The Arrest

Hi, Bark enthusiasts. I'm your host, Dilya DeAmbra, and the case I have for you today takes place in North Hampton County, North Carolina, which is a region that sits right on the North Carolina Virginia border. It's actually a few hours northeast of where I'm from, but it could not be more starkly different than the coastal area I was raised in. It's a region known for agriculture and access to acres and acres of vast forest. Another unique feature of this landscape is that two rivers, the Roanoke River and the Harren River, sort of sand which the county. Agribusiness is the main industry here, but it also has a sterling reputation for being a go-to destination for hunters and outdoor enthusiasts. According to the website, visit northhamptonnc.com. There are lots of fishing tournaments held here each year, and the county is well known for having a number of hunting clubs. One of the entities tasked with protecting this region's more rugged areas is the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which is an agency that may sound familiar to some of you. I've talked about it before in previous episodes of Park Predators. Like many wildlife protection agencies, the NC Wildlife Resources Commission has sworn law enforcement officers who make sure people don't violate the rules and regulations put in place to protect wildlife. Back in the fall of 1980, though, on Thanksgiving Day, it was one of the agencies own who needed protecting. This is Park Predators. Shortly before seven o'clock in the morning, on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27, 1980, officers working for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission in North Hampton County were gathering for a pre-dawn end of shift meeting. When everyone realized that one of the members from their group was missing. 34-year-old Gay Morton Lloyd Mays, who'd been on shift that morning, was nowhere to be found. It seems that his absence at this meeting was so unusual that right away his co-workers knew something was up, so without hesitating, they and deputies with the North Hampton County Sheriff's Office began searching for him throughout the county. In short, order agents with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation also joined the effort. While searching a section of rural roadway near the town of Jackson, a group of those officials came across something disturbing. They spotted the missing Gay Morton's vehicle off the roadway, hung up on a stump, and things just didn't look quite right. Then about 30 feet away from that, and some brush covered in leaves and honeysuckle vines, they discovered Lloyd's body. It was clear from the looks of him that he'd been dead for some time. According to coverage by the Charlotte Observer, he had a large shotgun wound to the left side of his chest, and the fact that he'd been intentionally obscured from view suggested whoever had killed him had tried to cover up the crime. Coverage by the Associated Press explained that searchers found evidence on the ground between his body and the roadway that indicated he'd been dragged to where he'd been discovered. I don't know if that means the ground was pressed down, there were shoe prints, flattened vegetation, or what, but whatever the searchers saw, to them, obviously it wasn't natural. Meanwhile, deputies in Port Smith, Virginia, which was about an hour and a half away from North Hampton County, received an unusual call from someone in their jurisdiction who said that officers needed to be on the lookout for two brothers, 23-year-old Samuel Fazon, and 22-year-old Chester Fazon. This tipster claimed that Samuel had spoken with him earlier that morning and said that Chester was dead in the backseat of his car and that he'd shot and killed a game warden. The person said he tried to convince Samuel to call the cops and get his brother to a hospital, but Samuel had refused. Because he said if he did, doctors would find a bullet fired by a North Carolina law enforcement officer in Chester's body. Now, this information was obviously noteworthy to Port Smith deputies, so much so that after getting a description of the type of car Samuel was said to be driving, they started looking forward in the area. And around 930 in the morning, they spotted his vehicle attempting to evade a police cruiser. Soon enough, things escalated and the Port Smith officers found themselves in a full-blown high-speed chase. Eventually, though, Samuel lost control of his car, slammed into a guardrail and flipped several times. When the dust finally settled, officers realized the car was completely upside down and sitting on its roof. Inside, they found Samuel alive and Chester dead in the backseat. But Chester hadn't died from injuries sustained in the crash. He had a gunshot wound to his abdomen from what appeared to be a revolver. Samuel was mostly unharmed with just a few cuts that required treatment at a local hospital. After being discharged, he was transported to a jail in Port Smith, then quickly extra-dited back to North Carolina to face a pending charge of murder. Two days later, on Saturday, November 29th, he was arraigned in Jackson, North Carolina, where a judge ordered he be held without bond. According to coverage by the Associated Press, the sheriff of Northampton County at the time told reporters that Samuel was the prime suspect in Lloyd's murder. The sheriff explained that Lloyd had stopped the phase-on brothers some time around 4 a.m. on Thursday along a rural county road near Jackson because he'd caught them jacklighting deer. Now, for context, jacklighting is a practice also known as spotlighting. It's when someone shines a light at a deer or any animal to get their attention, and