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the-record-newspaper · 5 years

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The Killing of Rhonda Hinson Installment XV

By LARRY J. GRIFFIN

For The Record

We are at a loss to explain why his character should be suspect or should be involved in this investigation…It would not help Mr. McDowell in the least to deny the rumors concerning his character and his background, since apparently no one would believe his unsupported denials anyway…Even if Mr. McDowell’s character is flawed, the fact remains that there is nothing to suggest that he is a serious suspect.—Excerpted from a letter to SBI Agent Charles Whitman from Attorney Steve Settlemyer, Aug. 5, 1983

On or about Sunday, Dec. 27, 1981, the Reverend Mr. Charles McDowell proffered his resignation to the deacon board of Wilkies Grove Baptist Church. In an April 20, 2019 interview, a lifelong anonymous Wilkies’ parishioner explained the management of the McDowell resignation:

They [Deacons] asked him to take a leave of absence to think about it [the resignation]. He may have been out a week or possibly a month—I just don’t remember. So, I don’t think he formally resigned to the church… [for] if he did, then the Deacons would have presented his resignation in our church conference or a special-called conference…and should be noted in church minutes. Charlie [Charles] came in August, 1978; he was pastor for several years after Rhonda’s death.

The actual reason for the proposed, precipitous departure is uncertain; though, it was alleged that McDowell left to accept employment elsewhere.

Judy Hinson remembered what he told her about the resignation during one of his two visits to their Hillcrest home subsequent to Rhonda’s murder. “He said that he was tired of living in a fish bowl and everybody knowing his business.”

It was approximately a month after Rhonda’s death that Charles McDowell called upon the Hinsons for the first time, according to Judy Hinson’s recollection. Judy had sent a check to him through the mail for conducting Rhonda’s funeral. During the first of two brief visits, Reverend McDowell returned the remittance.

“I remember his asking me, ‘Why did you ask me to conduct the funeral anyway?’ At that point, I told him I thought that was what he, Greg, and Rhonda would have wanted. He also asked, ‘What do you people want from me? I can’t be available to you 24 hours a day.’ I thought that was really an odd statement because we never asked him to be available to us at all,” Judy averred.

Linda Barlow, Ms. Hinson’s lifelong close friend, spent many an hour with the family—especially with Judy—in the aftermath of Rhonda’s death.

I spent nights at the Hinsons. Judy had so much trouble sleeping and had lost a lot of sleep. She discovered that Dramamine could help her to settle down—eventually—and she could fall asleep. And frankly, Rhonda’s death was really hard on us [Linda and her husband, Richard]. She was like a daughter to us. About a week before she was killed, Rhonda gave me a pair of Adidas [tennis shoes] that were missing the shoes laces. ‘Linda,’ she said, these will be some good work-shoes for you. You just have to get some shoe laces.’”

Ms. Barlow never wore the shoes and has kept them safely tucked away inside a box for over 37 years.

Linda happened to be at the Hinsons when Charles McDowell “came calling” for the first time and vividly recounted the details of that visit, during a Sunday afternoon interview. “I’ll never forget it. When he arrived he seemed almost angry; somewhat troubled. He never looked at anyone; he kept his head down and only looked at the floor. He asked Judy, ‘What do you want from me anyway?’ Well, that question made me angry, and I said, ‘How about a little sympathy?’”

Ms. Barlow had her young son with her that day whose name, coincidentally, happens to be Charles. “At that point, Mr. McDowell looked down at my son, kinda pulled him toward him, and began talking to him. I think he did that to break-up the tension that was in the room.”

“My friend, Linda, asked Charles about Greg and how he was,” Judy Hinson recollected. “He said that Greg was fine. Then Linda said, ‘I am afraid this will really hurt Greg for some time.’ McDowell said, ‘No it won’t. Greg will be fine. He is going to forget Rhonda and this part of his life. He is not going to let this bother him.’”

Both Judy and Linda recalled the brevity of that visit. “I don’t think that he was there more than 15 minutes. And there was no attempt on his part to comfort Judy, who was so obviously in need of it—you know like ministers generally do in situations like that.”

