Partners aplenty wanted a taste of Pro-formance, the sports drink that was to make them rich. But murder was the only thing that could slake Joey Caldwell's greed.
Joey Caldwell looked at people and saw dollar signs. 'I think everybody is curved with lines through them for Joey,' former business associate Eric Hillman says. A bodybuilder who tried to get rich selling vitamins and sports drinks, Caldwell came to care only for money, preferably other people's, and the way it made him feel. 'Joey was so after money he would have done anything for it,' Hillman explains. 'Joey loved money.'
Maceo McEachern loved people. Warm and outgoing, the Hamlet mortician was compassionate in his work and generous to his friends and community. 'Maceo didn't meet any strangers,' says Robert Bristow, a Hamlet police captain and life-long friend. Another friend adds: 'Maceo had the gift of gab, but he was a truthful person. He would rather have a friend than money.'
Their paths crossed in the ownership and marketing of Pro-formance, a clear, carbohydrate-packed sports drink. But what really brought them together was ambition, that odorless, tasteless, invisible and inexhaustible elixir of the American economy. In McEachern, ambition was benign. He wanted to make his own way outside the family business and one day live on his own horse farm. In Caldwell, it curdled greed into a deadly poison.
In a seemingly innocent business deal signed Feb. 1, 1991, Maceo McEachern acquired from Joey Caldwell the trademark and formula for Pro-formance. In doing so, he signed his death warrant.
On Sept. 1, 1993, Caldwell, 37, was convicted in U.S. Middle District Court in Greensboro of 57 counts of mail fraud, money laundering and transporting a weapon across a state line to commit a felony. The jury believed he used the shotgun to kill McEachern, 44, and his 82-year-old mother on April 12, 1991. The motive: $2 million in insurance. Says Hillman: 'I don't think Joey saw it as a life. I think Joey saw it as another means to get money.'
The double murder shook Hamlet. 'It was like a huge dark black cloud over the entire town. Everyone was just in a state of shock,' says Sid Hodges, a pawnshop owner and family friend. The McEacherns were well-known and well-liked. In 1972, he had become Richmond County's first black school-board member and, in 1978, its first black county commissioner. Both mother and son had served on local hospital boards. Mrs. McEachern, a former teacher with a reputation as a canny businesswoman, worked at the family's funeral homes in Hamlet and Rockingham.
Caldwell, who started his first vitamin business in 1986, had enjoyed adulatory articles in the Charlotte press. But behind his facade as an up-and-comer, he was cheating and conning. He became adept at inducing friends and acquaintances to invest in his ventures while leaving creditors dangling. 'He didn't want happiness. He wanted material goods,' says Jeff Compton, another former associate. 'He wanted an airplane, a Porsche, a nice big house, all that. And he'd get that stuff, without being able to afford it.'
Caldwell grew up in Gaston County. His parents divorced and remarried; his father makes chain saws at Homelite's plant in Gastonia, and his mother, who lives in Florida, works seven nights a week at a Christian retirement center. He dropped out of North Gaston High School in the 11th grade, according to school records. He married young and went to work for Talon Inc. in Gastonia as a tool-and-die maker.
When co-worker James Brooks left to start Specialty Machine Co. Inc. with a partner in the early 1980s, he hired Joey Caldwell. Skilled and reliable, Caldwell worked 50 hours a week at precision machining and grinding. Brooks describes him as serious, determined and compulsively neat. 'He was immaculately clean, a neat freak. He washed his hands constantly.' He was a perfectionist. 'Anything he went at, he was going to do it right.' His personal life was not exactly neat, however: He had a strained relationship with his father, whom he saw infrequently. His first marriage ended in divorce, and he remarried.
'He strived to live well,' Brooks says. 'He projected a very successful image. It was very important to him, to look the image.' He lived in a modest house in a Gastonia subdivision. 'He was an Oldsmobile guy. Nothing fancy,' Brooks says. 'But Joey wouldn't have any junk.' Caldwell became absorbed in karate, telling Brooks he had earned a black belt.
By the mid-'80s, Caldwell, though just 5-foot-8, became a serious bodybuilder, competing in local shows. 'The gym consumed him,' Brooks says, and took its toll on his second marriage. Business slowed, and Brooks was forced to lay him off. Caldwell didn't seem upset, Brooks says, and for a while he sold cars. He had started running with friends he met at King's Gym, one of Charlotte's top weight-lifting spots. 'He was a friendly guy, a big-hearted person. If you needed something and called him, he'd have done anything you'd ask,' says a friend from those days.
