Parents refuse to give up hope

By Laura Arenschield
Staff writer
BROADWAY — Karen Riojas fans out photographs of her oldest daughter and gazes at them in heartbroken admiration.
The pictures are all she has for now. Her daughter, 23-year-old Julie Michelle Bullard, was kidnapped 23 days ago during a robbery at her boyfriend’s home.
In one picture, an infant Michelle Bullard snuggles between her mother and father.
In another, a teenage Michelle wears a gold cowboy hat, posing for a glamour shot.
Then there is Michelle on graduation day, wearing a black cap and gown, her trademark smile lighting up the camera.
“She had the most beautiful brown hair,” Riojas says. “And she had the most beautiful brown eyes.”
Her eyes glistening with tears, Riojas shakes her head and corrects herself.
“Has,” she says forcefully. “Michelle has the most beautiful brown hair and eyes.”
Nearly four weeks have passed since the kidnapping outside Broadway.
Searchers plan to spend today combing fields near where Michelle’s wallet was found this week.
Julian Bullard, Michelle’s father, said volunteers are welcome. They will meet between 8 and 9 a.m. at the intersection of Bogie Island Road and N.C. 53, he said.
They will look for any hint of what has happened to Michelle since the morning of Jan. 2.
It was about 1 a.m., and Bullard was watching a movie with her boyfriend, his roommate and a family friend. The robber, his face covered, walked into the home and waved a gun. He robbed them, bound the other three people with tape and put them in separate rooms. When the others broke free, Bullard was gone.
Since then, clues have trickled in, each one raising her family’s hope.
The tips started the day she disappeared: David Wilson, a Harnett County man who spent 23 years in prison for murder, shot himself inside his truck when a sheriff’s deputy started to approach him.
Riojas said Michelle didn’t know Wilson, but investigators pointed out the coincidence: Wilson, 49, committed suicide about six miles from where Bullard was last seen.
A Broadway convenience store manager later said Bullard and Wilson were in the store at the same time the night of Jan. 1 — hours before Bullard was kidnapped — but said the two did not come in together or talk while they were in the store.
Investigators later said there is no evidence Wilson robbed the home or took Bullard.
A few weeks later, a man working on his backhoe found Bullard’s wallet in a roadside ditch in the Cedar Creek community in eastern Cumberland County.
Searchers combed the area and found other items, including socks, a purse and boxer shorts. Debbie Tanna, spokeswoman for the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, said there is no evidence those items are linked to Bullard’s disappearance.
Horrible ups and downs

For Bullard’s parents, hearing each tip is like sitting on a nightmarish see-saw.
“You just hope someone’s going to wake you up,” Julian Bullard said Friday. “We go from day to day not knowing what day it is.”
The North Carolina branch of the Missing You Foundation, an organization that helps people with missing family members, posted fliers with Michelle’s picture around North Carolina.
Missing You also has organized searches near Broadway, where Bullard disappeared, and along Bogie Island Road, where her wallet was found.
Riojas said she knows the statistics: After 72 hours, the odds are slim that a missing person is still alive.
But slim odds are better than no odds, so Julian Bullard and Karen Riojas will spend today wading through the fields along Bogie Island Road.
Pleas on television

Every person who hears about Michelle’s disappearance is one more person who might know what happened to her, so Riojas has appeared three times on CNN and once on Fox News.
Riojas remembers sitting in front of the TV last summer, watching coverage of a teenager missing in Aruba. She remembers seeing the girl’s mother, remembers how the agony and frustration built on the woman’s face with every interview.
“And now here I am, going through it myself,” Riojas said. “No mother should have to spend the rest of her life wondering where her child is.”
Tanna, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said national coverage doesn’t hurt the case, but she doesn’t think it helps. She said detectives have not gotten meaningful tips from the shows’ viewers.
To Riojas, though, no chance is too slim.
“I’ll never turn down a chance to take Michelle’s story nationwide,” she said. “If I only focus locally, I might miss an opportunity to reach someone who knows something.”
She has a message for the kidnapper, one she has repeated over and over: “Actions speak louder than words,” she said. “Emphasize that. Actions speak louder than words.”
And neither parent will give up the search.
“I love Michelle,” Riojas said. “I love my baby. And I hope and pray I don’t have to spend the rest of my life asking: ‘Where is my baby?’”
***

