This transcript details the first episode of a podcast investigating the unsolved 1994 murder of Beth Ellen Vinson, a 17-year-old dancer from Goldsboro, North Carolina. Beth Ellen had recently moved to Raleigh to live independently and chase her dream of professional dancing in New York. Her car, a white Mazda 626, was found abandoned at a Royal Pontiac car lot in Raleigh, with the radio on, the driver’s door open, and one of her platform sandals on the floorboard. A week later, her body was discovered in a wooded area between two warehouses, about half a mile away, covered with a piece of cardboard from a nearby dumpster. She had been stabbed multiple times, with reports suggesting between 15 and 28 stab wounds. The podcast includes interviews with former coworkers, family members (including her aunt Pansy and cousin Shannon), and friends (like Karen, Miranda, and Heather), who describe Beth Ellen as a vibrant, bold, and unique individual—a talented dancer who was unafraid to be herself. The investigation suggests she was killed at the body site, not the car lot, and the killer likely knew the area. The case remains open, and the podcast aims to uncover new leads.
Who killed Beth Allen? Episode 1. The lights are there. They have me help you. Yes sir. Hey, my name is Matt Thuff. I'm a private investigator and I'm working on an old case from Raleigh, North Carolina. A vehicle was found outside of a Royal Pontiac. Did you use to work for that car light? I did. The summer of 1994, the week before school started back, there was a car light. It was right off Capitol Boulevard on the service road. Well, when the guys were pulling into work that day, they saw a car out front of the gate. The radio was on, the driver's door was open, and there was a shoe in the floorboard. It was a lady's platform sandal. I don't know if I was the first one to see the car that morning because I usually went up and had to go up the top two buildings, and then I had to use car manager. Unfortunately, it was Steve Matthews and he's passed away. Trying to think of anybody who might have been working there at the time. The other two that were there early, they've all passed, they've passed away too. This is the oldest unsolved murder in Raleigh, North Carolina. And four days later, this was in the Raleigh newspaper. The parents of a missing 17-year-old girl say they hope she is just off on a rebellious teenage adventure, but admit they fear the worst as time passes. Beth Ellen Vinson is a lifelong student of modern dance and a former beauty queen whose car was discovered abandoned. Parked sideways in the driveway of the capital boulevard used car lot on Tuesday. That's what really worries her parents. The car, a white 1990 Mazda 626, was a prized gift from them that she had had for only a few months, her mother Penny Vinson said by telephone on Friday. "We're scared to death. We feel like the longer it takes, the less chance we have of getting her home." The teenager attends Southern Wayne High School in Goldsboro, where she will be a senior next year. Goldsboro is a rural town, a little over an hour south of Raleigh. She was crowned queen of the Wayne County Agricultural Fair last year. Following conflicts with her parents, the girl wanted to be on her own for a while during the summer, so she moved to Raleigh the week of July 4th her mother said. She and a girlfriend planned to move into a West Raleigh apartment, with two young men they had met. But the other girl backed out, Mrs. Vinson said. Beth Ellen had taken dance lessons since she was two years old. Her whole life was dancing. She won national and state competitions and had attended professional sessions in New York with Gregory Hines. It was her dream to move to New York to become a professional dancer. She danced every afternoon into the late evening on weekends. Mrs. Vinson said. Several months ago, her parents gave her the Mazda. "The only thing that makes us as parents think of Val Play is that she left her car. She loved that car. It was her pride and joy." Mrs. Vinson said their daughter told them she was working at a Windixie grocery store. "I really, really don't know where she is. She's very naive and trusting. If she's not safe now, she's scared to death. If she is where she wants to be, I'm hoping she's happy." What was the family like when they get the call that police had found her car and she was missing? Well. Beth Ellen's Aunt Pansy, her mom's sister. I left work and then went straight there and I was going to stay until they found her. You know, when Piny told me that she had been abducted or something that she's