Man freed by Innocence Commission charged in Pittsboro homicide

A Greensboro man who was cleared in a 1975 homicide by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission was charged Wednesday in the death of a Pittsboro woman last year.

Posted 5:36 p.m. Mar 1, 2018 — Updated 6:20 p.m. Mar 1, 2018

Matthew Burns

, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor

PITTSBORO, N.C. — A Greensboro man who was cleared in a 1975 homicide by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission was charged Wednesday in the death of a Pittsboro woman last year.

Willie Henderson Womble, 64, of 1511 Barto Place, was charged with first-degree murder in the April 11 death of Donna Dvonne Todd.

Todd, 54, was found dead in her apartment at 25 Creekside Circle.

Police haven't released her cause of death or any details about a possible motive for the killing.

Womble was 22 when he was convicted in 1976 of first-degree murder in Nov. 18, 1975, shooting death of Roy Brent Bullock during a robbery at a Butner convenience store. Womble maintained his innocence, saying police threatened him and forced him to sign a false confession that he had been paid $20 to serve as a lookout in the robbery.

Another man convicted in the case notified the Innocence Commission in 2013 that Womble wasn't involved in the robbery or Bullock's death, noting that the real accomplice had died in 2012.

The commission, the state-run agency that investigates post-conviction claims of innocence, recommended that Womble's case be reviewed, and a panel of three judges declared him innocent in October 2014 and ordered his release from prison.

State Bureau of Investigation agents and Greensboro police arrested Womble at his home without incident. He was being held in the Guilford County Detention Center.

Suggest A Correction