A paranoid North Carolina man was compelled to confess to a murder he committed 17 years ago after receiving phone calls and mail from Walmart that he thought meant someone knew his secret, The New York Daily News reported on Tuesday.
Matthew Gibson, 55, became concerned in June after someone from the retailer called to tell him a prescription for a woman he didn't know was ready to be picked up. He was so startled that he drove through the night from his home in Boone, North Carolina, to a police station in Winslow, Arizona, to confess to the murder, according to the Charlotte Observer.
Gibson pleaded guilty to manslaughter last week and has received a 10-year prison sentence after a few bizarre months that ended in him finally coming clean.
Gibson told police in Arizona that he met a woman in Bullhead City, Arizona late one night before going back to his trailer. She became loud and obnoxious and he told her to leave, but she refused. He finally bludgeoned her to death with a Maglite flashlight, threw her body by the Colorado River and kept it a secret for years. He didn't know her name before killing her.
The man thought someone knew about the murder in Bullhead City and was playing with him through Walmart. The 55-year-old told police that he began receiving text messages and voicemails from Walmart saying that Anita Townshed's prescription was ready.
Gibson later received an envelope with a Walmart advertisement in it, but it had no return name or address. He felt someone had tapped his phone, too. Gibson decided that Townshed must have been the woman he killed and felt someone might want him dead, as well.
Gibson, a former methamphetamine and cocaine addict, didn't know the identity of the 38-year-old woman he'd killed back in 1997. But it wasn't Anita Townshed. It was Barbara Brown Agnew. He said that if he hadn't received daunting calls, texts and letters from Walmart, he wouldn't have said anything about the crime.
