Donna Emmel

A 15 year old girl's body is found in a drainage ditch across from her home
Donna Marie Emmel was a bubbly, blonde-haired 15-year-old from Newport, North Carolina, remembered by her family as a "spitfire." A sophomore at Havelock High School, she was the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Her father served in the Marine Corps, and her mother was a homemaker. Described as outgoing and fun-loving, Donna was a self-professed tomboy who preferred cutoff shorts to dresses and wasn't afraid to get dirty. Her cousin, Beverly Boston, who was like a sister to her, recalled that the only time she saw Donna in a dress was for a school dance. It was a burgundy velvet dress she was later buried in.

The summer day of June 16, 1975, began like many others for Donna. She spent time with friends at the America Service Station and Grill, also known as Grice's Grill, a popular teenage hangout on U.S. 70 that had an arcade and pool tables. Around 8:30 p.m., her mother, Emily, called the grill and told Donna it was time to come home. Witnesses saw Donna leave shortly after the call, heading for a familiar shortcut through a wooded area to get to her family's house on Easy Street. Her ten-year-old brother later told their mother he saw Donna enter the path and then saw an unidentified man in a blue jacket follow her into the woods. When she had not arrived home by 9 p.m., her mother grew worried and reported her missing to the Newport Police.

A frantic search began immediately, with police setting up roadblocks through the night. The search came to a tragic end the following afternoon, June 17, when a local resident discovered Donna's body in a drainage ditch on Easy Street, directly across from her home. The former Newport Police Chief, Charles R. Tomlinson, stated that Donna had been strangled, but not sexually assaulted. Investigators told the family they believed she had been killed at another location and then placed in the ditch. Her mother, who saw her daughter's body, later told her niece, Beverly, that it looked as though Donna had been carefully placed there, "like she was being put to bed."

In the weeks and months that followed, the Newport Police Department investigated over 150 leads and questioned more than a hundred people, but no arrests were ever made. One person of interest from the beginning was Gregory Allen, a U.S. Marine stationed at nearby Cherry Point who was known to frequent Grice's Grill. Allen was questioned in 1975 but was released and later moved back to his home state of Wisconsin. He came onto investigators' radar again in the 1990s after he was arrested and convicted for a sexual assault in Green Bay. His DNA would later exonerate Steven Avery, the subject of the "Making a Murderer" documentary, for a 1985 rape that Allen had actually committed. When detectives learned Allen might be involved in a 1975 North Carolina killing, they questioned him again about Donna's murder, but he was uncooperative.

Decades later, Donna's murder remains unsolved, but her family has never stopped seeking justice. Her mother, Emily, passed away from cancer in 1995, never knowing who was responsible for her daughter's death. "She was a baby when they killed her," her cousin Beverly Boston said. "She never got to have babies. She never got to get married. She never even got to graduate." The family continues to visit Donna's grave on her birthday and the anniversary of her death each year.

As of May 2022, the case is an active investigation being handled by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) with assistance from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The family hopes that advances in DNA technology might finally solve the case, believing that evidence collected from Donna's fingernails could identify her killer. "She was a fighter - a spitfire," Beverly said, confident her cousin would have fought back. To generate new leads, a billboard featuring Donna's picture was erected in Newport. The SBI encourages anyone with information, no matter how small the detail, to come forward.

Anyone with information about the murder of Donna Emmel is asked to call the North Carolina SBI at 800-344-3000.