Our card this week is Deborah Perry, the 3 of Spades from South Carolina. Three decades have passed since 29-year-old Deborah Perry was found shot to death on a rural cul-de-sac outside Columbia, South Carolina, and her killer has never been caught. As cold case investigators follow new leads, Deborah’s daughter wonders if a pair of flowered pants and men’s underwear her mother was found holding could be the key to cracking the case.If you have information about the 1994 murder of Deborah Perry please contact Crimestoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/deborah-perry Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: Who was Deborah Perry?
Our card this week is Deborah Perry, the King of Spades from South Carolina. Now, many of you may recognize my voice from other audio chuck shows like Counter Clock, season seven literally just kicked off last month, or Park Predators, our summer show, which is now a weekly show. I know last week you heard from Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East.
Well, this week, Ashley is passing the mic over to me to tell you about a cold case from the Carolinas that needs your attention. For 30 years, the unsolved murder of a young mother found shot to death on an isolated South Carolina cul-de-sac has haunted her family. They feared they'd carry the mystery of Deborah's death to their own graves.
Chapter 2: What happened to Deborah Perry on October 23, 1994?
That is, until our investigation raised new questions and sparked fresh hope. I'm Delia D'Ambra, and this is The Deck. At 11.20 a.m. on Sunday, October 23rd, 1994, two officers from the Richland County Sheriff's Department responded to a call about a possible homicide on quiet rural Chartel Circle.
As they pulled towards the end of the one-block street, they spotted something eerie that honestly sounds like a scene from a horror movie. Four people standing at the edge of a cul-de-sac, all pointing in the same direction, at the body of a young woman lying motionless on the asphalt.
He walked up and the first thing he noticed was blood around the head of this female, partially clothed, shoes and other clothing materials awry around her body. I'm pretty sure that the first thing he thought, oh, this is a murder. Not like an accident or something, it looks pretty heinous.
That's Richland County Sheriff's Department cold case investigator Jeff Fuller. He said when the officers took a closer look, they saw the woman had an apparent gunshot wound to the head, a likely source for all that blood pooled under it. And there was so much blood. He said there was no doubt she'd been shot right there where she lay now.
The young woman was wearing a white crew neck sweatshirt with a black bra underneath, but she was nude from the waist down, except for the socks on her feet and a pair of blue and green flower printed pants clutched against her chest and draped over her torso.
It looks like she's trying to cover herself up. So apparently that was done before she was shot because she was shot in such a way that she couldn't do it afterwards, I don't think.
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Chapter 3: What evidence was found at the crime scene?
There was no size marked on the tag of the pants, but when police carefully removed them from her grasp, they found a pair of men's briefs, size 32-34 waist, that were inside. As far as what else they gathered from around the scene, it was kind of a mixed bag. Some items felt significant, but they also had to wade through a lot of trash that was scattered around the general area.
For some context, the cul-de-sac itself was surrounded only by weeds and woods, and the area seemed to be a popular spot for the things people do in the dark.
Those remote areas attracts people doing things surreptitiously, whether they're making out or drinking beer or doing drugs. It's everywhere on those kind of areas. It's kind of like going to a state park and trying to figure out Joe Smith's beer can out of all those that are laying around. It's hard to do it.
Officers gathered more than a dozen items from the general vicinity, including beer cans, some discarded clothing, and a towel found along the edge of the woods. They didn't know if any of that would relate to their victim, but better safe than sorry. There were some other items closer to where she was found, though, that felt more promising.
Officers collected two nine millimeter shell casings, one from under her head and one by her feet. They also collected a condom and a condom wrapper and a pair of white high top sneakers that had been placed on the soles side by side near her feet. Officers also photographed some tire skid marks on the pavement at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, more than 50 feet from where she lay.
The only other physical evidence they got would come from her autopsy. According to that report, she appeared to have been pretty healthy before her death. The coroner found she'd actually been shot twice in the head. The first bullet entered her left cheek and exited just above her right ear. And the second entered the right side of her head near the top of her skull.
