The Be-Lo Grocery Murders: Savagery in the Summer

Be-Lo Grocery closed its doors for the night with seven people still inside. Only six were meant to be there. The seventh person would leave only after trying to kill everyone else. More than thirty years have passed since the carnage. Who would do this and why?

Here’s to the land of the longleaf pine,

The summer land where the sun doth shine

Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great

Here's to "Down Home," the Old North State!1Official state toast via North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources

The Town of Windsor

Windsor, North Carolina, is a small town in the western corner of the state. In 1993, it had a population of around 2,000 residents. Tucked along the banks of the Cashie River, Windsor was the kind of place where life mostly moved at an easy pace. Neighbors lingered on porches on cool evenings, and children rode their bikes with friends. In the early 90’s it was the kind of place that seemed untouched by time, though even then there was a sense that such quiet days couldn’t last forever. 

Sunday, June 6, 1993, was a warm day. School was out, and summer was just beginning. Just like most small Southern towns, Windsor had no shortage of churches. The Cashie Baptist Church, named after the nearby river, has served the community for over a century. Every Sunday morning, families and residents filled the historic pews. Unbeknownst to the people of Windsor, unspeakable horror was lurking nearby. That June Sunday, just a ten-minute walk from the church, evil would enter their midst and leave the town forever changed.

Horrors at the Be-Lo Grocery

The Be-Lo Grocery Store was perfectly sized for the community it served. With only a handful of checkout lanes, the likelihood that you’d end up in line behind a friend or neighbor was high. On that Sunday, the store closed for the day at 6:00pm. Usually, there would only be two to three employees there after closing. This night, there were four extra people—a four-man crew had come in to clean and wax the floors. 

Just after the store manager locked the door, an unknown man emerged from his hiding place in the store. He would later be described as a Black male with a medium complexion and slender build, around 6’ to 6’2” and weighing 175 to 200 pounds with a military-style haircut. 

The man approached the only cashier, Joyce Reason, who was getting ready to leave for the day, brandishing a .45 caliber handgun. He demanded that Joyce get the manager. Grover “Bud” Cecil had been walking around the store, making sure everything was ready for the cleaning. Once Cecil was located, the assailant forced the two into the store’s office. Held at gunpoint, Cecil opened the store’s safe and took out all the money, approximately $3,000. He placed the money into a canvas bag.

Robbery turned Murder

Then, the man forced Reason and Cecil to walk over to where cleaning member Jasperer Hardy was standing. Hardy noticed the man holding a gun to Cecil’s back. “Do what he says. He means business.” Cecil said. The assailant rounded up everyone in the store and forced all six of them to the back of the store, near the meat counter. The man kept saying he didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

He ordered the captives to bind each other’s hands and ankles, using duct tape and dog leashes he took from the store. The assailant had the six people lie face down on the floor in pairs, making three piles. After a few agonizing seconds, the man said, “I hope God forgives me for what I’m about to do.” 

Then came the shots. Pop, pop, pop.

The gun either jammed or the man ran out of bullets. Undeterred, he walked into the meat-cutting room and came back with a butcher’s knife.

He asked Thomas Hardy if he could identify him. Even though Thomas said he couldn’t, the assailant slashed his throat and stabbed him, breaking the knife off in his back. Then the man turned to Jasper and asked the same question. “No, man, I don’t know you” was his response. The killer said, “Okay, big man, I’ll let you live.” The assailant then calmly took Bud Cecil’s keys and the money, along with the knife handle and gun, and left the store.

