by Charly Mann

Crook's Corner, which is located at 610 West Franklin Street, has been one of Chapel Hill's most acclaimed restaurants since it opened in 1982. It took its name from Rachel Crook who once operated three small businesses in the same location. She had converted a former gas station into a laudromat, a fabric store, and a produce and fish market. Besides running these stores, in 1951, this single, 71 year old woman was also a graduate student at UNC in Economics.

Site of Rachel Crook's business and residence in 1951

Unfortunately, Ms. Crook is best remembered as the victim of a horrible murder. On the night of August 29th, 1951, she was forcibly taken from her small apartment that was attached to her business, to an abandoned road about four miles south of Hillsborough, and there raped and then brutally murdered. The crime took place not far from the site of the New Hope Church. For decades it has been the folklore of Chapel Hill that her murder was unsolved, but I think there is little doubt that her killer was a Burlington bulldozer operator named Hobart Lee.

 
Rachel Crook and the restaurant named in her honor

These are the facts of the case. On the evening of August 29th Rachel was at her business. Around 8:00 PM several people along the sidewalks, and in cars leading from Crook's business, testified they heard a woman screaming from a green pickup truck that was traveling towards Columbia Street, and then down Airport Road in the direction of Hillsborough. The next morning, on August 30th, Highway Patrolman Robert Thomas found her body lying on its back in a pool of caked blood. Her face was so badly battered that it was unrecognizable. The white smock she wore was pulled up over her waist.

The SBI and Orange County Sheriffs quickly made a detailed investigation of the crime. Within a week they had arrested Hobart Lee, then 34, for the murder. The case against him seemed exceptionally convincing, and I will now detail most of the evidence.

1. Tire tracks at the murder scene matched those on Lee's truck. SBI special agent James R. Durham found that the tracks in the road next to where her body was discovered were created by three U.S. Royal recaps and one Seiberling tire. These matched the tires on Lee's truck, and were an unlikely combination to occur on any other vehicle.
2. Several of the Chapel Hill witnesses who had heard a woman screaming said the sounds came from a green truck that matched the description of Lee's.
3. There were other witnesses who confirmed seeing a truck matching Lee's near New Hope Church that evening.
4. There was blood under Ms. Crook's nails indicating she had tried to fight off her attacker. When Lee was arrested he had scratches on his arms and face.
5. Lee had a record of violent assaults and attempted rape on women dating back more than ten years.
6. When Lee was arrested he told Orange County Sheriff Sam Latta that he was so drunk on the evening that the crime took place that he had no recollection of what he did that night.
7. Lee passed through Chapel Hill twice each day on his way from Burlington to Cary where he was working on a road project. His route took him directly by Crook's store.
8. Lee never denied that he assaulted and killed Crook.
9. At the trial, his lawyer never called a single witness to counter the state's evidence or offer an alibi for Lee.
10. A heel mark was found at the scene of the crime that exactly matched one on Lee's shoe.

So why wasn't Lee convicted? First, because the case was not tried in Chapel Hill, but in Hillsborough, at the Orange County Courthouse. The event was like a media circus. The courthouse was freshly painted and given a new floor for the trial. The jury was primarily made up of rural residents with traditional southern Christian roots, a fact that would have a large effect on the outcome of the trial. Second, Lee's lawyer used an ingenious defense under the circumstances. After the prosecution rested its case with more than a dozen witnesses and an array of incriminating evidence, Lee's attorney said he would rest his case and not call a single witness to rebut all the damning evidence or offer an alibi for his client. Instead, he made a closing plea to the jury which he began by saying all the evidence against Lee was "circumstantial," since there was no actual witness to the murder. Then he delivered more of a sermon than a summation, liberally quoting verses from the Bible and making reference to Jesus, finally culminating with a quote from the Old Testament that said it was better to let several guilty men go free than convict one innocent man. His tactics worked. In less than 90 minutes the Jury found Lee innocent, and the man who almost certainly killed Rachel Crook was free.

Orange County Courthouse 1950

Today with DNA testing I believe we could conclusively prove Lee was guilty. This might require exhuming Crook and Lee's bodies. (I suspect Lee is now deceased – he would be 93 today if still alive.) If you are interested in resolving this horrible crime I urge you to contact the Chapel Hill Police, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, or the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to see if they can re-examine the physical evidence using modern forensic methods.

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