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Carrboro murder case from ’84 solved, police say

Posted on June 10, 2010June 10, 2010 by Staff

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

The wait to see justice done in the 1984 murder of 7-year old Carrie Ann Wilkerson may be over.

For the victim’s family and members of the Carrboro Police Department, the possibility for closure came Monday, when George Richard Fisher appeared at the Orange County Courthouse and was accused of raping and killing the girl and then setting fire to her mobile home at Rocky Brook Mobile Home Park at the bottom of the hill off South Greensboro Street.

Fisher is serving a life sentence plus 50 years for the 1985 murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of 8-year-old Jean Fewel, whose body was found hanging from a tree near Finley Golf Course.

The charges in the 26-year-old Wilkerson case are based on new DNA tests by the State Bureau of Investigation working with the Carrboro Police Department. At the Hillsborough hearing on Monday, Fisher, who is serving his sentence at Maury Correctional Institute in Green County, was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape and first-degree arson. Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall has not said whether he will seek the death penalty in the case.

For Jack Shivers, whose wife, Norma Shivers, was Wilkerson’s stepmother, Monday’s events brought some resolution.

“We’ve had 26 years to heal somewhat,” he said Wednesday, “but what we have been looking for was closure.”

Learning that Fisher – a family acquaintance suspected of the crime ever since he was implicated in the Fewel murder – had been charged completed the circle, he said.

Jack Shivers said the couple was preparing to formally adopt Wilkerson, who Norma Shivers had cared for since the girl was 6 months old, after they were married.

“She was a sweet little girl – very outgoing,” he said. “She loved her mother dearly and she was beginning to love me too.”

Wilkerson was well thought of by her classmates at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School and often walked to school with a group of friends, he said.

Shivers said while the charges brought some closure for him and his wife and others, it was sad to think of the people who had passed on not knowing what had happened.

Carrboro Police Capt. J.G. Booker said that although only one officer who was on the force at the time is still with the department, the case has never been forgotten.

Booker, who joined the police department in August 1984, said you could tell then how important solving the case was to the investigators. Cases involving young children or the elderly – the most vulnerable members of society – have special meaning, he said. “It’s the kind of thing that touches you.”

Over the years, Carrboro police have looked at the case several times, Booker said. “I looked at it myself in 1996,” he said. “It was never dormant.”

The case was re-opened a month ago when police received a tip about a different suspect. When that did not pan out, tests were run on the evidence using Fisher’s DNA.

The use of new DNA identification technology proved to be the long-sought break for investigators, Booker said, underlining the importance of preserving and saving evidence.

“The technology we have now didn’t exist in 1984,” he said.

You may have a strong suspicion, but without the evidence you can’t prove it in court, Booker said. “You have that glimmer of hope that something will break.”

Booker said while there will be a lot of focus on Fisher, it is important to remember the young girl killed 26 years ago and what she might have done with her life. “She would be a 33-year-old young lady now,” he said. “She never got that chance.”

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