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Bizarre murder, hazardous waste top stories of years gone by

SALISBURY POST

• 1990: Hazardous Waste. Rarely have local citizens and government united to fight a common threat as they did when they paraded, blocked highways, petitioned and went to court to stop any state effort to build a hazardous waste incinerator here.
  
• 1991: Desert Storm. The country went to war, and local families and friends watched and waited for news of loved ones in the Gulf.
  
• 1992: The president visits. George Bush didn’t win the election, but he and his White House entourage made the Faith Fourth celebration one for the record books.
  
• 1993: Food Lion fights. This year proved the most difficult in the Salisbury chain’s 36-year history, as Food Lion battled the media, unions and indifferent customers in Texas.
  
• 1994: Murder and dismemberment. A newspaper carrier found the smoldering garbage can on the side of the road, and for the next five months, local residents were horrified as sheriff’s detectives unraveled the case of Pamela Sanders, a Kannapolis woman who was asphyxiated and then dismembered.
  
• 1995: Husband acquitted. The jury didn’t believe Daniel Lee Buckley, the eye witness who said Ray Sanders brought his wife’s body to Buckley’s home to dismember and stuff in a garbage can. Sanders was acquitted, and Buckley went to jail.
  
• 1996: Food Lion rebounds. After years of trading jabs with ABC, Food Lion took its civil fraud case against the television network to a jury. The jurors agreed that ABC reporters committed fraud, but since the grocery chain did not legally challenge the truth of the broadcast, a judge eventually reduced the jury’s award.
  
• 1997. Four children die, but not for naught. Four children, all the subject of previous investigations by the Department of Social Services, died in a short space of time, triggering a troubling examination of our ill-prepared, undermanned child protection system. The local soul-searching eventually resulted in statewide reforms and money for much-needed child safety workers.
  
• 1998. Child abuse trials. Juries convicted DeMallon Krider’s mother, Tamanchies, and Budde Clark’s stepmother, Robin Gosnell, of murder, and testimony about the abuse both suffered again raised questions of how we failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. Clark’s maternal grandparents sued the county, Social Services and its director, Rick Travis, who later resigned.