His mother, Veta, was at the murder scene Monday tidying up after a candlelight vigil held the night before. Her son and three other people were killed in a mobile home in Carolina Lakes near Cameron. She lives in a mobile home that is a short walk from the scene of the quadruple murder.
“Well, that makes me mad,” she said, bending down to look at the one of the four crosses erected in front of the charred ruins of the mobile home where her son and three others died Dec. 19, 2003.
Beneath the plastic cups and half-burned candles were three gleaming copper cartridges, lying at the base of the cross that bears her son’s name.
Justice questioned who would put the bullets there, and why.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m going to call the police. I don’t know if they’ll care at all. ... I don’t know if someone is trying to send me a message.”
But what would the message be? She said that her son liked to hunt, so maybe it was a couple of his friends trying to make some sort of statement. Friends of the victims have acted on emotion before. They burned the rest of the trailer to the ground after attending the funeral of one of the other victims.
Justice may never know. There haven’t been any lingering issues having to do with the murders as far as she knows.
The crosses are about three feet high. They are all lined up parallel to the murder scene, about 10 feet in front of it.
On each cross is the name of a victim. In addition to Justice, 18, the other victims were Joseph Allen Harden, 19; Eddie Lynn Ryals, 21; and Harvey Daryl Hobson, 20. They had been shot and stabbed, and their bodies burned in an effort to hide the evidence.
A young woman was also attacked. Despite being stabbed 22 times, slashed across the throat and shot, she managed to escape and is the only witness to the murders.
Law-enforcement officers arrested and charged three people — Mario Phillips, 35, of Heron Road; Sean Maurice Ray, 24, of Heavenwood Road (the same road the Justices live on); and Yvette McLaughlin, 19, a Spring Lake resident.
The families of the victims keep in touch, and Justice said that she even waves to the Rays when she drives by.
“Joe (Harden’s) mom and I talk a couple of times a month,” Justice said. “Eddie (Ryals’) dad and I are super close. We talk every day. They helped plan the memorial and everything. I usually lean on my husband and two children. ... We lean on each other a lot.”
According to the Moore County Sheriff’s Department, all three suspects confessed to “to some participation” in the murders, Sheriff Lane Carter said. Everyone says that Phillips, who lived across the street from where the murders took place, was the ringleader. According to investigators, robbery was the motive.
“It was an awful tragedy,” Justice said. “Four young lives, lost for no reason. It’s a real hard thing to deal with (losing a child). To lose one to murder is especially hard — as brutally as they were murdered.”
Justice and all the other families are hoping that those responsible are given the death penalty.
“We are seeking the death penalty on all three,” Assistant District Attorney Warren McSweeney said.
Justice said that is exactly what she’s hoping for.
‘These Weren’t Strangers’
“I want the death penalty,” she said. “All the families do. It won’t bring our children back, but these weren’t strangers to our children.”
They did know each other and even considered each other friends. Veta Justice said that they’d been in her home. She’d given them rides. Phillips and Ray attended C.J.’s 18th birthday in August 2003.
“Then not two months later...” she said.
Also, C.J. Justice and Ryals often tried to help Phillips when he was short on cash and needed something to eat, Veta Justice said.
Phillips’ defense attorney, Bruce Cunningham, said that his client is mentally unbalanced. He’s been moved from the Moore County jail to the psych ward at Central Prison in Raleigh. Cunningham said that it’s too early to tell exactly what problem Phillips suffers from, but he’s having tests run and Phillips is taking medication.
“He’s on anti-psychotics,” he said.
The trial probably won’t begin until summer of next year, McSweeney said. The prosecution is still waiting on some evidence to come back from the SBI crime lab, he said.
One of the key witnesses could be Amanda Cook, the girl who escaped the grisly murders. Justice spoke with the young woman on Sunday.
Now 16 years old, she’s gotten her GED and wants to be a nurse, Justice said. Cook isn’t talking to the media, and it is unclear whether she is going to testify.
Justice is looking forward to the trial because she wants it over, but she is also dreading having those memories dredged up.
“You try to move on, but the trial is going to come and BOOM, bring it all back,” Justice said.
Not a Bad Place
Having to live so close to the murder scene doesn’t bother her, she said, and she’s not planing on leaving the neighborhood.
“I know when the murders happened, people said it was a bad neighborhood,” she said. “We’ve been here 11 years. ... Every neighborhood has drugs, whether you want to admit it or not. Every neighborhood has break-ins. You can turn on the news tonight and see that Cary has a string of break-ins. This is not a bad neighborhood. It’s just a place where something bad happened.
“It’s difficult on one hand, but I say they took my son, why should I allow them to take my house? ... My youngest is 15. This is the only home he really remembers.”
Now her focus is on healing and taking care of her family.
“It’s hard,” she said. “It’s real hard. But we have two other children. We try to keep things as normal as possible so that they don’t feel like they don’t matter.”
On Sunday, families of the victims met at the murder scene and held a candlelight vigil. It was cold and sleet was falling. When Justice walked home, it began to snow. She said that she knew it was going to snow.
“You know it’s going to snow,” she said. “C.J., Eddie, Joe and Daryl made sure of that. They were up in heaven having a laugh at us.”
