3 unsolved cases that still hold Charlotte’s attention

Here are three puzzling, unsolved homicide cases that took place in Charlotte, including one from the 1950s.

Editor’s Note: Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of these unsolved crimes.

The disappearance of Kyle Fleischmann

Backstory: 24-year-old Kyle Fleischmann vanished after attending a Dane Cook comedy show with a group of friends on November 9, 2007.

Timeline: Phone records provide some insight as to how the rest of Fleischmann’s night unfolded, but the full picture remains unclear.

• At 2:18am, Fleischmann attempted to call his sister while making his way to Fuel Pizza but didn’t get an answer. A Fuel Pizza employee has confirmed that he ate two slices of pizza at 2:20am.
• While at Fuel, he made a handful of phone calls at 2:42am — one to a local business he’d visited earlier that day, another to his voicemail and several to his father’s office phone, all of which were sent to voicemail. This series of calls took place over the span of 15 minutes.
• At 3:28am, Fleischmann called his best friend and then his roommate, both of which lasted four and six seconds respectively. He didn’t leave a message for either.
• The employee at Fuel doesn’t remember him leaving, but a cab driver saw a man, believed to be Fleischmann, near Hunter Wrecker Service on North Davidson Street at 3:25am. Police are certain it was him, as his cell phone pinged a tower close to that area three minutes later.
• No more phone calls were made after that, and his bank accounts became inactive.

People searched for weeks and never came across any additional information about where he went or what happened. Fleischmann’s parents suspect that he was murdered and buried underneath a NoDa apartment complex, but authorities say they’ve searched the area thoroughly but with no luck.

Have information? Contact Charlotte Crime Stoppers.

Irina “Ira” Yarmolenko

Backstory: On May 5, 2008, Ira Yarmolenko, a 20-year-old UNC Charlotte student, was found deceased near her car at the bottom of a steep embankment along the Catawba River. A bungee cord, a ribbon from her bag and her own hoodie drawstring were wrapped around her neck, according to multiple reports. According to detectives, she was lying on her back and her clothes and hair were wet.

• The man who found Yarmolenko said there was nobody in the immediate vicinity, except for Mark Carver and his cousin Neal Cassada, who were fishing about 100 yards away from the crime scene.
• Carver and Cassada were charged with Yarmolenko’s murder, but both maintained their innocence. A medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was asphyxiation, raising questions about whether she took her own life.

Timeline:

• At 10:18am, Yarmolenko stopped at a credit union.
• Just after 10:30am, she went to Goodwill.
• At 10:50am, Yarmolenko dropped off a goodbye gift on her way to Mount Holly.
• She passed the Stowe Family YMCA at 11:09am before going down the embankment at about 15 miles per hour and hitting a tree stump.

Detectives said that DNA from Carver and Cassada was found on some of the items around Yarmolenko’s neck. During his trial, Carver responded to a question about Yarmolenko’s height despite initially saying that he never saw her.

The latest: In 2019, a judge overturned Carver’s 2011 conviction and he walked free of his charges. Today, the Gaston County’s district attorney’s office is working to get Carver’s DNA evidence retested for a possible retrial, according to a January 2022 WSOC story.

• A website is dedicated to proving Mark Carver’s innocence insists that Yarmolenko’s death was a suicide.

The double murder of John and Annie Starnes

Backstory: This case goes back to the 1950s. John and Annie Starnes, a couple from Rutherford County, moved to Charlotte in the late 1940s, where they worked at their Pilot Restaurant until retirement in the mid-1950s.

• The Starneses had established a community of friends from serving folks in the area, and one of those friends was Charles B. Wright, who was also a restaurant owner.
• On May 19, 1963, Wright noticed that the couple hadn’t been seen for several days. He went to their house but no one answered the door, so he contacted CMPD.
• Once inside, the police made a discovery that was beyond gruesome: both John and Annie were found in their master bedroom with stab wounds and blood on the walls and door frames in what must’ve been a violent struggle. Their bodies had been there for two days, according to David Aaron Moore’s book Charlotte: Murder, Mystery and Mayhem.

Around the same time, two similar murders occurred in Virginia. When CMPD interviewed suspect Luther Durham Jr. of Guilford County, he told them that he’d been with his girlfriend, Alice Fritz, at the time.

• The couple was traveling with Alice’s sister, Myrtle, and stepfather, George, when they ran into car trouble while passing through Charlotte. Durham dropped the three of them off at the Starnes house, whom George claimed to know, while he went to a service station.
• Durham claimed to have seen John Starnes open the door for the three of them, which raises the question of what happened between then and when the John and Annie were murdered — or whether Durham made up the story about dropping them off to begin with.

As of 2019, Durham, Fritz and Fritz’s family members involved were all deceased, so these questions may go forever unanswered.

Go deeper: You can read more about the Starnes case here.