By 1986, Caldwell had, by his own admission, dabbled in steroids. He was also consuming up to $300 a month in vitamins and nutritional supplements. Realizing there was money to be made in buying the legitimate nutrition products directly from manufacturers and selling them to friends, he started Vitamin Locker Inc. In 1988 he hired Hillman, a marketer for Piedmont Airlines in Winston-Salem, and Compton, a Charlotte furniture salesman, who each put up $10,000 for 5% stakes in the business. Another partner, Mark Parker, a bodybuilder from Ohio, paid $20,000 for a 10% share. The company obtained private-label products from manufacturer Vitalabs Inc. in Jonesboro, Ga., and sold them through gyms and health-food stores throughout the Southeast.
Caldwell divorced his third wife and married Barbara Burford Riggins, a divorced fitness enthusiast who became Vitamin Locker's bookkeeper. A UNCC graduate who had taught math in Charlotte public schools, Bobbie was friendly but pliable, former associates say, and firmly under Caldwell's thumb. He often reduced her to tears in the office. She reportedly put some $25,000 into the business.
Caldwell moved his company into a new 12,000-square-foot building in a Mecklenburg County business park and hired about 15 people, far more than needed, Compton says. At its peak in 1989, Vitamin Locker's sales topped $100,000 a month -- respectable but far from the $4 million in annual revenues that Caldwell claimed in a story in The Business Journal of Charlotte in October 1988.
Hoping to ride the growing popularity of sports drinks, he developed an idea for a beverage targeted at athletes called Pro-Power and hired Coca-Cola Bottling Consolidated in Charlotte to produce it. Last year, sports-drink sales hit $800 million nationwide, with Quaker Oats Co.'s Gatorade quenching nearly a third of the market.
Caldwell was a compelling salesman. 'He's convincing as hell. I could tell you my eyes are blue, and he could get you in another room and convince you I was lying,' says Compton, whose eyes are very blue. Like most good salespeople, Caldwell was a masterful closer. 'He was the best con man I've ever seen,' Hillman says. 'He always used to say, 'The boat is leaving the dock. You can either get on it or get off.''
But with no beverage experience, outside capital totaling just over $100,000 and lousy business sense, Joey Caldwell had little chance to score big. His promotional attempts were 'real ready, fire, aim things,' Compton says. Caldwell spent $65,000 advertising Pro-Power, including renting billboards, before there was any distribution. He paid $18,000 for a two-page ad in Muscle & Fitness magazine with little return. He started a magazine, Southern Muscle, which folded after one issue. Pro-Power achieved only limited distribution in gyms and convenience stores in the Carolinas.
Running a struggling small business didn't keep Caldwell from acting like a big shot. He put his picture on Vitamin Locker's letterhead, paid himself $140,000 a year and drove a leased BMW. He wore custom-made suits and $150 Giorgio Brutini shoes. He and Bobbie moved into a $230,000 house in a wooded subdivision in Belmont, which they eventually bought with a $215,000 loan.
'It's funny. Joey wanted the money, but he didn't think he should have to pay for the stuff that he bought,' Hillman says. 'That's virtually what it came down to. He barely paid anybody for anything.'
His attitude changed dramatically. He stopped returning calls from weight-lifting friends. 'The last two or three times I talked to him, it went from 'Hi, how are ya, are you workin' out?' to a total conversation about how he could make money,' says one. 'Overnight he went from a friendly-smile type of mentality to 'I'm going to get rich,' from working out to chasing money.'
Both Hillman and Compton noticed that Joey was apparently skimming off the top; he frequently took home cash from sales at trade shows rather than depositing it. The company also failed to turn over to the government taxes withheld from employee paychecks.
Just as he had pumped up his physique, Caldwell pumped up his image. Compton recounts visits to ad agencies that wanted Vitamin Locker's business. 'They were just bowing down to Joey, and he was eating that stuff up. He'd sit back, and it looked like it was better than sex for him,' he says.
He began to show a darker, violent side. He told Hillman he frequently dreamed there were snakes in his bed and would wake up thrashing at his bedding. He boasted he had once shot at the car of an ex-wife's former husband. Hillman remembers Caldwell telling him that, when short of cash some years earlier, he had destroyed his lawn mower, then claimed a loss on his insurance. Another time, after hearing that Hillman had draped an arm around Bobbie while talking with others in the office, Caldwell stormed into his office and threatened to kill him if he touched her again.
