Home Family Law A Georgia inmate helps North Carolina authorities clear up a 50-year-old triple...

A Georgia inmate helps North Carolina authorities clear up a 50-year-old triple murder

364
0
A Georgia inmate helps North Carolina authorities clear up a 50-year-old triple murder

BOONE, NC (WBTV/Gray News) – Authorities said they were able to close the books on a 50-year-old triple homicide case in North Carolina thanks to the help of a Georgia inmate.

Bryce Durham, 51, his wife Virginia, 44, and their son Bobby, 18, were found murdered on February 3, 1972 during a snowstorm at their home in Boone, North Carolina, according to the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office.

The family was found by her son-in-law after he and his wife searched for the family with the help of a neighbor.

Investigators said 81-year-old Billy Wayne Davis, who is currently an inmate at a correctional facility in Augusta, Georgia, is believed to be the sole surviving offender in the Durham case, WBTV reports.

The other suspects have been identified as Billy Sunday Birt, Bobby Gene Gaddis and Charles David Reed and are all dead, according to the sheriff’s office.

Watauga County Sheriff Len Hagaman said his office received a call in 2019 from Georgia’s White County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) with information they recognized as potentially important to the Durham case.

According to Hagaman, the new leads were investigated and personal interviews were conducted with Davis in September 2019, October 2020 and August 2021.

“It was these interviews that ultimately helped us determine who was responsible through corroborating evidence. We are confident that we now know who committed these crimes,” the sheriff said.

Interviews with two sources confirmed evidence from the Durham crime scene, and the circumstances surrounding the crime were similar to a 1973 Georgia case known as the Fleming case involving Birt, Gaddis, Reed and Davis, authorities said.

Davis, Reed and Gaddis were part of a loosely organized network headed by Birt known as the Georgia-based “Dixie Mafia,” believed to be involved in dozens of violent crimes in Georgia and elsewhere in the Southeast during the 1960s was and ” ’70s, according to law enforcement officials.

The 2019 lead first surfaced when Birt’s son, Shane Birt, was at the WCSO to participate in research for a book about crimes that took place in Georgia, including the Fleming case.

According to investigators, Shane Birt shared that he was very close to his father and recalled a story Billy Sunday Birt told him during a prison visit when he admitted three people were killed in the mountains of North Carolina during a heavy snowstorm to have, and remembered that she almost got caught.

After hearing Shane Birt’s report, WCSO officials immediately contacted the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office.

Davis was questioned by WCSO investigators at the Georgia facility where he is serving a life sentence for crimes he committed in Georgia.

During those interviews, Davis involved Birt, Gaddis and Reed in a hired “hit” in the North Carolina mountains that almost got them caught in a bad snowstorm, law enforcement officials said.

Davis claimed he was only acting as a getaway driver, authorities say, and that it was the other three men who entered the home that night.

It remains unclear who orchestrated the crime against the Durham family.

In November 2021, the WCSO held a meeting with members of the Durham family to update them on their investigation and conclusions.

“I want to thank all the people who have worked on my family’s case for decades. I know that since 1972 they have sacrificed many days and weekends to work to solve this case,” said Ginny Durham, the victims’ daughter and sister.

Copyright 2022 WBTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.