Tuesday's Internet Edition, May 13, 2008.
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“We get tips on the case all the time and we get new leads all the time,” TPD Lt. Raymond Widener said. “We just have to follow it up. It is a very working and viable case.”
On Oct. 9, 2006, Wingard’s body was found bundled in plastic across from a section of Thomasville Furniture Industries Plant B still haunts Widener today. Employees of Mid-State Industries discovered the body.
Wingard was last seen approximately two weeks before she was found, and no missing report had been filed.
“There has been a lot of loose information coming from the streets about the cause of death,” Widener said. “There again, the only person who knows the cause of death is the person who caused it.”
With Hamby Creek adjacent to the vacant parking lot, the location of where the body was found gives Widener reason to believe that the murderer wanted the body to be found.
“The banks of Hamby Creek are 10, 12-feet deep,” the lieutenant said. “It is pretty well choked with underbrush. If they really wanted to hide her, they could have placed her in the back end of that creek with water and sand. We would have never found her.”
One key suspect, Wingard’s former boyfriend Leroy Garner, is vital for Thomasville Police to solve the crime, but he will not talk to police. Wingard was living with Garner prior to her death.
“We have some people of interest in this crime who have been people of interest from the beginning,” Widener said. “They are still people of interest. Leroy Garner is a person of interest and a very focused individual of interest.”
Garner, 65, was arrested on five drug charges by the Thomasville Police’s Vice/Narcotics unit on March 20 during an undercover operation. He was placed in the Davidson County Jail under a $500,000 secured bond.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation worked with Thomasville Police soon after the body was found, but the case remains unsolved.
With new technology coming every day, Widener hasn’t given up on hope that the right break will come.
Of most importance, Widener wants to solve the crime to give Wingard’s family some answers.
“I think about the families, her children and parents,” he said. “They deserve to know what happened. Somebody needs to pay for the loss of this girl’s life.”
Anyone with information regarding the case is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers of Thomasville at 476-TIPS.
Staff Writer Darrick Ignasiak can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 231, or ignasiak@tvilletimes.com.