Just posted this to my Facebook page: Holy smokes. I can’t take the innuendos anymore. It’s funny how many people think it’s a big deal who I go to the gym with. It’s never been a secret. I’ve seen court officials and cops there several times. I’m not hiding anything. Guess if we were playing [...]

UPDATE: INVESTIGATORS SAY MATTHEW ZEMLICK IS NOT A SUSPECT IN HIS WIFE’S DEATH. MATTHEW ZEMLICK DOES HAVE RESTRAINING ORDERS ON FILE AT THE ONSLOW COUNTY COURTHOUSE. Read the latest news in the case. —————————— Details are beginning to emerge from the Monday shooting in Swansboro Heights involving a resident of S. Dogwood Lane. The Daily [...]

Police are tight lipped on Monday’s homicide in Swansboro. Read the news here. Mike McHugh and I bounced some information around and here’s what we came up with: The address where crime scene investigators were working Monday is rented by John and Helen Giltz. I dialed their number in the phone book with the South [...]

YES. I am aware a high-ranking deputy sheriff was fired last week. YES. I am aware the sheriff collected deputies’ phones back in December. NO. I don’t know whether the two have any correlation whatsoever. Everybody wants me to write about the malaise at the Sheriff’s Office, but no one wants to go on the [...]

Michael Ward is suspected of having a gun in his rectum when he was booked into the Onslow County Jail. Read the news. Read the official press release from the Sheriff’s Office. It seems besides having a suspected ability for really packing it in, Ward has a proclivity for making up identities. He is charged [...]

While it has the same address, jdnews.com looks 100 percent better. Check it out. The website’s content has been steadily expanding and improving since Amanda Hickey took the job a couple of years ago. Now it looks great too. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it today. The Peanut Gallery’s comments on the [...]

- A little girl, a friend of my own children, was struck and killed by a car on Sand Ridge Road early Monday morning while waiting for the school bus. Just like other recent situations, it sucks when I get a phone call and start running information down to find out the persons involved are not strangers, but live down [...]

- One of the longest criminal trials in Wake County history is coming to a close. In a case I mentioned on the blog from time to time since 2008, Cary resident Brad Cooper is accused of killing his wife he said went out for a jog. Read the updated news here. – I have it [...]

I’m long removed from my seminary days. But even after escaping the trappings of organized religion, I still remember of few Bible passages. One verse that kept me going through years of hardship as I put myself through college while working a full time job to provide for my family was Psalms 37:25. It sounds [...]

Thursday was a weird day for me. And that is saying something. I started out covering the double murder trial of a former Marine mixed up in a harry situation (I know, that is stretching it, but the other two fit). Jarrell Wilson: Later, I interviewed Harry Brown about being tapped as the state Senate’s majority [...]

There is almost always extra information a reporter has left over when a story is complete. Sometimes it is totally unrelevent, sometimes the information is relevent, but there just isn’t space for it. Even the best, most well-rounded reports have to leave information out because there just isn’t room. I wrote three articles last week [...]

We’ve had a lot of questions in the jdnews.com comments recently about why we include information about Marines that we don’t include about other people. The latest example is today’s story about the Marine who slashed his buddy’s wrist open at a party early Sunday morning.   Read the story here.   What I find [...]

Sheriff Ed Brown called me a little before 5:30 p.m. yesterday to tell me that the medical examiner had finally listed an official cause of death for Anneka Lasseter, a 29-year-old mother who was murdered and dumped in a drainage ditch in May.   Read the story here.   And yes, it was on jdnews.com [...]

When Lindell Kay suggested I take over this blog, I was on the fence. Open myself up to direct bashing? Why the hell would I want to do that? It’s bad enough reading the comments on jdnews.com.   But alas, a blank page – any blank page – is the siren call to the professional [...]

My journey as crime reporter for the The Daily News is coming to the end of the road… Don’t celebrate yet. I’ll still be around. I will be assuming the government beat Monday. And while a final decision about my replacement has not been made by my bosses, one of the possible choices is someone [...]

- It only took like 30 minutes for the false rumor that a stabbing occurred at Swansboro High School to spread Tuesday. In truth a 20-year-old hurt himself while washing the dishes.It never ceases to amaze me how fast parents can spread wild stories about their kids’ schools, but when something really happens I don’t hear about it. Weird. [...]

