As NC pushes to resume executions, 3 Mecklenburg County men face death
The last execution in North Carolina was 20 years ago, but Republican state lawmakers hope to change that. Following the passage of Iryna’s Law last fall, the state has committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to accelerating the timeline for post-conviction appeals, meaning many of North Carolina’s 122 death-row inmates could soon be eligible for execution.
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Legal hurdles remain. The only legal method for execution in the state is lethal injection, and the drugs required to carry out the sentences are nearly impossible to come by. Gov. Josh Stein has said he will not approve alternative methods available to other states such as firing squads.
Still, Republican lawmakers have said they will keep pushing for death penalties to resume. That could have direct consequences for the three men Mecklenburg County jurors sentenced to death. Here’s a rundown of their cases:
Patrick Steen barely looked up from his Stephen King paperback when he was sentenced to die.
Convicted of first-degree murder, breaking and entering and robbery in August 1998, jurors agreed the state proved that Steen had broken into the home of a well-to-do elderly widow, Virginia Frost, two years prior. Then 28, Steen was a groundskeeper at nearby Myers Park Country Club who had been out on parole following sentencing for a series of car break-ins, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
That February, police found Frost dead in her home on Tanglewood Lane. She had been beaten and suffered 16 rib fractures. Police apprehended Steen shortly after the murder, weaving erratically on a bicycle with Frost’s blood on his clothes.
Steen had sold Frost’s television and silverware for about $75, witnesses testified in court.
His defense attorneys argued against the death penalty, pointing out that he’d been brain-damaged in a 1991 motorcycle accident and was abused by his father as a child. Steen had learning problems and had begun using drugs at 12 or 13, and his difficulties worsened after the motorcycle accident. Brain-damaged, he flew into rages and binged on crack cocaine, his defense team argued.
But the jury did not spare Steen’s life.
Since sentencing, Steen’s attorneys have filed several unsuccessful appeals. Now 56, he remains on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh.
Dubbed the “Taco Bell Strangler,” Wallace is Charlotte’s most notorious serial killer. The subject of a ”20/20” episode and a documentary, “Bad Henry,” Wallace’s murder of 11 Black women — and attempted murder of one of his victim’s 10-month-old sons — in the 1990s has drawn national attention.
Wallace murdered his first victim, 18-year-old Tashanda Bethea, in March 1990 in his hometown of Barnwell, South Carolina.
By 1992, Wallace had moved to Charlotte and was working as a manager at the Taco Bell on North Sharon Amity Road — the restaurant that would become his hunting ground for more victims. Between May 1992 and March 1994, Wallace would murder 10 more young women, most of whom had connections to the Taco Bell or to a local Bojangles where Wallace’s girlfriend worked.
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Wallace admitted to raping all but two of his victims. He killed his first victim in Charlotte, 33-year-old Sharon Nance, after the sex worker demanded to be paid for sex. While Wallace used a rock to kill Nance and a knife to stab his final victim, 35-year-old Debra Ann Slaughter, he strangled the rest.
Brandi Henderson, the girlfriend of one of Wallace’s best friends, was holding her 10-month-old Tyrece during Wallace’s assault. Wallace told police that after raping and murdering Tyrece’s mother, he gave the infant a bottle and pacifier, but then choked the baby with a towel when he wouldn’t stop crying.
Now Mecklenburg County Sheriff, Garry McFadden was a detective on the case with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department at the time of the murders. The department failed to link the murders at first due in part to a crime surge that overwhelmed law enforcement, McFadden told “20/20” producers. It took two years for CMPD to alert the public that a serial killer was on the loose.
Race and class also played a role, according to McFadden. Serious crimes in predominantly white or more affluent areas were far more likely to become CMPD priorities, McFadden told The Charlotte Observer in 2018.
Wallace was found hiding in a friend’s apartment and arrested on March 13, 1994. Following an all-night interrogation and a prayer session with police, he admitted to the killings. He was convicted in 1997 of nine of the women’s murders and sent to death row, where he remains today. He’s now 60 years old.
Despite the horrific nature of Wallace’s crimes, the murders have spurred lasting change. CMPD’s delays in catching Wallace led to reforms including increased numbers of homicide detectives and the creation of a cold case unit. Dee Sumpter, the mother of one of Wallace’s victims, co-founded a nonprofit advocacy group, Mothers of Murdered Offspring, that continues to support victims’ families.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers Andy Nobles and John Burnette were shot to death in October 1993 after responding to a call about a stolen van. Harden shot the officers during a struggle in a wooded area behind a public housing complex in southwest Charlotte. Harden said the killings were self-defense.
During appeals, Harden said he did not receive a fair trial because of outsize media coverage surrounding the case. His lawyers argued that the attendance of more than 100 uniformed police officers at Harden’s trial created an “inherently prejudicial atmosphere,” the Observer reported in 2004.
“Half of the jury was related to or friends with police officers. They sat and heard this case with scores of uniformed police officers watching them, expressing solidarity with the slain officers and communicating clearly their desire that Mr. Harden be convicted and put to death,” a court document read at the time, according to the Observer.
The killings shook Charlotte, with yellow ribbons and half-staff flags decorating the city in the weeks after the murders. The streets surrounding the murder scene were renamed for the officers.
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Despite Harden’s appeals attempts, he remains on death row. He’s 65.