That one was found lodged around her left cheekbone. The location and upward angle of the first gunshot wound told investigators she was likely in a car and possibly trying to get out when she was shot.
Now, at this point, you don't know if that's a fatal shot. It could have gone through the sinus cavities. It probably was a fatal shot shortly. But then is the person jumping out of the car when this happens and the head's tilted down making that shot? How does that get to be at that angle? Are they jumping out and get shot?
And then I think you could make a very high percentage guess that once the person was on the ground, there was a shot to the head.
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Chapter 4: What led to Deborah's identification?
Along with her name, they got an address where she'd last been living, seven miles from Chartel Circle. A few residents in the area reportedly saw her leaving home the night before, Saturday, October 22nd. She told at least one of them she was going to make a phone call, and this is 1994, so she was probably heading to use a payphone at a nearby corner store.
But who she called, where she called from, how she got from there to Chartel Circle, and why she was there at all is a mystery. It's not an easy walk from that apartment to the cul-de-sac, and it isn't somewhere you just happen to come across, which would indicate she got there by car.
Fuller told us investigators learned she might have known people in the Chartel Circle area and been involved in sex work. And a toxicology report came back positive for cocaine in her system, so maybe she was there to purchase from someone or to meet a client and things got out of hand.
There were too many questions and not enough answers, but investigators hoped her family might be able to give them more. Soon after Deborah was identified, Richland County investigators learned she had seven children, all of whom were in foster care, having been removed from her care sometime after her arrest for the forgery charge.
The father of her children, a guy named Danny Davis, was in prison on an accessory to robbery charge. So they contacted Danny's sister, Jennifer Davis, who would end up helping raise Debra's children along with her mom and her grandmother. Jennifer actually went down to the morgue to identify Debra.
Debra's hair was cut very short, and that wasn't the only physical change since Jennifer had last seen her several years earlier.
She had lost a whole lot of weight. Like, she just was running, you know, just in the streets, just running. It was terrible. I can say I'm a tough cookie. And I've been in the nursing field also, so I guess I was able to handle that.
That was Jennifer. And after speaking with her and the family, investigators learned Deborah's struggles began early. She'd grown up in New York City, close to Jennifer and Danny's family. Jennifer told us she'd actually visited the Perry family apartment in the late 1970s or early 80s.
I noticed that it was not a home, not the way that my mom had a home. My mom had a home. You understand what I mean? Like, when we walked into her home, there was no furniture. The walls were dark. There was one mattress on the floor in the living room. So when she took us into the kitchen, there was just a small little table there. with a bottle of Thunderbird, ashes, and an ashtray.
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Chapter 5: What were Deborah's struggles and background?
Both had run-ins with the law, and Deborah had four more children before her life was cut short. She had visits with the children, Jennifer said, but no one in the family knew much about the details of her life in the final few years.
With little information from family, investigators also struggled to find solid leads, and the few solid leads they did have, Detective Fuller couldn't tell us much about. For instance, according to the case file, on November 10th, they brought in a man for a polygraph.
He'd been arrested by the Richland County Sheriff's Office in 1990, but the file doesn't say what the charge was, and Fuller didn't know either. We do know the results of that polygraph test showed deceptive intent. If investigators dug more into this guy, I can't say.
There's nothing in the file about an alibi, and the absence of any other information about him from that point on makes it seem like investigators thought he was a dead end. They ended up determining that the two 9mm bullets used in the murder came from the same gun, a Luger. We know they tested them against two weapons that Detective Fuller says were used in another crime.
It was just standard procedure to run the comparison, I guess. So they weren't necessarily surprised when neither was a match. And those shoes found near Deborah's body were assumed to be hers, but there's no record of any forensic testing on them. Forensic testing on the condom, the beer cans, and the other items they found towards the edge of the woods also led nowhere.
And the flowered pants, those were still a big question mark. Based on our research, it seems pretty likely these pants, which didn't have a fly, are women's, but that doesn't fully explain the men's underwear inside of them. Sure, they could have been hers, but it was never determined. And investigators didn't do any initial testing on a spot of blood on the pants.
