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| Andrea Harbour's body found Sept. 13 |
Jimmy Harbour stands with funeral wreaths and a cross at the site on Powell Road where his wife’s body was found on Sept. 13. (Bulletin photo by Mike Wray) |
Thursday, June 18, 2009
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Powell Road in Ridgeway is an area of well-kept homes and manicured lawns. It is hard to imagine that a woman’s remains were found there in September.
It is especially inconceivable for Jimmy Harbour.
“This is a good neighborhood,” he said.
Harbour’s wife, Andrea Harbour, was last seen alive in the early morning hours of Sept. 8, investigators have said. Neighbors near the couple’s home called police five days later, after noticing a suspicious odor and what appeared to be human remains down a ravine.
“She was laying right over there,” Harbour said Wednesday, pointing to an area down an embankment, behind a wooden cross, funeral wreath and other floral arrangements he keeps near where his wife’s remains were found Sept. 13.
“It’s only about 1,200 to 1,500 feet from my house where they found her,” Harbour said. “I pass by it every day.”
No arrests have been made in the slaying. Henry County Sheriff’s Maj. Steve Eanes said there have been no recent developments in the case, but the investigation remains open.
Harbour hopes an increased reward for information about his wife’s death will help solve the case. He plans to add $1,000 to the $5,000 he is offering for information that leads to the arrest of Andrea Harbour’s killer or killers. That change will take effect in July.
Harbour also plans to put up more posters asking for information in the case, especially along the corridor of North Carolina 14. Andrea Harbour was well-known, especially in the Eden, N.C., area, where she had spent most of her life, her husband said.
Jimmy Harbour suspects her killer may have been from that area and possibly someone they both knew. He also believes she would have put up a fight, because that was her nature.
“She was a fighter. She’d fight you in a minute. She’d whip the average man, she really would,” Harbour said.
Police have said the preliminary autopsy showed that Andrea Harbour, 36, suffered a gunshot to her upper torso.
Harbour has said he was told by investigators that his wife was shot in the back.
He believes robbery was the motive, because Andrea Harbour had about $2,700 in her purse from an insurance settlement related to an auto accident, Jimmy Harbour and his mother-in-law, Sandra Ratliff, have said.
Andrea Harbour also had a disability check from Social Security for more than $500, her husband has said.
Police have been unable to find the brown leather or leather-like purse Andrea Harbour was known to carry.
The Harbours had been married about eight months when Andrea died, Jimmy Harbour said. But “I’d been knowing her since she was about 20 years old,” he said.
For about a year before her death, the two shared the Powell Road home that Harbour said he has lived in for about 17 years.
While Andrea Harbour had her share of problems in the past, Jimmy Harbour said she had come a long way in turning her life around.
“Andrea had really straightened her life out. She was really trying,” he said.
He struggles to understand the circumstances that led to her death.
“I can’t make peace with it” until the person or persons responsible are arrested, he said. “I just don’t understand why anyone would shoot a woman. It’s really bad the way it happened.”
Aside from the flowers near the area she was found, there is little to suggest that Andrea Harbour lived on Powell Road. But Jimmy Harbour vows he never will forget.
“I wish she was here. ... There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about her,” he said. “Everybody’s got to die, but not like that.”
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Henry County Sheriff’s Office at 638-8751. |
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