By Seamus McGraw

MONROE, N.C. (Crime Library, February 27, 2006) — In life, no one really paid much attention to Sharon Tucker Stone, unless you count the couple of times the 46-year-old woman was charged with the kind of small time crimes — bad check writing, making false statements to cops, failing to appear in court — that people who live beyond the margins and on the street often are charged with.

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It is, perhaps a measure of how invisible she was that she had been missing for more than a month before anyone even realized that she had vanished. Now, however, three weeks after a man, who was casually collecting aluminum cans across the South Carolina border found her decapitated body dumped not far from a pile of refuse, people are starting to talk about Sharon Tucker Stone.

The woman, who was last seen on Jan. 1 in the vicinity of Monroe, had been dead, authorities say, anywhere from two to five days. Investigators can only speculate about where she was, or what she had endured in the month between the time she vanished and Feb. 9, when she was found.

Although authorities are keeping all of their options open, a task force comprised of law enforcement officers from both Stone's home state of North Carolina and from South Carolina, as well as agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have confirmed that they are actively trying to determine whether Stone may have been the latest victim of a serial killer.

A police official on Friday told Crime Library that investigators have found significant similarities between Stone's slaying and the deaths of two other almost invisible women from Union County, North Carolina over the past years.

In 1997, Sharon House Pressley, a woman who's life mirrored Stone's in many respects, was found dead not far from a secluded creek. Like Stone, she had been shot in the head.

And two years ago, in roughly the same location, authorities found the body Christina "Christy" Parker. She too had been shot in the head.

At a press conference late last week, Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said that authorities had not yet determined whether the three women were all the victims of the same killer, but investigators "are certainly concerned" that such a predator might be at large.

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Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

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