The Call for Help

Despite his gunshot wound, Sylvester “Tony” Welch managed to break free. The duct tape binding him had soaked through with blood, loosening its hold. In a 2006 interview with local media, his wife said, 

“He said there was so much blood; he said his hands were tired, their hands were tied, and he said that his hands came loose because of all the blood. And he crawled out from under her to go to the front of the store, and that’s when he called 9-1-1. ²WNCT9

Leaving a trail of blood, he crawled to the front of the store and called for help. The 911 call came in at 6:56 p.m. When authorities arrived, the cleaning crew’s vehicle was backed up to the store’s front door. There were cleaning supplies outside. Police had no idea what horrors had taken place inside the store. Everything looked business as usual from the front. The doors were locked. They used the outside payphone to call the store but received no answer.

“Everything was Deathly Quiet”

It’s unclear how police were able to obtain entry, but they eventually did. After entering the Be-Lo Grocery store, Windsor Chief of Police Freddie Brown said, “Everything was deathly quiet. There was nothing in the store other than the hum of the cooler compressors in the background.”

Inside they found a scene that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Five people were lying in pools of blood. Bud Cecil, Joyce Reason, and Johnny Hankins were all dead. Tony Welch and Thomas Hardy were critically injured. 

“I remember the smell of blood; there was blood everywhere,” said now-retired Windsor Police Chief Rodney Hoggard.

The two critically injured men were rushed to area hospitals. Partly due to Welch’s quick and heroic call for help, they both survived their injuries but faced an uphill battle. Miraculously, Jasper Hardy was left physically unharmed. However, he was traumatized by what he had gone through. He had been lying at the bottom of one of the piles and “felt the trauma when the man on top of him was shot.” ³Associated Press. Grocery Workers Killed. Asheville Citizen-Times. 21 September 1993. He credits his survival to his Christian faith, saying, “It was only the mercy of God that saved me.” 

Anything Could Happen: A Town Afraid

The entire town was shaken; residents were left unsettled and afraid. A day after the murders, an unnamed resident admitted to reporters, wringing her hands, “We’ve never had anything like this in this little town” ⁴Associated Press. Mass Slaying leaves small town residents wary. The Sanford Herald. 08 June 1993

An employee of a plant store across the street recalled the unremarkable banality of that day: “It was just quiet silence. The only thing that was extreme was when the police and rescue squad came” ⁵Thompson, Estes. Victims Bound, then Attacked. The Charlotte Observer. 08 June 1993.Another resident, Johnny Piece, summed up the unease that lingered in the air: “It makes you aware anything could happen at any time” ⁶Associated Press. Mass Slaying leaves small town residents wary. The Sanford Herald. 08 June 1993

The Lives Lost

The crime was senseless and tragic. The victims were all regular people going about their day. Joyce Reason, a single mother to two young daughters, was 36 years old when she was murdered. She was engaged to an EMT, they were due to be married later that year. Bud Cecil was 47, a father to 5 children, two girls and three boys. He and his wife, Karen, had recently become grandparents at the time of his murder. Johnny Rankins, Jr., 48, was a married father of two sons. He was buried at the Beaver Hill Cemetery in his hometown of Edenton, NC.

Be-Lo Grocery Murders Investigations Begins

The killer told the victims that he was a former policeman who had been fired and had nothing to lose. After he shot into the piles, the gunman realized that the Hardy brothers were uninjured. That’s when he went and got the knife. Stacking the victims was an odd detail. It seems as though the assailant wanted to conserve bullets, hoping one bullet would take the lives of two people. Wallace Perry, Bertie County sheriff, said, “Only in military executions have I heard of it. I’ve never heard of it in a robbery.” 

The Windsor Be-Lo Grocery actually had a CCTV system, but it was inoperable at the time of the attack. It is unknown how long the system had been down at that time, nor who would have been privy to this information.

Immediately following the murders, police zoned in on the possibility of the killer actually being an ex-police officer. They contacted local precincts to request information on recently fired officers. Unfortunately, nothing came from these efforts.

Witnesses came forward and said they saw a car speeding north out of town shortly before 7pm. It was a white car with Maryland plates. Two men were seen inside.