missing. My immediate response was she probably ran off to New York. Like it just was to me so matter of fact, like she's fine. She would do these little run-off things. Like I was almost wanted to be, I wanted to be one of the people that thought maybe she had gone off to New York as crazy as it sounds. Thinking that a 17-year-old could actually get to New York. But if anybody could have, I think she would have been the one. So I wanted to believe that, you know, honestly because I didn't want to believe anything else. And why do you say that if anybody could have made it, there would have been her to New York? Just because she had wanted it for so long, which, you know, looked at before her actually moving out and I wouldn't have thought, you know, that. But I mean, she was, she was old, you know, pretty bold to have moved out and moved, you know, to Raleigh and doing the things that she was doing and likes to that's why I say if anybody could have. I mean, she probably could have and would have. She just wanted it that much. I would have never thought of doing anything like that. And so it was just, it was very bold to me like, so I'm wearing. She's not afraid to, you know, do whatever she wants and get what she wants. Yeah, I was in my college dorm room by myself and I turned on the news and I saw her car and I knew something was wrong. This is Erica. Because she had my mom's shoes on. I saw the shoe in the, in the news because my mom gave her these platform shoes that she couldn't drive with. They were so high. They were from the 70s. They were so old so she would take one off the drive with and that's what I saw in the video and I'm like, I knew something was wrong. In the early 90s, this building had no exhaust fans whatsoever. So in the early 90s, I put these two exhaust fans here to pull air through because they would get hotter and, you know, what, and during the summer. So seven days after Beth Ellen's car was found, this guy Craig Wade, he was the manager of a distribution warehouse at the time. I'm out here with Craig Wade outside his building. All of this was just a little hill. That, where you see all that dirt was trees, pine trees and whatever. He was pointing to a plot of land in between his building and the warehouse next door. There's about a 30 foot wide plot of land that runs in between the buildings, all the way behind the warehouses to a big marshy field. There's a drainage ditch that runs between the two buildings down to that field and you got about 10 feet of flat land outside of each building with about a 10 foot ditch that dips down in the middle. Today the land is clear, just dirt. But back then it was thick with trees. Now we first discovered or realized something was amiss. We knew about the little girl missing, young lady missing. And these fans were pulling in air, aroma. Come out the front and I just walked over here, holding this little embankment. And as I came out here, I mean it was very clear. She was laying, I think, face down, but she was covered with a piece of cardboard. And all I saw were the two legs sticking out. So I went in and called the police and they came out and did their thing. They had a whole crew out here on top of my building, on top of that building looking for weapons and whatever. So from the roadway though, you want to walk on back here. It had to come from the road. She had to. And they pulled in and it is parking lot to pull it there. That parking lot right there, yeah, that's my opinion. The parking lot of the warehouse next door, which at the time was some kind of furniture distribution center. It was cheap furniture. You have two or three guys working over there, but I never knew their name or anything. I'm surprised that no one working there would have seen very couple days, huh? You would think. Now, the cardboard that she was covered with, was that that had been cardboard from where? Probably from this business here from furniture, boxed furniture, but again, I don't know that. There was no logo or anything. I didn't stay around long enough to look at it. It was the size of that cardboard. It was pretty good size, yeah. But it was something that they were using that size cardboard. I would think so. But if you were putting money on it, you would say that the cardboard would have come from I'm there, yeah. Yeah. They didn't bring it with them. From the look of the news clips, I'd say maybe a six foot by four foot piece of cardboard. Right. Because it was too large, yeah, it was hard. Yeah. And there was no other cardboard around. And that was the type of thing where cardboard would be laying around.
