[Kenda] Columbus County, North Carolina,
is a very rural part of the state.
The kind of place where someone could think
they could cover up something that was really bad.
At 9:15 p.m.,
911 gets a call of a fire
and the fire department responds.
It appears to be an abandoned structure
that's been there for maybe 50 or 60 years,
and now it's destroyed,
and there are objects in the building
and including a mattress,
that is burned.
A fireman sees an object he thinks could be a pumpkin.
He realizes it's a human head.
It has teeth and hair
and eyes.
Housefires do not dismember bodies.
[police radio chatter]
This much is obvious.
We're dealing with one sick individual.
I spent my career closing murder cases.
But I'm not the only one who answered the call.
It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable.
To catch a ruthless killer,
to find justice, for the dead.
That's what it takes to be
an American detective.
[Deming] My name is Nick Deming.
I'm a special agent with the North Carolina
State Bureau of Investigation.
I wanted a job that, that wasn't routine.
Law enforcement is not a routine job.
[Kenda] The state only hires the best people
because they're looking for the best people.
Deming's been a detective for ten years
and is now working for the SBI
out of Jacksonville, North Carolina.
I've met Nick Deming.
He's a great guy and he is sharp.
He knows his business.
That day I was with my coworker.
I get a call about nine o'clock in the morning.
Yes, Deming.
There was body parts located in a burned barn
in Columbus County, about two hours away.
We drop everything and head their way.
-[siren chirps] -[tires screech]
Deming gets a call about this grisly scene
over in Columbus County.
Dismembered body parts set on fire?
This is not your average assignment.
[police radio chatter]
When I arrived at the scene,
I remember it was still smoldering.
The sickly sweet odor of burned flesh.
The stench is a hard, hard thing to deal with.
[Deming] You treat everything really
as a death investigation.
You don't form the opinion of,
of suicide, homicide right out the gate.
But here in this particular case,
I certainly want to treat it like a homicide.
[camera shutter clicking]
Their arms and legs were scattered around
throughout the debris.
[Batten] Whoa, whoa, guys. Coming down!
Once we moved a piece of wall,
we found the second torso.
[Batten] Hey, detective.
You're gonna want to see this.
It took it to a different level.
Wait a minute. Now we have two victims.
Dismemberment is an incredibly evil thing to do.
To kill is not enough.
You're so filled with hate,
you want to destroy the identity
of this individual.
Even animals don't kill like that.
Animals kill to survive.
They don't do so because they enjoy it.
Only humans do that.
At this point, I don't know
if the victims were murdered here,
or dumped here.
[Kenda] Agent Deming is faced with a question.
"Did this crime occur here,
or is it just dump the remains,
set them on fire and run away?"
Odds are very good
this is a dump site, not a murder site.
To control two living people and get them in this building
is not an easy thing to do.
But it's very easy if they are already dead
and already dismembered.
When we arrived at the scene at the barn, we had nothing.
No victim identification,
and certainly no suspect.
[Kenda] When you arrive at a scene
that's been destroyed by fire,
it's frustrating because you're already
behind the eight ball,
and the investigation has not even begun.
There's no evidence for you to find.
It's already been destroyed.
[Batten] We stayed on scene with the investigators
throughout the night,
and assisted with removing the body remains.
Who are these people? Where did they come from?
[doorbell rings]
[dog barking]
Are they related?
Or are they two separate murders?
We need to figure out what happened.
[detective] We are just here to ask you
a couple of questions about the house fire.
To get some answers to those thousands of questions we have...
Did you happen to see anything?
...we start knocking on doors.
We start trying to get a timeline
of when the fire was started.
[detective] Were you home around 5:30 p.m. yesterday?
[Kenda] Deming tries for a canvas in this area,
but there's hardly anyone that lives here.
The person that saw the flames and called it in
was merely a passerby.
There are no surveillance cameras.
This is rural North Carolina.
Mother Nature is the only witness to this.
[police radio chatter]
[Deming] When I was at the crime scene,
I overheard that two females
were missing out of Wilmington.
