High Point cold case resurfaces after suspect’s new murder arrest

David Scarborough’s new murder arrest in High Point has reopened a 40-year-old wound for the family of Zella Sink McGee, the 81-year-old woman killed in her West Burton Avenue home in 1986. For Lisa Gammons and Linda Flick, McGee’s granddaughters, the case is not an old file but a fresh reminder of how violence can echo through one family for decades and land on another without warning.

High Point police said the June 5 homicide began around 3:55 a.m., when Xavier Martin drove himself to Wake Forest Baptist High Point Medical Center with a serious stab wound. Despite life-saving efforts by hospital staff, Martin died. Detectives said they later determined the stabbing happened at 1750 Bethel Drive after speaking with family members and piecing together a timeline. Witness statements indicated the confrontation began when Martin kicked at a loose dog, which upset the dog’s owner.

Police arrested Scarborough at 1 p.m. on June 5 and charged him with second-degree murder in Martin’s death. He was 59 at the time of the arrest. The charge links a deadly fight over a dog in High Point to a man whose name had already been tied to one of the city’s most haunting killings.

Scarborough had previously been convicted in McGee’s 1986 death after High Point police arrested him in 2015, following DNA evidence that connected him to the case. McGee was found dead in October 1986 inside her burning home on West Burton Avenue. Reports from that case said she had been raped, stabbed repeatedly and that her home was set on fire. Scarborough was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, then released on parole in 2022.

Gammons and Flick said they were not surprised by the new arrest and had long feared Scarborough would hurt someone else after his release. Their reaction captures the larger cost of a case that never fully stopped hurting the people left behind: one family is again living with old grief, while Martin’s loved ones are now beginning the same painful process.