On November 17, 1991, seven-year-old Darien Hayes was found murdered in his family’s mobile home in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The scene at Sunshine Mobile Home Park revealed a violent triple homicide that also killed his mother, 27-year-old Helisa Stewart Hayes, and his eight-year-old brother, Phillip Hayes.

Investigators reported that Darien had been strangled with the cord from a curling iron. Phillip had been stabbed about 40 times with a pair of scissors and had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck. Their mother had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled. DNA evidence from the crime scene linked family friend Earl Richmond Jr., a former Army drill sergeant who had known the family and even served as a pallbearer at the funerals, to the murders. Richmond was arrested and charged in the Fayetteville killings.

Richmond was also connected to an April 1991 murder in New Jersey, for which he was later convicted and sentenced to life. For the Fayetteville case, he was convicted and received a death sentence. If anyone knew the Hayes family or has information about the events leading up to November 17, 1991, please come forward.