Mocksville man escapes death penalty in death of Burlington woman

By Daniella Battaglia
Winston-Salem Journal

GREENSBORO — A Mocksville man who shot a woman, beat her with a gun, slit her throat and dragged her body 15 feet into a ditch escaped the death penalty this week after a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Anthony Clay Campbell, 56, of 156 Charleston Ridge Drive in Mocksville was scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 6 for the June 2014 death of 45-year-old Joyce "Jo" Price Eaton.

Instead he pleaded guilty to the Burlington woman's death in Guilford County Superior Court. Judge Michael Duncan accepted the plea and sentenced Campbell to life in prison without parole.

"Life without parole seems like an appropriate punishment and her family also felt that way," said Howard Neumann, Guilford County's chief assistant district attorney. "There are few capital cases here where that deal has not been offered."

Guilford County Sheriff's deputies found Eaton's body in a ditch off AT&T Drive in McLeansville at 11:20 a.m. on June 12, 2014.

Deputies could tell that Eaton had been shot in the back and that her assailant repeatedly hit her over the head with a gun so hard, it broke the magazine, spilling ammunition onto the ground.

What they didn't know was her identity.

Neumann said investigators initially had few clues to work with. Cell phone records would help retrace the last moments of her life, which pointed them to her boyfriend Campbell.

The investigation into Eaton's death began as three separate cases. Guilford County deputies had an unidentified body, High Point police and the Alamance County Sheriff's Office had reports of a missing woman and Orange County deputies found Eaton's abandoned vehicle.

It was Eaton's estranged husband that helped law enforcement start putting things together.

Reading news reports that a body was found and knowing his wife was missing, he went to Guilford County authorities and was able to identify Eaton from crime-scene photos.

So investigators started retracing her steps. That led them to her employer, Verizon Wireless at Alamance Crossing, where Eaton was known as a hard worker who outsold her colleagues and recently won a regional award for her work.

Neumann said coworkers told investigators that they last saw Eaton around 9 p.m. on June 11 — hours before her death — in her car outside the business having what appeared to be a heated phone conversation.

Eaton's five children told deputies their mother got involved with Campbell through an online Ponzi-type scheme. They became romantically involved and both left their spouses.

According to Neumann, Eaton learned that Campbell and his wife were still together a week before her death.

"That put stress on their relationship," Neumann said. "She had pretty much decided that he should put up or shut up."

Campbell told investigators that he knew Eaton, but not romantically, and that he hadn't seen her in a week.

Detectives then accessed Campbell and Eaton's phone records from the night of the shooting. Cell towers were able to place phones belonging to both Eaton and Campbell at Alamance Crossing where Eaton worked and the crime scene in McLeansville. Another cell tower placed only Campbell's phone at the location in Orange County where Eaton's car was found.

Neumann said that left investigators with one question: How did Campbell get from Orange County back to his home in Mocksville?

Detectives once again poured through the couple's cell phone records and realized Campbell repeatedly called one number throughout the night of Eaton's death. It was a number that belonged to Campbell's distant relative.

Neumann said that relative had been duped by Campbell.

She believed that on the night of the shooting she had dropped Campbell off at Alamance Crossing for a business meeting at an Olive Garden restaurant, just feet from the Verizon store. She drove around talking on the phone with a friend, waiting for a call from Campbell to pick him up.

That call came hours later. But instead of being at Alamance Crossing, Campbell told her to drive to Orange County. She picked him up on the side of a road and took him back to a Walmart in Greensboro where he had left his car.

"She was the one piece of the puzzle that was critical," Neumann said. "She lays it all out."

Neumann said when investigators confronted Campbell, he admitted that he and Eaton drove around together and ended up at AT&T Drive in McLeansville. He said he couldn't remember what happened after that.

Presumably, after Campbell killed Eaton, her took her car from McLeansville to Orange County, where he abandoned it and called his relative for a ride.

Investigators arrested Campbell several months after Eaton's death.

On Friday, he was admitted into Central Prison in Raleigh to start his life sentence.

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