around and outside the. - Possibly. - There was a dumpster or two over here. - Where were the dumpsters? - Right. - Where you see that stack of whatever it is there, that's where the dumpsters were. - So yeah, that would be, make a lot of sense. - The dumpster would have been in the corner the parking lot closest to the wooded area. The corner that was facing Craig Wade's building. He walked straight back about 50 feet from where the dumpster would have been. And a few feet towards the ditch, that's where Beth Ellen's body would have been. - This is always stuck with him. This used to be a troubled area. - Oh, right. - Yeah, oh godly. We had break in after breaking in here. But they would take anything that was not nailed down and we had a lot of up here in this area. You had a lot of homeless people. - Pointing across the street to another wooded area. Yeah, this looked like it could still be a city area now, but back then, it's right off Capitol Boulevard, but just turned down a couple streets and it's kind of a secluded road of warehouses and woods. And then it curves around and spits you back onto Atlantic, another major street. - They thought that she would have been murdered right here. - So far, I've gotten limited information from the police because I've been told that this is still an open investigation. But one thing I was told by a detective was that they did believe she was killed in this wooded area where her body was found. The detective didn't go into details, but I figure because apparently there was no blood found in her around Bethellan's vehicle. And no blood was found in these parking lots. No drag marks in the dirt, that kind of thing. - What do you think? - Possibly, well, I don't know. She was taken from her car and brought here where she was, I wouldn't be a bit surprised that I hadn't thought about it to be part of her, but she may have been murdered here. Because the car was up there and she was here, somebody had to have another car to bring her down here. I'm guessing that, and that's just strictly. - Well, yeah, I mean, knowing the area, is there any way from where her car was that she could have, she would have ran to this location? - I don't think so. If you come on back this way, you'll see what I'm talking about. This was always a constant problem because there's a drainage pipe, goes under where that telephone pole is, that supposedly fed the water over the Crappery Creek. It constantly stopped up, so this was almost a lake most of the time, but not the day we found it. - Aside from the water drainage issue, although this location was only about a half mile away, it takes about five different turns on five different little streets to get back here. Being chased on foot here seems unlikely. She would have had to have been snatched out of her vehicle, leaving the door open, radio playing, her shoe on the floorboard, and then driven down here. - Yeah, this kind of thing couldn't happen today with all the security cameras and all. I didn't look like there's too many security cameras out here. - When we were here, they were never any security cameras. They probably have some over there, but we walked through the mud to the other side of the ditch to the old furniture warehouse side. - What you see here was just a field of weeds and scrubbokes. Now we're in the other parking lot. - And then the dumpsters would have been about right here. - Right, right where you walking there. - That right here actually, they stood out. Somebody knew it area. I've always thought that. I mean, they weren't, they didn't know so arbitrarily right back here. Somebody knew the area. Especially coming back here at night, it was dark. And so yeah, your thought was that they would have taken the cardboard from here, probably drug the cardboard 40, 50 feet. - Yeah. And they had the, in my opinion, had to pull up in this parking lot, right? 'Cause they, this parking lot, they wouldn't allow them to take her body and lay it over there. She was, came out of a car here. That's it. You know everything I know now. - I was there the day that they finally just had it. Bill said he wasn't getting the information. They didn't know anything and so Bill and Bruhann, - Bethellan's dad and brother. - Said they were going to the police station and they were going to demand some answers. And Penny was laying down and we've gotten her to go to sleep. - Again, Penny was Bethellan's mom. This is Aunt Panty. - And the phone rang and it was the news of an observer, Raleigh paper. They weren't sticking the sentence and I said, "Well, I'm sorry she's not available. "Can I help you?" And he said, "Yes, we're just wondering "how she feels now that they've discovered her daughter's body." And I just hung up. I just hung up the phone. I thought how cruel. And she just had to get the bill and Bill wasn't there. Bill had left her to go find out something on his own. And so she was there with just us and she was all the pieces. So she said, "I've got it, tell Bill. "I've got to tell Bill." He's going there and he's not going to know it. And he was thinking the whole way home, him and Bruhann, we had to go in and tell Mama. We got to tell Mama. And so they just kind of met on the porch and each one knew what they were thinking but they saw each other. I didn't know exactly where I was whenever I found out that they had found their body. It was our first day of high school, 12th grade. And I look and there is like a group of my friends and of course being allowed to you, and I'm like, "Hey, what's going on?" And then I'm like, "Licking it everybody "and I'm like, "No, really? "What is going on?" I walked into my dorm room and I turned on the TV and as it came on, I also hit the answering machine and the answering machine was my mom's voice saying, "Cheren call me, it's about the cell-in "and since the news story was that they had found her." I just never, I really don't think I had ever let my mind go to the idea that that was going to be the outcome. Like I just watched her so many times through this scene where she kind of ran away and came back and I just didn't ever think that was going to be the outcome. At 18 years old, to process that she was gone and to process that someone had done this to her and that I wasn't ever gonna talk to her again and it was just so big and so sudden and I think I didn't know how to process it. This is Beth Ellen's cousin, Shannon. And I just, I don't see how anybody could do this to her. You know, I mean, it makes more sense if they did it and they didn't know her because to know her, you couldn't do that, especially not in that way. Beth Ellen was stabbed to death back there in that wooded area between the two warehouses. Initially the newspapers reported it as multiple stab wounds. Years later it was made public that Beth Ellen was stabbed quote, "in excess of 15 times." Bill Vincent, Beth Ellen's dad told me the number he remembers the police telling him was 28. His daughter was stabbed 28 times and then covered with that piece of cardboard from the dumpster. - There was a girl that I met, actually I met her at Beth Ellen's grave site, which was really weird. It was a few months after she passed and she was at the grave site by herself and I was like, gosh, you know, do I walk up with this girl there or not, when I'm walking up there, we sat there for two hours talking. She told me how she met Beth Ellen in high school. - Karen was the friend by the grave. - I met Beth Ellen. My senior year of high school, she was a year younger than me and my last semester of my senior year, we were together in a Marine Biology class.