I was thinking that was a good distance away
from where we are at in Columbus County,
but it's definitely something
that we wanted to follow up with.
[Kenda] Sunday, April 2nd, 2017
in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Reverend Blevins is greeting
his Sunday morning parishioners.
[Rev. Harriet] Eva Jo Jones and Tiffany Cartwright,
were there every single Sunday.
On this particular Sunday,
we noticed that they were not there.
That for them was very unusual.
On Monday morning, I had gotten a text message
asking me if I had heard from
Eva and Tiffany over the weekend.
We really need to check on them.
We then said, "Well, let's just drive over
to the apartment."
[Kenda] They find the place locked up.
[knock at door]
Eva and her daughter Tiffany
have never missed a church service in years.
Everything about this is alarming to them.
[Rev. Harriet] We went to the manager.
We ask him if we could go in with him.
[door opens]
And so he opened the door.
It smelled very clean,
like some type of disinfectant.
We went all the way down the hall.
Everything was absolutely spotless.
Everything was put in perfect order.
There was not a dish in the sink.
There was nothing.
Like they had just
packed their bags and left.
I just knew something wasn't right.
So I called the Wilmington Police Department
and reported them missing.
-[siren chirps] -[police radio chatter]
Wilmington PD responds to the apartment,
finds the place neat and tidy.
Everything here had the appearance of total normalcy.
Nothing to see here, folks.
And yet something here just isn't right.
Where are these people?
Why didn't they tell anybody where they were going?
[Deming] So I realized that
we have two ladies missing out of Wilmington
and we have potentially two human remains
that were found in a barn.
Due to the fire damage, our best hope
was to reach out to Wilmington PD
and get the dental records to identify the human remains.
The coroner's office determines
that the bodies discovered in the barn
are in fact Tiffany Cartwright and her mother Eva Jones.
When you see a case like this where the violence is extreme,
it's personal.
This is not some random act by a lunatic.
This perpetrator is intent
on covering his tracks.
Deming knows this,
but no one can be careful enough
to stop a good detective.
Agent Deming now knows the identity
of these two unfortunate souls,
who were discovered dismembered
and burned to a crisp.
No one in their hometown of Wilmington knows that yet.
As far as they know, these women are still missing.
[reporter] Prayer after prayer
going up tonight
for Eva Jones and her daughter,
Tiffany Cartwright.
No one's heard from the mother
and daughter since Friday.
Both missed Saturday doctor appointments
and Sunday service at Life Community Church.
Their car gone,
their phones going straight to voicemail.
Now their church, that's more like family,
just wants them found.
Wilmington PD is now aware of who these people are
and report to Harriet at their church,
the woman who reported them missing in the first place.
[phone ringing]
When I heard the bodies
were dismembered,
I don't think I have ever felt so sick
and so... It was just an awful feeling.
Here we are in an investigation
where a mother and her daughter
are found brutally murdered,
dismembered and set on fire.
Who would want to do them harm?
Someone certainly did.
[Deming] At that point we don't know too much about 'em
because we are kind of almost working
two separate investigations
until we hit that overlap.
But Wilmington PD had spoken to
friends from the church, people in the community.
[church bell ringing]
I met Eva and Tiffany pretty soon
after they came to the church.
They were there every single Sunday.
[Kenda] Eva is 60 years old and is employed
in a legal office in Wilmington.
Her daughter Tiffany is 35
and is a custodian at a local elementary school.
They lived together in an apartment.
I did get to know both of them.
Uh, Eva particularly,
she just had such a sweet spirit about her.
And, uh, Tiffany she was great, she was quieter.
Uh, she served in our ministries.
They both were amazing people.
[Deming] Law enforcement always talks
to the next of kin to figure out who else
might be involved in the story.
Wilmington PD told me that they had spoken
to Eva Jo Jones' other daughter, Sara.
[Kenda] Sara has now moved out of state
after separating from her husband and now lives in Ohio.