Sketch of the Killer

A sketch of the killer was drawn up and circulated. An alert was put out for the car. Evidence was collected at the scene, including footprints and bullet casings. A footprint in blood was found as well as a fingerprint on a piece of duct tape used to bind the victims. The Windsor Police Department was a relatively small organization, and they immediately called in the Bertie County sheriff and eventually the State Bureau of Investigation, North Carolina’s branch of the FBI. 

Leads were plentiful in the days and weeks after the murders. Jeb Bohn, who authored a book about the murders, notes that “people thought they were seeing the suspect everywhere.” ⁷Bohn, Jeb. Closing Time. None of the many leads lead anywhere useful, however. Reward posters with the police sketch were plastered all over the town of Windsor. People were scared and wanted answers.

Aftermath and Unanswered Questions

The Be-Lo Grocery Store was reopened less than a week later. Understandably, residents struggled to feel safe in a place where such senseless violence had occurred. The store permanently closed a few weeks later.

In July, co-sheriff Perry said he thought there might be two people involved in the crime. One of the surviving victims gave a different description of the suspect, describing him as older with different facial features. It doesn’t look like this lead went anywhere, and the second sketch was never released to the public. 

In August 1993, a company based in Texas presented an unusual idea to the city of Windsor. They would check and see if one of their satellites had been orbiting over Windsor on the evening of the murders. They might have captured the suspect’s vehicle, either speeding away or parked in the grocery store’s parking lot. The city agreed and paid a $300 fee. Disappointingly, no satellite had been overhead at the time.

Profilers Step In

By November of that year, FBI profilers drew up a profile on the suspect. They said he would have served time in prison for a serious felony and likely joined a religious organization or cult while behind bars. He would have been a model prisoner who had the ability to convince “almost anyone of anything.” They posited that he had a “friendly demeanor” but had killed before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. 

Another Senseless Murder

Only a week before the Windsor attacks, another robbery ended in murder. Approximately 20 miles away in the small town of Bear Grass, NC, on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, 65-year-old Audrey Leggett was killed. 

She worked at Cherry’s Cupboard—a small convenience store. Audrey was a mother of three: daughter Judy and sons Herbert Jr. and Robbie. Her husband, Herbert Sr., had been killed in a car accident twenty-five years earlier.

The store’s owner, Jerry Cherry, had stepped out to run errands, and while he was out, the store was robbed and Leggett was murdered. The killer got away with approximately $200 in cash. It’s unknown if anything else was taken, such as cigarettes or alcohol. 

Audrey was on the phone with her daughter Judy when she said, “Hold on a minute,” before the call abruptly ended. Judy had been speaking with her mother about a meal she was making. A customer discovered Audrey’s body in the store’s cooler. She had been shot multiple times by a .22 caliber weapon. “They drug her all the way into the back, going to the cooler, and then they shot her,” said Cherry.

Bear Grass seeks the Truth

Residents of Bear Grass and the surrounding county gathered around Cherry’s Cupboard after hearing of the incident. No one could understand why someone would kill an innocent woman. Leggett’s son, Herbie Jr., told local media, “Why her? Why is that? What reason did they have to do this just for that little bit of money they got? 

After Audrey’s murder, the county sheriff “questioned anyone who might have been in the area.” ⁸Hunter, Kristen. 20 years later: Bear Grass woman’s murder still resolved. WNCT9. 08 August 2013.

They performed a traffic stop the day after, looking for information. The road the store was located on was heavily traveled. Ultimately, they found nothing. Jerry Cherry said he thought the killer knew Audrey. The prevailing theory in town was that she was murdered so she couldn’t identify her attacker. Police speculated Audrey’s murder could be connected to the murders in Windsor, but nothing has ever been released that would confirm or deny the connection.

Judy passed away in 2010, never knowing who took her beloved mother’s life. She herself was a mother to two daughters. 

Murder in North Raleigh

A few months later and 100 miles away in North Raleigh, North Carolina, two more grocery store employees would be targeted. A Food Lion store, much larger than both the Be-Lo and Cherry’s Cupboard, was the site of a double murder. 

