James Opelton Bradley has been convicted of murder three times in North Carolina, for deaths spread across a quarter of a century. In January 1990 he pleaded guilty in Cumberland County to the first-degree murder of his eight-year-old stepdaughter, who died in Fayetteville in June 1988. He served 23 years of a life sentence and walked free in February 2013 under the parole rules that governed crimes of that era. Fourteen months later he was under arrest in Wilmington, and before the decade was out two juries in that city had convicted him again: of the second-degree murder of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, a woman he knew, in June 2017, and of the first-degree murder of Elisha Tucker, a woman he had been seeing, in March 2019.
The second of those juries was asked to choose between death and life imprisonment without parole. It could not agree, and the law left the judge one sentence to impose. The North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld both Wilmington convictions, in November 2018 and September 2021. Bradley is serving life without parole for the murder of Elisha Tucker and a term of 365 to 450 months for the murder of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk.
Bradley was born in about 1962. He was 25 in the summer of 1988, 51 at his arrest in 2014 and 56 at his last trial. He had served in the United States Army, where he held the rank of sergeant.
In 1988 he was living in Fayetteville, in Cumberland County, with a family that included his stepdaughter, Ivy. She died there on June 9, 1988. She was eight years old. Bradley was charged with her murder, and the case ended without a trial: on January 22, 1990, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Cumberland County and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The case returned to public view in 2014, when the man who had pleaded guilty to it was charged with murder in Wilmington, and it was placed before juries there twice.
A life sentence in North Carolina in 1990 did not necessarily mean the rest of a prisoner's life. Crimes committed between July 1, 1981, and September 30, 1994, fell under the state's Fair Sentencing Act, and offenders sentenced under it were eligible for parole. Bradley's crime fell well inside that window. James Payne, a Wilmington defense lawyer with no part in the case, explained in 2014 that a defendant convicted of first-degree murder in 1990 could be considered for parole after 20 years.
Bradley served 23 years. He was released on February 11, 2013.
He left two kinds of paper behind him from those years, and both would come back to him. In 1994, four years into his sentence, he filed a motion for appropriate relief in the 1990 case on his own behalf, without a lawyer. He also wrote two works of fiction, short stories, one of them titled "The Beast Within." Prosecutors in Wilmington later put the stories and the motion before a jury as evidence of his state of mind, his intent and his identity as the killer, and the admission of that material became one of the central questions in his first appeal.
After his release Bradley lived in Wilmington, where he came to know Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk. They were friends. He gave her rides and admitted to having romantic feelings for her that she did not return. The court described their relationship as cordial but at times volatile.
Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk lived in Wilmington and was 53 in April 2014. She knew something of Bradley's past. Her mother recalled in 2015 that her daughter had answered her concern about him plainly: "Mom, they would have never let him out if he wasn't rehabilitated, and he seems to be a very nice person."
In the same period Bradley was in a relationship with Elisha Marie Tucker, who was 34 and lived in Leland, a town in the Wilmington area. He introduced her to others as his girlfriend, and the Court of Appeals described her in exactly those terms in 2021, calling Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk "another of his romantic interests." Elisha Tucker died in 2013, the year Bradley left custody.
Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk died in April 2014.
The Wilmington Police Department investigated her death from April 2014 and soon identified Bradley as a suspect. On April 29, 2014, Wilmington police arrested him and charged him with first-degree murder in the death of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk. At his first appearance, before District Judge Rebecca Blackmore, he was ordered held without bond, and a capital defender was appointed to represent him. He had served 23 years for the murder of a child.
Two days after the arrest the case widened. On May 1, 2014, police announced that a second homicide investigation was under way, conducted jointly by the Pender County Sheriff's Office and the Wilmington Police Department, and that Bradley was a suspect in it. He stayed charged in the first case. Wilmington Police Chief Ralph Evangelous called the development "an unfortunate surprise." The second investigation concerned the death of Elisha Tucker.
