Special Agent Gregory W. Spinelli, born March 8, 1949, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was 24 when he was killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 15, 1973. He joined the FBI in 1970 as a Physical Science Technician and became a special agent in 1972.

On the day of the shooting Spinelli was part of a surveillance team watching a motel room linked to suspects Arthur Tilmer Mankins and Bonnie Lou Logan in a savings and loan robbery. When the pair tried to leave, Logan was arrested while Mankins escaped into nearby woods and then an apartment building under construction. Spinelli pursued Mankins to the rear of that building and was fatally shot there; another agent later apprehended Mankins.

Mankins was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for Spinelli’s murder. Spinelli is buried in Saint Bernard’s Cemetery in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Did anyone in Charlotte at the time remember the stakeout or the construction site where this happened?