HILLSBOROUGH -- Wearing the same style of thick, dark-rimmed glasses that helped land him in prison 25 years ago, 61-year-old George Fisher pleaded guilty Wednesday to the second of two child murders that shook Orange County in the mid-1980s.
In February 1984, Carrboro firefighter Robbie Crabtree found 7-year-old Carrie Wilkerson's body, stiff and strangled inside the trailer she shared with her stepmother, nurse Norma Shivers, now remarried.
Shivers normally left for work around 7:30 a.m., while Carrie got herself ready then walked to school with two other girls from their neighborhood. But when the girls knocked on her door on the morning of her murder, she told them she was with a friend and would come to school later, District Attorney Jim Woodall said.
An hour later, firefighters responded to the mobile home and found a kerosene heater had ignited some clothes. Around the same time, someone called the old N.C. Memorial Hospital operating room and asked one of the nurses to tell "Norma" he had killed Carrie and he was sorry. Earlier that morning, a call had come to another operating room telephone asking for Norma, but when she answered the caller hung up.
"I knew from then that it was him," Shivers said Wednesday. "No one else that I know has those two numbers."
But Fisher was not a suspect at that time.
The other girl's murder
Instead of Fisher, investigators focused on Eddie Hathaway, Shivers' brother, who admitted molesting Carrie a few weeks earlier. In fact, Woodall said Shivers never mentioned suspecting Fisher until more than a year later, after a man walking his dog found 8-year-old Jean Fewel's body hanging in a tree at Finley Golf Course.
Witnesses remembered seeing Jean walking near Fisher's car on her way to Ephesus Road Elementary School and later in his passenger seat. They identified him by his thick, dark-rimmed glasses.
"He trolled around the school, and he was looking for victims," Woodall said.
Fisher told investigators he found children easier to talk to. Fisher was convicted, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison for murder plus another 50 years for kidnapping and attempted rape.
The two crimes had much in common. Both victims were second-grade girls with dark hair; both crimes occurred when they were getting ready or going to school without adult supervision; both involved strangling and sexual assault; both occurred in mid-winter, in the mid-morning hours on two Wednesdays.
The break in the case
Testing on Fisher's blood in 1985 and again in the late 1990s proved inconclusive, and there was no justice for Carrie. DNA evidence from a bedspread kept in a rape kit at the Carrboro Police Department all these years is what finally linked Fisher to the crime.
Superior Court Judge Carl Fox was district attorney in the 1980s and 1990s and prosecuted Fisher for Jean's murder. On Wednesday, he had to get Fisher's consent to preside over his plea hearing.
Fox punished Fisher with two additional life sentences plus another 15 years for an arson charge, all to run one after the other.
Woodall said Fisher would have been eligible for parole next month if not for the new convictions.
"A man like George Fisher who could willingly murder two little girls could never be punished enough," said Shivers. "He will never share love or be loved by anyone, share friendship or enjoy life outside the walls of prison."
The knowledge that Fisher will die in prison was little comfort to Carrie's birth mother, Rebecca Lowry, who blames Shivers for not protecting the girl after the father moved out.
"Through her this monster met my child and because of her, her brother sexually molested her," Lowry said. "When you have to bury a child, there is no closure and healing. My heart has been broken in half."
