“I want to send a clear message here. Hear my words,” SBI director Robert Schurmeier said at a news conference Thursday at the Surry County Sheriff’s Office. “The men and women of the SBI in partnerships with sheriff’s offices across this state and around the country will seek out justice for the cold cases that we have on our books. We will work day and night to pursue the suspects who think they may have gotten away with it 20, 30, 40 years ago.”
N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein speaks Thursday at the Surry County Sheriff’s Office about the role DNA testing played in identifying a suspect in the 1992 death of Nona Stamey Cobb.
Warren Luther Alexander, 71, of Diamondhead, Miss., was arrested March 15 and charged with felony murder in the July 7, 1992 death of Cobb, a 29-year-old woman who was last seen alive the night before getting into a truck with a white man at a rest stop on Interstate 85 in Cleveland County. Alexander was brought back to North Carolina on March 27 and is currently in the Surry County Jail with no bond allowed. His next court date in Surry District Court is May 4.
Vickie S. Gregory, Cobb’s sister, and two younger women who are relatives of Cobb, sat on the front row of a conference room in the sheriff’s office late Thursday morning as officials with the State Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General Josh Stein and members of the Surry County Sheriff’s Office spoke.
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They said persistence, law-enforcement partnership and new DNA technology led to Alexander’s arrest. After the news conference, the three women quickly left, and SBI spokeswoman Anjanette Grube said they did not want to make a statement.
Vickie S. Gregory (far left) and her family listen as a law enforcement officials speak about making an arrest in the death of her sister, Nona Stamey Cobb, during a press conference Thursday at the Surry County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Steve Hiatt read a lengthy list of law-enforcement agencies and officers, some of whom have since died, who worked over the past 30 years on the case.
“The fact that we’re all here today is a testament to the men and women who did not give up,” he said.
Capt. Scott Hudson of the Surry County Sheriff’s Office said a trucker found Cobb’s body off the northbound lane of CC Camp Road by a ramp onto I-77. Her body was found at 6:15 a.m. July 7, 1992. It would take about three weeks before investigators definitively identified her as Nona Stamey Cobb.
The Surry County Sheriff’s Office started investigating, with the assistance of the SBI, and located a woman who told detectives that she saw Cobb on the night of July 6, 1992, getting into a black Peterbilt truck with a white man. Hudson said the woman gave a description of the driver.
Hudson said DNA evidence was taken from Cobb’s body and other items, including clothing, and that evidence was submitted to the State Crime Lab for analysis. The Surry County Sheriff’s Office did not have a suspect until 1995, when an Asheboro trucker named Sean Patrick Goble was questioned about Cobb’s death. Goble denied killing Cobb, and in July 1995, Surry County investigators ruled Goble out as a suspect when DNA tests done on semen from Cobb’s body did not match Goble.
Goble was eventually charged and convicted of killing three other women, including a Florida woman whose body was found in Guilford County in 1995. He is serving two life sentences, plus 14 years, in prison, according to news reports.
Then in April 2021, special agents with the SBI’s Cold Case Investigation Unit and Surry County sheriff’s detectives re-examined evidence, including DNA, in Cobb’s murder. They worked with Colleen Fitzpatrick, founder of Identifinders International LLC, and were able to identify Alexander as a possible suspect. The company uses forensic geneology, which takes genetic information from direct-to-consumer companies to help identify suspects in criminal cold cases.
“I will tell you that forensic genealogy is a game changer,” Schurmeier said. “It’s incredible how it helps us connect the dots with people around the country, family members around the country, to identify the suspects who think they’ve gotten away with it.”
Stein said that seven analysts from the State Crime Lab analyzed more than 34 items of DNA evidence over a 10-year period to help break the case. He spoke directly to Gregory and the rest of Nona Cobb’s family.
“It isn’t finished but what we hope is that this impressive step taken by the State Bureau of Investigation and the Surry County Sheriff’s Office brings you one step closer to having some sense of closure and a sense of justice for what happened to Nona,” he said.
Surry County investigators and the SBI are looking into whether Alexander might be connected to other unsolved homicides. Hudson asked that anyone who has information or knows of similar killings contact the SBI’s Hickory office at 828-294-2266 or the Surry County Sheriff’s Office at 336-401-8900.
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