On that Thursday, during the day,
Sara made her trip from Ohio in her car to Wilmington
and she came straight to the church.
[Deming] Wilmington PD met Sara at the church
and informed her that her mother
and her sister were deceased.
[Rev. Tim] To the police's credit, they... they didn't want
to be alone at that moment.
And so we met at our church and...
they shared the tragic news with her and...
It was a moment.
I hope I never have to sit in a moment like that again.
[Rev. Harriet] Watching a human being absorb that kind of news,
it was traumatic to me.
I can't imagine how traumatic it was for Sara.
Just what do you do with all that pain?
Where do you put all of that?
Sara is of course devastated by this news.
They enquire of Sara who might want to do them harm.
Any issues with anybody?
[Kenda] Sara says, "No one.
They are the nicest people in the world."
The usual story,
no one has threatened them in any way,
nor are there any difficulties with anyone.
[Deming] I knew based off the dismembered bodies
that this is gonna be some link to a crime of passion.
It's gonna be linked to a potential anger, sadness,
all sorts of emotions that just built up.
Affairs of the heart produce emotions like nothing else.
People get really distressed
when they believe they're being rejected.
This produces rage,
and rage becomes revenge,
and revenge becomes murder.
Who were they romantically involved with?
How did that come to an end?
Did somebody monkey with somebody else's monkey?
That's always a problem.
Eva is 60 years old, but she is single.
They asked, "Does she date people?"
And they say, "No, not recently."
"Okay. What about her daughter, Tiffany?"
"Well, she has an ex-boyfriend."
"They broke up." "Oh, really?"
Their friends know him as Ben Chapman.
They dated for a period of time
and now they don't anymore.
No one knows much more about them than that.
But it's a name, and it gives Deming a place to go.
[Deming] Thank you for meeting with us.
Who are you, Ben?
And what you have to do with this, if anything?
[police radio chatter]
[Deming] I have seen it in my training and had experience that
a lot of times it's a break up with a girlfriend.
It could be that thing that
triggers that person to take a life.
Deming is considering how to approach Ben,
and identifying where he's currently located...
[phone ringing]
...when he's contacted by the coroner's office
with the results of the autopsy.
The medical examiner's report came out
and the findings were horrific.
You've got a blunt force trauma,
dismembered bodies,
removal of the limbs, and decapitation.
This is some dark stuff.
[Kenda] What's the cause of death?
Well, take your pick.
There's probably 20 causes of death in there.
These people weren't just dismembered,
they were tortured.
The hate that this person feels
never dissipates during this entire process.
He's having the time of his life
killing these people.
A lot of times, the straw that breaks the camel's back
it'd be learning of infidelity,
somebody leaving, a partner, betrayal,
could play a big factor in there.
[Kenda] Ben is an ex-boyfriend.
How did he become an ex-boyfriend?
A transgression by him?
Or a transgression by Tiffany?
Police like ex-boyfriends.
They do stupid things.
I've seen death
by every means
except a nuclear weapon.
Is this the worst murder I know about?
It's certainly in the top ten.
I've had worse, but not many.
In this case, we're talking about the dismemberment
of two women, and set on fire.
Could it be that Tiffany's ex-boyfriend Ben Chapman
be the person who did that?
He's certainly worthy of further enquiry.
They find nothing about him to be suspicious in any way.
All his friends and associates say
that he is a wonderful person.
In a lot of cases, the ex-boyfriend or girlfriend
can be a great source of information,
but in this case it wasn't of help.
When you're looking for someone
that has this level of violence in them,
you assume that they have an extensive criminal record.
Ben Chapman doesn't have one.
His demeanor does not match
someone who is capable
of doing what it was done to these two women.
Ben Chapman didn't do this.
Someone else did.
At this point, we're spinning our wheels somewhat.
They haven't even established
the location of the crime scene yet.
They know where body parts were dumped,
but that's not where these murders took place.
[Deming] We always want to find the scene of the crime.
That way we can locate more evidence.
That way we can help
determine through that evidence
who was there, maybe even who wasn't there.
