Cold cases have a way of haunting police investigators, digging under their skin and burrowing deep, waking them up in the middle of the night to chase leads in an endless loop.
Columbus Police Chief Selvain McQueen was just a lieutenant in the department’s Criminal Investigations Division in 1997 when 70-year-old George Wilbanks was found stabbed and strangled in his north Columbus home. This morning, the new chief finally arrested his killer.
McQueen formally arrested Earnest Terell Talley, 44, of 805 Remunda Drive in Columbus, and charged him with Wilbanks’ murder in front of a gaggle of local media gathered in the courtroom at the Columbus Municipal Complex. His preliminary hearing is May 17. Municipal Judge Marc Amos set bond at $2 million.
Talley was already in the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center on a burglary charge from Jan. 14.
Wilbanks’ body was discovered in his home Nov. 2, 1997; he had been stabbed and strangled.
His murder was the second in a string of five which occurred between 1996 and 1998. All were senior citizens. All died in a similar fashion. All lived in north Columbus, within a three-mile radius of one another. And until today, all five murders remained unsolved.
Mack Fowler, 78, was found July 8, 1996, in his home. Like Wilbanks, he had been stabbed and strangled.
On Oct. 13, 1998, almost a year after Wilbanks’ death, Robert Hannah, 61, was found in his home after a fire. He had been bound, gagged and strangled, and investigators believed the fire was used to cover up the evidence.
A week later, on Oct. 20, 1998, Louise Randall, 61, was found — also bound, gagged and strangled. Nearly a month later, on Nov. 17, 1998, Betty Everett, 67, was murdered in the same way.
Wilbanks lived on Second Avenue North at the time; he and Talley had mutual friends.
Authorities said they know the motive but declined to release the details.
“It has to do with money, but as far as details, we’d rather not say anything,” retired Columbus Police Chief Pete Bowen said this morning.
Thursday, McQueen credited retired Cpl. Ed Williams and Bowen for their assistance with solving the murder. The duo was brought back to the department and reinstated last year specifically to work on cold cases. McQueen also thanked Investigator L.C. Cockrell for his work in helping solve the crime.
The homicides received national attention, drawing a film crew from CBS News’ “48 Hours” to Columbus to spotlight the cases, but many residents said they spent more time comparing the city to “The Andy Griffith Show’s” fictional Mayberry — rife with corn-pone locals.
Senior citizens stopped going out at night. They armed themselves with guns and their homes with alarms. Some people speculated that a serial killer was on the loose, but McQueen never believed Wilbanks’ death was the work of a serial killer.
“I never thought this was a serial murder — we are going to eat this elephant one bite at a time,” he said at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
He added that he fully expects “without a shadow of a doubt” that there will be additional arrests in connection with the other cases.
“We have spent thousands of man hours in this investigation, and we will finally be closing this case 14 years after Mr. Wilbanks’ demise,” McQueen said Thursday. “We finally got the right pieces of the puzzle to complete this picture.”
Though he was part of the original investigation task force when Wilbanks died, McQueen was reassigned as an office manager/juvenile officer by then-Chief Billy Pickens. But he never forgot the case.
“It feels good bringing closure for the family of the victim,” McQueen said. “It’s a hurtful feeling when you have so much pain and suffering and there are people who keep talking trash on blogs and Facebook on the Internet. … it hurts the city and it hurts the families. These people need to believe there is going to be closure.”
And now, attention turns to the remaining four cases, which remain unsolved.
Dispatch correspondent Jeff Clark contributed to this story.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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