Billy Nunalee 1954-1978
4 April. That was yesterday. I didn't forget what day it was. I just didn't feel like writing anything. But, it's a date I remember every year.
4 April 1978. 33 years ago. I was a reporter for a Wilmington television station, been there about two years. A day before newsrooms were staffed 'round the clock. Good reporters had sources, those folks who tipped us when something went down. If you were good, some of those sources were from the law enforcement community. But, you had to earn their trust and, just as importantly, their respect. Without either, you were just another reporter, oftentimes an enemy of law enforcement. I had been lucky, after moving to Wilmington. A number of the local cops found out I had already been one of them for a while. Made my job covering hard news much easier.
4 April. The phone rings, as it often did, about 2 am, as I recall. One of my sources (good reporters will never rat them out, either) told me that a Wilmington (NC) police officer had been shot. He didn't know the condition, but said everything was "bad".
Talk about "bad"! It was bad all over. I was at the scene within 15 minutes. Outside a 7-11 store (that's when we actually had 7-11 stores). Uniform cops milling around. No one with a lot of information escept that one of their own had been shot. Word came from the hospital within a half hour. Officer James William (Billy) Nunalee was dead. Officially. No doubt, he was dead at the scene, but he was rushed to the hospital, only a couple miles away.
Billy Nunalee. The days when reporters covering the police beats, as I did, knew every cop in town. I knew Billy. A nice guy. I actually had to give a statement when I witnessed a wreck he was in. I also remember him, with two rowdy people in headlocks, at a big free-for-all. I was only a few blocks away when I heard his call for help...a 10-33 call. Pulling up, I saw him smiling. He said something like, "so how's your day going?" His shirt was ripped, I remember that his badge was missing. His hat was gone, too. Can't remember if he ever got everything back.
Dead at the scene, no doubt. He had been shot, numerous times as it turned out, with what was likely an M-16 fully automatic rifle, or the civilian equivalent, the semi-automatic AR-15. Perhaps a civilian gun illegally modified to be fully automatic.
Officer Nunalee, on routine patrol, stopped at the 7-11 store, part of his routine patrol procedure. Though 7-11 stores were originally opened from 7 am to 11 pm, many became 24 hour stores over the years.
Exiting the store, Billy was confronted by at least two people wearing masks. Impossible, the store clerk said, to tell whether they were male or female, young or old, black or white. Several robberies had been committed by such a pair over the previous couple months. Some speculate that Nunalee was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that the would-be robbers were getting ready to hit the store and were either spotted by Officer Nunalee as he walked from the store, or they just decided to take out a cop.
Just because he was there.
He could have posed a threat, sure, just by his presence. They could have remained in hiding, of course, and waited until he left. They obviously knew he was there. A marked police car in front of the store with no other customers is pretty hard to miss.There's no indication that Nunalee ever saw his killers. They just gunned him down.
Detectives, off duty officers, officers with the City-County Drug Squad, State Bureau of Investigation agents...a lot of cops...started showing up. Frustrated and upset. Shocked. Big city butchery had come to their small town. One of those officers was working the perimeter, making sure to keep everyone out. She was on patrol, a couple blocks away, checking buildings as cops on the late shift often do, always looking for signs of burglaries. She told me she heard either gunfire or firecrackers, a lot of them. She tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Nunalee on the police radio. A few minutes later, she found him, lying beside his patrol cruiser, in front of the 7-11. Just minutes after the killers left. Had they waited, even for a couple minutes, she could have been victim number two.
Small world it is. I had gone to high school with this cop's older sister. Years before. She left the force, not too long afterwards. Haven't heard from her in years.
The clerk was nowhere to be found. At least one bullet hole was in the store's front plate glass window (could have been the glass door). The clerk later returned to the store, and told investigtors what he saw. When the masked gunmen shot Billy, they walked over to his prone body, then fired numerous times into it, more than a dozen times, in all. They took his revolver, a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum from his holster, and shot at the shell-shocked clerk. He ran out the back door, and hid in the woods until he felt it was safe to come out.
Billy's revolver has never turned up.
Over the days and weeks that followed, a lot of people were questioned. Drug dealers were rousted. Understand that drug dealers usually know what's going on in the crime world they live in. They hear things, and often use that information as bargaining chips when they get popped on a dope charge. If they can give up a bigger fish, in exchange for some help from the cops, they'll rat out their own brothers. No one said this is a perfect world. In the days and weeks following 4 April 1978, drug agents put a lot of pressure on known drug dealers.
A lot of tips came in, but nothing good enough to take to the bank. No charges were ever filed. And, a cop's killers remained at large.
A few years back, Wilmington police reported that the brutal slaying of one of their own was solved. With the death of a man who had come to their attention years earlier. A man, serving a life sentence for a murder that he committed after Nunalee's killing, kicked the bucket in prison. He looked good for it, no doubt. He was certainly capable of shooting a cop. But, nothing concrete, no real physical evidence that could absolutely link him to the murder, was ever found. At least none that was ever made public. Where's the likely murder weapon, a .223 Colt assault rifle? A lot of bullets and spent shell casings, all containing ballistics evidence, were recovered. A stolen .357 magnum revolver, it's serial number listed in the National Crime Information Center, still missing. Relatively good details about the clothing worn. A woman claiming that the killer was her husband, and that he had buried the rifle at a location she gave police. No weapon was found. Crooks like to keep their guns. Or sell them. A prize weapon, like the M-16, and the .357, are tough to part with. But, nothing has turned up. Nothing to match the ballistics. Nunalee's gun is still at large.
No concrete evidence. No deathbed confession. No jailhouse confession. As far as we know, anyway. You would think that a cellmate might have learned something, something he could use for his own benefit. Cop killers in prison rank pretty high. Why wouldn't a convicted killer take advantage of this. Why wouldn't he tell someone something that would have elevated his status among prisoners, something that could have been useful to detectives. He didn't have a lot to lose.
One now-retired cop, a friend of mine, isn't so sure that they got their man. True, he and Billy were friends, and he...like a lot of other cops from that time...want to see that concrete evidence I mentioned. Unless it shows up, the 4 April 1978 murder of Officer Billy Nunalee will remain unsolved. In a lot of minds.
From the Officer Down Memorial Page http://www.odmp.org/officer/10035-officer-james-william-nunalee-sr.
Officer James William Nunalee Sr.Wilmington Police Department
North Carolina
End of Watch: Tuesday, April 4, 1978
Biographical Info
Age: 24Incident DetailsCause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Tuesday, April 4, 1978
Weapon Used: Rifle; M-16
Suspect Info: Case never solved
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