Apparent wrong-number texts, phone messages from Wal-Mart spark man's confession to long-ago slaying
By his own confession, Matthew Gibson had gotten away with killing an Arizona woman 17 years ago.
But then the North Carolina resident began receiving texts and phone messages from Wal-Mart saying that a prescription was ready for a woman he didn’t know. His conclusion: Someone had figured out that he was responsible for his long-ago slaying of a woman whose name he didn’t know and was leaving the messages in the victim’s name, the Charlotte Observer reports.
In fact, the messages appear to have been sent to Gibson in error and concern an entirely different—and apparently living—local woman in North Carolina. But, fearing that someone might be about to kill him, Gibson drove to Arizona and confessed the Bullhead City slaying to police. The victim’s name, as authorities determined, was Barbara Brown Agnew.
“We see a lot in this line of work,” said Alicia Marquez, a detective at the Winslow Police Department in Arizona told the newspaper, adding: “In his own mind … someone knew what happened after all these years.”
Once addicted to cocaine and methamphetamine, Gibson found religion a few years ago, and the slaying was weighing on his conscience. Hence, he was eager to take a manslaughter plea and begin serving a 10-year prison term so he could move on with his life, according to his lawyer, Bullhead City public defender Ron Gilleo.
