How is it that America, not just Lee County, but America, care so little for innocent victims? Sure a handful of folk are trying, volunteering, sacrificing. Some have made it their profession to advocate for the victims, some choose a career to hunt down or prosecute the criminals that prey upon the innocent. Very few are Good Samaritans. A recent example of what it takes to be a Samaritan is Amanda Williams Cristello, who has put up $10,000 of her and her husband's hard earned money to help bring home Julie Michelle Bullard, a 23 year old that was abducted at gunpoint, a 23 year old missing woman that the Cristellos have never met.

Michelle Bullard gets abducted, America sits, waits for someone else to do it, to look for her, to find her, to find out what happend so there is no more fear, no more questions. I am now middle-aged so I am reaching back, way back when I remember the old TV show Soap. It was actor Billy Crystal's first starring role. The butler Benson, played by Robert Guillaume, would ask whenever the doorbell rang, "You want me to get that?" as if Benson didn't have something better to do, or perhaps he was thought to be lazy. We lay on the couch complaining of our bad backs. Are we really too busy to answer the door ourselves or do we want others to do the job for us.

WANT ME TO GET THAT?

An 80 year old woman, Ruthie Jane Morgan, was last seen alive Tuesday afternoon in rural Moore County. Miss Ruthie was discovered yesterday by a search team, she was murdered behind her pig farm. A North Carolina State Highway Patrol Helicopter was asked to aid in the search around noon Wednesday, the helicopter arrived at the scene at 1:19 and spotted the body at 1:57. Michelle Bullard of Broadway, NC went missing Monday morning, January 2nd, in rural Lee County, perhaps the first missing person of the year. On January 6th the State Helicopter was brought in for a couple of hours, searching for clues as to the whereabouts of Michelle.

David Earl Wilson, a 49 year old convicted murderer residing in Harnett County, was also reported missing at 9AM Monday morning. Wilson was reported missing, perhaps the second missing person of the year, by his wife of 7 years, Kimberly Roberts Cameron Wilson. Wilson did not return home after his wife sent him to the store, at approximately 1030PM to grab some paper towels. Then Wilson drove a couple of miles into Broadway to purchase the towels at the Kangaroo Convenience Store on Main Street. When David Wilson did not return, his wife became worried and phoned police.

At approximately 1AM, three victims of an armed robbery and home invasion freed themselves and called 911. They reported that a white man wearing a gray sweatshirt and white shoes entered the trailer home through an unlocked door. They did not recognize him, his face was covered. They said the, armed, intruder seemed to be in his mid-thirties, bound them and separated them into different rooms. They also said one of their friends was missing, Michelle Bullard had been taken.

Authorities responded immediately, Deputies from 3 counties came to the scene searching for her. A dog trailed a scent to a small pond on the property, some deputies kicked in the door to her nearby home to search for her. You can imagine all the police cars running up and down the roads and highways searching for any clues whatsoever. In Moore County yesterday they had roadblocks set up to search for Miss Ruthie.

We know Michelle took her pocketbook with her, we know she took her cell phone and we know Michelle left without her shoes. We also know that Michelle Bullard was not the first person the abductor took from the house that night, prior to taking Michelle, he took another girl, returned her and then took Michelle.

We also know that at around 10:50 Sunday night Michelle was seen in the same Kangaroo store as David Wilson. We know this because a Harnett County Deputy discovered it on the Kangaroo store's surveillance tape Monday morning while working the Wilson missing person case. So we also can assume that sometime soon after that, word got around among law enforcement that the two missing persons were together briefly a few hours before the home invasion was reported. There was no indication that Bullard even looked at David Wilson. No indication at all that Michelle knew him.

Just after the 10:50 spotting of Michelle in the store she left a message on her friend Tara Gillum’s voicemail: “Oh my God, I've got some (expletive) to tell you.” The friend called back and Michelle never answered the phone. David Wilson's family began searching for him by driving around Broadway at 11 PM because he failed to answer his cell phone. Michelle isn't answering her phone and neither is Wilson.

Around 1AM, 911 in Lee County received a panicked call from the just freed friends of Michelle's at the house on Bradley Road, 2 miles, at the most, from the Kangaroo store, reporting the abduction and armed robbery.
It is unclear as to the time that the intruder entered the house. Media reports have been incorrect in stating that the invasion happened at 1, that is when the call came into 911.