On May 20, 2014, Bradley came before Judge Sandra Ray in the Van Newkirk case. She found "more than enough probable cause" to hold him for trial. In the Tucker inquiry he was, for the time being, a person of interest and nothing more. The office of District Attorney Ben David would try both cases.
A New Hanover County grand jury indicted Bradley on September 2, 2014, for the first-degree murder of Shannon Rippy. A year later her mother gave her first interview, and she addressed Bradley directly.
The prosecution's plan rested on the evidence of his past. In April 2016 the trial court held a pretrial hearing on what the jury would be allowed to hear, and on August 11, 2016, it ruled that the State could introduce the 1990 conviction, the death of Elisha Tucker, the two short stories and the 1994 motion. The court admitted the material for purposes the rules of evidence allow, among them intent, lack of accident, motive and identity.
The Tucker case moved more slowly. Bradley had been named a suspect in her death almost at once, but he was not formally charged until late 2016, after investigators had gathered further evidence. A grand jury indicted him for her first-degree murder on December 5, 2016. In January 2017 the district attorney's office announced that the State would seek the death penalty, citing at least one aggravating factor, among them the earlier conviction for the murder of his stepdaughter. Around the same time Bradley's capital defender withdrew from the case. Ben David called the change a delay tactic.
The Van Newkirk trial opened in New Hanover County Superior Court in Wilmington in June 2017, before Judge Paul L. Jones, and lasted about two weeks. Bradley was 54. The State's case was circumstantial. It drew on the evidence of his association with her in the period before her death and on the material the court had admitted the previous summer, including the conviction for his stepdaughter's murder and the evidence about Elisha Tucker.
Closing arguments were heard on June 28, 2017. The district attorney argued that the evidence, taken together, proved that Bradley had killed her. Rick Miller, for the defense, asked the jurors to weigh the consequences of a conviction resting on what he called thin proof. "These are good people," he said of the family, "but if we convict somebody on flimsy evidence, does that resolve anything?" The jury retired that afternoon.
It returned the next day, June 29, 2017. The verdict read: "We the jury by unanimous verdict find the defendant James Opelton Bradley guilty of second degree murder." The jury had rejected first-degree murder, the charge in the indictment, and chosen the lesser offense. Judge Jones sentenced Bradley the same day to 365 to 450 months in prison, a term of 30 to 37.5 years.
Bradley spoke briefly before the court rose. "I would just like to thank the jury for their time that they put into this and for everyone else involved," he said. Shannon's mother told reporters afterward, "Well, it's justice for Shannon I hope." Her brother described the mixed feeling of the day: "On the one hand you want to shed a tear." The defense said it would appeal.
The appeal, State v. Bradley, was decided by a three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Judge Zachary writing for the panel, with Judges Elmore and Hunter. Bradley challenged four pieces of evidence the jury had heard: the evidence of the 1988 case, the evidence about Elisha Tucker, the two short stories and the 1994 motion for appropriate relief. Each, he argued, had invited the jury to convict him for who he was rather than for what the State had proved.
The court did not decide whether any of the evidence should have been kept out. It assumed, for the sake of argument, that all of it had been admitted in error, and then asked the question the statute requires: whether there was a reasonable possibility that the jury would have reached a different verdict without it. Under section 15A-1443(a) of the General Statutes the defendant carries the burden of showing such prejudice. The panel held that he had not. Even without the challenged evidence, the circumstantial case against him was strong enough that a different outcome was not reasonably possible.
The opinion was filed on November 6, 2018, as an unpublished decision. Its conclusion was brief: "we find no prejudicial error in the judgment entered upon Defendant's conviction of second-degree murder." Ben David said that day, "This was about getting justice for Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk." In 2019 the Supreme Court of North Carolina denied Bradley's petition for discretionary review, and the 2017 conviction became final.
