Marijuana joint helps police crack deadly 1989 hit-and-run cold case in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WJZY) – DNA from a decades-old marijuana joint helped detectives solve a hit-and-run cold case that killed a North Carolina woman 34 years ago, police announced Friday.

The crash happened at a Charlotte intersection on Dec. 29, 1989. The victim, 52-year-old Ruth Buchanan, was walking across the street after leaving a department store when she was struck by a dark-colored vehicle that failed to stop at a red light, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD).

"Her body landed on the opposite side of the intersection, and that vehicle, according to witnesses, didn't stop, didn't render aid and continued to flee the scene," Sgt. Gavin Jackson with CMPD's Major Crash Unit said in a video posted on Facebook.

Buchanan was transported to an area medical center with serious injuries and pronounced dead the following day, police said in a press release.

Witnesses provided authorities with a description of the vehicle, a 1990 Mitsubishi Galant that turned out to be stolen, along with its license plate number. A few days later, on New Year's, officers responded to a Comfort Inn after receiving a call about a suspicious vehicle that matched the description of the car that struck Buchanan. Detectives obtained trace evidence on the outside of the car and confirmed that it was involved in the collision, Sgt. Jackson said.

The case went cold after several leads never amounted to anything.

Then, in 2022, investigators received an anonymous Crime Stoppers tip from someone claiming to know who hit Buchanan. Jackson said that while the caller provided some accurate details, the person implicated in the tip was not the actual culprit.

Detectives continued to dig into the case and looked at one piece of evidence that eventually led to a breakthrough in their investigation: a marijuana cigarette recovered from the suspect's vehicle. DNA from the cigarette pointed police to 68-year-old Herbert Stanback.

In March 2024, police interviewed Stanback, who was already serving a 22-year prison sentence in a Laurenburg correctional facility for an unrelated case. During the interview, police said he confessed to the hit-and-run.

At the time of the 1989 crash, Stanback was working at a local hotel as part of a work-release program for inmates, according to police. After allegedly hitting the victim, he abandoned the vehicle and returned to prison that same night.

Stanback was formally charged with Buchanan's murder in June.

"It's a once in a career type thing, a very rewarding feeling just to be able to notify the family of something like that," Sgt. Jackson said in the video. "Of course not every case is going to be solved this way, but you never know what's going to happen 20, 30 or 35 years down the line. And the fact that the scientific means of being able to obtain DNA linking it, not to a specific gene pool but to a specific individual, over three decades later is amazing."

Jackson also thanked the witnesses for coming forward to initially report the crime.