Everybody knew Beth Ellen. You couldn't help but know Beth Ellen, who Beth Ellen was. But that's where I really got to know her. - Why could you not help but know? - She was just this energy field. (upbeat music) She was so talented. I mean, everybody knew her from some way, whether it was that she had been clean of the fair or just you knew that she was this amazing dancer that had won all of these dance competitions. She really was just this amazing free spirit. And by that year, by her junior year, she dressed really differently than everybody else was just so exactly who she was. You know, she knew who she was, she knew who she wanted to be. And there was just this freeness about her that she had that I think most of us coming from a small, conservative rural community were afraid. We were afraid to be our authentic self and she wasn't. - When it outweighed her style of difference? - She was wearing things like a long floral 90s dress with tube socks and combat boots. Or a t-shirt, no bra, which drove the haunt her seat and cut off Jean shorts and tube socks and combat boots. She owned it like no one else in the school could have worn that but she could and she just pulled it off. She was just this force, really different. - But she wasn't your typical, I got really clean. - You know, the high school beauty queen, that one. - No. - Well, no. - This is Miranda. - She just kind of marched to the beat of her own drum. She was a dancer, she was involved in pagents. I entered my first pageant when I think I was in the eighth grade in Bethel and actually choreographed the lyrical piece that I did for the pageant. So we got to spend a lot of time together. - Yeah, and her seat was just always, that's just what she loved, she was always passionate about. - Yeah, she was an incredible dancer and she had a dream of dancing professionally, of going to New York and there was no doubt. Not only in my mind, but in everybody else's mind that she could have totally made it as a professional dancer. You know, I believe at a young age that her mom saw that in her and so I believe her parents did all that they could to help her chase hard after that dream. - Was she really like the Beth Niklas? - I'd say so, yes. - You know, a lot of girls have dreams of being a dancer on Broadway, but you thought that it was certainly a possibility for her. It wasn't just a dream. - Yeah, no, no, no, no, it was certainly a possibility with her. She could have 100% made it professionally as a dancer, not only in New York, but probably anywhere in the world that she would have chosen to go. - She was different and she felt like she was different and she was afraid people wouldn't like her because she was different and like different things than what the norm, which I think she kind of embraced that a little bit later in life, kind of embraced life and you know, to be a little different. - Was it grunge and everything? I think she was kind of one of the first to kind of be grunge, I guess you would call it in high school. She was just fun, but her son to be around, I spent almost most weekends at her house going with her on dance trips and watching her dance and watching her competitions, pageant, all kinds of things. - Heather. We were best friends from fourth grade, she owned up to fifth grade when we actually had a core accident. So it was Easter Sunday and she had got a new CD from the Easter really and she called and wanted to come over and wanted me to hear that CD, so she came over on her convertible, most important thing and I didn't have a CD player anything in my house at that time because they were new. And so we hopped in the car, take off to listen to that CD and hit a demand all of you know, just to hang out or whatever. And we didn't get, not even two miles down the road and we were looking for a CD or a cigarette lighter, I'm not sure what we were looking for. And she took her eyes off the road and smurved off the road over great to them, we had a truth. We pretty much hit it going, 50, 50 miles an hour and pretty much straight on it was a little more on my side than hers, which is how she, you know, didn't, she