School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
At around twelve forty am on June ninth, two thousand and nine, Angela Stewart, who went by Angel, pounded on the door of her neighbor Mark Lawson's house in Morrisville, North Carolina. It's about thirty miles from Charlotte. They lived in a quiet, suburban neighborhood called Gabriel Estates, so getting a panic to knock on the door in the middle of the night was very out of the ordinary. Mark was shocked when he opened the door and saw Angel
and her one year old son covered in blood. Angel lived next door with her husband, thirty one year old Matt Stewart, and their three children. She told Mark that she had woken up to find a gunman standing in her bedroom door, that the intruder had opened fire on her and Matt, and that Matt was fighting the gunman. Angel had grabbed their one year old son, who was in bed with them at the time, and ran for her life. Mark let Angel and her son into the house,
and he called nine one one. According to the nine to one one call logs, it was twelve forty five am when Mark Lawson made that call. Four minutes later, at twelve forty nine am, police and paramedics were rushing to the scene. Mark Lawson later summarized the conversation he had with Angel to a local news station, saying, quote, she came to the door, said she'd been shot, called nine one one, her husband Matt was struggling with the intruder.
End quote.
Matt and Angel had an eleven year old daughter named Hannah, a one year old son, and another three year old daughter. Hannah was staying with a friend. It was the first time she had ever spent the night at a friend's house. Angel had her one year old son in her arms, which ment her three year old daughter was still in the house with the killer. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a
small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a cake she liked me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at
Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Dispatcher's rushed to Matt and Angel's house at one fifty eight Shepherd Drive, but they did not immediately go inside. Apparently they thought that this was some kind of a hostage situation and that the killer could still be inside the home with Matt and Angel's three year old daughter, so they called this white team. Now it's unclear why they waited that
long with a house that was dead silent. But when they finally went into that house at two thirty am, so over an hour and a half later, they found the three year old daughter safe and sound. She had slept through the whole thing. But that was the end of the good news. Police found Matt's body in the upstairs bathroom. He had been brutally beaten, stabbed, and shot. Matt had clearly fought to the death to protect his family, and his killer or killers were still on the loose.
From the very beginning, it seemed like there were a lot of things that were unusual about this crime scene. A lot of the reasons why police made the decisions that they did can't really be known now because this is still technically an open investigation. But something prompted police to contact the squat team. Why did they believe that this was a hostage situation when there was no sign of the gunman? And why did they wait so long if there was literally zero sign of an active shooter.
Police have not said much publicly, but they did make it clear there was no sign of a forced entry into the home. Police believed that the killer had escaped out the back door. The back door had reportedly been left unlocked. If that's true, this would be very unusual for the family, because even in a safe neighborhood, they would normally lock their doors. This was a bizarre twist in a life that up until then, by all accounts,
had been pretty straightforward. Everyone said Matt Stewart was a nice, stable guy. Matthew Stewart was born on March fourteenth, nineteen seventy eight.
He lived in.
Mooresville for his entire life, which has a population of just over fifty thousand people and is nicknamed Race City, USA because it's a major hub for NASCAR. He graduated from Mooresville High School. He went to Mitchell Community College, where he earned his associate degree in nursing. He was made for that kind of work. He loved helping people. Friends and colleagues said he was kind, compassionate, and smart. Matt's three children, two daughters and a son, were his
entire world. According to his obituary, Matt was very active in his church in his twenties and his Christian faith was very important to him. Friends told police that he had been involved with drugs in high school and then he completely cleaned up and changed it. Seemed like he credited his Christianity with helping him keep his life on track. Several years before the murder, Matt met Angel in church. At the time, she was a twenty year old single mom.