On the evening of Sunday, September 19, Kristine “Kris” Ray went to pick her husband up from work. John Ray was a dry goods manager at the North Raleigh Food Lion. He was closing the store that night with office assistant Michael “Mike” Truelove. Ray called his wife at 10:40 that evening, letting her know what time to pick him up. She arrived at the store at 11:30pm. The front doors were locked, and the inside lights were on. After waiting for several minutes for John to emerge, she pounded on the front glass doors. She headed around back and used the delivery buzzer. Still no answer. Kris was a Food Lion manager herself, so she immediately knew something was wrong. She peeked through a window and saw receipts on the floor and the safe door open. 

She called the police at 11:51pm. Once they arrived, they had to wait for the store’s manager to come let them inside. Once inside, police found the safe had been emptied. 20-year-old Mike Truelove and 27-year-old John Ray were both found deceased in the store’s back cooler. They had both been shot in the back of the head. Approximately $2,300 had been taken from the store.

Quick Arrests in North Raleigh

Fortunately, these murders would not remain unsolved. Authorities arrested Food Lion employee Robert McNeill and his younger brother Elmer “Ray” McNeill on the same day as John Ray’s funeral. Both of the brothers had worked for Food Lion, but only Robert was currently employed by the company. He had recently been demoted and transferred to the North Raleigh location less than two months earlier. According to police reports, McNeill’s transfer came after co-workers reported him for sexual assault. 

Police surmised Ray was the trigger man, and Robert planned the robbery. It is unknown if the McNeill brothers knew about or were inspired by the Be-Lo store robbery and murders. 

The Trial and Sentences

Ray McNeill was sentenced to death in 1996. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison in 2012. Since his trial, his parents—who faced criticism during the trial—have worked to end the death penalty in North Carolina. While it is still legal in the state, no prisoners have been executed since 2005. Robert was sentenced to life in prison. According to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, both men are still incarcerated as of August 2025.

Kris Ray was eight months pregnant at the time of her husband’s murder. She gave birth to their son, John Kody Austin Ray, a month after losing her husband. John Ray loved Looney Tunes cartoons and was excited to become a father. Michael Truelove, who was described by family as “good-hearted and hard-working,” had just moved into his first apartment. Both men were working their way up in the grocery business when their lives were taken. 

Another Be-Lo Grocery Targeted

Just a month before the one-year anniversary, another robbery happened at a North Carolina Be-Lo grocery store. This time it was in Hertford, approximately 35 miles away from Windsor. Just like in Windsor, the perpetrator hid in the store until after closing. He then approached the two employees brandishing a gun. He tied them up with duct tape as well as dog leashes he took from the store shelves. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Store employees described the man as a Black male with a stocky build. This didn’t match the description of the Windsor killer.

There were actually several robberies of grocery stores in the Western North Carolina area in 1993. None ended in deadly violence like at the Windsor Be-Lo Grocery.

A year after the murders, a public memorial was held at the site of the former store. Family members and friends gathered to remember the victims and plead for answers from the public. Grover Cecil’s children hung a printed banner that read, “Daddy, we love you and miss you.” The survivors did not attend the public memorial due to safety concerns, as the killer was still out there.

Assistant Manager Dwayne Gilliam was one of the victims of the Hertford Robbery. He attended the memorial service. “It could very well have been my memorial service. “I’m just very thankful,” said Gilliam. He worked at the Windsor store six years before the murders, before being transferred. 

Time Ticks By

Over the next two decades, police chased leads, pleaded for tips, and kept the investigation open. The world did what it always does—it moved forward, indifferent to the weight of the loss in Windsor. Nothing would ever be the same for family members of the victims, the survivors, and members of law enforcement. The three survivors carried on as best they could, each grateful to have escaped with their lives. They did their best to assist police in their investigation. 

