Reading with Terry Harmon

Friday, September 18 11:30 am – 12:15 pm Ashe County Public Library This event is free and open to the public, no registration required. Join us for a reading with Terry Harmon with time for audience Q&A. TERRY HARMON Terry Harmon is a historian, genealogist, and author from Watauga County, North Carolina. A lifelong resident of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he has spent decades researching Appalachian families, local history, and regional culture. His published works include Cold in Carolina, CONVOLUTED, and Watauga County Revisted. A graduate of Appalachian State University, Harmon holds degrees in Political Science and Education and has devoted much of his writing career to preserving the history and heritage of the Southern Appalachian region. In addition to his historical and genealogical research, he has written numerous reflections on faith, Scripture, and the Christian life. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to documenting the people, stories, and traditions of the North Carolina mountains. https://terryharmon.com For fifty years, the 1972 murders of Bryce and Virginia Durham and their teenage son Bobby on a bitter winter’s night in Boone, North Carolina were unsolved, but in 2022, the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office announced that their killers had finally been identified. Based on information from Georgia, four men associated with the Dixie Mafia (including the infamous Billy Sunday Birt, whose notoriety was explored by the popular In The Red Clay podcast) were proclaimed with certainty to be the guilty parties who strangled the Durhams and placed them headfirst into a water-filled bathtub. Although the case was officially closed, questions remain about motive and who orchestrated the crime. Who and what would have brought these men from northeast Georgia to the home of a small town car dealer and his family in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and why? Or have the killers accurately been identified? Containing more than 160 images (photos, maps, and diagrams), this detailed account explores the lives and murders of the Durhams, the decades of investigation that followed, and the multiple leads, theories, motives, and suspects that have been put forth.