How “The Taco Bell Strangler” Serial Killer Was Busted Over An Earring

CHARLOTTE, NC — During the early 1990s, a serial killer was stalking Charlotte. Crack was flooding into the city, the murder rate was skyrocketing — and young African-American women were disappearing.

Eventually, the homicide detectives of the Charlotte Police Department arrested Henry Wallace, who would end up confessing to 11 murders in a killing spree that shocked the city.

Unlike serial killers who target strangers at random, Wallace preyed on his friends and coworkers, many of whom he met while managing a Taco Bell in East Charlotte — leading to his nickname, “The Taco Bell Strangler.”

On March 10, 1994, Detective Garry McFadden of the Charlotte Police Department was called to the scene of a homicide. The victim was an 18-year-old African-American female named Brandi Henderson. Her boyfriend, Lamar, had gone to work, and come home at around midnight to find signs of a struggle in the living room. When he got to the bedroom, he found Brandi’s body on the bed with two towels wrapped around her neck. Investigators determined that she had been strangled.

Lamar found his 10-month old son with clothing tied around his neck. He managed to remove the ligature, saving his son’s life, but was unable to revive Brandi.

Detectives did not realize it at the time, but Brandi was not the killer’s first victim — and would also not be his last. On February 19, 1993, 20-year-old Shawna Hawk was murdered. Her mother, Dee Sumpter, remembered hearing Shawna, who attended classes and worked a full-time job at Taco Bell, getting ready to drop her two-year-old godson off at daycare.

“It was a freezing cold day. I awakened, Shawna awakened. She had a full day that day,” Sumpter said.

Shawna Hawk [Investigation Discovery]

Dee said that she last spoke to her daughter when Shawna called at around 2 P.M. When she got home around 5 P.M., she received a phone call from Shawna’s boyfriend, Darren, who was concerned that he had not seen his girlfriend.

After Dee learned that Shawna had not shown up to pick up her godson, she called Darren and told him to come over. They began to search the house — and Darren was horrified when he found Shawna’s dead body in a bathtub full of cold water. “He screamed over and over, loud,” Dee remembered.

Charlotte PD arrived on the scene. “Every crime scene tells a story,” McFadden said. “I remembered that the tub was full of water. There was a child’s toy floating in the tub. But it wasn’t like your average crime scene. Very neat. Very clean. My big question is: ‘Why is there no forced entry?'” McFadden said. “It appeared as though she knew her assailant.”

Shawna’s autopsy report showed no evidence of sexual assault. Shawna’s neck was bruised and her vocal cords showed signs of trauma — which indicated that the cause of death was strangulation.

Detectives collected evidence at the scene including fingerprints, but found no trace of the killer. Police initially focused on Darren as a possible suspect, but said that he never met the standard of probable cause.

Several weeks later, a security guard found Shawna’s car parked at the school she attended. McFadden noticed that the seat was pushed back, and found evidence that the car had been wiped clean. Since Shawna was just five-foot-two, they developed a theory that her killer had driven the vehicle to the garage.

Though Shawna’s and Brandi’s crime scenes were different, with one being organized and the other showing signs of a struggle, McFadden remembers comparing them to determine if there was a possible connection. McFadden then spoke to Sergeant Rick Sanders, who told him that he had also worked a case with another Black female who had also been strangled with a towel.

Caroline Love [Investigation Discovery]

McFadden looked through case files and was able to find yet another victim: A friend and former coworker of Shawna Hawk’s named Caroline Love, who had disappeared in 1992.

Caroline’s sister, her roommate, and her roommate’s boyfriend had reported her missing when she failed to come home. Her apartment showed no sign of forced entry. Over the next few months, Caroline’s family and friends continued to search for her, but found no trace.

Police looked into other cases of women who had gone missing under suspicious circumstances. “We knew we had a problem, but we didn’t know how big that problem was,” McFadden said.

Soon, another body was found: It was 33-year-old Sharon Nance, a woman McFadden actually knew personally. Sharon had been beaten to death and dumped in a wooded area. McFadden knew her from the streets, as she was working as a prostitute at the time. She had been living with her aunt, and had vanished after leaving for a night out.

McFadden remembers Nance:

“It was heartbreaking…. Her lifestyle complicated things, but I think we need to look at it from a different perspective. She was a person. She was loved. She was a human being. So no matter what your lifestyle is like, you’re still someone’s daughter…. I think we need to look at that more closely, especially as law enforcement when you are investigating these cases. Not because of their profession or lifestyle.”

In 1992, police assembled a task force to investigate the growing number of disappearances, and to look for similarities in the cases. But the task force could not find plausible links, and ended up concluding that the murders were not the work of a serial killer.

