Sean Patrick Goble was a long-distance truck driver from Asheboro, North Carolina, who killed three women he met on the road in the first months of 1995. He was arrested on April 13, 1995, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and confessed to killing Brenda Kay Hagy, 45, of Bloomington, Indiana, whom he had picked up at a truck stop in East Tennessee. He also confessed to killing Alice Rebecca Hanes, 36, of Columbus, Ohio, and he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Sherry Mansur, 34, of Clearwater, Florida.
In December 1995 he pleaded guilty in Greene County, Tennessee, to two counts of first-degree murder, for Hagy and Hanes, and received two consecutive life sentences. He also pleaded guilty in North Carolina to second-degree murder in Mansur's death. Press reports linked him to possible homicides in at least 10 other states, but no other charge has been reported. Twenty years after his pleas he asked a Tennessee court to order DNA testing in the Hagy case. The request went to the Court of Criminal Appeals twice and was denied, the court pointing to his own detailed confession.
In 1995 Goble lived in an aqua-blue trailer in Asheboro and drove a black Peterbilt 18-wheeler with the words "The Wild One" painted across the cab, according to the Associated Press. He pronounced his first name "Seen." He drove for a long-distance trucking firm with a terminal in Winston-Salem.
He was a big man and proud of it. The AP reported that he bragged to police about his 300-pound physique and described himself as a "real lady's man." He had once complained to police that a girlfriend had beaten him up.
People who knew him described two different men. A neighbor called him a "scary kind of fellow." Others described a sensitive, generous giant. A co-owner of the trucking firm told the AP that Goble ranked in the top 15 percent of the drivers he had hired and called him a "take-charge kind of guy" who did not bother him with problems he could solve himself. When federal authorities laid out their case, the co-owner said, "it gave me goose bumps." The firm's owner told the AP that Goble would sometimes disappear for a day or two, with excuses such as "the truck broke down or the lights weren't working."
Brenda Kay Hagy was 45 and came from Bloomington, Indiana. Little else about her life was reported.
In January 1995 Goble met her at a truck stop; The Greeneville Sun places the killing at a truck stop at Baileyton, in Greene County, Tennessee. According to the written statement he gave on the day of his arrest, as the Court of Criminal Appeals later summarized it, she was looking for a ride to another state, and he agreed to drive her into Virginia. He strangled her inside his truck and took her body into Virginia. Her body was found on January 23, 1995, in Washington County, Virginia.
Goble's accounts of what happened varied. The Greeneville Sun reported that his written statement described a struggle over sex that he said he did not want. "I couldn't get her to breathe. I panicked," he wrote. In the same statement he denied having had intercourse with her. Notes made that day by FBI Agent Thomas R. Snapp record that he later admitted he had lied and said they did have intercourse in his truck. A laboratory report dated April 13, 1995, found DNA from Hagy and from an unknown person on swabs taken from her. Years later the state agreed that the unknown profile had never been compared with Goble's.
Sherry Mansur was 34 and came from Clearwater, Florida. Goble killed her in North Carolina, and her body was found in February 1995 in Guilford County, according to The Greeneville Sun. Little more about her has been reported.
Alice Rebecca Hanes was 36 and lived in Columbus, Ohio. She was killed in March 1995 in Jefferson County, Tennessee, and her body was found that month in Kingsport, Tennessee. Within about a week of his arrest Goble had confessed to killing her as well. The Greeneville Sun gives her name as Rebecca Alice Hanes; the AP gives Alice Rebecca Hanes.
Goble was arrested on April 13, 1995, in Winston-Salem on a Virginia warrant, according to The Greeneville Sun. Local, state and federal officers took him into custody when he drove his truck into his company's terminal there. (One AP report dates the arrest April 14.)
That day he gave the written statement about Hagy. He identified her photograph and drew a map showing where he had left her, according to the 2019 appeals opinion. Authorities said he admitted strangling her at a service station in eastern Tennessee and taking her body to Virginia. He was charged with murdering her.
Hagy's death fit a pattern of killings in at least seven states, the AP reported on April 14, although Virginia authorities declined to comment on possible links. Since 1991 the FBI and several states had run a task force on unsolved highway slayings, many involving women who spent time at truck stops and whose bodies were left along highways. Ron Barker, the sheriff of Forsyth County, North Carolina, said that because Goble was a long-distance driver, police in other states might review their unsolved files: "we may be hearing from some other states."
On April 22 the AP reported that homicide investigators from North Carolina and about 10 other states were working to build a profile of him. The Greeneville Sun later wrote that reports had linked him to possible homicides in at least 10 other states. No other state is reported to have charged him.