Wow! It has been a full week since I posted. in almost two years, that’s the longest this blog has gone without an update. I had good reason, though. I had dental surgery last Wednesday and was out for three days. I haven’t really felt good until today. I have been cranking on a few [...]

Sheriff Ed Brown said goodbye to Chelsea Donovan after six years of her reporting the news in Southeastern North Carolina. We went to Mai-Tai’s Restaraunt for lunch (I highly recommend the candy chicken). Mike McHugh took these photos with his cell phone. Chelsea, the sheriff, and Lt. Tommie Thomas: The Sheriff trying to explain how [...]

I have said goodbye to a lot of people in this business in the last three years. Several reporters and editors and others at the newspaper have moved on. TV news people like Laura Vesco have also left, leaving the area a little less bright. But today the people of Southeastern North Carolina have lost [...]

This was supposed to be some long, college-level thesis on how news articles come together, but I am tired and have a long day tomorrow, so here are the bare bones: News articles often have only one name in the byline, but – believe you me – it takes a lot more people than that [...]

————————————–UPDATE—————————————- The medical examiner, sheriff and D.A. talk about what happens next. —————————————————————————————- I brushed as close as I ever want to come to real pain today. I got to work early, hoping something would develop so I could get it done and go home early. Monday was free veterans dinner at Golden Corral. Questions about [...]

Some first birthday. As the daughter of Virginia Moll turned 1 year old Tuesday, her mother’s body was discovered in a shallow grave behind their home and her father was taken into custody for murder. The Molls on their wedding day in September 2008: Read the news article here. Like I said Monday, I have [...]

I covered a meeting Tuesday night where an Onslow County-hired consultant spoke to firefighters about funding full time employees. At one point the consultant said that the county needed to develop a way to map all of the area emergencies so troubled spots could be identified. A firefighter told him, “All you have to do [...]

If you have been following the Jonathan Gould trial on TV then you know how well each station has been covering the trial. But there is a lot of hard work that goes into the news before it hits the airwaves. N.C. Superior Court Judge Jay D. Hockenbury limited the number of television cameras allowed in the [...]

As long-time readers know, my personal life often bleeds into my professional one. I certainly don’t mean in the articles I write, but in the day-to-day grind of being a crime reporter in an area rife with unusual crimes. Tuesday was one of those days. I was up early because the jury in the Lawrence Dowsing [...]

I made a major error in reporting on the Lawrence Dowsing murder trial in today’s newspaper. The online story has been corrected and I will add a correction with the story I put in Saturday’s paper. Read the corrected article here. Police found a pair of bloody jeans in the defendant’s home. I incorrectly identified [...]

My boss (one of them anyway, I have quite a few), Timmi Toler has a really funny blog post up about a public official saying the newspaper uses illegal means to get its stories. Her response to that ludicrous statement is hilarious. She uses a metaphor of reporters standing on the street corner asking for a [...]

It is really hard sometimes for reporters to convince editors that they know what they are talking about. Here is WITN’s Chelsea Donovan and WNCT’s Parul Joshi trying to explain over their cell phones earlier today how the Gumbranch gunman could not have shot himself if he was aiming at the police.

No lie, I woke up Wednesday morning thinking that by now I had pretty much seen and heard it all. Wrong. Amanda found a warrant at the magistrates office that turned into this news story about a Marine sergeant handling one of his private’s parts. As we gathered information on that, I received a tip [...]

The old man who is hanging mannequins in his front yard will not be prosecuted. Read the startling news here. I am more than a corporate hack. And this Web site has always been about bringing you the best crime coverage from the Onslow area. To that end, I want y’all to check out these [...]

A Carteret County nudist accused of snapping nude photos of little boys is out on bail. Read that here. And a huge welcome back to Daily News Carteret County reporter Jannette Pippinwho has been on vacation. She goes away and all hell breaks loose – literally with the Croatan National Forest wildfire. She does a great [...]

Sometimes reporters are relieved when a big story breaks outside their coverage area. Lord knows we have enough on our plate on a daily basis. But sometimes a story is just so good reporters hate to see it pass with no local connection. Such was the case when the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today that a [...]

Read news here. The Daily News does not usually identify the alleged victims of sexual assault (a long-standing policy I do not totally agree with). But in this case, the wife had an interview with a New Jersey newspaper which identified her as the wife and then had an interview with her father. The newspaper [...]