25th Anniversary

In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the Be-Lo Grocery Murders, then-sheriff Wallace Perry said of the crime, “Not too many days go by that I don’t think about it.” I wish we could solve it,” Perry said. “I always hoped there would be a deathbed confession, but nothing yet.” Reflecting on the investigation, he said he thought too much stock was placed in the sketch. “He probably looked like that, but the nose in the sketch is too big,” Perry said. “It’s just my opinion, but I think the public focused too much on that nose. Everyone was running around looking at noses.” ⁹Lindell, John Kay. Cold Case: Grocery Store Slayings still haunt retired chief. Reflector. 26 June 2018.

Facts and Theories

The differences between the killings are worth noting. Audrey Leggett was killed with a .22 caliber weapon, while a .45 caliber weapon was used in the Windsor murders. The suspect in the Hertford robbery wore a mask and didn’t match the physical description of the Windsor suspect. No one was harmed at the Hertford robbery. However, the similarities between the Windsor and Hertford incidents are striking. The assailant also used duct tape and dog leashes to bind the employees. If the same person wasn’t responsible, could the Hertford robber have been a copycat?

Who was the brazen killer who walked into the Windsor Be-Lo that Sunday evening? Theories have run the gamut. Some think he was a local; others think he wasn’t from the area. Sheriff Perry thinks the man came there to kill, and robbery was his secondary interest.

Due to his haircut, the idea that he was a former military member was also floated. Author Jeb Bohn notes there are several military installations within an hour of Windsor. They aren’t large bases, but “smaller, ancillary locations.” ¹⁰Bohn, Jeb. Closing Time. This would also explain the out-of-state car seen speeding out of the area.

Unfortunately, the quality of the fingerprint evidence gathered wasn’t good enough to search in any databases. SBI Special Agent Dwight Ransome doesn’t think the killer was in the military or a police officer, noting the man was ill prepared. 

“It has always puzzled me that he had only one magazine for his pistol. A person trained in the military or as a police officer always carries more than one magazine. That leads me to believe he wasn’t military or a police officer. All I do know is he is a cold-blooded killer.” ¹¹Bryant, Cal. Murder Mystery. The Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. 11 June 2018.

DNA Evidence

DNA evidence does exist in the Be-Lo Grocery Murders case, but it is unclear what type of DNA it is, where it came from, and if it is enough of a sample to use in something like genealogical testing. Technology has advanced leaps and bounds in the last thirty years, but police have remained mum on their investigation. 

Jasper Hardy, Jr., passed away in 2024 at age 81. In an interview just a couple days after the murders, he said, “I said a lot of things to God while I was lying on that floor. And you can believe I plan to stick to every one of them.”¹²Thompkins, Estes. Triple Slaying stuns residents of small town. Goldsboro News-Argus. 08 June 1993.

The Survivors

Tony Welch passed away from cancer in 2005 at age 52. Thomas Hardy still lives in North Carolina. Former Sheriff Wallace Perry passed away in 2022. 

Bud Cecil now has great-grandchildren. His daughter, Jenny, told WITN in 2023, “That’s what gets me through… just knowing he’s there to give me the support and the push… He’s there. I can… he’s with me every day. Wish he could physically be here, but… can’t change it.” ¹³WITN. 06 June 2023.

Status of the Be-Lo Grocery Murders in 2025

The former Be-Lo Grocery Store building is still standing. It is now a part of Martin Community College. The population of Windsor has doubled since 1993, but it retains its small-town feel. Time has done little to distance the town from the horror of that day. 

There is a $30,000 reward in this case. If you have any information, please contact the Windsor Police Department at 252-794-3111 or the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 800-334-3000.

I would like to extend my thanks to author Jeb Bohn for speaking with me about this case and graciously sharing his research. You can find his book, Closing Time: The 1993 Be-Lo Murders, as well as his fictional work on Amazon.