New DNA testing led to an arrest in the nearly 40-year-old murder case of a North Carolina woman and her 10-year-old son, police announced Thursday.
In 1984, 27-year-old special needs teacher Sarah Mobley Hall and her son, Derrick Mobley were found strangled in their home on Ventura Way in Hidden Valley.
Police arrested 60-year-old James Thomas Pratt South Carolina on February 1, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police statement. His criminal history includes only minor, misdemeanor arrests, said Capt. Joel McNelly, CMPD’s Violent Crimes Division commander.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Cold Case Unit identified Pratt using new familial DNA technology that matches a suspect’s DNA after analyzing an entire family line. It was the first time the technology was used to solve a murder in North Carolina, McNelly said.
Similar technology helped CMPD make an arrest in 2019 in a rape case that went unsolved for years. And the same tactic helped authorities last year identify a missing Raleigh man found dead in Charlotte in 2010.
In Pratt’s case, it led police to an exact match, he said.
Pratt, who was 22 years old when the murders took place, was not a suspect in the original investigation, but he lived in the neighborhood and Hall were thought to have a “friendly relationship,” McNelly said in a press conference.
The FBI helped confirm Pratt’s DNA, McNelly said, but he declined to comment on how it was collected. Police are still working to understand Pratt’s motive.
“Society has probably forgotten about these folks,” McNelly said, “but the family never forgot, and we never forgot.”
Police Chief Johnny Jennings and Mecklenburg Sheriff Gary McFadden were original investigators on the case. Pratt was being held at the Mecklenburg County jail, which is overseen by McFadden, Thursday morning.
“To put the age of this in perspective,” McNelly said, “if there was a rookie police officer that started on the day of this crime, that person would be retired for more than 10 years now. More importantly, there’s been a family that’s been waiting 39 years wondering what happened to their sister, to their daughter.”
Hall’s parents died before the case was solved, but police notified her siblings of Pratt’s arrest, CMPD said.
Hall’s sister, Mary Dae, worked nearby the Hidden Valley home, she said in a CMPD video. She spent a lot of time with her sister and jovial nephew.
“I carried a burden for years because I felt like I should have been with her,” Dae said. “It would have never happened if I was with her.”
Jennings, in a video statement Thursday, recalled working on the investigation. “It was something that really tugged at me that I needed to solve this case,” he said, describing feeling an attachment to the single mother and son who were brutally killed inside their apartment.
“I should be retired somewhere getting a phone call that they solved this case,” Jennings said. “But I’m still working with CMPD, and we were able to bring closure to this case, and to be able to see that through as chief of police is just amazing.”
The investigation into this case is active and ongoing. Anyone with information about this incident cano call 704-432-TIPS leave information anonymously by contacting Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
A grant from the Bureau of Justice Administration allowed the police department to send Pratt’s DNA to a genealogy testing lab. McNelly said he hopes the technology continues to solve cold cases.
“We’re just on the front end of all this, it’s only going to get better,” he said. “There’s a lot of bad people that have done a lot of bad things that are probably a little concerned right now.”
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