[Kenda] So the scene is still out there,
and Deming knows it.
Where is it?
It's likely it's their apartment,
despite what the police say
they observed when they were in there.
So let's go back and look again.
[Deming] Detectives go back to the apartment
to see if anything's there that they might have missed.
They locate Eva's purse and phone.
[Kenda] Now that's interesting.
Just one victim's phone
was discovered in their apartment. Eva's.
But where is Tiffany's?
Deming needs to figure that out and fast.
[Deming] Cell phone records are great
because the cell phone provider will give us
the location of where the cell phone was last used.
[Kenda] So while they wait for answers from the cell phone company,
investigators carry out a full forensic work-up of the victims' apartment.
There's a factor involved
in physical evidence of a violent crime.
It's called blood.
Blood has a habit of showing up in the darndest places.
Even after time.
Crime scene investigators
are highly trained individuals.
They got more chemicals.
They have these fancy lights.
They have all sorts of, uh, equipment
that, that could help them,
uh, develop leads and collect evidence at a crime scene
a normal cop couldn't gather.
[Kenda] Blood is a curious thing.
It's a viscous liquid. It's not like water.
It's thick, and eventually
it's going to seep back to the surface.
On this occasion, they see something
they didn't see three days ago.
Now they see a faded crimson stain on the carpet.
They block all the windows.
They hosed the place down with luminol.
And it lights up.
There is blood everywhere.
Blood in the bathtub. Blood in the bathroom.
Blood in the carpet.
[Deming] Finding this amount of blood
tells us that somebody
could have been killed in this apartment.
Today's technology, uh, with DNA,
if there's a large loss of blood
it's gonna be extremely hard to get rid of it all.
So you're trying to figure out
what else isn't here that should be here?
There's hacksaw marks on the bathtub
and that could've played a role in how the bodies were dismembered.
There was a brand-new shower curtain
placed in the bathroom,
which by itself necessarily isn't anything,
but when you start combining all these other factors,
it's pretty significant.
At this point of the investigation,
with no signs of forced entry,
it's somebody that had access
that they willingly let into the house.
[Kenda] So now we are getting somewhere at last.
Deming now needs Tiffany's cell phone records back
because they are the next piece of this puzzle.
Great. Thanks.
Location data can tell you
a great deal about a cell phone.
In the case of Eva Jones,
the last location ping on her phone
was on the door knob in her apartment.
She didn't go anywhere.
In the case of her daughter Tiffany,
when they get those results back,
it's a total mystery.
[Deming] We learned through investigation at Wilmington PD
that Tiffany's last ping was in Myrtle Beach.
So what is Tiffany's phone doing
in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?
We need to go to victims' relatives and friends
to find out what connection,
if any, they had to that location.
We knew that Sara, Eva's other daughter,
had lived in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area.
[Deming] So Wilmington police talk to Sara to figure out
who else might be involved in this story.
One of the persons she mentioned was
her estranged husband Jeffrey.
[Kenda] Sara, the surviving daughter,
is going through a divorce with her husband
with whom she had two kids.
The husband's name is Jeffrey Harmon.
[Sara] Got divorced recently...
[Kenda] Sara has left Jeffrey
and is currently living in Ohio.
Wanted to stay together, be a family. I didn't.
She says Jeffrey is hoping they'll get back together,
but she has no plans to reconcile with him.
Everybody who was in Eva and Tiffany's sphere of influences in Wilmington,
except for one. Jeffrey Harmon...
who lived in Myrtle Beach.
[Kenda] Well, Jeffrey,
that's a bit of a problem now, isn't it?
Tiffany's phone is pinging in your city.
There's a moment in every case
when something happens that is the key to something.
You feel a sense of calmness come over you
because the tension has left you.
This is it.
This is what we need.
The last cell phone location ping
on Tiffany's phone
was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Now, who lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?
Well, Jeffrey Harmon does,
the estranged husband of Tiffany's sister, Sara.
Sara says Jeffrey says he loves her
and wants her to return to the family home.