During the early 1990s, the population of Charlotte was booming — and so was the crime rate. Yet there were only nine homicide detectives employed to cover the entire city.

On June 25, 1993, police found another young Black female victim, named Audrey Spain. And on September 15, Michelle Stinson was found deceased in her kitchen area — with a ligature mark around her neck.

Garry McFadden [Investigation Discovery]

Police determined that Michelle had been stabbed multiple times, and strangled with a belt.

The victims’ friends and families were desperate for answers — and some were angry because they felt that their loved ones’ deaths were not given enough coverage because the victims were low-income African-American women.

Dee Sumpter founded a support group called Mothers of Murdered Offspring, went to the press and wrote a letter to the killer that was printed in the paper.

On February 20, Vanessa Mack, a 25-year-old single mother of two, was found dead in her bed. She was the fourth strangulation victim in seven months. Once again, she was lying on her back with a thick ligature around her neck, and there was no sign of sexual assault.

Police said that the attack appeared to be the most brutal yet. Forensic evidence indicated that the killer had loosened, and tightened, the noose around her neck several times.

This time, police found a clue: Mack’s bank card had been stolen, and surveillance footage from an ATM where it was used showed part of a face in frame. But all detectives could determine was that the person who used the card was a Black male who wore a cross earring.

Meanwhile, the crime scenes were getting messier and more brutal, which indicated to police that the killer’s rage was growing.

Vanessa Mack [Investigation Discovery]

Since police believed that many of the victims knew their killer, they spoke to Brandi’s cousin George. He had been talking to Brandi on the night she disappeared, and told police that during the conversation Brandi had heard someone knock on the door, and told him that she needed to get off of the phone.

Police asked Lamar who his girlfriend would have let inside the apartment. Lamara gave detectives three names. One of the people he mentioned, Henry Wallace, had a shoplifting charge in his past.

But when Detective James Stansberry looked at Wallace’s photo, he was shocked to see a cross earring that appeared identical to the one in the bank surveillance video.

But as detectives scrambled to find Wallace, they got word of yet another homicide — in the same apartment complex where Brandi Henderson’s body had been found.

This time Betty Baucom, 24, was dead. Two towels were around her neck. She had been strangled, furniture was knocked over, and there was much more evidence of a violent struggle.

Police flooded the apartment complex and began knocking on doors to get information. Sergeant Sanders took the unusual step of going on TV and warning the public not to let anyone into their residence — even if they knew them.

Baucomb’s car was missing, and detectives were surprised to later find it parked across the street from the apartment complex. “This makes me believe that the killer is playing a cat-and-mouse game and actually taunting us,” McFadden said.

Det. James Stansberry [Investigation Discovery]

Detectives got another big break in the case when they found a palm print on the back of Betty’s car — and matched it to Henry Wallace.

Police launched a massive manhunt for Wallace. Before they found him, 35-year-old Deborah Slaughter was found murdered in her apartment — and the killer had used exactly the same modus operandi.

On March 12, police tracked Wallace down to a residence in East Charlotte and found him inside, hiding in a bathroom.

Detectives said that Wallace was calm when they questioned him. Wallace, a former DJ who had served in the Navy, admitted to knowing many of the victims. He was personable and able to convince the women to give them access to their homes.

Finally Wallace came clean, and gave police a list of nine women who were missing in Charlotte. Police had not realized that many of the women were victims of the same serial killer.

Image taken from surveillance footage showing the cross earring [Investigation Discovery]

In a shocking twist, Wallace confessed to murdering Caroline Love — and revealed that he had been the boyfriend of Caroline’s roommate, Sadie, the one who had gone along when Sadie reported her missing.

Wallace also admitted that he had sexually assaulted the women, but covered up the rapes by redressing the victims. He described in detail the women’s appearances, and how he raped and killed the women, robbing them to feed his crack habit.

He also confessed to two additional murders: Those of Sharon Nance and 18-year-old Tashanda Bethea.

Following the Wallace case, the Charlotte Police Department hired more detectives and made changes to the way that police were taught to communicate and deal with victims’ family members.

In 1997, Wallace was found guilty of nine counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death. He is currently on Death Row at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Following his sentencing, Wallace made a statement to his victims’ families. He said:

“None of these women, none of your daughters, mothers, sisters, or family members in any way deserved what they got. They did nothing to me that warranted their death.”

For more on Henry Wallace, “The Taco Bell Strangler,” watch Investigation Discovery’s Bad Henry on ID GO now!

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Main photo: Henry Louis Wallace [Investigation Discovery]

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