just got a little bruised up and all that. But I remember them packing me up 'cause I was airlifted to do, and I remember them packing me up and it hurt really bad. I don't remember anything else until I woke up a couple weeks later and I see. - What were the injuries you? - Um, my right ankle was crushed, my left ankle was broken, my left femur was broken, my right arm was broken, I had a crushed vertebrae in my back, I had to wear like a back brace for nine months afterwards and both of my jaw bones and my nose were broken, lost my tooth, and sometime when I was in ICU, one of my lungs collapsed. - And what do you remember about the tourist conversation between you and Bethel and I? - When she came and visited me at the hospital a couple times and I know one time she came and where I wasn't able to get up, they had to sit, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, it's called a tilt table and they like strap you onto and stand you up and that hurt really, really bad. And her mama and her were coming in when they had me on that and I was crying and so that, you know, for her 'cause she's hurt me, you know, crying and hurting. And I mean, we just able to, this awkward conversation after that because you know, he's like this, she felt bad, that she had, you know, was driving. I was in body wood and then the next year when we started school, we didn't have any classes together and so we didn't really see each other except in passing. So we just kind of lost touch. - Some people have thought that after that wreck or I guess maybe that wreck in passenger. - Thank you. - Like I said, she'd always been a little different but it seemed like even more so after that. (gentle music) - I think we all at some point go through a rebellious phase and I think it was just maybe a time in her life where she was trying to figure out maybe what she really wanted and not say much what her mom wanted. - Her mom was pretty controlling, you know, about her dancing and her school and her pageants and I think that's a lot that's on Rebellt because she was just so controlled her whole life. - Like her mom was kind of like one of the things. - And her mom? - Yes. (laughs) A pageant mom, yes. - Wow. - Very much so. You know, if I asked Beth on to spend the night well she's got to go to dance class or she's got to go to ballet or tap but she's always always doing something with that. And you know, her mom went and let her have much of the social life, you know, outside of that with her friends because she kept her into that stuff all the time and it kind of warled that day all night every time. - So, your knowledge, there wasn't a life other family drama going on. It was basically just that Beth Ellen felt like her mom was just overwhelming her with the dance and the dance and all that kind of stuff. - Exactly. And a lot of the times that Beth Ellen would run away that semester on the weekends, she would run away from home and it was, you know, usually around something like her mom had entered her in another pageant. And Beth Ellen didn't want to do it anymore. She just felt like that just wasn't really who she was anymore. She definitely loved the dancing part. She didn't feel like she was a beauty queen, you know, to do those kinds of things anymore. She really enjoyed being able to cut her hair off and, you know, die at a different color and just kind of be herself instead of having to look like a girl that they thought should be Miss Other Nguyen. - Well, yeah, so when she would leave on the weekends, where would she go, just one of her many friends? - Usually she would just end up at a friend's house and I think she would even call her dad and let her dad know, like, hey, I'm over at Kelly's and I'm fine, you know, just it was more of a, it was a safe rebellion. She would usually come see me at the restaurant I worked at. It was like a 50 style diner kind of restaurant and she would come on a Sunday after all of that had happened and be like, I have to go home, I'm out of gas, and I'm out of money. I'm gonna have to go home and so I would feed her French fries and stuff until she was ready to go home.