What we do know is that David Wilson was said to be retrieving some paper towels at 10:30 at night, we don't know why it was so urgent to do this so late at night. We know he was at the store buying paper towels at a little before 11 because he was seen doing so on tape. We know family members went searching for Wilson at 11, we do not know why the family search went out 30 minutes after the wife last talked to him or why they waited until after 9 the next morning to call the Harnett County Sheriff to report him missing. We assume that everyone in this small community had heard by then that Michelle was missing.

A BOLO (be on the lookout) went out looking for him on Monday. Cars were dispatched to search the roadways.
The search was for Wilson's 2003 tan Ford F-150 pickup truck. Someone reported seeing a tan truck near the scene of the crime.

After sundown at around 6PM Monday David Wilson is in phone contact with his family. David Wilson's brother William met with David on Nursery Road to talk. William persuaded his brother David to drive home. William and David drove in separate vehicles, David was behind his brother. William reported seeing a white SUV turn around behind David. David did not keep up and William returned to David's house with David nowhere to be seen. Soon William could see David's truck approach the house and a deputy pull in behind. As the deputy exited his vehicle David Wilson fired a bullet into his own chest, killing himself. The truck was in reverse and the gas pedal was mashed down causing the truck race backwards through a fence and into a pasture.

Wilson was wearing different clothes than the clothes he was seen wearing at the Kangaroo store the night before.

There has been no report of any evidence found in the truck or on the person of David Wilson leading a connection between Michelle Bullard and David Wilson. The Lee County Sheriff's Office and the SBI examined it at the scene and then had it transported to the SBI Lab to do a closer investigation.

In 1974 David Wilson was in an argument at the Sundown Lounge in Cumberland County, he told Thomas Corney that he would return with a gun and shoot and kill him. Wilson did in fact return later and did in fact shoot and kill Mr. Corney. Wilson was shot in the leg as he was making his escape. A bar patron shot Wilson as Wilson fled. David Earl Wilson was charged with First Degree Murder, was allowed to plea to Second Degree Murder and was give a sentence of 40-60 years in prison. In 1980 Wilson and another inmate escaped Wagram Prison by cutting through the fence and they were captured almost a week later in Michigan after a high speed chase that ended in the death of Wilson's passenger and caused serious injuries to himself. (Wilson's face is horribly scarred from he wreck) Wilson was charged with Escape and was given a two year sentence that was to be served concurrently with his 40-60 year sentence. In other words he was not punished for escaping .

Wilson was let out early on parole on September 16, 1998, he was married to his wife Kimberly on December 12, 1998. Kimberly later gives her husband David title to her property on August 5, 1999.

Little is known about Kimberly and David's relationship. We do know that the entire family has been extremely defensive about David's past. We also know that after David's escape in 1980 he was captured near his sister's home.

Notice I am not calling this shooting a suicide, I will wait for the autopsy report. A desperate man, said by his brother to have looked as if he was on drugs, a man guilty of one death if not two (his passenger in the high speed chase died as the result of Wilson attempting to flee), a man that had admitted to have driven around aimlessly over the past 7 hours, he had been struggling with financial ruin and a drug addiction, a man unwilling to stop for the deputy, put the truck in reverse and then BANG.

It is entirely possible for Wilson to have accidentally shot himself. He could have been trying to conceal the handgun, he could have also been attempting to do something sinister. Prison inmates, especially the ones with long sentences, discuss and train how to defend themselves against arrest. My brother Marc showed me how someone could have overpowered and slain Bald Head Island Police Officer Davina Buff Jones with her own weapon. Within a second my arm was twisted up around my back. There could be a technique taught now to wait until the officer approaches the vehicle, place the vehicle in reverse, accelerate backwards, the officer is surprised, has to turn, meanwhile the officer is exposed, no longer tucked somewhat safely behind the doorjamb. If he committed suicide, why did he have the truck in reverse?

These are questions that need answers and will be answered in time. But who cares?