of course that animal sort of freezes, making it much easier to kill them. That practice is illegal in nearly every county in North Carolina, Northampton County included. State law said, and still does, that it's illegal to jacklight after sunset or before sunrise. And because the phase-on brothers were doing it around 4 a.m. when Lloyd came across their path, he took issue with it. According to what the sheriff told reporters, Lloyd had first noticed the pair because he saw one of them riding on the hood of their car holding the spotlight, and at some point after stopping them, he seized their shotgun and then an altercation broke out amongst the three men. According to the sheriff, one of the brothers struck Lloyd in his face, took back the shotgun and began loading rounds into it. That prompted Lloyd to fire at least four shots from his service weapon, one of which had fatally struck Chester in his abdomen. Now in the midst of everything, Lloyd was shot by the brother's shotgun. The chief wildlife enforcement officer at the time told the press that it was standard protocol for Lloyd to carry a firearm while on duty. However, Hanna's counterparts were regularly reminded to only use their guns if they were defending themselves. The de facto rule for NC Wildlife Resource Commission officers was to never shoot at people for shooting animals. In this specific scenario though, Lloyd would have known that the Faeson brothers alleged defense for spotlighting deer would have only been a misdemeanor. So the fact that he'd had to resort to firing his gun strongly suggested a scenario where he'd feared for his life. One of Lloyd's supervisors at the time told the Associated Press that Game Wardens like him were regularly having encounters with deer hunters illegally operating at night. He stated that these individuals were a bit of a rougher bunch than most hunters and oftentimes there was alcohol involved in their late night activities. According to another supervisor, Lloyd didn't let these types of challenges discourage him from fulfilling his duties though. He was a former Special Forces Officer who'd served in Vietnam. After that, he studied law enforcement and sociology for six years before graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1975 and he earned a degree in law enforcement and administration. And by the way, that's the same university system I attended. I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, albeit many decades after Lloyd departed the UNC system, but my point is, with his degree, his life experience, it all made him well-equipped for his job. His dad, Willie, would later tell the Associated Press that Lloyd had originally wanted to be a detective in law enforcement, but he took a position as a wildlife officer when it opened up. He'd just been promoted and transferred to North Hampton County six months before his death. One of his supervisors told the Associated Press, quote, "He was above average, a sharp good investigator. He was sharp enough that he wouldn't let anyone get the jump on him. But it's hard to say what can happen when you get one man against two." Another supervisor also told the news service, quote, "We work alone, and there are so many things to watch for. Evidence, guns, people, that we have to be on the ball. Some of the people who violate fishing game laws go at it like others go about robbing banks. A lot of them carry guns, and you don't want to be unmindful of the danger," end quote. It seems Lloyd was no exception to the working solo scenario. Like nearly every other warden in his position, he was a lone ranger. He was described as someone who naturally spent a lot of time outside and was understanding of people, including sportsmen who violated the law. I saw it reported in some of the source material that Lloyd always seemed to have good camaraderie with folks, even hunters he'd have to issue citations to. At the time of his murder, he was a bachelor. He had a lot of outdoor hobbies like tennis, golf, and softball, and he came from a large family, including his parents and three siblings. Samuel Faeson, on the other hand, came from a much different background. He had two brothers, Chester and Ralph, and he'd been raised by relatives after the death of their father in 1962. An article by The Smithfield Times explained that in July 1980, so this would have been about four months before Lloyd's murder, an aisle of white county grand jury where Samuel was living in Virginia had indicted him for grand and larceny. That indictment stemmed from an incident in March of that year in which he'd stolen a man's pick-up truck from a service station. Like Lloyd, Samuel was also a military veteran, but according to Department of Veterans Affairs records, his stint in the service wasn't very long. He'd served in the Air Force in 1976, but was discharged after nine months for reasons I was unable to find. Meanwhile, during the first two days of the murder investigation, authorities interviewed Samuel extensively, and they discovered even more incriminating evidence that only made the case they were building against him that much stronger. When Samuel was first brought back to North Carolina on Thursday night, just hours after the shootout, his arrangement was supposed to take place the following morning on Friday, but that hearing was delayed because by Friday morning, authorities had learned from Samuel where additional evidence used in the crime had been stashed. According to coverage from that time, on Friday's searchers who'd gone back out to the areas near the crime scene, found Lloyd's 357 magnum revolver laying in the woods, some 600 feet from where his body had been found. An initial inspection of that gun