In her handwritten memoirs, Ms. Hinson wrote of Charles McDowell’s first visit when he returned the check and comments he made to her.

“He told me to forget about Rhonda and live for Bobby and Robbie. He said a carload of boys likely got behind a girl out at that time of night, and when she would not stop, they shot. He said that I would never know who did this…He also told me that Rhonda would be dismayed if she knew how I was acting.”

It was Thursday, Feb. 9, 1984—two days after his son’s 21st birthday and over 25 and a half months subsequent to the killing of Rhonda Hinson—that 47-year-old Charles McDowell called on her family for a second and final time. Judy Hinson remembered this visitation more vividly.

“I was home alone but was able, at that point, to talk with him more. When he came in, he was visibly upset. I think Sarah Helton from the Valdese News had gone down to his house and church attempting to talk with him; and, he was angry. So he came to our house to talk with us about it.”

By this time, the Hinsons had hired a private investigator—Tom McDonald from Randleman — to look into the case who advised them to record all conversations regarding Rhonda’s death—whether face-to-face or by phone. So, when Charles McDowell visited that day, the confabulation between him and Judy was recorded.

“He asked me, ‘Why would you think that I could have killed Rhonda? We loved her…and did a lot for her,’ he said. He reminded me that Betty was the one who got her the job at Hickory Steel—one that she would not have gotten had it not been for Betty.”

“I asked him, then, that if he loved Rhonda, why did he say the things that he did at the funeral? [‘I do not know whether or not Rhonda went to hell.’] He replied, he did not know about her soul because she was not affiliated with his church. I told him that Rhonda was a good person.”

McDowell’s predictable, yet piercing comment, laced with pious religiosity, has lingered in Judy’s mind for 37 and a half years, “Ms. Hinson, there is a lot of good people in hell.”

“I told him about my alcoholic father and that he was a good man even though he drank. Charles said, ‘I hate people who drink,’” Judy recalled.

During the course of conversation, Reverend McDowell summarized his whereabouts on the early morning of Dec. 23, 1981 when Rhonda was murdered.

“I came through the crime scene, stopped, and asked what happened. I thought she had passed out, ran off the road and that was what killed her. They [police] would not tell me what had happened. They told me to come over to your house. When I got there, McDevitt was there. I called Betty and Greg. When Rhonda called, Greg talked to her. I didn’t. I didn’t know they had argued till the next day. Greg acted normal. He said she had gone to the party alone, and he was going to stay home.”

He continued: “I went to Sherry’s [Pittman-Yoder] house and came through Longview on 64/70, got on I-40 at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I thought that was the route she would have taken. I had been to Sherry’s once to pick her [Rhonda] up. That is how I knew where Sherry lived. I left the house about 2:30 (a.m.) or 3 (a.m.) to go look for Rhonda.

Once more, McDowell averred that the case would never be solved. “He told me that nothing would help Rhonda now and other people should not be hurt because of this.

Near the conclusion of the conversation, Judy offered to return to Charles his son’s East Burke class ring that Rhonda had in her possession. Surprisingly, he refused to take it.

“Charles said that Greg did not want it. He also told me that if I located anything else of Greg’s that was in Rhonda’s possession to just throw whatever it was away, along with the class ring.” [Note: Supposedly, Greg McDowell’s class ring is contained within the substantive evidentiary files at the Burke County Sheriff’s Office.]

As the Reverend Mr. McDowell was leaving that day, he told Ms. Hinson that this visit would be his last to their residence. “He told me that he could not come back because we were out of his district,” Judy recorded in her journal relative to that culminating, eventful visitation.

But it was during this final visit with Judy Hinson that McDowell alluded to a second polygraph that law enforcement had administered to his unsuspecting son. “The police jerked Greg up out of school [North Carolina State University] and polygraphed him. Steve Whisenant said his experts tell him it has to be done without the person knowing, because you can take things to beat it.”

The first of two lie-detector tests was administered to Greg McDowell within a week of the fatal shooting; the second on Oct. 29, 1982—ten months and six days after the killing of Rhonda Hinson.

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