GUILTY NC - Lacoy McQueen, 20, pregnant, murdered, Raleigh, 17 May 1996

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Police have arrested and charged 40-year-old Edwin Christopher Lawing in connection with the death of Lacoy McQueen on May 17, 1996.

McQueen was a 20-year-old Shaw University student when she disappeared. Her remains were later found in March 1997 when construction workers discovered human remains off U.S. Highway 1 near Kittrell.

Days later, police charged Lawing, who was a student at N.C. State University at the time, with McQueen's murder. However, the charge was later dismissed.

After additional testing was performed on the evidence, the Wake County District Attorney's Office decided to reconsider prosecution of Lawing.

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A Wake County grand jury this week handed down a true bill of indictment charging Edwin Christopher Lawing, 40, of 551 Old Charlotte Road in Concord, with the first-degree murder of McQueen...

Police say Lawing was in a relationship with McQueen, who was also from the Charlotte area, and detectives early on considered him a suspect. Investigators twice searched Lawing's dorm room at Watauga Hall before McQueen's remains were discovered. "Police believe the crime occurred in the suspect's dorm room at N.C. State," Sughrue said...

Lawing was transported to the Wake County jail, where he is being held without benefit of bail, a jail spokesman said Wednesday night.

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Almost 20 years after a Shaw University student disappeared, a Concord man charged with killing her went on trial Monday in Raleigh.

Edwin Christopher Lawing, 41, is charged with murder in the death of Lacoy McQueen.

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Testimony continued Thursday as investigators took the jury back 19 years in the trial of Edwin Christopher Lawing, a Concord man charged in the 1996 murder of a Shaw University student.

Lacoy McQueen, 20, was reported missing May 17, 1996, when she never returned to her dorm room after she told her roommate she was meeting Lawing at North Carolina State University's Bell Tower. A construction crew discovered her remains off U.S. Highway 1 near Kittrell nine months later.

On Thursday, former Vance County Sheriff’s Office investigator Robert Catlett said he remembered when his team received a call from a man who found a skull in the woods. When investigators arrived, they found the skull, along with other bones and pieces of clothing.

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Immediately following opening statements Tuesday, McQueen's college roommate, Stephanie Jeffries Jones, took the stand. She said McQueen was pregnant, and that she and Lawing had been arguing about the pregnancy when she disappeared.

"(Lawing) said it was going to ruin his life," Jones said. "He was going into the military. He was the grandson of a prominent family. I guess they expected more from him or something."

Through tears, Jones said she remembered the day she found out her friend was expecting.

"We talked about whether or not she was going to keep the baby and how she was going to finish school with a baby," she said. "We were so close, we came up with a plan - this was going to be our baby. ... We were going to help take care of the baby."

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Immediately following closing arguments Monday morning, a Wake County jury began deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of Edwin Christopher Lawing, who is accused of killing Shaw University student Lacoy McQueen in 1996...

McQueen's blood was found in Lawing's North Carolina State University dorm room, and a pebble on Lawing's shoe matched rocks found at the site where her body was found in a wooded area off U.S. 1 in Kittrell, in Vance County.

During closing arguments, the defense attorney referred to the rock as "junk science," and said police "stalked" Lawing for 20 years, never considering other suspects.

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OkieGranny said:

http://www.wral.com/evidence-in-sha...s-only-to-edwin-lawing-officer-says/15449285/

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After less than two hours of deliberations on Monday afternoon, a Wake County jury found Edwin Christopher Lawing guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 death of Shaw University student Lacoy McQueen.

Lawing will now spend the rest of his life behind bars.

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