SBI's quick field work leaves behind a mystery

WARRENTON -- SBI agents inspected 10-year-old Tyler Jones - his chin resting on a shotgun - and soon declared him a killer.

It was April 16, 2005, in a rural outpost in northeastern North Carolina. Tyler's mother, Glinda Pulley, lay lifeless in the bed above him, her face made unrecognizable by a shotgun blast.

The SBI dispatched a team to help the tiny Warren County Sheriff's Office. Among them: veteran agents Greg Tart and Blane Hicks.

To them, the case appeared open and shut. Tyler's thumb was on the trigger. A suicide note was stashed beneath the pillow cradling his mother's head. A CD with violent music by rapper 50 Cent was found in a nearby stereo.

By evening, less than seven hours after police had been called to Pulley's home, the SBI turned the house back over to the family.

An investigator broke the news to Tyler's father, Dan Jones: Tyler shot his mother, then killed himself. They told the same thing to a pathologist before autopsies began. The theory blasted across television news stations that night.

The swift conclusion shocked Warren County deputy Regina Nolan Thomas, the lead local detective.

"You don't walk into a scene and judge it right away," said Thomas, who left the sheriff's office in 2007. "You have to search every nook and cranny."

The SBI left a trail of evidence behind. Bloodied bedsheets and carpet remained. So did a shotgun pellet lodged in the wall in Pulley's bedroom. They almost missed the suicide note; the undertaker said he found it when he lifted Pulley's body. No one searched Tyler's bookbag from his mom's SUV.

Investigators also failed to notice that Pulley's fireproof lock box, where she kept important papers, was empty. Among the missing items: life insurance policies worth $700,000 that named as beneficiary the mother of Pulley's boyfriend, Dennis Carter.

For decades, the SBI has enjoyed the reputation of having the best and brightest law enforcement officers in North Carolina. Its field agents are dispatched to rural counties to help crack the toughest cases.

The quality and fairness of their work has been under attack this year, amid an N&O series highlighting some agents who cross ethical lines while investigating cases and some forensic scientists who push past the bounds of accepted science to deliver answers pleasing to prosecutors. In cases such as this one, local law enforcement officers have come to question judgments made by some SBI agents.

"The SBI really hamstrung us," Thomas said.

Thomas, who now works as a private investigator in Virginia, soon believed Tyler and his mother were both murdered. She would work in vain for years to try to put the case back on solid ground.

The SBI steps in

Just 60 miles north of Raleigh, Warren County is dotted with cotton fields and country stores. Fortune is rare, and so is violence.

Sheriff Johnny Williams keeps only 34 sworn deputies; no one is trained to process crime scenes. So, when Williams learned about the bloody mess near Alcoa, he called the SBI.

Tart was a highly ranked field agent, and Hicks was a lead agent, just a step below Tart. They were career agents who'd been climbing the ladder over the previous decade and would continue to rise in the years that followed.

Williams says he gave the SBI control and stayed out of their way. He said he's not sure what the SBI collected and what was tested.

Nearly five years later, Williams is still in the dark. He said he has been refused acopy of the SBI's report to the district attorney.

SBI spokeswoman Noelle Talley said the agency had been asked for help at the crime scene and later helped conduct a few interviews the following week; those results were shared with District Attorney Sam Currin. Talley said the agency would be happy to lend more help if asked by the sheriff or district attorney.

Williams technically considers the case still open, though no detective works the case day to day. He insists it was the SBI, not his office, that ruled the deaths a murder-suicide.

Since 2005, Williams and his detectives have brought evidence to Currin about a possible killer. It wasn't enough for Currin, Thomas and Williams said.

"He said the SBI had ruled it a murder-suicide, and unless he got a confession, he wouldn't touch it," Thomas said.

Currin could not be reached for comment.

Deputy's doubts grow

From the start, Thomas felt uneasy about Carter, Pulley's boyfriend. She found his behavior suspicious.