Hillman and Compton knew things were seriously awry when creditors began calling. Carolina Freight Carriers stopped accepting loads unless they were accompanied with payment, Compton says. When he checked the files, he found nearly a year's unpaid bills. From May to September 1989, the company failed to pay Vitamin Locker's $5,890 monthly rent. When Hillman asked what was going on, he says, Bobbie Caldwell told him it was none of his business.
When Vitamin Locker fell behind on payments to Vitalabs, the business began to crumble. 'Of course we felt betrayed,' says Paul Shull, president of Vitalabs. After Caldwell bounced checks totaling $27,429.38, Vitalabs swore out criminal warrants against him. Hillman and Compton quit in July 1989 to become salesmen for Vitalabs. Caldwell sued them and Vitalabs, accusing them of stealing Vitamin Locker's customers. Someone -- Hillman believes it was Caldwell -- called the phone company and had his number changed. And Hillman and Compton say Caldwell sent out a phony letter to customers over Hillman's forged signature.
Ultimately, under a December 1989 settlement, Caldwell dropped his suit and agreed to pay Vitalabs his debt. But as Vitamin Locker foundered, Hillman, Compton and Parker lost their investments. In addition, they were liable for a $100,000 loan taken out from First Charlotte Bank in 1988. Caldwell had told Hillman and Compton that, as 5% owners of the business, they were liable for only 5% of the loan, or $5,000 each. No such luck: When Vitamin Locker defaulted in December 1989, each stockholder was liable. For the next 12 years, Hillman says, he must pay $400 a month for his portion of the debt.
Caldwell's finances were in chaos. In September 1989, he abandoned the office building without notice, owing owner FC Properties $25,729. He owed $18,006 to Jordan Graphics, a printing company, and $14,270 to Springs Leasing for a Canon copier. His bounced checks made him unwelcome at several Charlotte gyms. He consulted Charlotte bankruptcy lawyer David Badger, then stiffed him on the $523.50 bill. Falling behind on their house payments, he and Bobbie were forced to temporarily move to an apartment.
Undeterred, Caldwell talked his father and his wife's mother into investing $25,000 apiece in a new company, Gymbags Inc., incorporated under Bobbie's name to protect it from his creditors. He decided to focus on a new sports drink, Pro-formance. He hired Arcadia Farms, a Buncombe County bottler owned by Nathan and Carolyn Arthur, to produce it. The clear drink came in four flavors and was sold in transparent plastic bottles.
For help in marketing the drink, Caldwell approached Gastonia beverage distributor Ben Rudisill in the summer of 1990. Satisfied by Caldwell's bank references and impressed with Arcadia Farms' operations, Rudisill tested the product at a few Gaston County grocery stores. 'I liked the looks of the product,' he recalls, 'and it did sell.' He agreed to become master distributor for Pro-formance and lined up distributors in Durham, Fayetteville and Columbia, S.C. The drink started showing up in Winn-Dixie and Harris Teeter stores.
Three months after reaching an agreement with Caldwell, Rudisill was astonished to receive a telegram inviting him to a meeting in Southern Pines to introduce beverage distributors to Pro-formance. The meeting's sponsor was Clyde Sullivan, a Coors distributor for the Fayetteville area. Behind Rudisill's back, Caldwell had appointed Sullivan master distributor.
After a lawsuit and settlement, Rudisill was allowed to keep $39,000 collected from distributors. Still, the experience stung. 'Everyone |Caldwell~ came into contact with, he managed somehow to violate,' Rudisill says. 'He had no intention of paying them or keeping his word. He was one of these shell people, with nothing behind the shell. If you sued him, you got nothing.'
The product, Rudisill believes, had great potential. 'It would have been another Gatorade had he been legitimate,' he says.
In Hamlet, Maceo McEachern also saw a fortune in soft drinks. The only child of undertakers Maceo and Vela McEachern, he had grown up doted upon in a well-to-do household. Around 1950, the McEacherns had traveled to Winston-Salem for a mortgage when local bankers refused to lend them money for a brick house, apparently because they didn't think a black family should live in a better house than many whites. A solid 6-foot-3, Maceo played on the defensive line for Monroe Avenue High School's football team, treasuring the blue and white jacket he received when the team finished second in the 1964 state championship for black high schools.
Once a teacher, Vela McEachern later joined her husband's funeral business, which he had founded in 1929. Though nominally retired, she drove her Lincoln to work every day. She feared thunderstorms but little else, relatives say.
