‘She loved Us, And We Loved Her’: 71-Year-Old Man Identified As Suspect In 1992 North Carolina Cold Case Murder

A man is accused of killing a woman in North Carolina and dumping her body on the side of an interstate nearly three decades ago.

The Surry County Sheriff’s Office recently announced investigators used DNA to identify a suspect, Warren Luther Alexander, 71, in Diamondhead, Mississippi, and arrest him last month in connection to the 1992 cold case murder of Nona Stamey Cobb, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.

Cobb’s body was found along Interstate 77 in Surry County on July 7, 1992, and an autopsy determined she was strangled to death.

According to investigators, 29-year-old Cobb was last seen alive the previous evening as she got into a truck at a welcome center in Cleveland County.

In 1995, police tracked down their most promising lead in the case and tested the DNA of Asheboro-based trucker Sean Patrick Goble. His profile was not a match with that of forensic evidence collected from the victim’s body, but Goble was found guilty and given multiple life sentences for slaying three women in unrelated cases.

Cobb's murder case then went cold until April 2021, when the State Bureau of Investigation’s Cold Case Investigation Unit and detectives from the Surry County Sheriff’s Office took a fresh look at evidence.

According to the sheriff’s office, investigators were able to identify Alexander as a suspect using DNA.

He was extradited from Mississippi and is being held without bond in the Surry County jail.

In a 1992 interview with the Journal, Vickie S. Gregory noted her sister was battling a drug problem when she vanished.

“She loved us, and we loved her,” Gregory said of the widowed mother of a then-3-year-old boy. “Just because you do something wrong doesn’t mean you stop loving her.”