On Friday nights in the Whiskey District, the music pours out onto the streets. When the weather’s nice, chatter floats above the patios and open doorways of the bars and cafs; when it’s not so nice folks traipse across Walker Avenue from one warm, dry watering hole to another.
This corner of Greensboro has served as an anchor to a certain segment of the community since even before Ogi Overman used to bang out his dispatches from the Suds N Duds. A neighborhood blooms in every direction from the corner of Elam and Walker avenues, Lindley Park, where young families share treelined streets with college students, hipsters, musicians and anyone else who doesn’t mind a little noise after dark. And there are other denizens of this thoroughfare, corner scenesters and the inebriate class, who may not live in the dwellings but log plenty of hours per week in this district devoted to all the exciting and wonderful things that can happen when the sun sets and the lamps get turned down low.
A tribeof
regulars populates the corner of Walker and Elam on any given night, a
loose amalgamation of locals and transplants with nothing more in
common than love of good, live music, open and accepting temperaments
and the desire to see and be seen. They own businesses, make art, work
in area restaurants, play in bands, go to school… but when they come on
down to Walker Avenue, everybody’s on the same page. And maybe not
everybody knows your last name, but if you’re one of the tribe, there
is no more than a couple degrees of separation between you and any
other.
Not everybody down here on the corner knows Deborah Ann
Moy, the 36-year-old Greensboro resident who, any other autumn, would
be tearing it up with her friends at Walker’s or the Blind Tiger,
sleeping in Sunday mornings and cheering on the Redskins when she woke.
But since the morning of Sept. 13, Deb Moy has laid in a hospital bed
in an undisclosed location, the sole surviving victim of one of the
most brutal crimes in the city’s history… a living, breathing crime
scene, fighting for her life as her friends and family form a
protective phalanx around her, struggling against incredible pain and
shocking loss to voice the name of the one who did this to her. She’s
the only one who knows… her, and the killer who left her this way. Not
everyone on the corner knows Deb Moy, but
The Blind Tiger is a stanchion near the corner of Walker and Elam avenues, the Whiskey District, where Deb Moy and Ransom Hobbs decided to keep the party going. PREVIOUS PAGE: The William B. Vaught House on Summit Avenue, also known as the Castle, the scene of the crime. (photos by Keith T. Barber)
everyone who spends any
time with his elbows on the bar at Walker’s has heard the tale of a
promising night gone terribly wrong, of the murder of one of their own
in the post-dawn hours and the savagery that befell her, the wicked,
snarling thing set loose in her apartment that left her broken to
pieces and irreparably burned.
Everybody down knows the story, because here is where the story starts.
•••
It was just another Friday night in the big city, according to Craig
Trostle, who was out with Deb the night of Sept. 12. “I had actually
known Deb for about 12 years,” he says. “She dated a friend of mine.”
He had run into her at Fisher’s Grille towards the end of August, he
says, and they became reacquainted. “Deb is a lot of fun,” he says. “She’s always flirting, meeting people. She’s very vibrant.”
When
he ran into her at the Blind Tiger that September night, he remembers
she was out celebrating with friends. “It was a birthday,” he says.
“They had all gone out to dinner.”
It was 11 p.m. or so, and
Hot Politics was ripping the air with horns on the Blind Tiger stage.
Craig had just left the Carolina Theatre, where he works as a
stagehand, and ran into Deb and a couple of her friends as they
completed the circuit between the Tiger, the Wahoo and Walker’s. He
also ran into William Ransom Hobbs Jr., a bluesman known to the tribe
simply as Ransom, with whom he was loosely acquainted.
“You
get introduced to someone who’s kind of in your circle,” Craig says,
“you can kind of just assume they’re alright — they know the code and
they’ll be good, genuine, cool people.”
xxx
The
group cast their lot together, and the night wore on and on. Chris
Boggs, a Greensboro resident and former marine, had dated Deb in the
past and the two remain friends. He says he saw her that night at the
Tiger.
“We worked together at George K’s years ago,” he says.
“She was connected to a lot of people in a lot of different ways.” He
says he saw Deb and her party come into the Tiger at around 10:30 p.m.
“The band was already playin’,” he says. “I remember there was a fella
who kept coming up and asking her to dance. He was like a cowboy — a
cowboy hat, boots a white shirt, kinda stylized. Shaved head. He came
up and danced with her and hit on her pretty hard.” The Walker Avenue
rumor mill holds that there was a conflict between Deb and another
former boyfriend that night on the sidewalk in front of the Tiger. But
there is not much evidence to support this. Doc Lucas, proprietor of
the Blind Tiger, keeps a pretty sharp eye on the windows of his club.
