On February 21, 1990, long haul truck driver Ronald Thomas found his way to the Park View Grill, where he drank beer and shot pool with the owner, her partner, and a 32-year-old woman named Talana Kreeger. Twelve hours later, at a truck stop on Interstate 95, Thomas spoke to a local minister by phone, telling him, "I did something terrible," as he confessed a murder.
The true horror of Talana Kreeger's death would gradually unfold to her friends, who gathered at the Park View for the grim news that they were not prepared for. The quiet coastal community of Wilmington learned the gruesome details through media coverage that revealed how Talana had been manually disembowelled by her attacker, and left to bleed to death at the edge of a tree-lined field.
While hinting at the importance of "homosexuality" as a factor in the murder, news reports did not confirm the sexual orientation of the victim, or its possible relevance to the crime, leaving the public to speculate about why this had occurred.
Courtesy New Hanover Public Library
Courtesy Wilmington Star News
Talana Quay Kreeger loved animals, was a skilled carpenter, and a beloved friend who was described as "caring" and "fearless", by those who knew her best. Surviving a difficult childhood, and the early death of her mother, Talana had worked hard to create a stable life for herself. Her friendships were so important to her, that she was known to give her time freely, as she had been doing in her renovation of the bar at the Park View Grill, on the night she was killed.
Ronald Sheldon Thomas trailed a specter of tragedy, as he located his delivery site in Wilmington, and wheeled the sleeper cab back onto Shipyard Boulevard. While his fundamentalist roots in rural Alabama did not condone drinking, the search for a cold beer and relief from the boredom of the road brought him to the brooding cypress trees and Spanish moss of Greenfield Lake, as he pulled the truck to the front of the Park View Grill.
To view detailed Court of Appeals reviews of this case, click on the links below. This information is graphic and disturbing.
