Naman Shrestha
In the early 1990s, Charlotte became grounds for the murder of several young black women, including 20-year-old college student Shawna Hawk. The discovery of her body sent waves of shock and grief across the entire community, with her family feeling the brunt of it all. While ABC’s ’20/20: Lock the Door Behind You’ puts Shawna’s murder case in focus, it also covers the connected murders of other women in the city. As the episode features in-depth interviews with the victims’ loved ones, the viewers are bound to get insightful details into the cases that brought terror to the community.
Shawna Hawk Was Found Dead in Her Bathtub
Shawna Denise Hawk was brought into the world by Dee Sumpter and Walter Hawk II on December 2, 1972, in Charlotte, North Carolina. As she grew up surrounded by love and care from her family, especially her mother, she turned out to be a saintly young woman who had a smile that could light up the entire room. In the early 1990s, her family was divided when her parents got divorced. While her brothers chose to live with their father, Shawna chose her mother, and they resided in a two-story apartment on Elon Avenue. At the time, Dee was employed as a receptionist at a downtown Charlotte law firm.
In order to get by and support her mother, Shawna went to Central Piedmont Community College in the morning and worked at Bojangles at night before getting a better job at Taco Bell. With an innate sense of justice, she pursued law and wanted to become a successful lawyer in the years to come. She even had a boyfriend named Darrell, with whom she was looking forward to spending the rest of her life. Unfortunately, her dreams and aspirations for the future came to a sudden halt on February 19, 1993. When her mother returned from work and found her belongings lying around but could not find her daughter, she called Darrell.
When Darrell looked around the house for her 20-year-old girlfriend, he found her floating in the bathtub. Soon, the police took over the crime scene and secured the perimeter as they looked for clues in the property. Although her skull had suffered a blow from a dull and heavy object, the cause of her death was determined to be ligature strangulation. The autopsy also revealed that there was hemorrhaging in the conjunctiva, the lips, the face, and across the voice box.
Someone From Work Was Responsible For Shawna Hawk’s Murder
After gathering the evidence they could find at Shawna Hawk’s apartment, the detectives started interviewing her family members, friends, and co-workers in hopes of getting a lead. Several weeks later, her car was found in the parking lot of the Central Piedmont Community College. Unfortunately, even that did not yield anything significant. When a year went by without any development in the case, Shawna’s mother, Dee, released a letter addressed to the killer and wrote, “Dear Killer: I am the mother of Shawna Denise Hawk. I am writing to you because you murdered my only daughter in our home on February 19, 1993, between the hours of 1 pm and 5 pm.”
“It is so hard to believe that an entire year has gone by since that horrible Friday evening when Shawna’s dead body was discovered in the bathtub where you put her. I do not hate you. What purpose would that serve? I do want you to come forth and confess to the horrible atrocity you have committed,” she added. Soon, on March 9, 1994, the police arrested Henry Louis Wallace, Shawna’s former boss and manager at Taco Bell, for the murder of another woman, and that’s when he admitted to killing Shawna Hawk and several other young black women between 1990 and 1994.
The Killer Was Brought to Justice For Several of His Crimes
Henry Louis Wallace confessed that he visited Shawna Hawk on the afternoon of February 19, 1993. He added that she let him in without any hesitation, and the two talked for about an hour or so. When he talked about his fight with his girlfriend Sadie, Shawna teased her a bit, as Henry claimed. Moreover, as she gave him a simple kiss on the cheek to say goodbye, he claimed that his “other side” came out. “It was like a switch being turned on or a button being pushed or a door being opened,” he said. According to his confession, he straight away told her that he wanted to indulge in sexual activity with her. Then, he reportedly raped her and put her in a chokehold before leaving her in the bathtub. Being an acquaintance of her, he even went to her funeral and pretended he had nothing to do with the murder.
Several months later, Henry ran into Shawna Hawk’s mother, Dee Sumpter, at a store, where he hugged her and expressed his condolences. Remembering Shawna as the sweetest person ever, he also told her that he had been wanting to visit her and ensure she was holding up alright. When the truth about his guilt broke out, there was an uproar in the area’s black community as the police were accused of neglecting the murders because they were of black women. Dee also voiced her opinion, saying, “The victims weren’t prominent people with social-economic status. They weren’t special. And they were black.” Finally, on January 7, 1997, Henry Louis Wallace was found guilty of rape and murder of nine women. A few weeks later, on January 29, he was given 9 death sentences, 10 life sentences, and 322 years in prison.
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