revealed it had discharged five shots, four of which had successfully fired, and one which had not. About three miles away from there, investigators went to a body of water known as Corwell's Mill Pond, and they found Lloyd's badge, billfold, and uniform shirt, along with a 12-gauge shotgun sunken in the water. The sheriff told the Associated Press that it was believed the clothing and Lloyd's personal items had initially been tied around the shotgun and then tossed into the pond, but at some point some of the items had drifted apart. At emotions hearing a few days later on Thursday, December 4, Samuel's court appointed public defender asked the judge to order all members of law enforcement who'd been publicly commenting about the case to the press and all of the evidence that had been found to stop doing that. He argued that any further discussion by the sheriff or other investigators could prejudice a future potential jury, and the judge agreed. A probable cause hearing was then scheduled for two weeks after that, but it got pushed down the court's calendar even further as well, because attorneys for the state explained that they were still waiting on the medical examiner to finish Lloyd's autopsy. Turns out, the Emmy's office had chosen to have chemical test done on some of the evidence, and that process was taking a lot longer than anyone expected. In the meantime, Samuel's defense attorney successfully argued that he should be granted bond while the autopsy was still pending. So, without objection from the prosecution, Samuel posted a $25,000 bond and was released pending trial. His attorney told the court that his client would stay with a couple who'd raised him since he was a child and that he would maintain a steady job. The attorney didn't like the fact that Samuel's probable cause hearing had been delayed, because he believed that all the evidence he discovered thus far proved one thing. The other phase-on brother, Chester, was the killer, not Samuel, which was an interesting take and not completely unfounded. According to information, Samuel voluntarily provided to the NCSBI and Northampton County Sheriff's Office following his arrest, it was Chester who'd fired their shotgun at the game warden, which was why Chester had ended up dead. Samuel reportedly told authorities that it was his brother who'd been the aggressor the whole time, not him. However, come mid-January 1981, after a grand jury considered the evidence and testimony in the case, they didn't quite see things that way. The panel formally indicted Samuel for Lloyd's murder, and the case was set for trial. In the meantime, Lloyd's colleagues at the NC Wildlife Resources Commission honored his sacrifice at their first monthly meeting of the new year. A few weeks after that, Northampton County's DA announced his office would be pursuing a first-degree murder charge against Samuel, but that was later downgraded to second-degree murder the day before the trial started in mid-May 1981. According to coverage by United Press International, some of the first people to testify were members of law enforcement who'd interviewed Samuel, the night he was arrested. A sheriff's deputy told jurors that Samuel had confessed to stealing $34 in cash from Lloyd's wallet after this shooting, as well as taking the game warden's watch. According to Samuel, he said Lloyd actually had $56 in his billfold, but he'd only stolen a portion of it. An NCSBI agent who'd interviewed Samuel testified as well, but Samuel's defense attorney tore that guy apart on the witness stand because he was routinely referencing type transcripts of notes from the interrogation, which interestingly had details which differed from the handwritten version of his notes that he'd taken while actually conducting Samuel's interview. In addition to that, a chemist for the NCSBI who'd analyzed swabs taken from Samuel's hands after his arrest testified that gunshot residue analysis on that evidence was inconclusive, meaning the chemist had not found proper concentrations of chemical elements, like barium, lead, and antimony on Samuel's hands, which are commonly associated with a discharge firearm. This expert witness didn't go as far as saying that no traces were found. He just said that he couldn't say for sure whether Samuel had or had not fired a gun that morning. So this meant that the prosecution had literally zero physical evidence to indicate that Samuel had murdered Lloyd. And it seems because of that during trial the prosecution once again modified the charge they were seeking a conviction for. Instead of second-degree murder, attorneys for the state opted to pursue a charge of aiding and abetting second-degree murder. At the end of the day, the crux of the prosecution's case was this. The Faeson brothers were illegally hunting deer, they got caught, they didn't like that, so they killed Lloyd. And then Samuel covered up the murder and proceeded to give inconsistent statements to officials in both Virginia and North Carolina about what had happened. Tom Fortner reported for the Ronuk Chowon News Herald that a police officer from Port Smith, Virginia, who testified at trial, said that Samuel had first told him it was Chester who'd fatally wounded Lloyd. But then later, allegedly, Samuel had said he'd been the one to grab the shotgun. Samuel's defense attorney, though, rigorously argued to have that police officer's testimony dismissed, because he said that Port Smith investigators should never have been questioning or getting information from Samuel after he'd been in such a severe car accident. The judge ruled against the defense, though, and admitted the Port Smith officer's testimony. But he wasn't the only member of law enforcement whose