you know, we would talk it through because I would be like, you have to get a school tomorrow anyway. So you're going to have to go home and she would say, I know, I know. And you said, Beth Ellen always want to kind of get out of the goal for, always want to get out of the small town or this is Erica. That's sort of very young age. She and I both collected things like, we were old school people. We would collect Maryland and Rose. She wanted that lifestyle. She wanted to be famous. She wanted all of that. She was ready to go like as soon as possible. She wanted that life. And that's why she was doing what she was doing. So she could go to New York because I want to say they went that year before when she met Gregory Hines and she saw Broadway and all of these things that she could be doing. And she was just ready to go. She couldn't wait. So that summer, a month or two before the murder, the timelines are fuzzy. Beth Ellen and a friend tried to take a Greyhound bus to run off to New York. This is Beth Ellen's friend's dad. She's going to pack my little camera, but then you want to stay all packed up. And I got winded that we're at the bus station. But I pulled in my strings with the Goldsboro Police Department. And they said they could not stop Beth Ellen from getting on that bus, but they could stop my job because of Kelly's age. Kelly was only 15 at the time. And Beth Ellen was 17. I said, well, you do what you want. But I'm on the way there. And if you don't capture Beth Ellen, I'm one dear. I said, let me go. I've no business leaving me there. And Beth Ellen's got a mom and dad. They diverted me to the police department. So they didn't want no sin. And they got the girls. Beth Ellen surrendered and went on to the police department with her. Her daddy ended up taking her back home. But Beth Ellen didn't want to be back home. And her parents couldn't legally keep her there. 16-year-olds can live on their own if they want in North Carolina, where she wanted to be was New York. And the stepping stone was-- Did you know that she had moved to Raleigh? Well-- Beth Ellen's Aunt Pansy. Pinyville kept that kind of a secret because they kept thinking it's not going to last. She's going to come home because Beth Ellen got mad at them because they would not let her go to Lala Palozo. But definitely it's a big rock thing, like woodstock or something. And they refused to let her go. And she got mad. And she left. And that's when she went and moved in with bunch of people in Raleigh. They were just hoping that she would come home. And I kept reassuring her. She will. I said, Piny, she's going to get there. I realized what she's giving up. And she'll be back. And Piny said, I don't know. She said she was still mad at me when she left. She said the last thing that she said to me was, I hate you, and walked out the door. And tell you something that it just did in my heart. Since it happened, when Piny called me, it was like three or five. We talked all night long. That was just the way we were. She didn't sleep. I didn't sleep. So after Beth Ellen had died, Piny kept telling me she just wished she knew that Beth Ellen wasn't heaven. And Beth Ellen had forgiven her. Because the last thing she remembered her saying was, I hate you if she walked out the door. And so one night, Beth Piny called me and she said, Piny, she said everything's OK. She said, Beth Ellen, it's been heaven. And she said, and she isn't mad at me anymore. And I said, well, how do you know that? And she said that she was going through some cards and stuff that she had in a box. And she found a piece of construction paper. Now, when they did Beth Ellen's tombstone, I don't know if you've seen it at the cemetery. It's a black tombstone. And it's got actual pictures of her dancing shoes on the back. It's her dancing and background is Broadway. Her goal was to dance on Broadway. Anyway, her tombstone is black. I had to tell you that to get to this. Piny told me that night that she would go through some cards and look at it some stuff. And she found this piece of construction paper that she said, I've never seen before. And I don't know why it was in my card box. But she said, she opened it up. And in little kid handwriting, it said, mommy, I love you. And on the other side was a hill. It was a little drawn hill and it had three crosses on it. And at the bottom of the hill was a black tombstone. That was Piny's answer. She was with God. And she loved her. But Piny God, relief from that. She got piece of wine. This is Panzi's daughter and Beth Ellen's cousin, Shannon. She said you don't always think about it. But when you do, it's like it's raw. And we just get upset. Of course, I want it to be solved. I want justice for her. I want closure for the family. I want the killer to have to pay. And to have to know that Beth Ellen had enough people caring for her. And caring about her that we didn't stop fighting and hoping. Her friend Heather from the wreck. I just don't understand the hell it can't be. How they just have not solved it in 29 years. I mean, I'm kind of a fan of true crime. And so I watch all the idees. And you see these people that have went missing or whatever in, like, I think 70. And they're solving their murders. And I just don't understand. I don't know. It is a time. It can't be solved somewhere or another. Then it breaks my heart. And then her mom and I never got closer before she passed away. Penny died in 2017, 23 years after Beth Ellen's murder. She didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve to go out like that. And for nobody, what happened to her? And for nobody to have no justice to be failed. For her failing and her failing. And I still understand how anybody can do that. So you have 17 year old and keep quiet for 29 years. And nobody knows anything. I just don't understand how more hasn't came out. People aren't hurting saying or thought of anything. You have to deal with somebody. Somebody has to know. There has to be someone. Back to Beth Ellen's cousin Shannon. You know, I was so glad that my uncle Bill decided to talk to you because he didn't want to. He didn't want to bring it up again. Nobody does. But we have to do this for her. She deserves it. That's the last thing we can ever do for her. My name's Matt Duff. I'm a private investigator and I'm going to be working on this case until it's solved. My last podcast investigation, I was able to uncover enough new information that resulted in a state of execution for a man on death row in Texas. I worked on that case for over four years. So I can generate enough new information to change the course of a case. And I'll work on it for as long as it takes. So right now, the plan for this podcast is to release a new episode every month, which gives me time for production and investigation. I'll be using this podcast as an investigative tool, a way to get Beth Ellen's name back out there and heat this case back up. The goal of having this case solved this year, 30 years is long enough. As more and more people start talking about Beth Ellen again, new information will surface. It always does. There are people out there with information, information for whatever reason they've been holding on to for 30 years. And some people may have information, but they don't even know it yet. As this podcast continues to unfold, and you can see more of the full picture.
