Shatley murder

A year later, killing unsolved

People will gather today to remember Ashe man

November 19, 2006

By Monte Mitchell
JOURNAL REPORTER

GRASSY CREEK

Tim Shatley was shot and killed on a dark mountain highway on his way home from work a year ago today.

Someone, somewhere knows why, but the motive and the killer's identity are a mystery to his family and investigators.

Shatley, 30, had driven nearly an hour to get home to Ashe County, where Kathleen Shatley and their son, Seth, waited. Tim was killed just three miles from home.

His family didn't know exactly when to expect him after his first night of work at a restaurant in North Wilkesboro.

Seth, now 9, had played in his first team basketball game that day and wanted to tell his dad about it. But when it got to be 11 p.m., his mother sent him to bed.

Tim had had a good first night working at Pa-Paw's Barbecue on a busy Saturday night, according to the owner. Tim thanked the owner for hiring him, told him that it looked like the job was going to work out well, got into his van and headed home.

Driving up N.C. 16, it's 37 miles from the restaurant to the bridge.

Investigators believe that Shatley stopped near the intersection of N.C. 16 and Old Field Creek Road, just north of the bridge over the North Fork of New River. The bridge, then under construction, was one lane with traffic lights at each end of the construction zone.

Based on where shattered glass was found, investigators believe that the van was between the two lights when shots were fired from close range. The van accelerated, traveling about 200 or more feet after the first shot. Four windows were shot out. A bullet went through the front window.

Emergency workers thought that they were responding to a fatal traffic accident when they arrived and found that Shatley's van had run into a concrete barrier. Then someone noticed a bullet hole in the door frame.

An autopsy showed that a large-caliber bullet had passed through Shatley's body, going through his left shoulder, and traveling backward and down through the lungs and aorta.

Major Steve Houck, the chief deputy for the Ashe County Sheriff's Office, said that detectives and agents for the State Bureau of Investigation have spent many hours on the case, but there have been few leads.

"We've followed up on several things on it, but I can't tell that we're any closer than we were a year ago," he said.

The window on the driver side of the van was rolled down. Investigators say that Shatley may have stopped for someone who flagged him down.

Because his vehicle had engine problems, he was driving his mother's van that night for only the second time. Few people would have known to look for him in that van.

"We're still at that point, we're not convinced. Was it intended for him or not?" Houck said. Investigators have wondered whether the killer meant to shoot someone in the area who drove a similar vehicle.

Gov. Mike Easley has offered a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Authorities are looking for the driver of a white Ford Explorer that was seen in the area around the time of the shooting. They don't necessarily consider the person a suspect but want to know what he or she might have seen.

On the day after the shooting, the Shatleys had planned to celebrate Seth's 9th birthday.

But instead of celebrating his birthday, Seth was thinking about his father. From a hiding place in the house, he retrieved his father's Christmas present for Kathleen - a ring - and gave it to her.

Seth, a fourth-grader now, will turn 10 on Tuesday.

A living-room display case in the Shatley home includes 17 framed photos of Tim and his family: photos of him with Seth as a baby, of Tim in a chef's hat, at a favorite vacation spot in Cherokee, and of Tim fishing. His grave marker shows a fisherman hooking a fish that leaps from the water.

The display case also includes a restaurant-training certificate and a diploma from American Pro Wrestling. Tim, who was 6 foot 2 and about 225 pounds, had wrestled in small regional matches in such places as Sparta and Pfafftown.

He had been so busy working in restaurants and taking the culinary-arts program at Wilkes Community College that he wasn't wrestling as much in his last years.

But the wrestlers came through for the family in a big way. They staged a benefit - "Battle of the Belts" - last spring in Sparta as a fundraiser for Seth's education. The Texas Outlaw and Bounty Hunter battled Mitch Blake and Jake Lotus, among other matches. Shatley's mother, Inez Reeves, joined the wrestlers in ringing the bell for her son.

She is trying to work up the courage to look at the crime- scene photos, to see if there's some clue she can spot that others didn't notice. Things don't make sense to her. "Something don't add up," Reeves said.

Reeves raised four boys mostly by herself, and Tim, the oldest, was her rock, she said. He would have graduated from culinary school by now. His dream was to open his own restaurant, and Reeves would joke with him about how she would do the dishes.

Her small apartment in Sparta includes many framed photos of her boys. Tim's last Mother's Day present to her hangs in a prominent spot on the wall. It's a framed artwork: Look at it one way, it shows the face of Jesus; look at it another, and it's the scene of the Crucifixion.

Reeves thinks that investigators could do more and wishes that they would communicate more with her. Authorities had told her that Tim died in a suspicious vehicle accident, but only later when she got a newspaper did she learn that he had been shot.

She cries as she tells the story. She said she doesn't remember how she got to the newspaper rack at the Dollar Mart in Sparta, but when she came to her senses, she was leaning against the wall as the storeowner hugged her.

Reeves keeps a scrapbook about Tim. Inside is a receipt he had given her for a $10 pecan pie that he was going to bake as a benefit for a Christmas Party for children served by the Rainbow House. "He didn't live to do it," Reeves said. "I kept that because it had his signature. It was the last thing he signed."

People will gather in Ashe County at 5:30 p.m. today for a candlelight memorial service near the N.C. 16 bridge where Tim Shatley was killed.

"It's about his life," Reeves said. "I want them to know when he was born, when he got saved, baptized, about his jobs, his love for his fellow man, how good he was to me."

Anyone with any information about the case may call the Ashe County Sheriff's Office at 336-219-2600.