Ray Field Carter

Do you know who murdered 34 year old Ray Field Carter in 1982?
In the early morning hours of April 19, 1982, Ray Field Carter, a 34-year-old Black man, left his apartment at 1333 Condon Street in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was driving his brother's 1973 Pontiac Catalina, a four-door car with a distinctive pea-green color and a white vinyl top. The vehicle, with license plate number VZN-591, disappeared with him into the spring morning. Carter, an employee at Radiator Specialty of Charlotte, was last seen alone. His home was in the Oaklawn Park neighborhood, a significant post-World War II suburb developed for African American families, a community of brick ranch houses and split-levels that was home to a mix of blue-collar workers, educators, and professionals.

The following day, April 20, the search for what happened to Ray Field Carter came to a grim end miles away in neighboring Cabarrus County. A man named Max Cline, a resident of Centergrove Road, was looking for stray cows in a wooded area off the dead end of Earnhardt Lake Road in Concord when he made a devastating discovery. He found Carter's body and immediately alerted the Kannapolis police. The case was soon handed over to the Cabarrus County Sheriff's Department when it was determined the location fell within their jurisdiction.

The scene of the discovery was a quiet, undeveloped pocket of Concord. In the early 1980s, Concord was a city of around 18,000 people, experiencing a period of growth and annexation. The wooded area where Carter was found would, in later years, be developed into what is now Copperfield Boulevard, but at the time, it was a remote spot. An initial examination by detectives at the scene revealed that Carter had been shot at least once in the torso.

The investigation into Ray Field Carter's death began immediately, with the State Bureau of Investigation called in to assist the county sheriff's department. An autopsy conducted by the North Carolina Medical Examiner's Office in Chapel Hill would later confirm that he had died from multiple gunshot wounds, and that the weapon used was not a shotgun. A critical piece of the puzzle, the pea-green Pontiac Catalina, was nowhere to be found. An all-points bulletin was issued for the vehicle, and law enforcement cautioned that the driver should be considered armed and dangerous.

Decades have passed since the discovery in the woods off Earnhardt Road. The once-quiet dead end is now a busy thoroughfare, a transformation that mirrors the growth of the surrounding area. However, time has not brought any answers in the death of Ray Field Carter. His case is now one of a handful of unsolved homicides on the books of the Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Investigation Unit.

The 1973 Pontiac Catalina that he was driving has never been recovered, a silent testament to the secrets of that April day. No suspects have been publicly identified, and no arrests have been made. The investigation remains open, a cold case file waiting for the one piece of information that might finally shed light on who killed Ray Field Carter and why. The Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office continues to ask for anyone with information regarding the homicide to come forward.