I have read on this blog and heard it elsewhere that Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown was laughing at the horrible smell coming from a Deerfield home last week where a woman was charged with allowing her children and animals to live in the same area.   I have something to say about this and [...]

Monday marks the one year anniversary of Off the Cuff. For the last 365 days this blog has seemed both blessing and curse, eagle and albatross. People have been able to express themselves and tear other people down. People have treated others with respect and operated outside the designed perimeters to insult third parties. I [...]

I get e-mails and phone calls from time to time from people involved in a criminal case and curious about when a certain person is going to trial. They say they have looked up a name on the N.C. Court System Calendar and see that the person is scheduled to appear in court on such [...]

This post is to address comments on jdnews.com on the follow-up report about a Marine accused of secret peeping. This is my opinion and does not reflect the opinion of The Daily News or Freedom Communications. This should be common sense, but a lot of people have been asking me this lately and accusing me [...]

The Daily News racked up eight awards this year from the North Carolina Press Association. If you look at the news story, you will see each award makes perfect sense. Timmi Toler is the best when it comes to columns, John Althouse is a master photographer, Jennifer Hlad’s Afganistan blog put mine to shame and [...]

I have been up in Raleigh accepting my award for investigative journalism. Tell you about that Friday. Bumped into Kinston Free Press content editor Bryan Hanks and he told me to check out his blog (which I do often, mostly for the eye candy). Anyway, he slams what he sees as sloppy journalism by a [...]

I should have posted earlier today, but I have been busy… For the last several days, WNCT’s Laura Vesco, WITN’s Chelsea Donovan and I have been in a race to get confirmation on a story with huge implications. We all struck gold at about the same time this morning. At least one Camp Lejeune Marine is [...]

OK. I don’t think we are supposed to be talking about internal operations, so if this post is gone, you will know why… Molly DeWitt won an argument with me the other day. It was an argument I was proud to have and happy to lose. You see, we were arguing over who would get to [...]

Almost one year exactly from when Maria Lauterbach’s body was found and authorities announced her assailant had fled to Mexico, history is repeating itself just north of here. The missing Sampson County woman I told you about Friday is dead. Authorities found her body in a wooded area not far from her home this weekend, [...]

Mike and I are getting better and better at following paper trails. The ladies at the various downtown offices should be getting to know us pretty well by now. For instance, here is an article which sheds more light on an earlier story about a Camp Lejeune Marine charged with getting teenage girls drunk at a party, [...]

Vickie Babbitt and Vickie Lewis have many obvious differences – age, race, etc.But they share a common denominator that has affected their lives and the lives of their families. The two women, married to Marines, became involved in an extramarital relationship that altered their futures forever. Babbitt, released on bond, stands accused of helping to kill [...]

UPDATED: The guy who was hassling Laura at the courthouse yesterday and played badass with authorities was arrested for drug possession and placed in the Onslow County Jail with a $10,000 bond. He has weapons charges hanging over his head along with a couple of disorderly conducts and resiting an officer. He was on probation for larceny and drug [...]

Former WCTI-TV cameraman Eugene Shelton was found guilty of obstructing an officer Thursday. Eugene waiting for his trial.  Read the article here. As I reported earlier this year on the blog, Eugene is a friend of mine. I have heard through mutual friends that he thinks I threw him under the bus, but it isn’t [...]

My favorite writer, Ernest Hemingway once said that when it comes to writing, it is more important what you leave out than what you put in. As a writer who got his start in the newspaper business, Papa knew what he was talking about. I had a good conversation Friday with a high-ranking Camp Lejeune official. [...]

An article about a convicted child sex offender being sentenced to continuous satellite-based monitoring is Online here. I wrote about the Orwellian aspects of monitoring child molesters back July when the governor signed it into law. As the father of five children, I certainly want the government to monitor convicted child sex offenders as much as [...]

While I was surfing WRAL.com today, I came across this article. I remember this case from reading the local newspaper while going to college and working as a night watchman in Sanford. The carrier would deliver the paper at about 4 a.m. every morning to the faucet manufacturing plant I was working at. I looked [...]

WRAL’s Gerald Owens interviewed me about a week ago in reference to the William Miller cold case. The story posted on NC Most Wanted and WRAL‘s Web sites today. The video package includes interviews with Sheriff’s Capt. Rick Sutherland and myself.  ————————————————————-  Also, edited for space in the last cold case article about Court Street – the bludgeoning death [...]