Thirty-one years after a 14-year-old was found shot dead on a logging road off Covington Road in Brandywine, Charles County investigators are still asking the public for help identifying who killed him. Sterling Emmanuel Settle, a ninth-grade student at Oxon Hill High School, was last seen near his home in Oxon Hill on the afternoon of Monday, October 9, 1995. His body was discovered four days later, on October 13, 1995.
According to the Charles County Sheriff's Office, officers responded to the logging road at approximately 4 p.m. that day after a report of a deceased male. Officers identified the victim as Settle, who had suffered gunshot wounds to his upper body, and his death was ruled a homicide, per the Charles County Sheriff's Office's cold case page. More than three decades later, the case remains unsolved.
The gap between where Settle was last seen and where his body was found spans two jurisdictions — he vanished near his home in Oxon Hill, in Prince George's County, but turned up in rural Brandywine, well within Charles County. No further investigative details, including how he ended up there or who may have been involved, have been made public.
Reward Amount Has Shifted Over the Years
Exactly how much money is on the table for information has varied across official postings over time. The sheriff's office's own cold case page lists a reward of up to $1,000 from Charles County Crime Solvers, while The BayNet reported a $2,500 reward in coverage marking the case's 26th anniversary. A separate BayNet report put the combined reward offered by Crime Solvers and the sheriff's office at up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest or indictment — the same figure cited in the sheriff's office's anniversary-date social media post this year.
Charles County Crime Solvers can be reached at 1-866-411-TIPS, and the agency is asking anyone with information about the case to come forward, with the option to remain confidential.
Part of a Broader Push on Cold Cases
Settle's case is one of several the sheriff's office has worked to keep in public view. Beginning in 2020, the agency made it a priority to bring greater attention to its cold cases through social media, according to NBC News. That effort, known as the Pursuit of Justice initiative, was launched by the office's Cold Case Unit specifically to gain more media coverage for cases like Settle's, and investigators began highlighting cases on the anniversary of each crime, sharing them across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the department's website.
The strategy has occasionally paid off elsewhere in the county. A 1979 killing in Charles County, Maryland, resulted in a 2024 murder conviction after DNA evidence helped crack the case, with a jury finding Andre Taylor guilty of murdering 28-year-old Vickie Lynn Belk following a nine-day trial, as reported by WTOP. Whether similar forensic advances could ever be applied to Settle's case is not addressed in the sheriff's office's public materials.
For now, Sterling Settle's file remains open, his family still waiting for answers more than three decades after he disappeared from his Oxon Hill neighborhood and was found dead in the woods of Brandywine.