On December 15, 1995, in Greene County Criminal Court, he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Brenda Kay Hagy and Alice Rebecca Hanes. Judge James E. Beckner imposed two consecutive life sentences. The prosecutor, Al Schmutzer Jr., said Goble never showed remorse. He did not appeal.
In North Carolina he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Sherry Mansur's death. The Greeneville Sun described that sentence as another life sentence.
In September 1997 Goble filed a petition for post-conviction relief in Tennessee. Judge Beckner dismissed it without a hearing as filed too late. Goble said he had filed an earlier petition in 1996, but the Court of Criminal Appeals found that the claim could not be substantiated and in 1998 upheld the dismissal. That opinion is listed under the spelling "Gobble."
On November 5, 2015, writing for himself without a lawyer, Goble filed a petition under Tennessee's Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act of 2001. He said that swabs taken from Hagy and submitted to the Washington County, Virginia, Sheriff's Office had never been compared with his DNA profile, and that testing them would show he did not kill her. The state did not respond at first, and the court denied the petition as untimely, applying the one-year limit that governs most post-conviction claims.
In 2018 the Court of Criminal Appeals at Knoxville reversed. In an opinion by Presiding Judge John Everett Williams, it held that the act sets no time limit on requests for DNA analysis, so the petition should not have been dismissed as late. "Given the considerable discretion we afford to a post-conviction court's grant or denial of a petition for DNA analysis, we decline to review the merits," the court wrote, and it sent the case back to Judge Alex E. Pearson. Court officials told The Greeneville Sun that the outcome of a hearing could lead to a new trial on the Hagy conviction. Goble was 51.
On remand the state answered on August 6, 2018. It produced the laboratory report of April 13, 1995, which showed DNA from Hagy and from an unknown person on the swabs, and it agreed that no comparison between that unknown profile and Goble's had ever been made. On August 13, 2018, Judge Pearson denied the petition without a hearing. He found that Goble had given a full confession describing how he met the woman, how he killed her and where he left her. Whether she had had sex with anyone else, the judge wrote, "does not take away from the fact that" Goble murdered her, and the DNA identity would not create a reasonable probability that he would not have been prosecuted or convicted. He found that the petition was an attempt to "thwart" the administration of justice rather than to show innocence.
Goble appealed again. On September 13, 2019, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in an opinion by Judge Robert H. Montgomery Jr., joined by Judges Norma McGee Ogle and J. Ross Dyer. The court reasoned that a match to Goble's own DNA would "merely confirm" what he had told Agent Snapp, and that another man's DNA "would not exculpate" him, because he had admitted killing her and disposing of her remains. His argument that the confession should have been suppressed because of a violation of his right to counsel was, the court said, "not a cognizable claim" under the DNA act.
At the time of the 2018 appeals ruling, Goble was serving his Tennessee sentences at the Northeast Correctional Complex in Mountain City, Tennessee, according to The Greeneville Sun. Tennessee Department of Correction records cited in that report put his earliest parole eligibility in 2056.
Proven by his own guilty pleas, and final: the first-degree murders of Brenda Kay Hagy and Alice Rebecca Hanes in Tennessee, and the second-degree murder of Sherry Mansur in North Carolina.
Admitted by him after his arrest: the Hagy and Hanes killings. He gave differing accounts of the Hagy killing, first denying and then admitting intercourse, and describing the killing as happening in a struggle. The courts treated his written statement as a full confession.
Suspected, no charge reported: possible homicides in at least 10 other states.
Details that vary between sources: the date of his arrest (April 13, 1995, in the Greeneville Sun and the 2019 opinion; April 14 in one AP story) and the order of Hanes's given names.
1991: the FBI and several states form a task force on unsolved highway killings.
January 1995: Brenda Kay Hagy, 45, is killed at a truck stop at Baileyton, Tennessee.
January 23, 1995: Hagy is found in Washington County, Virginia.
February 1995: Sherry Mansur, 34, is found in Guilford County, North Carolina.
March 1995: Alice Rebecca Hanes, 36, is killed in Jefferson County, Tennessee, and found in Kingsport.
April 13, 1995: Goble is arrested in Winston-Salem on a Virginia warrant and gives a written statement about Hagy; he is charged with murder.
April 1995: he confesses to the Hanes killing.
December 15, 1995: pleads guilty in Greene County Criminal Court to two counts of first-degree murder; two consecutive life sentences.
North Carolina: pleads guilty to second-degree murder of Mansur.
September 1997: files a post-conviction petition, dismissed as untimely; dismissal upheld in 1998.
November 5, 2015: files a petition for DNA analysis in the Hagy case.
2018: the Court of Criminal Appeals rules the petition was not time-barred and sends it back.
August 13, 2018: the petition is denied on remand.
September 13, 2019: the Court of Criminal Appeals affirms the denial.
2056: earliest parole eligibility, per Tennessee prison records cited in 2018.