On Easter weekend of 1979, Harriet Delaney Simmons, a 40-year-old mother of seven, was looking forward to a trip and a joyous family reunion that was planned for after her return. Working as the night manager at Johnny's Supper Club in Raleigh, North Carolina, she was a woman dedicated to her family. In the early hours of April 15, after finishing her shift, Harriet got into her blue 1978 Toyota and began the drive to Nashville, Tennessee, to visit a boyfriend.
She had promised her children she would call them later that day, but the call never came.
When Harriet failed to arrive in Nashville and her family couldn't reach her, they grew frantic and reported her missing. Initially, their concerns were reportedly dismissed by some as a case of a mother simply running away. Refusing to wait, Harriet's son-in-law, Ronald Dement, set out to drive the route she would have taken. His search ended at an Interstate 40 rest stop west of Statesville, where he found her abandoned Toyota. The car had a flat tire, and while her suitcase and other belongings were still inside, her purse and keys were gone. There was no sign of a struggle, and with no other leads, the investigation stalled.
For nearly a year, Harriet's fate remained a mystery. Then, on March 23, 1980, a person walking in a wooded area of the Pisgah National Forest near Candler, North Carolina, discovered a human skull. A subsequent search of the area by the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department uncovered more skeletal remains, along with clothing, jewelry, and a set of car keys. Using dental records, the medical examiner confirmed the remains belonged to Harriet Simmons. The autopsy revealed she had been stabbed four times in the chest, and the keys found at the scene were proven to belong to her Toyota. Despite this discovery, police had no suspects, and Harriet's murder became a cold case.
The silence surrounding the case lasted for 19 years. The breakthrough came unexpectedly on August 13, 1998, when a man named Jerry Leon Harmon walked into the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department. Heavily intoxicated and burdened by a long-held secret, Harmon confessed to witnessing a man named Terry Alvin Hyatt murder another woman, Betty Sue McConnell, back in 1979. Harmon also implicated a second man, Dean Helms, as having knowledge of Hyatt's crimes. When investigators interviewed Helms, he provided the missing link to Harriet's case, confessing that he had been with Hyatt in April 1979 when they targeted her.
Helms told investigators that he and Hyatt had pretended to offer assistance to Harriet for her flat tire at the rest stop. They forced her into their van, drove her to a secluded area in the mountains, and Hyatt raped her. Helms recounted that Hyatt, armed with a knife, then led Harriet into the woods. Helms heard her scream and saw Hyatt return alone, with blood on his hands. This confession finally connected the two decades-old murders to one man: Terry Alvin Hyatt, a serial killer from Asheville.
Terry Hyatt was arrested on November 19, 1998. In January 2000, he stood trial for the murders of both Harriet Simmons and Betty Sue McConnell. A woman who survived being kidnapped at knifepoint by Hyatt in October 1979, Carolyn Brigman, provided powerful testimony about his pattern of violence. On February 1, 2000, a jury found Hyatt guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery. He was given two death sentences for the murders, in addition to seven consecutive life sentences for his other crimes.
Years later, while on death row, DNA evidence linked Hyatt to a third, unsolved murder from 1987—that of 19-year-old Jerri Ann Jones. To avoid another death penalty trial, he pleaded guilty in 2005 and received an additional life sentence. Terry Hyatt remains incarcerated on death row in Raleigh's Central Prison, having exhausted his appeals. The confession of a haunted accomplice finally brought justice for Harriet Simmons, closing a painful chapter for a family that had waited nearly two decades for answers.
