autopsy. she alerted them to start looking for something that looked curveved in nature. at the crime scene, the area was littered with discarded tires. all were covered with brush, except for one, just 20 feet from ginger s body. when they looked at it, they thought them saw the what might have been blood. they thought they saw what might have been some hair on the rim of the tire. the tire rim was rusty. so that may have actually led to the amount of hairs that were recovered when it was processed. if it had a smoother finish, any transferred hairs may have been lost. more than 50 hairs were recovered, but none had roots attached that could be used for dna analysis. there were head injuries. you would assume that those hairs were broken off during an assault, during an attack. the hairs were dyed brown.
it was a hot summer day in greenville, north carolina. the hayes family stopped at a local store for some snack food before going out for the day. as jeremy hayes and his brother-in-law went inside the store, his wife ginger decided to change the baby s diaper. when the men came back outside, the car was gone. at first, jeremy assumed it was a joke. ginger was up to her old tricks again playing pranks and moved the car around in the parking lot. so they looked around the parking lot. jeremy called ginger s cell phone, but there was no answer. that s when he called police. i didn t know what had happened. i didn t know what in the world, you know, could have happened to make her, you know, just leave. are you saying this was a carjacking? i don t know what s going on.
edwards stopped at the same strip mall where jeremy and ginger hayes stopped to get snacks. edwards saw the car running with the door open and decided to steal it. he probably didn t know that there was a baby in the back seat until later. edwards drove to a store 45 miles away and forced ginger to withdraw $100 from her debit card. investigators believe edwards may have had an accomplice watching the baby in the car at the time. edwards drove to a secluded field, assaulted ginger, then beat her to death with a discarded tire. investigators found blood spatter on his shoes, his shorts, and the tire. he left the baby in the field, apparently willing to let him die from exposure. edwards parked the car at a
edwards, a known crack addict and career criminal with more than 40 arrests. he immediately picked him out, and said that s the guy i saw push the young lady into the car and take off. but edwards denied any involvement. he said if you tell us where ginger and nicolas is now, they could still be alive. you won t be as much trouble as you are in. he said, i don t know anything you re talking about. they were racing against time. and it s rare that you find your suspect before you find your victim. then investigators tried getting some information by asking another way. whatever story you have to tell me to allow me to find the child alive, then tell me that story. let s just save a life. you didn t have to tell me that you actually did it. all you had to do was tell me a friend of mine might have told me you need to go look here. but he wouldn t do anything. shortly after edwards
ginger hayes and her 11-month-old son, nicholas, were kidnapped from a parking lot in greenville, north carolina. this was broad daylight on a saturday morning. nobody expects a crime of that nature to happen in a time frame like that. i didn t have any clue what anybody could have done, you know? carjacked, kidnapped, god forbid, you know, murder. 45 minutes after the kidnapping, surveillance video showed ginger and an unidentified man going through a grocery store checkout line. it gives you that little bit of hope, you know? she s alive now. maybe she ll be alive five minutes from now or an hour from now, et cetera, until you have time to find them. but the baby wasn t in the surveillance footage, leading police to believe that the perpetrator had an accomplice.