Suspect in two-year-old killing of sisters reaches court

WINTON, N.C.

The man accused of killing two Emporia, Va., sisters made his first court appearance Friday for arraignment on two counts of first-degree murder.

If convicted, William Curtis Futrell, 34, of Franklin, Va., could face the death penalty, said District Judge Thomas Newbern.

Futrell was charged with slaying Nellie Bradley, 71, and Dorothy Hobbs, 74, whose bodies were found Aug. 4, 2006, outside Murfreesboro, N.C. He was arrested in Franklin on Thursday.

During Futrell's arraignment, which lasted about a minute, his responses to Newbern's questions were nearly inaudible, but he requested a court-appointed attorney. A probable cause hearing was scheduled for Dec. 2, and he will be held without bond at the Hertford County Jail.

Futrell was slightly more vocal during the walk from the jail to the courthouse.

He told reporters he didn't know what to say because he had nothing to do with the deaths. When asked how he felt when he was arrested and charged, he said, "I was in tears."

Hertford County Sheriff Juan Vaughan Sr. said Friday that DNA and other evidence will prove the case against Futrell. Vaughan said earlier that investigators were led to Futrell by evidence initially collected and a break in the case Wednesday. He gave few details, including possible motive.

Vaughan said Futrell's DNA was collected in May and that on Wednesday he learned that the DNA matched evidence gathered during the investigation.

The sheriff said he was relieved when the arrest was made but added that authorities continue the investigation and that there could be more charges and arrests.

Futrell has a criminal record in North Carolina and Virginia that includes assault and larceny, according to court and police records in Bertie, Hertford and Northampton counties in North Carolina and the city of Franklin and Southampton County in Virginia.

His most recent conviction was in Northampton County, N.C., on felony larceny of a vehicle, said sheriff's Capt. Daryl Harmon, who investigated the case.

A public works employee had left a county-owned truck unattended at the courthouse in January, he said, and Futrell was found with the vehicle in Rich Square, N.C., west of Hertford County. Harmon said he was arrested and given a suspended sentence in April with 18 months probation.

On Aug. 4, 2006, a passer-by found the bodies of Bradley and Hobbs along a dirt road about a mile outside of Murfreesboro, just over the Virginia state line. The sisters had been stabbed and stripped nearly naked.

Deputies located their missing car about 15 miles away in Southampton County and found blood in its trunk. A year later, authorities had gathered evidence and an FBI behavioral profile, but little else.

An important clue came from the forensic investigation of the abandoned vehicle, where a third person's DNA and a bloody palm print were discovered, Vaughan said.

No keys were found with the vehicle, and Vaughan said in a 2007 interview that the suspect might have planned to return to the car.

A year after the killings, Vaughan said he was still working hard on the case but had little new information. He has stayed in close contact with the sisters' family and delivered news of the arrest to the family at a restaurant in Courtland, Va., on Thursday.

"I don't think I ever knew the real meaning of being thankful until this happened," Linda Tuck, Hobbs' and Bradley's younger sister, said in an e-mail Friday.

Tuck said she does not like to talk about their deaths or think about what they went through, but she has spent the past two days taking phone calls, greeting visitors and talking to reporters.

"I know that people are sick and tired of looking at me and hearing what I have to say," she said in her e-mail. "But I made up my mind that this is something that I can do to repay Dot and Nellie for all of the things that they did for me when I was a child."

The family will gather at the family farm in Emporia this Thanksgiving, just as they do every Sunday for lunch.

"Until we lost Dot and Nellie," Tuck said, "I'm not sure I really realized how precious our family was to me."

Lauren King, (757) 446-2309, lauren.king@pilotonline.com