She and her husband gave Maceo a Corvette when he graduated from high school. He attended North Carolina Central on a football scholarship, often lending classmates the suits and jackets his mother lovingly selected for him. After graduation, he went to mortuary school in Cincinnati and enjoyed a brief hippie period, living in a communal house and going to Woodstock on the back of a friend's motorcycle. After his father's death in 1971, he took his place running the family's funeral homes in Hamlet and Rockingham. Jovial by nature, he played the part of undertaker with proper solemnity, though he often wore black cowboy boots with his suits.
As a school-board member, the never-married McEachern won better wages for cafeteria and maintenance workers. As a county commissioner, his efforts to represent all the community sometimes disappointed militant blacks, recalls Naomi Daggs, an English teacher at Richmond Community College whom he dated for nearly 20 years.
A sports lover, he worked out at a local gym, rooted for Carolina and enjoyed attending Charlotte Hornets and Hamlet High football games. He bought his first horse in 1976, and in 1981 he and partner Michael McInnis formed 4-M Farms, buying and training champion quarter-horse colts and yearlings. They employed a professional trainer, but McEachern loved being around the horses, happy to clean stalls and tote hay. Hodges recalls how McEachern stayed up all night with a sick horse that finally died. When Hodges commented that at least the horse had been insured, McEachern replied, 'You don't understand. I'd rather have that horse than 10 times the money.'
'He had friends in pretty well all segments of the community, visited at black and white people's homes,' Hamlet Police Chief Terry Moore says. 'He enjoyed life.'
But he also had an ambitious side. 'He didn't want to die an undertaker,' Daggs says. Trying to make his own fortune, he had distributed Amway products and sold insurance, irradiated food and oversized toilet-paper dispensers. 'Maceo's mother used to say, 'Poor Maceo. He has the luck of a buzzard,'' Daggs recalls. 'Something would always go wrong.'
He got into the beverage business in the late '80s distributing Island Treat, a soft drink based on tropical fruits, to nearby Fort Bragg and other military bases. He met the Arthurs and started distributing water and juices from Arcadia Farms. They introduced him to Caldwell in 1990. McEachern, the Arthurs, Clyde Sullivan and his wife and son each bought 5% stakes in Gymbags. A few others had smaller stakes, leaving the Caldwells about 65%. An excited McEachern, who put up $50,000 for his share, 'wanted |Pro-formance~ to replace Gatorade on the NFL bench,' Hodges says.
Sullivan had plans of his own. The distributors' meeting at Southern Pines on Nov. 29, 1990, had generated a lot of interest in Pro-formance. But Monty Irvin, a marketer hired by Sullivan, testified at Caldwell's trial that Sullivan instructed him not to take any orders from eager distributors. Sullivan's motive, McEachern later told Daggs, apparently was to squeeze Caldwell out of the business by choking off Gymbags' cash flow. It seems Sullivan had checked up on Caldwell and concluded he was a liability. Sullivan and the Arthurs declined to be interviewed.
Forced to choose between feuding partners, McEachern picked Sullivan over Caldwell, who had annoyed him by acquiring a Mercedes when the business needed every penny. He admired Sullivan's ruthless streak, which he himself lacked, Daggs says. 'He'd trip over his own good nature,' she says. Recalling how McEachern also liked TV tough guy J.R. Ewing, 'I guess he was a ruthless wannabe,' she says.
Sullivan, a well-connected Republican who entertained Marilyn Quayle at his farm during a fund-raiser in 1991, employed some unconventional business methods. In December 1990, he and McEachern confronted Caldwell in his Charlotte office, accompanied by two armed off-duty Moore County deputy sheriffs. Sullivan accused Caldwell of trying to cheat the company. The deputies were later reprimanded by the sheriff and nearly lost their jobs.
As 1991 began, Sullivan's squeeze play was working. Once more, Caldwell was in desperate financial straits. Gymbags failed to pay $92,310 for radio ads aired during Duke and N.C. State games. Several old creditors were taking Caldwell to court. He defaulted on his BMW lease and his NCNB credit card. All told, Caldwell had some $200,000 in claims pending against him in Mecklenburg County courts. Gymbags' net worth at the time was a negative $14,000. Caldwell tried to sell rights to the drink to Sullivan, but negotiations became acrimonious and finally collapsed.
Now McEachern saw an opportunity to become a big-time player. With a loan from Laurinburg-based First Scotland Bank, he acquired the drink's trademark and formula from Gymbags. The February 1991 deal called for McEachern to pay $40,000 down plus $235,000 over four years and 3 cents a gallon on sales. As part of the deal, Gymbags took out two 'key-man' life-insurance policies totaling $2 million on McEachern, ostensibly to protect future payments.