And, the more Thomas learned about Tyler, the more she doubted suicide. Family members told her that he doted on his mother, and he was so terrified of guns that he wet himself when he went hunting with relatives. He'd seemed fine at school the day before and was having a buddy sleep over that weekend.

Days after the SBI cleared the scene, Thomas said she asked the sheriff for permission to go back to Pulley's house.

"I was uncomfortable with the work done that [first] day, else I wouldn't have gone back the second time," Thomas said.

What she found on that second visit convinced Thomas that she was likely dealing with a double homicide. She declined to say what led her to that conclusion, saying she doesn't want to undermine the case should it ever be prosecuted.

Over the next several months, Thomas pursued Carter, according to search warrants and subpoenas.

The money

Thomas discovered $700,000 worth of life insurance policies that would have benefited Carter's family. The monthly premiums nearly exceeded Pulley's income.

Pulley designated Carter's mother, Edith Carter, as the beneficiary, a move her relatives find strange. They say Pulley barely knew Edith Carter and that she would have wanted to provide for her sons after her death. Dennis Carter controlled his mother's finances, paying everything from her church tithes to grocery bills, according to a search warrant.

Shortly before Pulley's death, someone identifying herself as Pulley faxed letters to the insurance companies asking them to keep quiet about the policyarrangements, according to a search warrant.

Days after the Pulley family buried Tyler and his mother, Dennis Carter asked funeral home director Lawrence Boyd for a copy of Glinda Pulley's death certificate. Boyd said he refused. Dennis Carter then tried to secure one from the Register of Deeds, according to the warrant.

Carter has previously been accused of financial misdeeds. He was charged with insurance fraud and fraudulently burning a building, but those charges were dismissed.

The State Department of Insurance opened an investigation in September into Dennis Carter relating to Pulley's life insurance policies. The department declined to discuss the details of investigation, but investigators opened the case after receiving a complaint from a crime scene expert hired by Pulley's family.

Efforts to interview Dennis Carter failed.

Competing claims

In 2006, Nationwide Insurance asked a Superior Court judge for guidance on how to pay out the $450,000 owed on Pulley's life insurance policy. Edith Carter, the named beneficiary, staked a claim. So did Danny Jones, Pulley's oldest son. When Pulley died, bill collectors started seeking payments from Jones.

In 2006, Jones and Carter agreed to split the insurance payout. Jones used his share to settle his mom's debts.

The family is unsure how another $250,000 policy with the Farm Bureau was resolved; Edith Carter was named as the beneficiary on that policy.

The Pulley family is confounded by the lingering mystery of Pulley's and Tyler's deaths. For years, family members stopped by the sheriff's office each week for an update. When Thomas left the sheriff's office in 2007, another detective took interest for a while. He, too, left. Since then, the Pulley family says inquiries have largely been met with silence.

Thomas said she feels guilty that the case stalled after she left. "I really thought I'd get the family some closure one way or another," she said.

In 2008, a lawyer hired by Carter asked that computers and financial records and other items seized during Thomas' search of Carter's home in 2005 be returned. The district attorney consented.

Dad's plea unanswered

Dan Jones, Tyler's father and a sheriff's deputy in Halifax County, wrote to Attorney General Roy Cooper pleading for help. In the letter, Jones insisted his son was not a murderer and warned that a killer lurks in the community. Jones said he has never received a reply.

"The SBI is supposed to be the best we have in the state. ... I'm not pleased with the investigation they did," Jones said. "They didn't seem to care."

Meanwhile, Tart and Hicks have flourished at the SBI. In 2009, Tart was promoted to district supervisor, where he supervises dozens of field agents in several counties, including Wake and Johnston. Hicks is an assistant special agent in charge.

This year, Hicks has been helping the SBI's Internal Affairs unit, investigating the work of maligned agents. Among those he's investigating for the SBI: Duane Deaver, a former lab analyst blamed with withholding blood test results that raised questions about dozens of cases.