People will come to realize they do have a significant piece to this puzzle. And there's a lot more to the story. It's all a blur for me. It was an awful time. Well then I started questioning why was she in Raleigh then? Like, you know, who was she there with and why didn't I call her? And that bugged me for so long and then when I went to her parent house that this was after the funeral on thinking or before the funeral. I can't remember. They told me that she was staying with a boyfriend and that she was in an escort service and I'm like, what? If you have information about this case or know someone who might call 1-866-TIPS-The-Number-4-BE That's 866-847-742-3 or email us at who killed Beth Ellen at gmail.com If you're in North Carolina and want to help, please email us. For more information on the case and to see pictures, check out our website at BethEllenPodcast.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. 2024, the year of closure for a family and justice for Beth Ellen. Thank you for listening and stay tuned. [Music]
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The case involves the unsolved murder of 17-year-old Beth Ellen Vinson, a dancer and former beauty queen from Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Her car was found abandoned at a used car lot in Raleigh in August 1994, with the radio on, door open, and her shoe inside.
Seven days later, her body was discovered in a wooded area between two warehouses, covered with cardboard, having been stabbed over 15 times (possibly 28 times).
Beth Ellen had moved to Raleigh that summer to pursue independence and her dream of becoming a professional dancer in New York.
The investigation suggests she was likely killed at the location where her body was found, not at the car lot, and the killer probably knew the area.
The case remains unsolved, with limited information from police due to the ongoing investigation.
Summary:
This transcript details the first episode of a podcast investigating the unsolved 1994 murder of Beth Ellen Vinson, a 17-year-old dancer from Goldsboro, North Carolina. Beth Ellen had recently moved to Raleigh to live independently and chase her dream of professional dancing in New York. Her car, a white Mazda 626, was found abandoned at a Royal Pontiac car lot in Raleigh, with the radio on, the driver’s door open, and one of her platform sandals on the floorboard.
A week later, her body was discovered in a wooded area between two warehouses, about half a mile away, covered with a piece of cardboard from a nearby dumpster. She had been stabbed multiple times, with reports suggesting between 15 and 28 stab wounds. The podcast includes interviews with former coworkers, family members (including her aunt Pansy and cousin Shannon), and friends (like Karen, Miranda, and Heather), who describe Beth Ellen as a vibrant, bold, and unique individual—a talented dancer who was unafraid to be herself.
The investigation suggests she was killed at the body site, not the car lot, and the killer likely knew the area. The case remains open, and the podcast aims to uncover new leads.
FAQs
Beth Ellen Vinson was a 17-year-old student from Goldsboro, North Carolina, a dancer and former beauty queen who was murdered in 1994.
Her white 1990 Mazda 626 was found abandoned outside a Royal Pontiac used car lot on Capitol Boulevard in Raleigh, with the radio on, driver's door open, and a platform sandal in the floorboard.
Her body was found seven days later in a wooded area between two warehouses, about a half-mile from her car, covered with a piece of cardboard from a nearby dumpster.
She was stabbed to death, reportedly in excess of 15 times, with her father recalling the police told him she was stabbed 28 times.
She moved to Raleigh the week of July 4th to be on her own for a while after conflicts with her parents, planning to share an apartment with a girlfriend and two young men.
Her dream was to move to New York and become a professional dancer, and she had already won national and state competitions and attended sessions with Gregory Hines.
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