In the winter of 1968, the town of Gaffney, South Carolina, was gripped by a chilling series of events that would leave a lasting scar on the community. Among the victims of this reign of terror was a 14-year-old female named Nancy Christine Rhinehart. In late January, the young girl vanished after visiting her grandmother. She had intended to meet her mother at a downtown store where she worked but never arrived.
Initially, law enforcement considered the possibility that she was a runaway.
The grim truth of Nancy's fate came to light in February. On February 8, 1968, a man anonymously contacted Bill Gibbons, the editor of The Gaffney Ledger. The caller provided directions to the locations of two bodies. Following his instructions, authorities discovered Nancy Rhinehart's body buried under a brush pile in a wooded area, with one of her feet protruding from the debris. It was determined that she had been strangled and raped. The same caller also led police to the body of another missing woman, 20-year-old Nancy Carol Parris.
The anonymous caller was later identified as Lee Roy Martin, a local textile mill worker who came to be known as the 'Gaffney Strangler.' Martin's murderous spree had begun in May 1967 with the killing of Annie Lucille Dedmond. In a strange twist of justice, Dedmond's husband had been wrongfully convicted of her murder and was serving a prison sentence. Martin's conscience, it seemed, was pricked by this fact, as he mentioned in his calls to the newspaper that another man was serving his time. His final victim was 15-year-old Opal Dianne Buckson, who was abducted on her way to the school bus stop.
Local residents spotted a vehicle near the scene of Buckson's abduction, which led to the arrest of Lee Roy Martin on February 27, 1968. He was subsequently convicted for the murders of all four victims and received four life sentences. Following Martin's confession, Annie Dedmond's husband was released from prison, and the charges against him were dropped. Lee Roy Martin's life also ended violently when he was stabbed to death by another inmate on May 31, 1972, while serving his sentence.