But McEachern had begun to doubt Sullivan as well. He discovered that, contrary to what Sullivan had told him, the drinks were not being distributed to a local gym and that, at another, they had been marked up 19 cents a bottle without his knowledge. The Caldwells invited McEachern to Charlotte and convinced him they were on the level. McEachern agreed to testify for Caldwell in a $2 million suit against Sullivan.
On April 10, 1991, Vela McEachern found a cinder block in the driveway of the brick house she shared with Maceo on the outskirts of Hamlet. She lugged it aside and told several friends, confiding to one that she was afraid someone was mad at Maceo and that she would warn him to be careful. He was in New Orleans on a trip to recruit distributors for Pro-formance.
He returned the next day, exhilarated over the distributors he had signed. That night, he and Daggs rented the movie Ghost. She asked what he thought happened to people after they died. 'Nothing,' he answered. 'I think you just die.'
She saw him again the next day and found him in a curiously troubled mood. They argued, then made up, and he told her he loved her. Later that evening, muggy for April, he didn't show up to dress a body for burial. Concerned, a funeral-home employee went to his house. No one came to the door, but peering through the window into the den, he saw McEachern slumped on the couch. He called the police. They found McEachern on the couch and his mother in a rocker, their heads and chests ripped by four blasts of double-aught buckshot.
'It was a bad, bad situation. I've seen quite a bit of that kind of thing, but this was awfully brutal, to shoot an 80-something-year-old lady with a shotgun,' Capt. Bristow says. The house had not been ransacked. 'It appeared somebody came in to kill these people and leave.'
By the next day, police and SBI were focusing on the intrigue around Pro-formance. 'It was a business that bounced back and forth among three groups of people. It would have made me nervous,' Bristow says. SBI agent Bill Lane notes: 'There was something about this Pro-formance thing that made people go crazy.'
'Maceo was really just a pawn,' Daggs says. 'He was so vulnerable.' Adds Bristow: 'It was just his ambition got in the way, got him killed. He had to do a lot of wheeling and dealing to get in the middle of this.'
The county mourned. With no church big enough, the funeral was held at Fairview Heights Elementary School and was attended by hundreds. Many of McEachern's friends gathered that night for a wake at the house where jazz great John Coltrane was born, just down the street from the McEacherns' funeral home.
Sullivan refused to speak to the police for several days. When he finally consented, his lawyer did most of the talking. Law-enforcement officials describe him as 'not very cooperative.'
SBI agents interviewed the Caldwells the day after the murders. Witnesses had reported seeing a white man and a car like Caldwell's green Acura near the McEacherns' home the previous day, but the Caldwells had an alibi: They were in Charlotte seeing a movie and shopping when the killings took place 80 miles away. They produced ticket stubs and a timed and dated receipt from Eckerd's in SouthPark Mall to prove it.
When Hillman and Compton read about the murders, they immediately thought of Joey Caldwell. 'Gut feeling, I knew he had something to do with it,' Hillman says. 'It was conniving, and that was Joey. It had Joey written all over it.'
Despite months of work, investigators turned up little evidence. That summer the insurance policies paid off, with $1.3 million going to the Caldwells and some $700,000 to the minority shareholders.
The Caldwells used the money to pay off some debts and improve their lifestyle. They put a 2,000-square-foot addition, including an office and gym, on their house. The gym came with a tanning bed and equipment costing more than $17,000. They spent more than $22,000 on furniture from Boyles, acquired several paintings and installed a high-tech security system. They paid $30,000 for landscaping. They spent thousands of dollars for software games and programs. They bought a Mercedes 500SL, a Porsche 911 Turbo and two boats. They bought $7,000 in lingerie for Bobbie, who had breast implants and liposuction.
Still, a friend says Bobbie became quieter, more serious. Caldwell worked out of his home office, trying to get another vitamin business going. They stashed thousands of dollars in the laundry basket, the drawer below his computer and the engine compartment of one of their boats, apparently in case they had to flee.
Within 18 months, the money was all but gone. SBI agents had interviewed them several times, subtly keeping the pressure on. One night, Bobbie awoke to find her husband threatening to kill her. He had dreamed she had turned on him.
When he began talking about taking out life-insurance policies, she went to a lawyer. Early this year, while testifying before a federal grand jury, she admitted that she and her husband had plotted the murders. Joey, she said, had decided to kill whoever bought Pro-formance for the insurance money. He would have preferred to kill Clyde Sullivan, she said. 'I hate it has to be Maceo,' she said he told her. 'I like Maceo.'
