Cindy Howard

On a summer day in 1974, the life of 15-year-old Cindy Howard was brutally cut short in a crime that would haunt Onslow County, North Carolina, for decades. Remembered as a vibrant young woman, Cindy’s death, along with that of her friend, marked a profound loss for her family and the tight-knit community. The path to understanding what happened was a dark one, revealing a predator who had been hiding in plain sight.

The tragic events unfolded on Friday, August 2, 1974. Cindy and her friend, 15-year-old Karen Amabile, had walked to a local post office to mail a letter. As they started for home, they were approached by 16-year-old Debra Ann Brown, who knew Karen from school. Debra offered the two girls a ride, an seemingly innocent gesture that led them into a meticulously planned trap. Waiting nearby was Debra’s stepfather, Marcus B. Shrader III, a 33-year-old Navy medical corpsman stationed at Camp Lejeune.

According to Debra Brown’s later court testimony, once Cindy and Karen were inside Shrader’s van, the friendly offer turned into a nightmare. Shrader handcuffed the girls, gagged them with pantyhose, and taped their eyes shut. He then drove them to a remote, wooded location in the Bear Creek area of Onslow County. There, he sexually assaulted both teenagers before strangling them to death. Their bodies, clad only in their underwear, were later discovered abandoned in the woods, leaving two families shattered and a community in fear.

The investigation into the double homicide quickly became part of a larger, more terrifying series of crimes. Just two weeks later, on August 16, 19-year-old Cheryl Potter Boyd was abducted from a post office parking lot, forced to assist in a bank robbery, and then shot in the face. This crime bore similarities to another bank robbery and murder from January of that year, where 23-year-old Ginger Rader was killed. Investigators, led by a young detective named Delma Collins, soon connected the crimes to Shrader. He was arrested at his home in Cedar Point on August 18, 1974.

The subsequent investigation uncovered a house of horrors. Shrader was suspected of abusing his stepchildren for years. His stepdaughter, Debra Brown, facing the possibility of the death penalty herself, began to cooperate with police. She detailed her stepfather’s monstrous acts, including his role in the murders of Cindy and Karen. She explained that she had been sexually abused by Shrader since she was 12 and was pregnant with his child at the time of the murders, stating she helped him out of fear for her own life.

Although police charged Marcus Shrader with all four murders, he was only brought to trial for the murder of Cheryl Potter Boyd. In December 1974, an Onslow County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death. However, he was never tried for the murders of Cindy Howard, Karen Amabile, or Ginger Rader. Following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down North Carolina's mandatory death penalty, Shrader's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

For the next three decades, Shrader remained behind bars. He became eligible for parole in 1986 but was denied at every review, thanks in part to the persistent efforts of his victims' families to ensure he would never be free again. Debra Brown was convicted for her role in the Boyd kidnapping and served seven years of a fifteen-year sentence. The case officially stands as solved, with the primary suspect deceased. Marcus Shrader died of a chronic illness in Central Prison in Raleigh in early July 2007, at the age of 65, after serving 33 years. For the families of Cindy Howard and the other young women he murdered, his death marked the end of a long and painful chapter, though the memory of their loss remains.