I know this ha been quiet for a while but this case needs to. E still looked at! I found and read up on this today, as well as the Reddit thread linked above by the niece. It caught my attention because I grew up 2 hours south at Surfside Beach and all of my relatives were living along the stretches of beaches between Surfside and Carolina back to the 1920s. A few issues/assumptions seemed odd to me so I called my 95 yo grandmother to discuss.
In May 1941 she was 18 and married (graduating from high school at 15 back then so this was "mature") and her sister was 21 and married, both living in Myrtle Beach on the main boulevard. This beach (as they all were along this strip into southern NC) was very similar and you really could barely tell when one ended and the other started. That said, Myrtle was maybe 5 or so years ahead of Carolina as far as being built up, so I think it's a good comparison.
In addition they had an aunt and uncle in Wilmington they would visit who would take them over to Carolina Beach for dinner so there is something to compare it to. Here are the things she said that stand out to me:
References to it being a well known case and even nationwide hunt: she laughed and said 'not hardly'. She had never heard of it or read about it and she is one to keep up with the news. She said back then they read the weekly Grit paper and listened to the radio for news. They would have frequented her aunt and uncle's at that time but still never came up. And she still remembers murders and such from back then as they were rare.
The way LB was dressed when she went to the store- Nana said for sure she would have been dressed that casually- no question. It was a beach town and hot. "I never wore hose or such unless I went into town to a fancy store. Sundresses, shorts, turbans, and flip flops- that's what we lived in.
The store- first off she knew right away it was a Mack's dime store. It was on the boardwalk and she knew it. Mack's was also the drugstore in Myrtle, as well as 3 more beach towns she reeled off. She did confirm they sold "undies" there (lol!!) And she insisted that they never would have been open past 9. I asked about this over and over- even in a tourist spot? Even at the beach? Even in the summer? She added that in 1941 all of those beach towns practically shut down from Labor Day until school was out at the END of May. So even if they stayed open a little later in the summer, it wasn't season yet and "later" would still be 9ish.
Pouring concrete- not suspicious at all. My grandfather was a builder who also built most of the houses they lived in and she said many an evening until dark he was out doing things like laying forms and pouring concrete. She said what WAS suspicious is that if he had been doing that and she said she was running to the store he would have never been able to describe what she was wearing in that kind of detail and she didn't know any husband then who could.
The car- she said you would expect LB to walk to the store but bc it was that time of night and she had the little girl it wasn't suspicious. We both also find it odd that if the car was submerged in surrounding waters that the various severe hurricanes and floods there over the years didn't unearth something.
I think that is all I asked so far. Now she is interested too and wants me to tell her more.
On a last side note, I read this article from 2011 when they dug up the concrete and was shocked to see they were using my great-uncle's (Nana's brother no less) archeological sifting screens that he designed and manufactures. Weird, small world.
And last, this article is either very poorly written or has many timeline-detail discrepancies from earlier stories.
http://www.twcnews.com/archives/nc/...s-case-in-nc-gets-new-look-NC_644556.old.html
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