She related how Caldwell had placed the cinder block in the McEacherns' driveway on April 10, planning to shoot McEachern when he got out of his car. When he failed to turn up, Caldwell returned two days later. Entering the McEacherns' house, he hit the elderly woman on the head with a frying pan and forced her to call her son to tell him to come home. When he did, they sat and talked for as long as half an hour. Caldwell shot Maceo first, then Mrs. McEachern, apparently reloading his double-barrel and shooting them each again. Ever the neatnik, he gathered up his spent shells and left.
He had worn shoes two sizes too big so his footprints could not be traced. He taped over the model name on his car and fastened on a stolen Ontario license plate. Bobbie provided the alibi, buying two tickets to a movie he had already seen and visiting the mall on her own. She had taped the evening's TV shows so he could watch them later.
She led investigators to the Georgia gun shop where he had bought an Excam shotgun under the name Scott Arthur. Experts matched his handwriting with that on the gun registration form. A call had been made from his car phone to the gun shop that day.
On March 11, 1993, the SBI wired Bobbie with a microphone before she went to lunch with her husband at Chili's in Gastonia. Over his bean soup Joey worried about a visit from agents that morning. 'At first I thought that they were going to try to arrest me,' he said. '... I'll never go back to the door without my gun. It's not like I'm willing to go through a trial and all that. I'm just not.'
She asked him about the gun and the clothes he had worn, and he assured her that they were 'scattered all over the place.' He told how he forced Mrs. McEachern to call her son: 'I made her say what to say. I was this close to her.' When his wife asked if he had any regrets, he replied, 'Yeah, I really do. I wish there had been another way. And there probably was, but I didn't choose that, so now I'm stuck.'
When they left, the waitress told them to 'have a good day.' As they entered the parking lot, FBI and SBI agents arrested him.
Because testifying against a spouse is not allowed in state court, Caldwell was charged in federal court with mail fraud, money laundering and weapons violations -- first-degree murder, the deed the trial revolved around, is not a federal offense. 'Maceo and I were friends,' he testified, denying he did it. 'Maceo believed in me.' But shown a grisly picture of the victims, he displayed no emotion.
Prosecutors Rick Glaser and Sandra Hairston convinced the jury that the physical evidence supported Bobbie Caldwell's story. 'They're a team, a lethal, diabolical team,' Glaser said. Capt. Bristow was in the U.S. attorney's office when Bobbie, preparing to testify, debated whether to bring her expensive purse into the courtroom. 'I looked at it,' the policeman recalls, 'and the first thought that came to my mind was: blood money. I thought, 'You bought that with somebody's life. The pocketbook, the car you're driving, the addition on your house -- it's not worth that. An old lady didn't deserve to die so you could have a $200 purse.'
On Sept. 1, Joey Caldwell's ambitions ended when the Greensboro jury found him guilty. His bronzed bodybuilder physique had dwindled to pale slightness after five months in jail. Glaser intended to seek a life sentence.
That night, Caldwell pulled one more deception. In solitary confinement in the High Point Detention Facility, where jailers check on prisoners every 15 minutes, he blocked the window into his cell with a note saying he was using the toilet. It bought him an extra eight minutes of privacy. When a guard entered at 1:28 a.m., he found Caldwell unconscious, a sheet tied around his neck and wedged behind a plate in the wall. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
'At last the lie is over,' he reportedly wrote to Bobbie in a letter he left. True to character, Joey Caldwell had refused to play by others' rules. He had welshed on his final debt.
As of early November, prosecutors were preparing to charge Bobbie Caldwell in the murder plot. Hillman and Compton are partners in Europa Sports, a Charlotte vitamin- and supplement-distribution company. Rudisill distributes a sports drink called Jogging in a Jug. The Arthurs, who bought Pro-formance from Maceo's estate, bottle and sell it in the Southeast.
In Hamlet, the McEacherns have not been forgotten. Daggs still teaches at the community college. Chief Moore, who once took an evening course from her, says she sets high standards. The paper he wrote for her was on cooperation of law-enforcement officials in investigating major crimes. Sid Hodges thinks about Maceo every day. 'It was exactly like losing a brother.'
The McEacherns lie buried in the cemetery near the high-school football field. Daggs says maybe Maceo can hear the cheers on Friday nights. On a recent clear, cool day, two bay horses gamboled in the sun at 4-M Farms, their manes streaming as they ran. He would have liked to have seen that.
