Missing North Carolina man Tony Maddox found dead, homicide probe begins

Tony Maddox disappeared after a morning sighting in Lincolnton, and the case tightened fast when his black 2014 Dodge Charger was found abandoned in Charlotte the next day. By Tuesday afternoon, June 2, search crews had recovered the 70-year-old’s body in a wooded area in Lincolnton, turning a missing-person call into a homicide investigation.

Maddox was last seen around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, on Nelson Drive in Lincolnton, and he was reported missing the next day. The recovery site was in a wooded area in Lincolnton, with one report placing it off Clark Creek Road. Search and rescue personnel, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Gaston County Emergency Management, several fire departments, and K-9 teams from North and South Carolina all joined the effort to find him.

By Thursday, June 4, police were publicly calling Maddox’s death a homicide investigation. The Lincolnton Police Department was still asking anyone with information to contact Detective Sergeant Stephanie Allen at (704) 736-8900, a sign that investigators were still piecing together the timeline from the last confirmed sighting, the abandoned car and the wooded recovery site.

The biggest break came on Friday, June 5, when detectives obtained warrants charging 36-year-old Kayla Rose Bessette with first-degree murder and common law robbery in Maddox’s death. Authorities said Bessette had already been in the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office on unrelated charges since May 30, and the sheriff’s office was expected to serve the new warrants. Police have not released additional details about how Maddox died or what evidence led to the charges.

Maddox’s obituary lists his birth date as August 23, 1955, and his funeral service was scheduled for Friday, June 12, 2026, at Coulter’s Grove AME Zion Church in Newton. For Maddox’s family, the arc was brutally short: a missing report on May 27, a body in the woods a week later, and then the hard turn from search efforts to a homicide case that is still missing its full story.