Did she miss several days over
the course of those 2 years? In some work environments that's not acceptable. Right.
The other thing In the garage it's not acceptable. Right. The other thing that we need to keep in mind they they did a
great job on Unsolved Mysteries of re-enacting the message on the answering machine.
But that's not like an actual recording that they're playing. From my understanding the only two people who
have ever heard this message was those two men men on that day John and Kevin who went to look for Debbie.
They played the message erased the message. So I'm not saying that they didn't hear the
message. I'm not questioning that. I would I wouldn't go that far to to suggest that these people would make
this up. But what I do find odd is Jenny's statement to the newspaper is they became very concerned. Well
maybe they did but your other statement was they didn't find anything wrong with the
cabin. They assumed that Debbie had left possibly left with somebody in a hurry so they fed the dogs turned off the
heater and left the house. Right. So which was it? Were they concerned or was everything just normal? I think the
tough thing here is the location of the cabin. I mean there's not a lot of neighbors so we
don't have a lot of eyewitnesses that saw her coming into the property with somebody following her or maybe that she
was at the property with a different vehicle meaning that she was there with somebody else. But we have clear-cut
eyewitness accounts saying that she was at work and then we obviously have her punching out of work for that day. So
it's very difficult. It is very difficult. I can say this regarding the voicemail or the answering
machine message that it looks like law enforcement was able to determine who in fact left the
message and did question this individual. According to Jenny this individual did work
with Debbie. Uh the family believes that he was one of two men that were interested in
Debbie that was trying to pursue kind some kind of relationship with Debbie. Refused their advances as they This guy
was looked at Jenny says that he did not want to take a polygraph test. But the sheriff's office also say you
know we talked to everyone that the family asked us to interview. And we couldn't find anything in the
course of those interviews that would lead us to believe anything other than it was an accidental drowning. We
couldn't find anything at the scene that let us to believe anything other than an
accidental drowning. Yeah but they're stating that and also omitting any signs of footprints drag marks or a
barrel. If any of that existed again it's it's it's very confusing because you have one
group one camp saying we have these pieces of evidence and the other camp saying
none of that stuff ever existed. The tricky thing though is I go back to the beginning of this case.
You have two officers on record talking about a barrel. You have the department who decides
we're going to come back tomorrow and collect a barrel. There seemed to be at one point
regardless if there was a barrel or not a collective agreement by the sheriff's department that a barrel existed.
So that part is all very confusing to me. What Jenny Edwards believes and what her family believes is kind of a
theory as to what possibly happened is that somehow Debbie was taken from her property held
captive for hours probably days and killed in a manner that didn't leave much in the way of detection probably my
guess would be smothered and then placed into the barrel and dragged into the pond placed in the
pond. The sheriff's department removes the body and whoever put her there came back and
took the barrel away in the middle of the night. There are a lot of things that have to
line up for that to be possible. Is it impossible? No. Certainly not impossible. And again for
me Captain all I can do is label this a mysterious unexplained death because we don't have any definitive
answers or definitive proof or evidence for me to lean one way or the other. If there was a barrel there if she was
found in a barrel I'm saying murder. I'm saying foul play. I'll go one step step further. I'm with
you if there's a barrel definitely this is a homicide needs to be investigated as such but it's the clothing.
Get rid of that barrel fine. You can't get rid of the fact that she's found in clothes that are not recognizable to
anybody friends family or loved ones. And I think you're spot on there Captain and it's just like what we saw in that
Asia Degree case. If you cannot If you cannot find a reasonable explanation why she had a
photo of an unknown unidentified girl in her possession then you cannot explain why she
disappeared or why she left her home that night. This is the same thing. If there's a barrel that barrel must be
explained. There must be a reason why that barrel exist and how she ended up in it. The other thing you're right take
it a step further where did this clothing come from? She didn't just drive home on the 26th
and go out and buy a bunch of clothes that are way too big for her that she didn't need put them on and fall into
the middle of a pond and drown. So it's all very difficult. I think that I think that the family is right to keep
pursuing this. I think the sheriff's office was right to call in another agency a state agency
to take a look at it. It's just a shame that here we are all these years later with a very uncomfortable
uneasy feeling of we don't have any real answers. We don't have a great understanding for what happened to this
young woman with a promising future. I think as the Fayetteville Observer pointed out, I
think they nailed it when they said there are many questions in this case for which law enforcement officers admit
they do not have the answers. For everything true crime garage, check us out at truecrimegarage.com.
And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook at true crime garage. And make sure you join us back
here in the garage next week for a new off the record and a new case. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't
litter.

Debbie Wolfe ////// 488

Part 1 of 1

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

This week we review a cold case from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Debbie Wolfe, a nurse in her twenties vanished after leaving work at 4pm on December 26th, 1985. Her family became concerned and went to check on her at her home. When they got there they discovered her car but no Debbie. Items were out of place, something was not right and things were not as they seemed to be. Join us in the Garage for this mysterious, unexplained death case.

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Brief Summary

Debbie Wolfe disappeared in 1985; her body was found in a pond, raising questions of foul play and investigation failures.

Key points

The Disappearance of Debbie Wolfe. Debbie Wolfe, a nurse, goes missing after a routine day at work.
Discovery of Debbie's Body. Debbie's body is found in a pond, raising more questions than answers.
Autopsy Findings. The autopsy reveals Debbie drowned, but circumstances remain unclear.
Murder Investigation Begins. Cumberland County authorities await autopsy results on Deborah Wolfe, found in a barrel.
The Barrel Mystery. Conflicting reports arise about the presence of a barrel in the pond.
Family's Doubts. Debbie Wolfe's family challenges the investigation, insisting it was murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is True Crime Garage and this is the mysterious case of Debbie Wolfe.

Introduction to the case

5:52WatchMay 12, 2021

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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