The second trial was a capital case, and it began in an unusual setting. Jury selection opened on January 22, 2019, in Burgaw, at the Pender County Judicial Annex. Hurricane Florence had damaged the Pender County Courthouse the previous autumn, and the proceedings continued in downtown Wilmington. Four hundred potential jurors were summoned. The judgment in the case was entered in New Hanover County Superior Court, and the presiding judge was Douglas B. Sasser.
The evidence was heard in March 2019. Investigators and a sheriff's deputy testified for the State, among them Sergeant Robert "Lee" Odham and Sergeant Matthew Fox. The jury also heard evidence about Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, which the State offered to show identity, motive and plan.
Closing arguments were heard on March 25, 2019. The district attorney described the State's proof as "silent witnesses that scream the truth." The defense answered that Bradley and Elisha Tucker had been dating, and that people seeing them together meant nothing more than that.
The jury deliberated for about two and a half hours. On March 26, 2019, it found Bradley guilty of the first-degree murder of Elisha Tucker. Family members and friends of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. It was his third murder conviction.
The trial then moved to its sentencing phase, in which the same jurors would decide between death and life imprisonment without parole. In his closing argument on April 2, 2019, the district attorney cast the decision in terms of Bradley's whole record. "Three strikes you're out," he told the jury. "You lost the right to walk among us, even other prisoners." The State described him as manipulative and predatory.
The deliberations went badly wrong the next day. On April 3, 2019, the judge announced that the jury had returned a unanimous recommendation of life without parole. A juror was then overheard saying that the decision had not been unanimous. When the court polled the jurors one by one, eleven said they had not voted for life without parole and one said that she had. Asked whether more discussion might help, the jurors split again, five, five and two.
On April 4, 2019, after about two days of deliberation, the court accepted that the jury could not reach a unanimous recommendation and declared a mistrial in the sentencing phase. Under North Carolina law a capital jury that cannot agree on a sentence leaves the court no choice: the trial court imposed life imprisonment without parole, and judgment was entered that day. Bradley gave notice of appeal in open court.
Ben David spoke outside the courtroom. "There's justice. There's no question that justice has been done by this jury."
The second appeal was argued before the Court of Appeals on June 9, 2021, and decided on September 21, 2021. Judge Inman wrote the opinion, with Judges Tyson and Arrowood concurring.
Bradley raised three main issues. The first concerned the evidence about Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk. Because his objections at trial had come too late to preserve the point, the court reviewed it only for plain error, and found none. The evidence was admissible under Rule 404(b) of the Rules of Evidence to show identity, motive and plan, and the trial judge had not abused his discretion under Rule 403 in deciding that its value outweighed the risk of unfair prejudice.
The second issue concerned the prosecution's closing arguments, which Bradley attacked on several grounds. The court held that the prosecutor's references to the earlier case were a reasonable inference from the evidence and were not made for an improper purpose. Where the prosecutor had strayed, in remarks about the burden of proof and the verdict sheet, the judge's curative instructions had removed any prejudice, and the motions for a mistrial had been properly denied. The prosecutor's characterizations of Bradley, and a poster board displayed to the jury, did not rise to the gross impropriety that would have required the judge to intervene on his own motion.
The third issue was the sufficiency of the proof. Bradley argued that the State had not shown premeditation and deliberation, the elements that separate first-degree murder from second-degree. The court held that there was substantial evidence of both, and that the trial court had been right to deny his motion to dismiss. Finding no individual error, it found no cumulative prejudice either. The opinion closed: "we hold Defendant received a fair trial, free from prejudicial error. NO ERROR."
As of the 2021 decision, Bradley was serving life imprisonment without parole for the murder of Elisha Tucker, together with the 365 to 450 months imposed for the murder of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, in the North Carolina state system. No later appeal is on record.
Bradley's three convictions span a change in North Carolina law that shaped the course of the case. His first crime, in 1988, fell under the Fair Sentencing Act, which governed offenses committed from July 1, 1981, through September 30, 1994. Prison terms imposed under that act carried eligibility for parole, which is how a man sentenced to life for first-degree murder in 1990 could be released in 2013. For crimes committed from October 1, 1994, the state moved to Structured Sentencing, under which parole was abolished.