He was working behind the bar that night, and casts doubt on this
detail of the story.
“That’s all bullshit,” he says. “There
was nothing like that. And if there was, my people would be on it in
some way, especially if it was a guy-girl kind of thing with a regular.
We would have heard about it, saw it… something.”
Scott
Wilson, who spends most evenings on the sidewalk in front of the Wahoo
just across the street, working the door, was also on duty that night.
“If
there was anything like that,” he says, “I don’t recall.” As the hours
sped towards 2 a.m. last call, Chris Boggs remembers the scene clearly.
“When the bar closed,” he says, “I suggested we go to my house
to party. Initially they were into it, but she was talking to some
other people, and she was more into going with them. As she was
leaving, she was laughing. They were all going to party somewhere.”
It
was Deb, Ransom, Craig and a friend of Deb’s, Kellie Edwards, an ad hoc
party crew with casual connections who were not yet ready to call it a
night.
It happens all the time after last call on Walker
Avenue: The music stops and the lights come on, you pay your tab and
look at the person standing next to you. “Where you goin’ after this?”
You hitch a ride or you throw a six-pack in your car and head over to
someone’s house to while away the last vestiges of darkness and usher
in the morning with your newfound friends.
Kevin Coon,
bartender at Walker’s Bar and a friend of Deb’s, was making drinks that
night and remembers a few details. “They left at closing time,” he
says, and he personally walked the group over to the Tiger, gave them
all hugs and bade them farewell.
“Deb’s been in that circle of
people for a long time, so she knows a bunch of them,” he says. “When
they left I figured they were going to a late-night somewhere.
Ransom wanted to get his guitar. He wanted to play.” He shales his head,
‘You
get introduced to someone who’s kind of in your circle, you can kind of
just assume they’re alright — they know the code and they’ll be good,
genuine, cool people.’
— Craig Trostle
“I just thought it was another night,” he says.
Craig Trostle picks up the thread.
“First
we went to Ransom’s house to get his guitar,” he remembers. “He lived
just around the corner. The Deb said, ‘I got to pee.’” Because they
were in the neighborhood, Trostle took Deb inside the Carolina Theatre
and let her use a bathroom in a dressing room. It was about 2:45 a.m.
Before they left, Deb stood in the center of the darkened stage and
made a phone call. “Guess where I am,” she said on her cell phone. “I’m
on stage at the Carolina Theatre!” They arrived at Kellie’s house in
the Westerwood neighborhood shortly after 3 a.m. “It was just Kellie
and Ransom, playing guitars on the porch,” Craig says. “Then after
about an hour, this dude Micah shows up.” Micah is one of the loose
ends of the story, a regular at the Westerwood Tavern with short blonde
hair. “He said I met him once at the Westerwood,” Craig says. “I don’t
know… I may have. He seemed like a nice enough fella. He seemed okay.
But then, at one point, Deb jumped up and said, ‘This guy put his hand
up my dress! Get him out of here!’ But the next thing you know, they’re
sitting there with their heads on each other’s shoulders. You know, she
liked to be the center of attention.”
It was Micah, Craig
says, who gave Deb and Ransom a ride over to Deb’s place to continue
the party. It was perhaps 4:30 in the morning. Craig crashed on
Kellie’s sofa. And according to an employee of the bar, Micah has not
been seen at the Westerwood since.
The house on
Summit Avenue known as “The Castle” is an architecturally significant
home in the Aycock Historic District, built in 1906 as the residence of
William B. Vaught, who at the time was a clerk at Cone Export and
Commission Co. A noble granite structure with pilasters, porch archers
and
a corner turret, it has long since been broken up into apartments that
attracts renters who appreciate its proximity to downtown and don’t
particularly sweat it when late-night parties happen.
Deb had
been living here for about six years, and this is where she brought the
party. One can imagine they swapped tales and sang songs as the evening
rolled until dawn. Craig says that Kellie called Micah on his cell
phone some time after 7 a.m. to remind him that he had to work that
day, and that he reportedly left Ransom and Deb in a condition that
cannot be called perfect, but can certainly be called good. And then it
happened.
According to Greensboro police and interested
parties who prefer to remain anonymous, someone entered Deb’s apartment
as the sun crept over the horizon. In the ensuing minutes, he killed
William Ransom Hobbs Jr., then brutalized Deb Moy and beat her
unconscious. He then took a flammable liquid that was on the premises,
doused the bodies with it, and then set the crime scene ablaze.