Matt fell in love with Angel and wanted to marry her and help raise her daughter, and so that's what they did. Four months after they met, Matt and Angel got married. Matt went on to adopt Angel's older daughter, Hannah, and he and Angel went on to have their daughter and then their son together. Matt and Angel both worked as nurses. Matt was a nurse at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, where he was highly regarded for his work, ethic,
for his spirit. Everyone loved him and respected him. Angel also worked in nursing. She was enrolled in a nursing program at the time of the murder. She also worked at Carolina's Medical Center. Besides their work and their kids, Matt and Angel were both very passionate about and involved
with their church, Riverlife Fellowship, where Matt volunteered with youth ministries. Now, everyone may have said that Matt adored his family and got along with everybody, but anytime something like this happens, it's natural to ask who someone's enemies were, and in this case it was hard to figure out. In fact, detectives were struggling to find a motive at all, and
the only witness they had was Angel. At first, police thought this could have been a straight up home invasion, a robbery gone wrong, but the evidence did not match that theory because, first of all, nothing had been stolen from the home. Secondly, despite this brutal battle to the death, police were having difficulty tracing the killer's trail. Angel's mother, Brenda Hare, made some early statements to reporters. She indicated there was a lot of blood in the bedroom and
the bathroom. Matt had bled heavily. The fight was brutal and prolonged, and yet there seemed to be no trace of blood anywhere other than the master bedroom and the bathroom through there were no drips of blood leading out the door or anywhere else. While the police and SWAT team were in this standoff waiting outside the home, paramedics were tending to Angel and her one year old son. Angel had been shot once in the arm, reportedly in
the wrist. One of her family members wrote a post online stating that the bullet had gone clean through her arm. After she was examined, both she and her child were taken from her neighbor Mark's house to a local hospital, where her wound was treated. A lot of people have commented on this. On Angel leaving the scene with her son and leaving her daughter behind in that house, Some
people find that strange. They say her maternal instinct should have taken over, and even if she was afraid for her life, they questioned why she would leave her second child. But I can somewhat understand Angel may have been in shock trying to help her son. What I can't understand is that after that, Angel was taken to the hospital for what seemed to be a superficial wound, rather than staying at the scene while police waited to see if there was an active shooter with her other child inside
her home. When police initially asked Angel about the intruder, she said that she woke up and saw a shadowy figure in the doorway. She said the assassin didn't say anything, just started opening fire on them. Then, she said, Matt jumped up out of the bed and fought him. She grabbed her son and ran. Police canvassed the neighborhood, but None of Matt and Angel's neighbors reported hearing anything unusual, no loud sounds, no gunshots, nothing odd until they heard
the police cars. But at some point, and it's not clear exactly when these details leaked out, Angel was able to give police a description of the intruder. She said she couldn't really see anything except that he was very tall. A police started looking into similar crimes, and one name came up pretty early in the investigation. Patrick Tracy Burris. Patrick Tracy Burris was a spree killer who committed a string of murders in Gaffney, South Carolina, in Cherokee County.
It started on June twenty seventh, two thousand and nine, when he fatally shot a peach farmer named Clein Cash in his home. Police found the next victims four days later, Hazel Linder and her daughter Gina Linder Parker. Both of them had been gunned down in their own homes. Then, on July second, Patrick came into a furniture store. He shot the owner, Stephen Tyler, and his daughter, Abbey, both
of them later died. Law enforcement in the area were understandably panicked about a spree killer who was murdering and robbing citizens seemingly at random, and so was the community. They were wondering who is going to be next. On July sixth, two thousand and nine, Patrick got into a shootout with police and was fatally shot by an officer. Police later matched Patrick's twenty five caliber gun to the killings in Gaffney and found items from some of the
victim's homes in his possession. They realized that he had been robbing people. Later, there was outrage when it was discovered that Patrick had been released from a ten year sentence early, which allowed him to commit these murders. There did seem to be some circumstantial similarities in that the crimes were seemingly totally random, but there were other differences. For one thing, Patrick's murders all happened in a small,
confined area near Gaffney. Secondly, he didn't leave his victims alive, at least not knowingly. He shot everyone he encountered, though some of Patrick's victims died later in the hospital. And finally, Patrick stole things from the houses he went into. The police did take a hard look at him because he was a spree killer, and also he was very tall. The way Angel described Matt's killer. Patrick was over six
foot five. The Morrisville Chief of Police, Karl Robbins, later addressed this, telling the media quote, we don't have anything that links him to us right now, other than that he's been in the general area end quote. The theory about Patrick being the killer seemed to be put to rest for good after law enforcement tested his guns. Patrick used a twenty five caliber weapon in all of his known kills, and that was the only firearm he was
believed to own. This firearm did not match the thirty eight and forty caliber ammunition found at Matt's crime scene. We're going to get back to that ammunition in a minute, because that is another bizarre detail of this case that has never been resolved.
For now.