The 1994 change also altered what a first-degree murder conviction meant. Under section 14-17 of the General Statutes, first-degree murder is a Class A felony, punishable by "death or imprisonment in the State's prison for life without parole," as decided under the capital sentencing procedure in section 15A-2000. Second-degree murder is a Class B1 felony, or B2 in certain cases, and carries a term of years. James Payne summed up the effect in 2014 for anyone convicted of first-degree murder under the new law: "Life without parole means life without parole. It means he will never, never be outside the prison wall."
A death sentence in North Carolina requires a unanimous recommendation from the jury. When a capital jury cannot agree, as Bradley's could not in April 2019, the sentence is life imprisonment without parole. The Tucker jury's division therefore decided the penalty, though not the conviction, which the jurors had reached unanimously.
Both Wilmington trials turned on Rule 404(b), which bars evidence of a defendant's other crimes when its only purpose is to show his character or propensity, but allows it for other purposes, such as motive, intent, identity, plan or the absence of accident. Rule 403 lets a judge exclude even relevant evidence when its danger of unfair prejudice substantially outweighs its value. In 2017 prosecutors used the earlier deaths in the Van Newkirk trial, and in 2019 they used the Van Newkirk case in the Tucker trial. On appeal the two panels took different routes. The 2018 panel assumed error and found no prejudice; the 2021 panel found no error at all.
The Van Newkirk prosecution was also a case built on circumstantial evidence, and the defense attacked it on that ground. The district attorney argued that murder convictions on such evidence have been upheld in other cases. The jury convicted, and the Court of Appeals held that the circumstantial case was strong enough to stand on its own.
Bradley pleaded guilty in the 1988 case; no confession is on record. The 2017 conviction was for second-degree murder, the jury having rejected the first-degree charge in the indictment.
The final division of the Tucker sentencing jury is not on record. When the jurors were polled on April 3, 2019, eleven said they had not voted for life without parole and one said she had.
About 1962: James Opelton Bradley is born.
June 9, 1988: His eight-year-old stepdaughter, Ivy, dies in Fayetteville, Cumberland County.
January 22, 1990: He pleads guilty to first-degree murder in Cumberland County and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
1994: He files a motion for appropriate relief in the 1990 case on his own behalf.
October 1, 1994: Structured Sentencing takes effect in North Carolina, ending parole for new crimes.
February 11, 2013: He is released on parole after 23 years.
2013: Elisha Marie Tucker, 34, of Leland, dies.
April 2014: Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, 53, of Wilmington, dies.
April 29, 2014: Wilmington police arrest Bradley and charge him with first-degree murder in her death.
May 1, 2014: Police announce a second homicide investigation, with Bradley a suspect.
May 20, 2014: Judge Sandra Ray finds probable cause in the Van Newkirk case.
September 2, 2014: He is indicted for the first-degree murder of Shannon Rippy.
August 11, 2016: The trial court rules that evidence of his earlier history may go before the jury.
December 5, 2016: He is indicted for the first-degree murder of Elisha Tucker.
January 2017: The district attorney announces that the State will seek the death penalty.
June 29, 2017: A jury finds him guilty of the second-degree murder of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk; he is sentenced to 365 to 450 months.
November 6, 2018: The Court of Appeals finds no prejudicial error in the 2017 conviction.
January 22, 2019: Jury selection begins in the Tucker case in Burgaw.
March 26, 2019: A jury finds him guilty of the first-degree murder of Elisha Tucker.
April 4, 2019: A mistrial is declared in the sentencing phase; he is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
2019: The Supreme Court of North Carolina denies discretionary review in the Van Newkirk case.
September 21, 2021: The Court of Appeals finds no error in the Tucker conviction.