Mystery Disappearance
Jan. 1: Julie Michelle Bullard , 23, and David Earl Wilson, 49, shop at the same time in a convenience store, but don’t appear to be together.
Jan. 2: Bullard disappears at 1 a.m. during a robbery at her boyfriend’s house on Bradley Road near Broadway. Friends who were there say the robber threatened them with a gun, then taped them up and put them in separate rooms. When they got free, Bullard was gone. Investigators search a pond, fields and wooded areas within 16 square miles of the mobile home, but find nothing.
Jan. 2: David Earl Wilson, 49, commits suicide along a road in Harnett County, just outside Broadway, about six miles from where Bullard disappeared.
Jan. 3: Searchers continue to comb the area around the mobile home for clues. They question whether Wilson could have kidnapped Bullard and say the location and timing of his suicide is suspicious.
Jan. 6: A friend of Bullard’s offers a $10,000 reward to anyone who comes forward with information about Bullard’s disappearance.
Jan. 11: A manager at a Broadway convenience store says surveillance tape shows Bullard and Wilson in the store at the same time. A CNN crime show features Bullard’s case.
Jan. 20: A Cumberland County man finds Bullard’s wallet in a ditch along Bogie Island Road , near Cedar Creek, in the eastern part of the county. Subsequent searches find other material related to the case, but no sign of Bullard.
Jan. 25: Maurice Godwin , a Fayetteville criminal profiler, says Bullard probably is in an area near Bogie Island Road.

 

Questions abound in case of missing Lee County woman

By Julia Oliver
Staff writer

BROADWAY — Authorities investigating the disappearance of a Lee County woman said Tuesday they were having trouble sorting through conflicting witness reports and other information. They said they are trying to rule out any link to a Harnett County suicide.
“We’ve got five scenarios on the table,” said Harnett County Sheriff Larry Rollins.
“All of them have no evidence that we can give them credence.”
The 23-year-old woman, Julie Michelle Bullard, was reported missing Monday. Witnesses said that around 1 that morning, a man broke into a mobile home she was visiting on Bradley Road just outside Broadway. The man, who had a gun, taped up three people in the home — Bullard’s boyfriend, his roommate in the mobile home and woman who was a family friend of Bullard’s — put them in separate rooms and stole money and small items, according to information the Lee County Sheriff’s Department released Monday.
The three people told authorities that when they managed to get free, they discovered Bullard was gone.
Investigators searched a lake and woods near the mobile home Monday. They have said there is no evidence that the people who reported the incident knew the burglar.
But Lee County Sheriff Billy Bryant said Tuesday that authorities were having difficulty pinning down what the man looks like.
“We got about three different descriptions,” Bryant said.
Investigators tried Tuesday to rule out the involvement of a 49-year-old man who committed suicide in Harnett County around 7 p.m. Monday evening.
Rollins said the location and the timing of the suicide by David Earl Wilson, who had also been reported missing, seemed suspicious.
A Harnett County deputy driving on McArthur Road near the town of Broadway had seen Wilson’s gray truck, which was described in the missing persons report, Rollins said.
The deputy turned his car around to get a better look. Wilson pulled over, then pulled back onto the road when the deputy began to leave his car. Wilson pulled over a second time, and the deputy saw a muzzle flash as the man shot himself. The truck rolled off the road into the woods.
Both Rollins and Bryant said they could neither link Wilson to Bullard’s disappearance nor eliminate his involvement as a possibility. At least one lawman showed a neighbor of the Bradley Lane mobile home an image of a gray pickup truck and asked if he had seen it around.
Bryant said investigators are still following other leads in the case.
“We did not come up with anything concrete,” he said.
Recent relationship
Several of Bullard’s family members and her boss at the Fairview Dairy Bar, a popular diner in Sanford, said she had recently begun dating one of the men who live in the mobile home. They identified him only as Will.
Bullard’s grandmother, Terzel Brown, said Bullard had completed her GED recently and plans to go to college. She had been particularly happy at Christmas, Brown remembered.
“She just felt like she had accomplished some things,” Brown said.
Kathy Freedle, the owner of the Dairy Bar, described Bullard as a dependable worker.
“She’s a good girl,” Freedle said. “She’s not one of these comes in here, works a week then is gone.”
Freedle said Bullard left work on New Years’ Eve with the intention of going out to party. A co-worker who is also a close friend of Bullard’s called her all day Sunday and Monday without reaching her, Freedle said.
The staff has been broken up about Bullard’s disappearance, Freedle said. They, and regulars at the community hangout who ask after Bullard, have a lot of questions.
“We really have heard a lot of confusing things,” Freedle said.
Bullard’s father, Julian Bullard, who had organized a search for his daughter Monday, said he and a band of about 15 or 20 volunteers continued combing the area Tuesday morning in automobiles and on four-wheelers.
“We all went back out and just rode the roads,” he said.
He said he felt lost waiting for investigators to give the family information. But he didn’t know what else to do.
“We’re taking one hour at a time,” he said.
Staff writer Julia Oliver can be reached at oliverj@fayettevillenc.com or 323-4848 ext. 280.

