At last, closure in teen's death after murderer is found in jail
By John Joyce
Published in News on March 29, 2015 1:50 AM
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Jared Graybeal, 16, was found murdered near LaGrange in 1996. It would be 18 years before the case was solved.
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Thomas Steele Dail was sentenced March 16 in connection with the teen's murder.
After 18 years of waiting, the Graybeal family finally has closure.
At least now they know who was responsible for 16-year-old Jared's murder -- and that someone will be punished for the crime.
They have been waiting for justice ever since the teenager's body was discovered on Louie Pollack Road near LaGrange.on April 4,1996.
Jared was last seen the day before outside a Goldsboro restaurant.
And until late last year, there was not enough evidence to make an arrest. However, testing by the State Bureau of Investigation and the Center for Advanced Forensic DNA Analysis, a private lab in Greenville, and interviews with investigators from the Lenoir County Sheriff's Office, the Goldsboro Police Department and the SBI helped officers charge Thomas Steele Dail, 50, in the case.
Dail was already in prison serving a life sentence for killing a state DMV examiner in 1995.
And in a plea deal accepted March 16 in Lenoir County Superior Court, Dail received a second life sentence without the possibility of parole for killing Jared.
Jared's brother, David Graybeal, said the sentencing was the end of a long road for the family.
"It's nice to get the case closed. The biggest thing was not knowing all these years," he said.
Dail did not say anything at the hearing, Graybeal said. But the prosecutor read part of the confession Dail gave in a jailhouse interview conducted by Goldsboro police in October 2014.
Graybeal said the detectives were able to answer many of the family's lingering questions.
"It was not a real clear cut 'why,'" Graybeal said.
He was told Jared and Dail had argued -- that Dail had been high on cocaine all that day -- and that he had pulled a knife on Jared.
"Jared just spoke to the wrong guy in the parking lot," Graybeal said.
Graybeal's parents, John and Linda, were present at the sentencing.
Graybeal said the family would have liked to have seen Dail punished specifically for killing Jared. Instead, he said, they feel like Dail is just going back to where he was.
But there is some comfort in knowing that Dail has not been free for the last 18 years, Graybeal said.
"It was good to know he was sent to prison just a couple months after killing my brother. You know he wasn't 'out there' like you imagined and just nobody saying anything. He was sitting in prison and no one knew who he was," he said.
The family considered the death penalty, but decided it should not be their choice to make.
"I understand why (the district attorney) took the death penalty off the table. It was the only thing left to take from (Dail)," Graybeal said.
In the end the family had to find solace in the fact they had learned why their loved one was killed and that the man responsible had been found.
"The biggest thing is we are very thankful to law enforcement for never giving up," he said. He personally thanked former Lenoir County Sheriff Chris Hill and Goldsboro Police Department Investigator Karen Zwirblia for their efforts.
"Karen knew Jared, so I think this was a bit personal for her," Graybeal said.
Investigator Jeremy Sutton, who worked with Ms. Zwirblia on the case the two detectives eventually helped close, said the credit belongs to everyone involved.
He said the case took thousands of manhours and many sleepless nights over an 18-year period to solve.
"From the initial investigators to Investigator Zwirblia and I, there were hundreds of interviews conducted and hundreds of pieces of evidence evaluated," he said.
Sutton also credited Sheriff Hill with getting subsequent DNA evidence tested through a private lab that, in addition to the evidence tested by the SBI, narrowed the feild of suspects to Dail.
"We hope that in the coming months and years to come, the family and friends (of Jared Graybeal) will be able to have some peace in the fact that Tommy Dail will never hurt anyone else," Sutton said.
District Attorney Matt Delbridge, whose office worked out the plea agreement, commended the efforts of those involved in the case. He, too, credited law enforcement with never giving up.
Delbridge recognized former district attorney Branny Vickory, Sheriff Hill and the investigators with the Goldsboro Police Department for their diligence.
"It is human nature to relinquish the pursuit of a difficult goal in the face of years of disappointment and frustration," he said.
Delbridge said he was proud to be associated with the "fine law enforcement organizations ... that never gave up their efforts to solve this murder despite the passage of so many years."