Two days before Christmas in 1999, 25-year-old Tera Tracy walked out of her house and across Holly Shelter Road, to start her overnight shift working as a clerk at The Pantry convenience store, which sat at the corner of Holly Shelter and Castle Hayne Roads. The married mother of four children had taken a job to earn extra money, to help her family afford presents for Christmas.
Several hours after her shift started, around 4:00 a.m. on the morning of December 24th, a customer walked into the store, spotted Tera’s body on the floor behind the counter and called 911. Investigators from the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office responded, and determined someone had beaten Tera, stabbed her several times, cleaned out the cash register and took off. Tera died at the hospital, never making it back home to celebrate Christmas.
“It’s the holidays, it’s my grandson’s birthday, and isn’t this a terrible way to spend his birthday and spend Christmas?”, Janice Hamilton, Tera’s mother, said the day after the murder happened.
Read more: wect.com
