In July 1994, 17-year-old Beth Ellen Vinson left her family in Grantham, near Goldsboro, with dreams of becoming a Broadway dancer in New York City. After staying with friends in Goldsboro and Mount Olive, Beth Ellen joined a Raleigh escort service by pretending to be older, hoping to earn enough money for her move to New York. She was introduced to some relatives of her Mount Olive friends, who were students at NC State University in Raleigh, and moved in with them. She eventually started a relationship with one of the brothers, Ricky Heath.
On August 16, 1994, Beth Ellen received a job call from the escort service. Despite assuring Ricky that she would be fine, she was never seen alive again. Early that morning, her car was found abandoned with the engine running, the radio on, and one of her shoes on the driver’s side floor. Tragically, on August 23, her body was discovered, brutally stabbed over 15 times, under a piece of cardboard in a drainage ditch near the former location of Big Boss Brewery on Wicker Drive.
Private investigator Matt Duff has started a podcast on Beth-Ellen’s murder to bring more attention to it as the cases reaches it’s 30th anniversary without a suspect in custody. I’ve followed this case for years, and Matt has turned up bits of information I never knew about the case. For example, in the latest episode Matt interviews recently retired Raleigh PD detective Jerry Faulk. Detective Faulk was the third detective assigned to the case, and he focused on individuals living in Avery Close, the apartment complex Beth-Ellen was living at with Ricky Heath and his roomates at the time of her murder. Interestingly, a call was made from Beth-Ellen’s apartment to a neighboring apartment on the same day, and roughly the same time, that she was last seen alive. Futher, calls from Beth-Ellen’s apartment had gone out to other neighbors late at night earlier in the month, yet all but one neighbor reported to police they ever talked to her.
This case remains one of Raleigh’s oldest cold cases, unsolved for nearly three decades. Beth Ellen’s mother passed away in 2017, and her father’s health is declining. At a press conference on the 20th anniversary of her murder, Beth Ellen’s uncle and the Raleigh Police Department (RPD) detective assigned to the case urged the public to come forward with any information.
In the coming months, I will publish more blog posts about this cold case and encourage readers to share their thoughts in the comments or on the blog’s social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook. There are many details about Beth Ellen’s story that I haven’t covered yet, and I plan to share reliable information I’ve found online. For those interested in researching, I recommend starting with Matt’s podcast, and the Uncovered.com webpage on Beth Ellen’s case . Despite the limited public information, many questions remain unanswered.
Do you have any thoughts on this case? Know anyone who might want to speak about it? Please leave a comment on this post. To contact Raleigh law enforcement anonymously with a tip, call Raleigh Crime Stoppers at 919-834-HELP (4357).
The Raleigh Police detective currently assigned to Beth Ellen Vinson’s case is Detective Michael Harmon. He can be reached at [email protected] or (919) 996-1503.