Qualla: Killing of Brenda Sue Brown

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Brenda Sue Brown was eleven years old. On the morning of July 27, 1966, she argued with her younger sisters about a powder-puff compact, the kind of small-stakes squabble that happens in any house with three girls. Her mother asked her to walk her six-year-old sister Patricia two blocks to a Head Start class. She walked Patricia there. She did not come home. By 6:45 that evening, a Shelby Rescue Squad team had found her body in a wooded patch off South Lafayette Street, not far from where she lived.

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: The Search

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Gladys Brown began looking for her daughter at 10:15 that morning, driving the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking neighbors and passing motorists if they had seen the girl. An hour later, the Shelby Rescue Squad organized a formal search. The wooded lot was 150 feet off Sout...

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: The First Suspect

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Robert Roseboro lived a few hundred yards from where Brenda Sue's body was found. Investigators believed he had done it. Detective Smith, decades later, would still say so. But Roseboro refused to answer questions, and in 1966 the investigators did not have the physical evidence ...

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: Two Sisters Refuse to Let Go

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2005, almost forty years after the murder, Brenda Sue's sisters, Patricia Buff and Mary McSwain, asked the Shelby Police Department to reopen the case. Officers told them the files were lost. The sisters did not accept that. After four days of searching through storage, the or...

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: The Exhumation and the Confession

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 15, 2006, Brenda Sue's body was exhumed from the Spring Hill Church Road Cemetery in Lillington. The wooden casket had disintegrated; only a few bones remained. On May 21, a public memorial service was held, and Brenda Sue was reinterred at Sunset Cemetery in Shelby. Meanw...

Killing of Brenda Sue Brown: The Trial That Never Came

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On February 12, 2007, Shelby police arrested Thurman Price, then 79, on a first-degree murder charge. He was released on $50,000 bond and denied any involvement. On May 10, 2007, Earl Mickey Parker's body was exhumed from Sunset Cemetery to test his palm print against the print f...