In fact, they either didn't notice it or assumed all the blood came from Debra. Which I know feels a little infuriating, but this was the early 90s. The use of DNA testing in cases was a precious resource, not always utilized for pick your favorite reason. So it's not all that surprising that Deborah's case went cold.
Her kids grew up without their mom and believed they'd never get answers about what happened to her. But in 2009, they saw on the news that her case had been reopened and the Richland County Sheriff's Department was asking for tips.
According to that story on News 19 in Columbia, police had spoken with a witness who claimed to have seen a man with a medium build walking on Chartel Circle the night of Deborah's murder. And get this, the witness said the man was wearing flowered pants. Deborah's daughter, Janetta Holmes, told us that detail made her stop in her tracks.
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Chapter 6: What did investigators learn about the suspects?
He was like, yo, for all I know, she went to get a key of coke and a key of heroin. And he said, yo, when she got back, he said, this cat robbed her and they murdered her. And he said, the kid that I believe did it, he got murdered too. I'm like, really?
But despite this, there's absolutely no way for us to know if either one of these guys, the relative who claimed he overheard someone admitting to the murder or the guy Danny met in prison, actually know anything about it. But Danny and Debra's daughter, Janetta, believes there could be something there.
Her dad doesn't remember the name of the guy he talked to in prison, and he doesn't know the name of the kid who was the alleged trigger man, who also got murdered. But he does have at least partial names for the people who supposedly set it up.
One went by the name of Milton, and another guy went by the name of Polo. They were the two big dog drug dealers in Colombia. They went by those nicknames.
Jennifer also thinks the story the guy in prison told Danny is plausible based on what Danny has told her about Debra and her drug dealings over the years.
From what he said to me, what I can remember is that the guy started talking to him and telling him that she was rough. She was a rough cookie. And also that whoever the guys were that was trying to, I guess, put her on to selling with them or selling for them, they pulled a gun out on her. And before they could pull, she had already pulled. So they said, oh, so you're a roughneck.
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Chapter 7: What mysteries remain about Deborah's case?
You know, you don't play. So it's like, we want you on our team. So I guess that's when she got initiated in or whatever the case may be. They trusted her, probably gave her drugs to sell, not realizing that. She was on drugs. And like any other drug deal gone bad, she probably used it. When they were looking for their money, she had already used it.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time a drug deal gone bad turned into a murder, but there's really no way to verify any of this since we don't know who Milton or Polo are. So put all that information firmly in the rumor category.
Fuller hadn't heard those names either, so after our team spoke with Jennifer, Janetta, and the rest of the family, we made sure to put them back in touch with the Richland County Sheriff's Department so investigators could follow up on any new leads. And there is still hope for new leads.
In 2022, Fuller was reviewing cold cases and realized there was evidence in Deborah's case that could be retested for familial DNA links to a suspect. He sent the male blood found at the scene for additional analysis, hoping new technology would provide a break.
The blood was sent for DNA analysis beyond the capability of our lab because it was so degraded that special extraction techniques had to be done. It took three times to get that done to the point that any kind of genome count at all, and it was very, very low. There's simply not enough information in the match data to generate additional leads on the identity of the subject.
Now, it may change as people donate, get their DNA in the public.
Fuller said that DNA testing conducted on the men's underwear in 2010 was a bust, but the underwear wasn't submitted for new testing in 2022, along with the bloodstain from the pants. And Fuller said he's now checking to see if it can be retested to determine who was wearing it, Deborah or a suspect.
Janetta and her family are hoping that new forensic technology will provide a break in the case, or that new witnesses will come forward with information that leads to Deborah's killer. Janetta grew up living with her paternal great-grandmother and is now 36 and a mother herself. She's broken the cycle of poverty and addiction that had such a devastating impact on her mother's short life.
Her aunt Jennifer and grandmother Maddie are proud and think Debra would be too. But this one, oh yeah.
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