 

Police ask: Is suicide tied to abduction?
A plumber who lived near the kidnapping scene shoots himself as a deputy approaches
Julie Michelle Bullard was abducted Monday.Jim Nesbitt and Barbara Barrett, Staff Writers
The hunt for a pistol-wielding masked man who abducted a woman during a Lee County home invasion widened Tuesday as investigators searched for a possible link to an apparent suicide in nearby western Harnett County.
David Wilson, 49, a plumber who lived about six miles southeast of the quiet rural lane where the home invasion took place, shot himself once in the torso with a handgun around 7:15 p.m. Monday, said Maj. Gary McNeill of the Harnett sheriff's office. Wilson was sitting in his pickup as a deputy sheriff pulled up to question him.
There was no sign of the missing woman, Julie Michelle Bullard, 22, said McNeill. He said investigators aren't sure Wilson is connected to the home invasion and abduction, which took place around 1:30 a.m. Monday while Bullard and three others were watching a movie in her boyfriend's single-wide near the town of Broadway.
"Right now, there's no direct link," he said.Because of the close proximity and timing of the home invasion and Wilson's apparent suicide, Lee County authorities are taking a hard look at both, said Chief Deputy Kevin Bryant of the Lee sheriff's office. But Bryant also said Wilson's death is one of several leads being checked by his detectives and agents with the State Bureau of Investigation.
"At this point, we're looking at all possibilities," said Bryant. "I've got detectives everywhere. We're looking at everything."
Wilson's wife reported him missing Monday morning, McNeill said. A deputy saw Wilson halt his tan 2003 Ford pickup on the side of Cameron Road, about a mile from his home, and stopped to question him because the truck matched the description in the missing person report.
As the deputy pulled up, Wilson shot himself and died in his truck, said McNeill.
Wilson worked for Village Plumbing Co. of Chapel Hill, said his brother-in-law, Ken Roberts, who also lives on Cameron Road. Roberts said he and other family members can't explain Wilson's apparent suicide.
"It shocked me big time," said Roberts. "It's just something you wouldn't think would happen. He was the type of person who lived life to the fullest."
Investigators have not mentioned the Lee County home invasion and abduction to Wilson's family, said Roberts.
"They never said nothing about him being involved in that -- not to us, no way," he said.
Early Monday morning, a masked man wearing a camouflage jacket and jeans walked through the unlocked storm door of the gray single-wide on Bradley Road, said Bryant. The trailer's front door was open.
The man ordered Bullard, her boyfriend and another couple to lie on the floor. He bound their hands with heavy tape, said Bryant, and ordered each of the four into different rooms. He then searched the trailer for valuables.
After hearing no noise for several minutes, three of the people shed their bonds and realized Bullard was missing, said Bryant. The suspect also took an unspecified amount of cash, a cell phone and a wallet.
Bryant discounted rumors of a staged abduction. "We're not looking into that," he said. "The best comeback on that is -- have you ever had a gun stuck in your face? You've got a suspect brandishing a handgun, saying lay down -- who's going to be a hero?"
By Tuesday afternoon, officers had halted their search of the pond behind the single-wide rented by Bullard's boyfriend and the thick copse of woods that separates Bradley Road from the missing woman's home on Burgess Circle.
But family and friends continued their informal search for Bullard. Her father, Julian Bullard, said family members had been driving everywhere they could think of to look for her.
"We've just been riding around -- riding, looking all over, trying to find something," he said.
Angela Lockamy, 23, attended Lee County High School in Sanford with Bullard. She said Bullard had been dating the man who lived in the Bradley Road trailer for a couple of months. Lockamy did not know the man's full name, and authorities would not identify him.
All day Monday, divers plunged into the pond while deputies with dogs and police officers on ATVs combed the woods and a field behind the trailer, Lockamy said. They also questioned her about her ATV and checked its treads.
"I think when they find her, it's not going to be too good from the sound of it," Lockamy said. "This is the worst that's ever happened down here, and I've lived down here my whole life. I'm scared to leave my door unlocked now."
Staff writer Jim Nesbitt can be reached at (919) 829-8955 or jim.nesbitt@newsobserver.com.