The media calls me for answers to things I find out the same way they can. They don't care. Nearly 90% of what I have found out is simply looking in old public record files and asking for the stuff I can't find and talking to any one I see about what they know or heard or saw.. The other ten percent comes from helping to look for Michelle. Yes, I walk the woods, drive the roads, and put out flyers. I could be doing something else, maybe I should be doing somethng else but instead I am doing this. Most of my friends in the media have 10 hours of hard work everyday, they have no time to do research so they feed off of each other's story. It took almost a week before anyone in the news looked up Wilson's criminal history but meanwhile they will publish a poor pitiful me memorial to his cowardly actions. Media reported last night at 5 that Wilson killed a man in a bar fight, no that's not right, if he would have looked up information regarding the testimony of witnesses there that night, he would have seen that Wilson shot a man with both malice and forethought, it was not done in the heat of the moment, during a struggle, as the the reporter suggested. There is a difference, a big difference. This morning a reporter from the Fayetteville Observer at least went to talk to the Corney victim's family. Good job. In that article she wrote, Family members of the man Wilson shot in 1975, a Fayetteville bar owner named Thomas C. Corney, said hearing about the murder again after 30 years has been difficult. Corney’s son, Tom Corney Jr., who lives in Hope Mills, was 9 years old when his father was killed.
“It brings back some very bad memories,” he said.
He said his family is particularly troubled by the way Myatt (David Wilson's sister) characterized the shooting as self-defense. According to newspaper accounts from 1975, witnesses said David Wilson had been causing problems at the bar and was thrown out. He threatened to kill Corney, left, then came back with a gun, witnesses said. He shot Corney in the chest.
Bobby Corney, an older brother of the bar owner, said he hoped David Wilson did turn his life around. But he believes Wilson’s family is unfairly characterizing his crime.
“I’m sorry for Wilson’s family. I’m not sorry that he’s dead. I have to forgive him for what he did,” Bobby Corney said.
“I want the record to be straight.”

Media left the Bullard family in the dust to go chase the next story, and we all know that there are tons of other stories out there to cover. My wife pointed out last night as we watched the Nancy Grace Show, on Monday night Nancy told the mother of Michelle Bullard, "Karen... Karen.. We're not letting go of this," yet last night I saw no mention of Michelle Bullard. No mention since I don't know when, last week maybe, in the Raleigh News & Observer. No one cares. We are a nation of over-worked, over-paid, over-fed, over-burdened, over-committed, over-whelmed, over-medicated, over-populated, over-developed, over-pitched, over-used, and over-tired people. And because of that we over-look the obvious, we over-look each other. I am afraid that soon we will all over-look MIchelle.

Certainly those family members and close friends on both the Bullard side and the Wilson side are anxious for answers. But that is about it. Not many others care, or will care next month.Their time is valuable, much too valuable to pause a second to think how they could help and act on it.

America is spending their time and money on other things, important things... to them. About two million people over the past couple of weeks have seen the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain, more disturbingly is that a just released horror movie titled Hostel depicts the most brutal, sadistic tortures and suffering ever seen on the screen, yet it has an opening box office weekend of 19.6 million dollars knocking the Christian themed Chronicles of Narnia out of the top spot. Folks America has a broken back, we are paralyzed from the neck down, we can't react or fight back, our heart is numb. No one seems to care. The lack of attention to Michelle Bullard's abduction was the last straw and it should be yours too. We can't take anymore! We are over-loaded.

Pictures taken from the horror film HOSTEL - currently #1 at the Box Office

Since when was it that a couple of million people would rather watch some people be tortured than search for someone that is missing or help someone who is suffering, and not just watch the horror film but spend money and time to do so. Time and money better spent. What happened to us? Am I the only one that went to Sunday School? It's more than a shame, it is the sign the fruit loop Pat Robertson has been waiting for, it is the end, our backs have been broken and I can finally see it.

So I think I understand it when the butler on the TV show Soap wants to know if someone wants him to get the door, he had to drop what he was doing because others pay no attention to anything outside their immediate conversation, their own little selfish world. Why get up to see if someone came to the door for help, or was needing to deliver an important message requiring an immediate response, most often it was someone just needing to be let in, to come home. Let someone else do that though, a servant, someone who serves others. Why? Because it's the way things are done. Someone else should get it, it's status quo. And that's why Benson ends up getting it.

I got it now.