By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Mar 20, 2009
Updated: Mar 20, 2009

DURHAM COUNTY — Beverly Sechler's worst nightmare came true on August 21, 1989 when she arrived at her sister's house to find the kitchen door swung open and blood all over the driveway.

Something was terribly wrong, she thought. She was right.

On a quiet street in an affluent Durham neighborhood, Cindy Kirk , 34, was attacked in her driveway in broad daylight while a construction crew worked on a house down the block and a landscaper mowed the lawn across the street. She was stabbed multiple times, twice in the heart, but no one saw the attack. Her final scream, heard by the landscaper across the street, was brushed off as the high-pitched squeal of a child who's fallen of her bike.

Cindy ran into the house to protect herself and collapsed just inside the door, while her two-year-old daughter napped unharmed upstairs.

The case has been passed from investigator to investigator, but a lack of physical evidence and no strong motive has left the case unsolved for nearly 20 years.

"I don't know if we didn't get any evidence was sheer luck or sheer genius. I don't know if it was planned and, you know, this is exactly how I want it, this is exactly when I want it and I'm going to do it this way. Or if it was just dumb luck," said Investigator Shawn Pate of the Durham Police Department. Inv. Pate has been working the case since January 2008.

He said he believes the crime was premeditated, but is unsure whether Cindy knew her attacker. In interviews with neighbors, police were able to get a description of a suspicious man in a green car who was seen in the neighborhood in the days prior to the attacks.

A mail carrier told police that the man had approached her a few days prior to Cindy's murder and asked her where he could find a map. She said he seemed to be hiding something behind his back, something he didn't want her to see. When he approached her again about 10 minutes later, she told police she thought he was creepy and odd, bombarding her with questions about the neighborhood, questions she said were random and in no particular order, all the while hiding something behind his back.

The man she described matched the description of a man the landscaper and a maid working in a nearby house saw in Cindy's driveway around the time she was killed. It was between 1 and 2 p.m. and she was loading up her car to drop her daugher off at the babysitter and head on to work at the Liggett Myers cigarette factory in downtown Durham. The babysitter called Beverly when Cindy never arrived to drop off her daughter. Worried, because Cindy was always punctual, Beverly drove over to her house.

Upon arriving at the scene and scared of what she was going to find, Beverly got a neighbor to check on Cindy. The rest of the day, she said, was a blur.

The "suspicious man" was middle-aged, medium height and weight, and clean-cut looking with dark hair. He was driving a green four-door American made mid-sized car, possibly a Reliant K, Inv. Pate said.

"What I've always wondered was if you were going to do it, and you were going to plan it, you see her coming back and forth loading up the car, why he never went into the house and did it. Where there would have been absolutely no witnesses," Inv. Pate said.

Those unanswered questions continue to haunt Cindy's family, who, unlike police, believe Cindy was the victim of a crime of passion. Beverly Sechler and her husband, Gary, suspect that someone close to Cindy killed her, but they have no evidence to back it up. Cindy's husband, Bill, was at work at the time and has been cleared as a suspect, Inv. Pate said.

"At first, I guess I'm naive, I really thought some random person came by and maybe they tried to attack her and maybe she fought, so it scared them away and they ran off," Beverly said. "But after having gotten more information from the police the past few years, it doesn't sound to me with the evidence they have that it could have been a random thing. It sounds to me like a crime of passion. Hate. And that's really hard for us to comprehend because Cindy was such a likable person."

"I do definitely feel like it was either someone she knew or someone who was even possibly hired to harm her," she added.

Beverly described Cindy as easygoing and laidback, generally well-liked and respected without an enemy in the world. But Cindy was also a very private person, she said, and she may not have shared problems she was having with her sister or friends.

The lack of skeletons in Cindy's closet has also baffled police. Who would have wanted to kill Cindy? And why?

In the 20 years since her death, people with information about this case have died or moved away, but Inv. Pate is optimistic that the killer confided in someone, and it's time for that person to come forward.

"Cindy's child, her daughter, was 2 at the time. So as you can imagine, now she's an adult, but it would at least be nice to be able to tell her that this person here is the reason why you never really got to know your mother," Inv. Pate said.

Gary and Beverly Sechler are also desperate for answers.

"It's just not fair for Cindy to be the only one that's suffered. That took the ultimate penatly for this and no one else has paid anything. And it's literally ripped a family apart... they need to pay for their crimes now," Gary said.

If you have any information about the unsolved murder of Cindy Kirk, call NC WANTED toll free at 1.866.43.WANTED (1.866.439.2683) or click on "Report a Tip" Your identity can be kept confidential.