Caroline Love

Caroline Love was a 20-year-old college student living in Charlotte, North Carolina, and working a job at a local Bojangles' restaurant. She shared an apartment with a roommate, Sadie McKnight, who was dating a man named Henry Louis Wallace. Friends of Wallace described him as having two sides, a "good Henry" and a "bad Henry." To those around him, he often played the part of a concerned friend, which masked a much darker reality.

On the evening of June 15, 1992, Caroline finished her shift at work and returned to her apartment. Her family and friends grew worried when she failed to show up for her next shift, and they filed a missing person report with the police. Investigators who visited her apartment found that some furniture had been moved and the sheets from her bed were gone, but there were no overt signs of a struggle or foul play. For nearly two years, Caroline’s whereabouts remained a mystery, and her case was treated as that of a missing person.

The truth of what happened to Caroline was revealed in March 1994 when Henry Louis Wallace was arrested in connection with the disappearances and murders of several other young Black women in the Charlotte area. During his confession to a string of brutal crimes, Wallace admitted to killing Caroline. He told police that he had secretly made a copy of his girlfriend's apartment key. On that June evening, he used the key to let himself into the apartment he knew Caroline would be returning to alone. He hid and waited for her to come home.

According to Wallace’s confession, after Caroline arrived, he sexually assaulted her and then strangled her to death. He wrapped her body in her own bedsheets and later disposed of her remains in a wooded area of Charlotte. After committing the murder, Wallace joined his girlfriend, Caroline’s roommate, and her sister in filing the missing person's report, feigning concern for the woman whose life he had just taken. Following his confession, Wallace led investigators to the location where he had left her body.

Henry Louis Wallace, who became known as the "Taco Bell Strangler" because he met many of his victims through his job as a fast-food manager, terrorized Charlotte between 1992 and 1994. He was ultimately connected to the murders of eleven women in North and South Carolina. On April 4, 1994, a grand jury indicted him for the murder of Caroline Love.

In January 1997, a jury found Henry Louis Wallace guilty of nine of the murders, including Caroline's. He also received convictions for related charges of rape, sexual offenses, and robbery. The court sentenced him to death for each of the nine murders. He was sent to Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, to await execution.

The investigation into Wallace's crimes drew criticism for the time it took to connect the cases, as all his victims were young Black women killed in a similar manner over a two-year period. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department later stated it had since implemented changes, including mandatory meetings for homicide detectives to better identify related cases.

As of July 2024, Henry Louis Wallace remains on death row in North Carolina, where he has continued to appeal his sentences under the state's Racial Justice Act. The case is considered closed, having ended in conviction and sentencing.