He seems to get along fine with his mother-in-law
and his sister-in-law.
Jeffrey was a even-keel man,
who had volunteered with the Boy Scouts,
and was known to be relatively quiet.
[Deming] All right. All right. Thank you.
[Deming] We weren't able to locate anything significant between them,
through domestic violence, or anything of that nature.
Following the murders, the investigators
had reached out to Jeffrey
to tell him what had happened to his in-laws.
[Deming] Wilmington spoke to Jeffrey Harmon.
He said he hadn't seen Tiffany or Eva since Christmas
and he had no plans to see them.
[Kenda] When Wilmington PD spoke to Jeffrey Harmon,
he told them his mother-in-law and sister-in-law
did not want to be involved in their marital problems.
When police talked to Sara, she gave them the same story.
[Kenda] So that account is all confirmed.
But surprise, surprise, it's not the entire story, because it never is.
Harriet Blevins, the wife of the minister,
recalled something important.
I knew about Sara and her husband's troubles,
because Eva would confide in me
and others at the church to pray for Sara.
She was always very concerned for Sara and for her children,
and that she did not think
that Jeff Harmon was a good guy,
and she did not think he was good to Sara.
I think that Tiffany also was not happy
that her sister was married to such a man.
[Kenda] Let's run him through the system.
Find out where he lives.
Well, Jeffrey,
Tiffany's phone is pinging close to where you reside.
It started to click and we, at that point, knew
that one of the phones was down there at his residence.
And it was a bold-faced lie if he said he didn't see them since Christmas.
I always loved it when people lied to me.
Tell me a lie,
'cause if you'll lie to me,
I'm talking to the right fellow.
Now we have to go confront Mr. Harmon.
Go see him
and look him in the eye.
[Jernigan] I'm Sergeant Jamie Jernigan.
I formerly worked with
Horry County Police Department
as a investigative detective
in the homicide unit.
April 4th, 2017,
the criminal investigation unit
receives the call from Wilmington PD
to send out a detective to an address
out on Leo Drive in Myrtle Beach.
[knock at door]
[Jernigan] The detective attempts to make contact
by knocking on the door.
He checked the windows.
He looked around, he didn't see anyone.
[Kenda] So where's Jeffrey?
Is he hiding? Is he just at work?
Interesting.
So he took his business card, put in the door.
They left a business card for a reason.
They want Harmon to know they were there.
They want to see if it hinks him up at all.
[cell phone vibrating]
[Deming] I was at home sleeping after working a long day,
and I hear the phone ring around 2:00 a.m.
The 2:00 a.m. phone call's never good.
It's Horry County Police Department.
[caller speaking indistinctly]
[Kenda] Deming is on the phone with the Horry County
Police Department in South Carolina.
They reported they've received a phone call
from Jeffrey Harmon's friend.
We knew we had a problem.
[police radio chatter]
The Horry County Police Department
in South Carolina
received a call from
Jeffrey's friend
who's in Jeffrey's home.
He said Jeffrey called him in a panic.
So he headed over to the house.
He went inside.
As he approached the bathroom door,
he heard a gunshot.
I arrived on scene and, uh, was immediately
met by initial responding officers.
Jeffrey apparently realized the police were closing in.
He did not want to face that.
[Jernigan] It was a male subject
who was found deceased in the bathtub,
fully clothed,
from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
With the evidence that was collected at the scene,
we were able to conclude that there was no foul play,
that it was in fact a suicide.
[Kenda] So he takes the coward's way out.
He eats his gun.
Now they have to obtain
all the corroborating evidence.
So the investigation continues.
We found the victim's jewelry in the neighbors trash can,
and victim's cell phones,
multiple handguns, multiple boxes of ammunition,
a notebook that was recovered
that actually did contain a suicide note.
And we took Jeffrey Harmon's
pickup truck from the location.
I believe it was a Dodge truck.
[Kenda] Detectives now have a good idea
on how this crime took place.
They don't have a perfect idea because they weren't there.
