VIDEO: The Morbid Case of Brenda Sue Brown

Brenda Sue Brown was an 11-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered. Her body was found by rescue workers in a wooded area near downtown Shelby, North Carolina.

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With no leads and insufficient evidence to make an arrest, the murder became a cold case.

The case remained cold until a series of newspaper articles 40 years later brought forth new evidence in the spring of 2006.

According to Wikipedia, after a morning of arguing over a powder-puff compact with her younger sisters, Brenda Sue was asked to walk her 6-year-old sister, Patricia, two blocks to a Head Start class. This was the last time Brenda Sue was seen alive.

At 10:15 a.m. Brenda Sue’s mother, Gladys Brown, began a door-to-door search. Brown drove through her neighborhood, asking neighbors and passing motorists if they had seen the girl. An hour later, a search team was formed by members of the Shelby Rescue Squad.

At 6:45 p.m. Brenda Sue’s nude body was found in a wooded area 150 feet from South Lafayette Street and not far from her home. Her body was covered with freshly cut tree limbs, leaves, and brush. The red and white dress she had been wearing was folded neatly and placed atop the brush. A bloody rock was found nearby.

Authorities determined that Brenda Sue had been beaten to death with the rock found nearby. Her skull had been fractured in twelve places. Police reported that, although the body was nude, she had not been raped.

Police believed the killer was on foot because, due to heavy traffic on South Lafayette Street, he would not have been able to get out of a car and force the girl into the woods without being seen.

At the time, police had several suspects. These included an unidentified bald white man who had exposed himself to Brenda Sue’s sister a few days earlier, and a 13-year-old, mentally disabled, black boy named Robert Roseboro.

The unidentified white man who exposed himself could not be found.

Robert Roseboro was briefly questioned by police. When officer Harold Smith questioned him, Roseboro remained silent. “He wouldn’t answer. He just sat there. Roseboro´s silence made him more suspicious,” Smith said.

Roseboro lived a few hundred yards from where Brenda Sue´s body was found. That, along with his refusal to answer questions, made him a suspect, Smith said.

The public was baffled as to why Roseboro, who was seen in the area on the morning of Brenda Sue’s murder, was not interrogated further by police. People theorized that Roseboro may have been protected by a local crime syndicate which dominated the town of Shelby in the 1960s.

“We just didn´t have enough evidence on him. We had to let him go,” Smith said. He said that he and other investigators believed Roseboro had killed Brenda Sue.

When the case was reopened in 2005, detectives visited Roseboro in prison, but he refused to talk about the case.

Robert Roseboro was convicted in May 1969 of the 1968 murder of Mary Helen Williams of Shelby, whose murder was similar to that of Brenda Sue.