Matthew Gibson, a 55-year-old North Carolina man, finally came clean about a 1997 murder he committed after receiving some texts from Walmart.
Say what now?
Gibson, 55, showed up in Arizona's Winslow Police Department, where Det. Alicia Marquez discovered him "sitting in the lobby, scared and sobbing."
"He wanted to talk about crime he committed more than a decade before," Martinez said, and he recalled meeting a woman one night in Bullhead City, Ariz.
They went back to his trailer, where she became "loud and obnoxious" and he asked her to leave. When she refused, Gibson "bludgeoned her to death."
Using a Maglite flashlight, he killed her just like that, then threw her body into the Colorado River, where he buried his secret, seemingly for good.
Until Walmart texted. And called. And even sent a hard copy of a letter saying that a prescription for Anita Townshed was ready for pickup, anytime.
The actual woman he killed was Barbara Brown Agnew, but Gibson didn't know that, and was convinced that Townshed was his old victim.
He thought someone was monitoring his phone calls and had placed "a contract on his head," so he hurried up and confessed out of guilt and fear.
Gibson, a former drug addict, found religion years ago, his attorney said. "He felt bad," Ron Gilleo said of his confession. "It was weighing on him."
As for whether this sort of confession is unprecedented? "We see a lot in this line of work," Marquez told the Charlotte Observer. "He was in fear for his life."
That being said, the case wasn't just cold, it didn't exist. Until he confessed, and asked that he be allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter immediately.
It's unclear if he has begun serving his sentence, but he's definitely earned his place among the strangest criminals and news stories we've covered ...
Devin Langford, a drunk man in custody, tried to urinate out of the rear passenger side window of a moving police car because he was drunk. It did not go as planned.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