The evidence would show that Sara leaves Jeffrey
and he doesn't take that well.
[dramatic music playing]
Sara told me that the relationship with her and Jeffrey was very strained.
Uh, she described it as miserable,
but that there was never any violence
or any addiction to drugs or anything like that.
Just that it was an unhealthy, difficult relationship,
that she was looking to get out of.
[Deming] Sara left her husband, Jeffrey Harmon.
Jeffrey Harmon decided it's best for vengeance
to lash out at her loved ones.
Jeffrey Harmon has a psychopathic episode
and decides he'll torture his wife
by butchering her mother and her sister.
What his motivation for that is...
Who knows?
I'm not crazy.
So I don't know.
March 31st, he purchased some duct tape.
Buying duct tape just sounds like
there was some forethought and planning
to what he was about to do.
He drives his truck to the women's Wilmington apartment.
[doorbell rings]
No, we went over this again. I don't want you here.
[Kenda] Eva Jones doesn't know
what his intention is that day.
[Eva] I told you, we don't want
-anything more to do with you. -I just want to talk.
As there's no signs of forced entry...
-I just want to talk. -[Eva] Okay, come in.
[Deming] ...it's believed that Eva Jo Jones
let Jeffrey Harmon into their home.
[Kenda] Detectives believe
she lets him into her apartment
and he attacks and kills her.
[Eva gasping]
Drags her into the bathroom,
into the bathtub
and chops her up for God's sake.
He can't get enough blood on him.
That's how psychotic he is at this particular moment.
He is out of contact with reality.
Detectives believe Jeffrey then waits
for the daughter Tiffany to come home.
They find photos in Jeffrey's phone
of Tiffany tied up and duct taped,
and kidnapped for a period of time.
[Deming] Harmon kidnaps Tiffany and drives her back
200 miles to his residence in Myrtle Beach.
Eventually he kills Tiffany as well and dismembers her.
[Deming] Tiffany and Eva were missing for three days.
Evidence is still unsure where Tiffany was killed
or where her mother's remains were held during this time.
But what we know, he takes the remains to an abandoned barn
and sets the barn on fire.
He then proceeds to try to cover up what he has done,
clean up the apartment, vacuum the blood out of the entry hall...
All the different tricks that he thinks
will absolve him of guilt in this matter.
He returns home.
He thinks he has a plan.
It comes unraveled when detectives close in.
When panic sets in, your worst enemy is your mind.
He can't face that.
He's a tough guy when he's faced with
two small women he can overcome.
But he's not truly a tough guy.
He's just a nutcase.
So now he chooses self-destruction over punishment.
[Deming] He called a friend.
Jeffrey locked himself in the bathroom, and laid in the bathtub...
[gunshot]
...and shot himself in the head.
[Kenda] So long, Jeffrey.
The world's a better place without people like you.
[Deming] Investigation's shown he acted alone in doing this.
In this case, case closed by death of offender.
You can't prosecute a dead guy, so the case is closed.
Without question, this is sick.
Jeffrey Harmon is one sick little boy.
Six years later we are still grappling
with the fact that that something
like that could happen here,
within our community
and, you know, our family, basically.
It's just astounding.
I think if I could talk to the kids,
or to Sara today,
you know, that I would just really
reiterate to them
how much Eva and Tiffany loved Sara and those kids.
I would say this is, uh, one of the worse I have worked.
I learned some lessons from this case, don't overlook anybody,
just 'cause they are not wearing all black and a ski mask,
you know, they could easily be the guy next to you in the store.
Jeffrey was known as a even-keel
Boy Scout leader, mild-mannered guy
and he was our guy.
[Kenda] Sara met the wrong guy,
and Eva Jones and Tiffany Cartwright
died in the worst possible way
as a result.
Good police work nailed Jeffrey Harmon in the end.
Did Jeffrey Harmon look like a murderer? No.
Is he a monster? Yes.
And he acted out
being precisely that.
A seemingly mild-mannered guy who was anything but.
Trust no one.
This case is an indication of that.
Trust no one.