To date, no one has been charged with the crime.
David Hoggard lives
with his family in a house in the Aycock Historical District, about a
hundred yards from the Castle on Summit Avenue. On the morning of Sept.
13, he says he arose about 6 a.m., as is his usual custom. At around 8
a.m. on this warm Saturday morning he headed over to the Greensboro
Farmers Curb Market over on Yanceyville Street in his official capacity
as a Parks & Recreation Department commissioner to talk to the
vendors about an issue, and also to buy some tomatoes, some flowers for
his wife, Ginny, and a cinnamon roll to have with his coffee. He
stopped in his tracks when he smelled smoke.
He cut through an
alley [where?] and came upon the Castle as flames licked from a side
window and black smoke blasted out. Once there he saw an acquaintance,
Ross Myers, who said he was first on the scene. Ross had knocked on the
door, he told Hoggard, and tried to get the people out, then found a
garden hose and attempted to douse the flames.
“There were two
fire trucks,” Hoggard remembers. “Four firemen went in. These two came
out carrying this… carrying Ransom. And they laid him on the ground
about ten feet away. I knew it was a person, but my first thought was,
‘I hope whoever this is is not alive.’ When they laid him down his arms
stayed up. It was quite surreal.”
The 911 call came
in at 8:26 a.m., and the first responders got there in about five
minutes. Firemen pulled Deb Moy from the flames and got her in an
ambulance. The Crime Scene Investigation team was on the scene by 1030
a.m. to gather what evidence was left. “You can recover some things,”
says Lt. Brian James of the GPD’s Criminal Investigation Department,
“but fire does destroy some evidence. If I told you different it’d be
false.
“We in no way feel like this is a random act,” he
continued. “Because it happened at her residence, we’re led to believe
that the act of violence was directed toward her. Ransom may have been
in the wrong place at the wrong time.” James is hesitant to say to much
about an ongoing investigation, and he says the department is still
awaiting lab results from the State Bureau of Investigation as theories
are constructed and broken down. “The first thing we do when we don’t
know who did something,” he says, “we look at the victim. Who disliked
this person? Who did they owe money to? Anybody who was there, past
associations who may have wanted to do harm. “That’s about where we
stand with this one.” Detective Tim Parrish drew the case. He’s been
with the department for 27 years, about 10 of them working homicides.
“I’ve
seen some bad ones,” he says. “This was horrendous. As far as the
brutality it ranks pretty high up there. There are people I’ve talked
to who are pretty torn up about it.” Parrish says he has some leads in
the case, and he awaits more information from the SBI, but he is
reticent about details.
“There’s information we don’t want
spread,” he says. “I got persons of interest who I am concentrating on.
We’ve got items of evidence. I’m still getting information every day.
You take all the information you can get and work it. I got this case
on the thirteenth of September and I’ve pretty much worked this case
the whole time. People have shock and awe about this case, but we still
gotta do it right. We gotta be fair. This isn’t an hour-long TV show.
These things take time.”
Meanwhile Deb
Moy lies twisted in a hospital bed somewhere, ensconced by protective
family and friends. The fire ruined her legs, which not so long ago
could dance all night, and both have been amputated.
Doctors
are trying to save her hand. To facilitate healing and minimize pain
she is often in an altered state of consciousness. In her waking
moments, she has so far been unable to enunciate the events of that
evening.
Ransom Hobbs was feted by dozens of his best friends in a memorial service at the Empire Room in Greensboro, and his death is mourned all over the world.
And
police are still seeking leads in this savage series of events. They
have yet to charge anybody with the crimes. But Lt. James knows this:
“Whoever did this,” he says, “was incapable of empathy.”
Meanwhile
in the Whiskey District, people still come together and talk about Deb
Moy, about Ransom, about the wild night and terrible morning they
shared. On Walker Avenue, in the scene that’s virtually built upon
simple human emotions like joy, love, friendship and, yes, empathy,
they will not forget.
Anyone with information about the murder of William Ransom Hobbs Jr., the assault on Deborah Ann Moy or the fire in the Castle on Summit Avenue should call Crimestoppers at 336.373.1000 or call Det. Tim Parrish directly at 336.574.4008.
To comment on this story e-mail Brian Clarey at editor@yesweekly.com.
The Castle was built in 1906 as the home of William B. Vaught. It has since been broken down into apartments occupied by those who appreciate the historic architecture and the house’s proximity to downtown.