Let's put a pin in that. Law enforcement confirmed the bizarre nature of Matt's case in two thousand and nine when the police chief told WBTV, quote, this is a very strange case, and detectives are putting all of their resources into trying to find the killer. End quote. In January of twenty ten, nearly six months after Matt was brutally murdered, police released a composite sketch. The killer was described as a tall, large framed man weighing around two
hundred and fifty pounds. Police also announced an eleven thousand dollars reward for anyone with any information that could help lead to Matt's killer. After the initial headlines, the case kind of seemed to fade away. Matt and Angels families didn't really speak publicly about the case, but without public outreach by the police or Matt's family, no one in the area heard about the home invasion murder. In twenty eleven, according to the Morrisville Tribune, the police did make some
more information public. They stated that Matt's autopsy quote showed several defensive stab wounds in addition to the gunshot WANs that killed him end quote. But still they seemed to have no suspects, and after that information dropped, nothing seemed to happen until twenty eighteen, when Freddie Wilson released a podcast called Unforgotten, the Unsolved Murder of Matt Stewart. Freddy didn't know Matt personally, but we talked to him about his connection to the case and to Matt's church.
So I went to a very small private Christian school. I was in sixth grade in two thousand and four, I believe more so Christian Academy. It was affiliated with a church called Riverlife Fellowship. My graduating class was of thirteen and I think it was the largest graduating class that ever went through the school. It shut down, I think the year after I graduated, but it was a very close knit maybe seventy five percent of the kids that went to the school their families were members of
the church. And while I was attending in two thousand and nine, over this summer there was someone that was very prominent in the church and he was murdered.
As the subject of.
The podcast, I sent shot waves through the community and particularly the folks that I was close with in the school, some of my teachers who were also at the church, some of them pastors. So I kind of grew up hearing about the case and being there when people were talking about it very emotionally.
Though this case is still an open investigation and we can't get many documents via FOYA, as Freddie pointed out in his podcast, some documents have been made public. They include the medical Examiner's report, and the medical examiner's report highlights another strange fact in this case, the fact that Matt was shot numerous times with two different caliber bullets. He was shot with both thirty eight and forty caliber bullets.
This could mean either there was more than one killer, or that there was one killer who for some reason had different types of ammunition, or that there was one killer with two different guns. We know from what police released in twenty eleven that after shooting Matt several times, his killer began stabbing him in a frenzy. The medical examiner's report states that Matt had multiple defensive wounds that indicated he did try to fight while he was being attacked.
Matt was shot multiple times in the face, chest, arm, and back. He was also stabbed several times in the face, neck, and shoulder. In addition to shooting and stabbing him, Matt's killer beat him with a heavy object. This caused blunt force trauma wounds and defensive wounds on his hands. Police said that the crime scene was covered in blood and that it appeared as though the fight had traveled into the bathroom. What can we learn from this? Matt fought
hard for his life. That's obvious. It's also striking. The killer didn't just incapacitate Matt. They made a point to finish him off. To police, this was appearing less and less like a random shooting and more and more like Matt had been specifically targeted. It seemed clear from police statements there were several oddities at Matt Stewart's crime scene. Matt was shot several times with two different types of ammunition, but there were reportedly no shell casings found at the scene.
This appeared to be a bedroom ambush homicide, because otherwise it would be very unusual for a robber to come into a home late at night, not steal anything, and then go straight to the bedroom and then to attack one person with several different weapons. Most home invaders who are targeting someone's stuff will just leave when they realize there are people home. Angel didn't say anything about the killers, telling them they wanted money or giving them any kind
of verbal demands. Whoever it was, came into the house and just in her words, opened fire immediately. Then once they brutally killed Matt, they let Angel escape. If the killer or killers were so worried about having witnesses, they made sure to eliminate Matt by using two or potentially three different weapons. Why let Angel leave, of course, any time that a spouse has murdered and there's no immediate motive. The wife is always questioned and police did talk to Angel,
but it's unclear what happened during those interviews. In twenty eighteen, before he released the Unforgotten podcast, Freddie did speak to Matt's sister, but for the most part, Angel's family has largely avoided speaking to any media outlet so far. In fact, they made it clear to Freddy they did not appreciate him making the podcast. But Angel has spoken out in recent years, in an episode of Dave Ramsey's podcast and
also in a video posted on YouTube. She has also talked to people at her church about the attack, and when she spoke to the congregation, she said that she had been questioned by police and given a lie detector test. Angel has never been charged with any wrongdoing and there's no suggestion she has ever been considered a suspect.
