In the late summer of 1979, Betty Sue McConnell, a 21-year-old mother, was working at a Dunkin' Donuts in Asheville, North Carolina. Born on March 12, 1958, Betty was the daughter of Carl and Margaret McConnell. She was building a life for herself and her young child in the mountain city. On the night of August 24, she finished her shift and, around 11:30 p.m., called her mother to say she was heading to a local bowling alley to meet a friend.
It was the last time her family would hear from her.
In the early morning hours of August 25, Betty Sue was driving her car when two men in a truck began to follow her. At a traffic light, the driver, Terry Alvin Hyatt, made an obscene gesture. When Betty drove away, Hyatt pursued her, eventually ramming his truck into her car and forcing her off the road. Armed with a hunting knife, Hyatt jumped out and forced Betty into the passenger seat of her own car. He ordered his friend, 19-year-old Jerry Harmon, to follow them. Hyatt drove to an isolated dirt road where he raped Betty at knifepoint.
After the assault, Hyatt forced Betty back into her car and drove to a remote spot near the French Broad River, close to the town of Alexander. He dragged her down a steep bank, out of his accomplice's sight. Harmon later told police he heard Betty screaming, and then there was silence. Hyatt reappeared with blood on his clothes and confessed to Harmon that he had stabbed her and thrown her in the river. To conceal the crime, Hyatt drove Betty’s car several miles upstream and pushed it into the water, threatening to kill Harmon if he ever spoke of what had happened.
Miraculously, Betty Sue McConnell fought to survive. Soaking wet and bleeding from multiple stab wounds to her chest, she managed to crawl from the riverbank to the driveway of a nearby home, some fifty feet away. The residents, Don and Sue Helms, discovered her gasping for air and immediately called for help. Before she succumbed to her injuries in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Betty managed to utter her last words, stating that she had been "picked up at work by two guys" and then "stabbed and thrown into the river." Her car was found partially submerged in the river five miles from where she was found. An autopsy would later determine the fatal wound was a puncture to her pulmonary artery.
For nearly two decades, Betty’s murder remained a cold case, a source of unanswered pain for her family. The break came on August 13, 1998, when a guilt-ridden and heavily intoxicated Jerry Harmon walked into the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department. He confessed to Captain Pat Hefner that he had been with the man who committed a cold-blooded murder 19 years earlier. Harmon’s detailed account of the night’s events matched the evidence from the 1979 case file perfectly, finally giving investigators a name: Terry Alvin Hyatt.
Harmon also led police to another friend, Lester Dean Helms, who implicated Hyatt in the similar 1979 abduction, rape, and murder of a 40-year-old mother of seven named Harriet Simmons. Investigators also connected Hyatt to a non-fatal knifepoint abduction and robbery of another woman, Carolyn Brigman, just two months after Betty's murder. On November 19, 1998, police arrested the 41-year-old Hyatt. Initially, he admitted to being present but blamed Harmon for Betty's murder.
Terry Alvin Hyatt, a serial killer responsible for at least three murders between 1979 and 1987, was tried in January 2000 for the murders of Betty Sue McConnell and Harriet Simmons. The prosecution's case was built on the powerful testimonies of his former friends and his surviving victim, Carolyn Brigman. On February 1, 2000, a jury found Hyatt guilty on all counts, including first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and first-degree rape. He received two death sentences for the murders, in addition to seven consecutive life sentences for his other crimes. Years later, in 2005, DNA evidence would link Hyatt to the 1987 murder of 19-year-old Jerri Ann Jones, for which he pleaded guilty and received another life sentence. Terry Hyatt remains on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, his execution pending.
