The year is 1965 and Suellen Evans is attending college at UNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She’s 21, beautiful, intelligent, and majoring in Home Economics. However, something sinister lay in wait for Suellen on July 30th.
**Suellen Evans**
At 12:30pm that fateful day, Suellen finished up her class and was headed back to her dorm to pack, as she was due to travel home Mooresville the next day. She stopped by a well to talk to a friend, and then sought out a professor to discuss her school work.
After this, she took a shortcut she often used, through an overgrown arboretum (the Coker Arboretum) and that is when a man stepped out from behind some bushes, and attacked her. He stabbed her twice; once in the neck, once in the heart, with a knife similar to a switch blade.
Given that she took this path often, it’s possible that the perpetrator knew she’d be walking along there at this time.
Despite passerbys hearing her cries for help, no one was able to make it in time. Two nuns found her, barely alive. One attempted to do chest compressions, but was unsuccessful.
“He tried to rape me…I believe I’m going to faint” were Suellen’s last words.
**Coker Arboretum**
At least 200 men joined in the search to find the man, and there were reportedly 97 suspects and 211 leads – all of which ended in dead ends (please excuse the pun) There were two possible suspects that stood out in my research.
One was an unnamed gardener who matched a vague description of the perpetrator. A coed stated that they’d seen a man in a blue pull – over shirt at the scene. The person saw the person’s arm and described it in a Newspaper article as “A black arm – darker than sunburn – around a girl’s legs.”
According to the newspaper, a janitor in a nearby classroom stated that he was a young black boy wearing the same type of shirt run out of the arboretum.
Bare in mind that this was the 60s and the civil rights movement was in full swing in NC. I can’t tell you whether any of this was related to that.
**Newspaper Article**
A gardener with a similar description was brought in for questioning, but since he kept fainting every time the subject of the murder was brought up, there was never much information gained from him.
To this day, the case remains unsolved.
More information:
[A look into UNC’s unsolved on – campus murder](https://thetab.com/us/unc/2016/11/08/unc-unsolved-1965-murder-6923)
[More unsolved murders in NC ](https://thetab.com/us/unc/2016/11/08/unc-unsolved-1965-murder-6923)
All The Quiet Cases 
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