She gave a public talk at a church. She mentioned being polygraphed in that talk, so that would give some further evidence that she was questioned.
But from what I heard, yes, she was questioned, and you know, there had always been an underlying presumption that this was someone that.
Was close to Matt.
Not quoting police or any came, but from what I've gleaned, you can hear in some of the episodes people talking that it was if not a crime of passion, just a crime of real emotions someone that knew and was familiar with Matt.
In the music video for a band called Big Daddy Weave on YouTube, Angel talks about her faith and how it got her through the dark days of her husband's murder. She also gives more details about the night Matt was killed. She said that they were together in bed and that he went to ten to their son. Then she said he brought their son into.
The bed with them.
Angel made a comment about how she believed that he was a better and more attentive parent than her, But she said after Matt brought their son into the bedroom that night that Matt said their son just needed as mommy. Angel went on to say what a wonderful father Matt was. In that video, there were a couple of details that
I had not heard publicly before. In the incident report, Angel said that she woke up to a shadowy figure who opened fire, But then in this YouTube video, she said she heard a sound and woke up before seeing the mysterious figure in the doorway. It's a tiny difference, but who knows. There may be more details that could help lead to the killer. Police have said they have no usable physical evidence, which seems odd as well because
this was a pretty large crime scene. Maybe they collected no DNA, or there's another possibility that police did collect DNA, but that the foreign DNA if it wasn't either Matt's or Angels, could have been someone who had a connection with Matt or Angel. Maybe it was someone the couple knew, someone close to them, maybe someone who would have a reason for their DNA to be inside the home. Could this have been a contract killing, and if so, who
would have wanted to hurt Matt. There were some very early rumors of drug involvement, but there has been absolutely no reason to believe that Matt was in any way involved with drugs since high school. What we know for sure is that once the killer got inside that house, they seemed determined to finish the job. Whoever attacked Matt brutally beat and shot and stabbed him. He was the target. There have been other brutal home invasions, some that have
happened under bizarre circumstances and remain unsolved. We're going to be covering another home invasion murder in an upcoming episode, the killing of twenty five year old Josh Shulman on outer Bridge Lane in South Carolina. His father, Larry Shulman, was also pistol whipped and shot in the attack, but Larry survived. Larry told reporters that the police considered him a suspect due to the fact that Larry's mother was dying and left some money to Josh, which brings up
a natural question in Matt's case. Is there any indication that Angel or anyone else could have gained financially from Matt's death. There have been rumors that Matt was having financial problems. A former colleague of Matt posted on Facebook that he remembered Matt Ann had worked with him at the hospital where Matt was on the day shift. This
person said they were on the night shift. This person claimed about a week before his death that Matt was taking extra ships at the hospital due to what this person had been told by a charge nurse was money issues. But it's important to note this is only third hand information. There's nothing available publicly that I've found that indicates that Angel and Matt's debts were anything more than what any
normal young couple with a family was facing. Brenda told reporters that Matt and Angel had just paid off their student loans and that they both had good jobs. Angel stated in the YouTube video that she had remarried. She was introduced to her husband through a friend who thought they should meet because they had both suffered tragedy. He had also lost his wife. Reportedly, she died of cancer.
Angel said she credits her new husband and her Christian faith with getting her through the darkest times after the murder. I completely respect Matt and Angel's families desire to move on with their lives, even though I have no desire to retraumatize a family. It's terrifying to me that this killer is probably still out there and they could do this to someone else. We need to know why did this killer target Matt? Why take the time to brutally
eliminate him using three different weapons? Could this be someone close to Matt and if so, are they still living in the community.
Understandably, the public is very interested in this. It's a notable person and it's a horrible crime and they're not telling the public everything. Of course they can and shouldn't, but that kind of feedback and communication typically happens in cases like this. Even if you're not getting a lot of information, none of those things are happening.
So it seems I think to many of the people that I talk to in the community, especially people.
That really cared about Matt, that they're not doing anything, and fears start to set in.
Is there something that went wrong with the investigation.
There's been some real political upheaval in Morrisville, particularly in the last couple of years, and allegations of corruption has played the department for.
A long time.
But I think most people have a lot of grace and respect for what law enforcement do and that they can't come and tell everybody everything all the time.
But I think that trust kind of erodes year after.
Year, as especially as there's silence and what has happened locally to people in the community getting not only the cold shoulder, but feeling like they're doing something wrong.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
and L. C. Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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