work came under scrutiny. Samuel's attorney vigorously cross-examined every officer in deputy, who testified for the prosecution, to the point where some of their credibility and methods really came into question. Additional testimony, which bolstered the defense's argument, came from an assistant medical examiner who said that Lloyd had been shot at close range. The coverage from the time describes the position of the gun at the time of Lloyd's death as directly against his body. So, the assistant amie surmised that he'd likely died instantaneously. A deputy chief medical examiner from Virginia who'd conducted Chester's autopsy told the court that he'd died from a round fired by Lloyd's service pistol from about one or two feet away. And medically speaking, Chester could have lived long enough to load his shotgun, crawl to a vantage point where he could see Lloyd in Samuel's tussling, and then fire, which was a scenario that lined up with Samuel's version of events. The climax of the trial, though, came when the defendant himself took the witness stand. He testified for three hours and gave an account of what he claimed happened between Lloyd his brother and himself on that fateful Thanksgiving morning. And the details he described were not pretty. According to Samuel, on Wednesday, November 26, after getting off work at a shipbuilding company in Virginia, he went to his brother Chester's house and met up with him and Chester's three-year-old son. Around 9 p.m., they left in Samuel's car to drive to North Carolina. And on their way, they drank some beers. Eventually, they made it to their aunt's house around 1.15 in the morning. After that, they drove to one of their cousins' homes where they left Chester's son. Then around 4 a.m., they set out to go turkey hunting with Chester driving Samuel's car and Samuel riding on the hood armed with a shotgun. He testified that out of nowhere Lloyd Mays had surprised him and his brother when he turned on his blue lights. Initially, the game warden's stop was calm. Lloyd seized their shotgun and reviewed Samuel's car registration information. But then, in the middle of this interaction, Chester started walking away from the game warden, which prompted Lloyd to dart after him and ordered him to come back. While doing that, Samuel said Lloyd grabbed his brother by his shoulder and shoved him against the car. Moments later, Chester weirded back and punched Lloyd in the face, which caused the game warden to fall to the ground and lose his grip on their shotgun. Right away, Samuel said Chester grabbed the gun and ran to the back of the car to take cover, but then Lloyd started firing at him and the second shot struck Chester. According to Samuel, that's when he jumped into action and started struggling with Lloyd. He knew at that point his brother had likely been fatally hit and he just didn't want Lloyd to keep shooting at him. So he pinned Lloyd to the ground but said the game warden managed to fire off two more rounds, one of which came close to hitting him. And before he knew it, he said he heard a shotgun blast ring out and realized that Chester, with his dying breath, had fired around at Lloyd from about three feet away. When cross-examined by the prosecution, though, Samuel's version of events changed slightly. He said that Chester and Lloyd had actually traded quite a few blows with one another before the shootout occurred. Attorneys for the State alleged that Samuel had not been telling the truth and instead the scenario had unfolded more like this. He'd watched his brother get shot and then purposely restrain the game warden so Chester could stagger over and jam the shotgun into Lloyd's chest, but Samuel denied such allegations. He explained that he'd been trying to separate his brother and Lloyd the whole time. And once he saw Lloyd take out his revolver, he stepped back. He said the only reason he'd tussled with Lloyd was to keep him from firing at Chester. Throughout most of his time on the witness stand, Samuel emphasized that he had not personally shot Lloyd and that due to being awake for nearly 48 hours prior to the shooting, he was a little out of it. His wine was dazed and he couldn't think straight. What he did know for sure though was that he'd taken measures to cover up the crime. He admitted to running Lloyd's car off the road, hiding his body in the woods, stealing the cash from his billfold and taking his watch. Then he said he tossed the game warden's gun in a field before discarding the shotgun in the pond. When asked why he'd done all those things, Samuel's response was that he couldn't remember. But the defense put on experts who attempted to provide a more tangible answer to that question. Two psychiatrists, one of whom had personally evaluated Samuel, explained that his behavior after the crime was consistent with someone who just experienced sudden severe trauma. The experts described Samuel's post-crime decisions as "catastrophic reactions." They explained that Samuel's experience of having seen his brother killed and then watching Lloyd die could have triggered partial memory loss and the inability to differentiate right from wrong. Which is why he tried to hide all the things associated with the crime, and why his initial recollections to authorities had some inconsistencies. Derr is also heard about Samuel's prior crimes, including that grand larceny incident from a few months before the murder, and his convictions for a slew of traffic violations. But in the end, after nine days of trial, Derr is deliberated for just over an hour and came back with their verdict. Not guilty. According to reporting by Tom Fortner, because the prosecution had changed the type of charge they were seeking a