By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Mar. 31, 2009
Updated: Apr. 9, 2009

UNION COUNTY — When Theresa McClung arrived at her father’s house on June 10, 2003, she found him dead on his living room floor covered in blood.

Charles Hanley, 75, a former volunteer firefighter, had been stabbed more than 15 times with a screwdriver.

“There wasn’t anybody that didn’t like my father. He was such an outgoing, very likable person that I could not understand why anyone would want to take his life. And basically, I was numb. I couldn’t really feel emotion and all I wanted was help,” McClung recalled.

Heartbroken, she waited for answers. In time, those answers came. Timothy Kennedy and Jose Manuel Torres Miranda were charged with murder. Hanley worked with Kennedy at a local paving company, and Kennedy often took advantage of Hanley’s generosity by coming over to borrow money. This time, he brought Miranda with him.

Once inside, the two men attacked Hanley, said Lt. Cody Luke of the Union County Sheriff’s Office, and robbed him.

“They killed him for not very much money at all,” he said.

McClung told NC WANTED that the men killed her father for drugs and a prostitute. And although the case is solved, she still waits for answers.

While Kennedy sits in jail, Miranda is on the loose. He has eluded justice for six years, but investigators and McClung hope that someone will come forward with information leading to his arrest.

Miranda is on the State Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted list, and Lt. Luke said all indications suggest that Miranda has fled to Mexico. The Union County Sheriff's Office contacted INTERPOL, the International Criminal Police Organization, to request that they issue an international bulletin for Miranda’s capture.

But investigators cannot even be sure that Jose Miranda is the man’s real name and, armed only with a photo, they need information from the public to determine his true identity and whereabouts.

In the mean time, McClung continues to pound the pavement, posting flyers and talking to people from Union County in southern North Carolina to Rockingham County in the north, hoping for a tip that will lead authorities to Miranda. She meets people who know him, who say that Jose Miranda is not his real name, who say he is in Mexico, but who will not provide the details necessary to make an arrest.

It’s frustrating, she said, but she has to keep trying until both men responsible for her father’s death are safely behind bars.

“If I can get him in, then I feel like justice is served. Right now, I have to. This is something I have to do for my father,” she said.

If you have information on Miranda's true identity or whereabouts, 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.