Murder In The First

Murder in the First         Shortly after midnight on August 22, 1995, seventeen year old Daniel Lee Pence was kidnapped in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, by Todd Charles Boggess, a twenty year old drifter. Boggess, accompanied by a fourteen year old runaway from Durham, North Carolina, told Pence he was interested in purchasing the 1987 black Ford Mustang LX Pence was trying to sell. After calling his mother to inform her of the potential buyers, Pence allowed Boggess to test drive the car.

        After several unsuccessful attempts to get rid of Pence and steal his Mustang, Boggess tied Pence's hands together and drove to Durham. The runaway, Melanie Gray, led them to an abandoned house off Terry Road where Boggess blindfolded Pence before forcing him from the car.

        After leading Pence down a path to a wooded area just outside the abandoned house, Boggess began his lethal assault. He beat Pence with a large board until he collapsed.

Then Boggess began kicking the teenager before throwing a large rock on his head. Pence never got up again.

        After the murder Boggess and Gray rode to a pawn shop where Boggess, posing as Brian Yockey, pawned a set of socket wrenches and a pair of Sony stereo speakers yanked from Pence's car. The couple was not seen again until August 24, when Teresa Nicholson of the Beaufort County Sheriff's Department spotted the car near Boggess's parents home on Cotton Ranch Road near Washington, North Carolina.

        By the time backup had arrived, the car was gone. Deputies soon found the car on a road through a nearby cornfield. Boggess sped through the cornfield but ended up wrecking the car. The two suspects ran from the car, only to have police chase them with dogs an a helicopter before surrendering.

        After the arrest, officers...