conviction for, the judge had told jurors that they could only find Samuel guilty of aiding an abetting chester in second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter. They couldn't actually convict him of murder himself. So when the jury returned, it was a resounding acquittal. Naturally, law enforcement officers, particularly colleagues of Lloyd's, were disappointed with this verdict. Lloyd's father Willie and his sister Judy were also unhappy with the acquittal. They'd sat through every day of the trial and traveled several hours from where they lived in Chapel Hill, only to have their hopes for justice dashed. In his closing argument, the district attorney had told jurors, quote, "Sam is just as guilty as if he had pulled the trigger himself, and I'm not sure that he didn't," end quote, which insinuated that, regardless of what the jury concluded, he still believed Samuel played a pivotal role in Lloyd's death, period. Samuel and his attorney, on the other hand, were elated with the acquittal. Samuel told the press that he'd never had any major doubts about how the trial would go, because he believed God would seem through it. But despite winning that victory in May, Samuel wasn't out of the woods just yet in terms of his legal trouble. Come August of that year, he was indicted again by a grand jury, but not for murder, for eight other charges related to the crime, including larceny of a firearm, concealment of a felony, accessory after the fact of murder, assault on an officer, using another person's vehicle without their consent, and several misdemeanor hunting license violations. Two of the felony charges, accessory after the fact to murder and concealment of a felony, those carried potential sentences of ten years each. The larceny of a firearm charge carried a maximum five-year penalty. Now, I'm sure you're all wondering, just like I was, why didn't the DA file these additional charges the first time around? Well, according to what a spokesman for that office told the Roe note-cho-on-news herald, the DA had decided not to move forward with those lesser offences at the outset, because doing so would have made the case too complex. To be honest, a part of me gets that, but I also kind of feel like maybe the prosecution knew going into trial that their case was shaky, so they held back filing everything so that if they lost that trial, they could always come back and take another swing at Samuel. Now, I don't know that for sure, but it certainly feels like a possibility. Anyway, when the second indictment came in in August 1981, North Carolina authorities couldn't immediately find Samuel at the address he'd said he was living at at the conclusion of his murder trial, so they enlisted some help from federal agents to track him down. Eventually, Virginia authorities found him working as a handyman in Norfolk, and they took him into custody. He stayed put in a Virginia jail for months, while officials in both states tried to sort out his extradition. The key issue? Samuel didn't want to go back to North Carolina to face the eight new charges he'd been indicted for, because he argued that if he was tried for those offenses, it would essentially be double jeopardy, which for those of you who are unfamiliar is a clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution that protects someone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime. The battle to bring Samuel back to North Carolina to stand trial dragged on for 14 months, but then in June 1983, after all that time sitting in jail, Samuel pleaded guilty to one count of concealment of a felony, and he was released with credit for times served. The rest of the charges that had been pending against him were then dropped. In 1989, United Press International interviewed Samuel over the phone for an anniversary article about Lloyd's murder. He told the publication that he'd never really gotten over the incident. He referred to it as a terrible thing, and said he felt lucky just to be alive. He remarked that if he could go back in time and do things differently, he would. He said he'd put both Lloyd and Chester in his car and take them to the hospital, not Barry Lloyd, steal his things, and keep his brother's body with him as he fled. He told UPI that after the incident on Thanksgiving Day 1980, he'd never gone hunting in the woods again. From the records I was able to find, Samuel lived the rest of his life a free man until his death from cardiac arrest at the age of 41 in March of 1998. By then, he was divorced from his wife whom he married in 1975 but had separated from prior to Lloyd's murder. If there was one good thing that came from Lloyd's sacrifice, it was reformed policy. Following his murder, the NC Wildlife Resources Commission updated its practices to include instructions that law enforcement officers should work together in pairs. The updated policy also stated that officers would now wear bulletproof vests, carry better flashlights and arm themselves with a shotgun. Today, Lloyd's memory lives on in the legacy he left behind, and his name, along with nine other commission employees who have died in the line of duty, is etched into a memorial outside the entrance of the Piska Center for Wildlife Education in North Carolina. If you find yourself in the wild woods along the border between Virginia and North Carolina anytime soon, I hope you'll think of Lloyd and all the difference he was making for wildlife protection and likely would have continued to make if only he'd been given the chance. Park Predators is an audio check production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. You can also follow Park Predators on Instagram @ParkPredators I think Chuck would approve.