Alice Means was found beaten and stabbed multiple times along railroad tracks on the north side of Spartanburg in 1977, her throat cut and her body partially clothed, and nearly 50 years later, no one has ever been arrested for her killing. Spartanburg police say the person responsible may never have left town at all — they could still be living in the same community where Means died.
A Case Investigators Believe Is Still Solvable
The Spartanburg Police Department is searching for answers in the 1977 murder of Alice Means, according to the department, as reported by FOX Carolina News. Investigator Lamb told the station that police have had suspects over the years but have not made an arrest, and Lamb said Means knew her killer. Lamb believes the case can still be solved with the right tip, and said the person who killed Means could still live in the same Spartanburg community.
According to the police report cited in that reporting, Means was assaulted before she was found, and clothes were discovered near the crime scene. Means had left a nearby house on Wofford Street hours before she was found, and that house was the last place she was seen alive. Wofford Street is a historic east-west thoroughfare named after Rev. Benjamin Wofford, running near Wofford College and through Spartanburg's Northside corridor along the city's central rail lines, according to Wofford College Archives.
No Photograph, No Family — Just Rumors and Memory
Investigators face an unusual obstacle in trying to close this case: Means has no known photograph available to them, and she had no surviving family members able to provide one. That leaves community memory and anonymous tips as some of the only tools left for identifying who she was and who may have killed her. Investigators are seeking people who remember the case or who have heard rumors or direct information over the decades since.
Anyone with information is asked to call Spartanburg police or Crime Stoppers. Tips submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC are routed through a Computer-Aided Dispatch system that assigns callers confidential code numbers, ensuring anonymity while preserving eligibility for cash rewards, according to the South Carolina Crime Stoppers Council. The statewide non-profit network operates 24 hours a day without taxpayer funding.
Why an Almost 50-Year-Old Murder Can Still Be Charged
Under South Carolina Code § 16-3-10 and § 16-3-20, murder is defined as the killing of a human being with malice aforethought and carries a penalty of 30 years to life imprisonment without parole or the death penalty, according to the South Carolina General Assembly. No statute of limitations applies to homicide in the state, meaning prosecutors could still charge a suspect in Means's death nearly five decades later if one is identified.
Modern forensic tools also give investigators options that did not exist in 1977. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division operates a centralized Forensic Services Laboratory in Columbia that processes biological evidence using STR-PCR technology and manages the statewide Combined DNA Index System database to help local agencies work unsolved cold cases, per SLED's own description of its DNA database program. Separately, state law under South Carolina Code § 23-3-625 directs SLED to conduct DNA typing and upload biological profiles into CODIS for missing persons and unidentified remains cases, a mechanism enacted under the Unidentified Human Remains DNA Database Act.
Real-Time Crime Center Backs Up Older Investigations
Spartanburg police also now operate a cloud-based Real-Time Crime Center inside headquarters, built on the Axon Fūsus platform, which aggregates live and recorded video feeds to support both active and historical investigations, according to CUBNSC. City officials briefed the community on that system's integration in January.
The Means case surfaces as Spartanburg County law enforcement marks September as National Cold Case Month, with agencies conducting targeted public information campaigns and video releases aimed at generating new leads on long-unsolved homicides. It joins a list of other cold cases from the same era that local authorities have periodically re-promoted as forensic technology has advanced, including the unsolved 1989 shooting of Matthew Griffin, the 1990 murder of Madelyn Cox Thomas, and the 1991 stabbing of Ray Ballard — a case Hoodline covered last month. The Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office maintains a dedicated Cold Case Unit that re-examines old homicide files and coordinates with SLED to re-interview witnesses and review physical evidence.
For now, the biggest lead investigators have is the belief that whoever killed Alice Means never had to go far to hide. As Lamb put it in comments to FOX Carolina, the case can still be solved with the right tip — and that tip may be sitting with someone who has lived in the same Spartanburg neighborhood for decades.