 

Plea made for missing woman
By JUSTIN STORY
SANFORD - The mother of Julie Michelle Bullard made an emotional plea Wednesday for any help that could lead to the location of her missing 23-year-old daughter.
“As Michelle's mother, I'm pleading for anyone who has any information to please contact the Lee County Sheriff's Department,” said Karen Riojas at a press conference in front of the Lee County Sheriff's Office. “We want her back in our arms one more time so we can let her continue her life as she deserves to be able to live it.”
Shortly after Riojas' plea, law enforcement officials said they had suspended ground searches for Bullard for the time being.
“There is no ground search at this particular moment, but that's not saying there won't be any new ones as time goes by,” said Chief Deputy Kevin Bryant of the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
Investigators have searched a 16-square mile area of land near the mobile home at 6504 Bradley Road, where a masked white man entered with a handgun about 1:30 a.m. Monday morning.
The man tied up the four people inside the trailer, ordering each one into separate rooms and taking money and cell phones from the victims before leaving. When three of the victims were able to free themselves, they saw that Bullard was missing.
The search area included a pond and a wooded area that law enforcement combed over until Tuesday afternoon.
Bryant said investigators have suspended their ground searches for Bullard, because no new information has been received suggesting new areas of land for law enforcement to cover.
“We haven't been getting as many leads as we had during the first two days, though we continue to get leads every day,” Bryant said. “Any type of lead we have in any county, we're sending our detectives there to follow through.”
The State Bureau of Investigations has been assisting the sheriff's office for this case by offering its manpower, lab technology and other resources.
Bullard's relatives, meanwhile, have been conducting informal searches of their own, meeting up at Bullard's mobile home at 108 Burgess Circle and searching significant portions of Lee County for her.
Bryant said investigators have not ruled out the possibility of a connection between Bullard's alleged abduction and the suicide of a man in Harnett County.
David Wilson, 49, who lived about six miles from the Bradley Road mobile home where the robbery took place, fatally shot himself about 7:15 p.m. Monday during a traffic stop as a Harnett County Sheriff's deputy approached to question him.
“I can't rule that out, but I don't know for certain that there is a connection,” Bryant said.
Family members describe Bullard as about 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing between 105-115 pounds. The sheriff's office is offering a reward for information leading to Bullard's whereabouts.
Anyone with information can contact the sheriff's office at (919) 775-5531 or use the confidential tip line at (919) 718-4577.

 

Sheriff's department suspends ground search; still pursuing all leads
By JUSTIN STORY
BROADWAY - Terzel Brown waited by the phone Wednesday morning, anticipating the calls from worried relatives. All the while, she held out hope that the next person calling would be her missing granddaughter.
It's becoming all too familiar for Brown, who has spent the better part of this week sitting by the phone in the home of Julie Michelle Bullard.
Bullard, 23, was reported missing after she was apparently abducted during a robbery at around 1:30 a.m. Monday at a mobile home at 6504 Bradley Road, just outside of the Broadway city limits.
In the days since the robbery, Brown has been taking care of Bullard's home and consoling the many relatives who have visited this week.
The home has served as the central meeting point for family members who have scoured the surrounding area into Harnett County in their attempts to locate Bullard.
Brown said she enjoys a very close relationship with her granddaughter; the two often talked on the phone as often as 10 times a week.
“I enjoyed being a big part of her life and she enjoyed keeping into mine,” said Brown, who is also caring for Bullard's cat, Gizmo.
The last time the two talked was around 4 p.m. Sunday, about nine hours before the robbery reportedly took place.
Brown said the conversation was interrupted when the battery on her cell phone ran out of power, but she could have imagined how the call may have concluded.
“We always ended by saying ‘I love you,'” Brown said.
Wednesday morning, about 20 family members gathered in front of the modest, gray single-wide mobile home at 108 Burgess Circle that Bullard moved into recently and determined where they would go to search for her.
Earlier gatherings have been more emotional.
“Monday night was the crying session for all of us,” Brown said. “I had my time, too, but I'm just trusting that they can find her.”
Shirley Washington lives next door to Bullard on Burgess Circle. The two seldom interacted, but Washington remembers Bullard introducing herself upon moving into the neighborhood roughly three months ago.
“She was very energetic and excited about moving into her own place,” Washington said. “She was a very friendly young lady.”
Bullard could often be found with a smile on her face, or with a phone to her ear while talking with a friend, according to her sister Lydia, 19.
“Michelle has a very bubbly personality,” said Lydia, a student at Central Carolina Community College, who said her sister had planned to eventually enroll in college herself.
Brown continues to wait for the call that will produce her granddaughter's voice, and she pledges to remain optimistic while Julie Bullard remains missing.
“You have to just think that everything is going to be OK,” Brown said. “I think through the grace of the Lord, we can provide some means to connect her to life, and I'm not going to change my viewpoint until something changes it.”