Murder of Brenda Sue Brown

Thurman Price maintained his innocence until his death on August 4, 2012, while still awaiting trial.

In February 2010, Roseboro was subpoenaed to a Cleveland County hearing to determine if enough evidence existed in the Brenda Sue Brown murder case to bring suspect Thurman Price to trial. During his testimony, which lasted less than ten minutes, Roseboro denied killing Brenda Sue. He said he did not know who did it, and had no memory of the day she was murdered. He said, "You're talking about something forty years ago. How would I recall something that long ago?"

On February 9, 2010, a Cleveland County judge ruled that Earl Mickey Parker's deathbed confession and Lail's testimony would be admitted evidence at trial. Lori Lail testified at the hearing that in June 2002 her grandfather, Earl Mickey Parker, told her on his deathbed that he and Thurman Price killed Brenda Sue Brown in 1966.

On February 12, 2007, the Shelby police arrested Thurman Price, 79, on a first-degree murder charge. Price's home is located close to where Brenda Sue's body was found. It is unclear whether Price lived there in July 1966. According to county records, Price did not purchase the house until 1973. He was released from jail on February 16, 2007, on $50,000 bond and denies any involvement in the murder of Brenda Sue.

On May 10, 2007, Earl Mickey Parker's body was exhumed from Sunset Cemetery in Shelby to see if his palm print matched the bloody palm print found on Brenda Sue's shoe. The results of this test were inconclusive because the hands of the body were too deteriorated to get a print.

The Brenda Sue Brown murder mystery has been profiled on several crime shows, including the Oxygen Channel's "Captured" on November 11, 2007.

The case remained cold until a series of newspaper articles 40 years later brought forth new evidence in the spring of 2006.

On May 15, 2006, Brenda Sue's body was exhumed from the Spring Hill Church Road Cemetery in Lillington, North Carolina, and examined for any available evidence. The wooden casket in which she was buried had disintegrated, and only a few bones remained. On May 21, 2006, a public memorial service was held, and Brenda Sue's remains were laid to rest in Sunset Cemetery in Shelby, North Carolina.

In the spring of 2006, the Shelby, North Carolina, newspaper, The Shelby Star, ran a 13-part 40th anniversary series about the Brenda Sue Brown murder.

The indictment indicated that Earl Mickey Parker had described in detail how Brenda Sue was killed and, according to authorities, his confession to his granddaughter is consistent with evidence found at the crime scene in July 1966. According to court records, Lori Lail called the family of Brenda Sue Brown on April 3, 2006, and told Brenda Sue's sister that the killer was Thurman Price but did not mention her grandfather's involvement.

When the case was reopened in 2005, detectives visited Roseboro in prison, but he refused to talk about the case.

In 2005, Brenda Sue Brown's sisters, Patricia Buff and Mary McSwain, spent months asking the Shelby Police Department to reopen her case. Officers told them that the case files were missing.

Shortly thereafter, Lori Lail came forward to police and claimed that her grandfather, Earl Mickey Parker, had told her shortly before his death (on June 26, 2002) that he and a man named Thurman Price had killed Brenda Sue.

Robert Roseboro was convicted in May 1969 of the 1968 murder of Mary Helen Williams of Shelby, whose murder was similar to that of Brenda Sue.

At the time of Williams's murder, racial segregation was intense in Shelby. Rumors of the Ku Klux Klan threatening to harm Roseboro were taken so seriously that he was secretly transferred to a jail in a nearby county until his trial in 1969.

At 11:30 a.m. on June 22, 1968, a woman and her daughter arrived at Mary's Cannon Towel Outlet. This was Mary Helen Williams's business, located on Dixon Boulevard in Shelby. There they saw a "CLOSED" sign hanging in a window.

According to police records, Sheriff Allen was the last person in possession of this evidence after he had retrieved it from the State Bureau of Investigation in Raleigh, North Carolina, in August 1966. The only physical evidence still available was a bloody palm print that was taken from Brenda Sue's shoe in 1966.

The public was baffled as to why Roseboro, who was seen in the area on the morning of Brenda Sue's murder, was not interrogated further by police. People theorized that Roseboro may have been protected by a local crime syndicate which dominated the town of Shelby in the 1960s.

Brenda Sue Brown (May 15, 1955 – July 27, 1966) was an 11-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered. Her body was found by rescue workers in a wooded area near downtown Shelby, North Carolina. With no leads and insufficient evidence to make an arrest, the murder became a cold case.

In 1954, Parker, 26, and Price, 25, had been indicted together for the rape of Shirley Morrison, a 12-year-old girl, in Patterson Springs, North Carolina. In January 1955, the men pleaded guilty to assault to commit rape. According to court records, Parker and Price were each given a 3-5 year suspended prison sentence, ordered to keep a job, not to drink alcohol, and to pay court costs of $240.