Jeffrey Lee Foster, a 14-year-old white male from Forsyth County, North Carolina, was murdered in July 1976. His death was later linked to George Kent Wallace, a man with a long history of violent crimes against adolescent boys. Wallace, who had previously served time for impersonating a police officer and assaulting minors, was known for luring young male victims under false pretenses before subjecting them to physical abuse.
On the day of the murder, Wallace picked up Jeffrey while the
teenager was hitchhiking near Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem. After driving to a secluded dead-end road, Wallace reportedly dragged the boy into the back seat of his car, pulled down his pants, and paddled him. He then resumed driving, searching for a location he deemed suitable to carry out the killing. Once he found such a place, Wallace forced Jeffrey out of the car, laid him on his stomach, and stabbed him to death.
At the time of the murder, authorities suspected Wallace but lacked sufficient physical evidence to prosecute him. The case remained unresolved for years, despite multiple interviews and investigations conducted by Forsyth County law enforcement. Wallace's pattern of criminal behavior continued throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, including additional assaults and impersonations of law enforcement officers.
It wasn't until years later, during a death row interview in Oklahoma, that Wallace confessed to the murder of Jeffrey Lee Foster, as well as another killing of an 18-year-old male in 1982. Wallace had been sentenced to death for separate murders committed in Arkansas, where he used similar tactics to lure and kill two teenage boys. His confession to the North Carolina murders provided long-awaited closure to the cases, though he was never formally tried for them due to the lack of prosecutable evidence at the time. Wallace was executed by the State of Oklahoma in August 2000.
