THURSDAY APRIL 17, 2014 VOLUME 120 ISSUE 117 Serving The University of Alabama since 1894
NEWS | COLD CASE
“not a day for a murder” Easter Sunday continues to mark the anniversary of Tuscaloosa County’s oldest unsolved murder By Lauren Ferguson and Andy McWhorter CW Staff
CW | Austin Bigoney
s Easter morning dawned on April 22, 1973, University of Alabama students were still asleep after a long night spent on Woods Quad listening to a concert by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Others had already driven home to celebrate with church services and foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies. But the holiday calm was abruptly interrupted for University of Alabama Police Department investigator Irvin Fields, who was informed by phone that a student named Paula Lee Ellis was missing. Paula Lee, originally from Miami, was wrapping up her freshman year at the University. She had pledged Pi Beta Phi sorority in the fall, was popular among her friends, her sorority sisters and football players, and enjoyed participating in campus activities. Her brother described her as a typical college girl: a good student, former majorette in high school and interested in majoring
in education. She had biked to Woods Quad the night before to attend the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band concert, but she never returned to the Martha Parham residence hall the next morning. Her body would be discovered a few hours later, seven miles away, in a roadside ditch in Northport, just as Easter Sunday services were coming to a close across the area. This year, Easter Sunday strikes a solemn chord for the Ellis family. It marks the 41st anniversary of Paula Lee’s death, and another year that Tuscaloosa County’s oldest unsolved murder case remains cold. The Ellis case is not the only murder of a University of Alabama student that remains unsolved. Ronald Perryman was shot in his home in 1976, and Chanda Fehler was found in the Black Warrior River in 1987, but some progress has been
made in their cases over the years. Paula Lee’s murder, on the other hand, is no closer to being solved than it was that morning in 1973. “It was a beautiful day,” Fields said. “Not a day for a murder.” After receiving the call, Fields and his partner at the time, James Junkin, met at their office and began what they thought would be a simple search. Initially, they believed Paula Lee had spent the night at a friend’s house. “We went to every friend’s apartment that we could find out that she knew and began looking for her,” Fields said. “Because a lot of times people go to others’ apartments, and you think they are missing, and somebody divulges where they’re at. That’s what we thought we were dealing with.”
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CW File Paula Lee Ellis
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