After ex-husband's guilty plea, remains of missing Cumberland woman found

The remains of a Cumberland County woman who had been missing for more than 31/2 years were found last week, after her ex-husband pleaded guilty to his role in her death, police said Wednesday.

Posted 9:46 p.m. Mar 24, 2021 — Updated 3:40 a.m. Mar 25, 2021

Gilbert Baez

, WRAL Fayetteville reporter

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The remains of a Cumberland County woman who had been missing for more than 3½ years were found last week, after her ex-husband pleaded guilty to his role in her death, police said Wednesday.

Heather Carter, 28, and another woman were at the Zip-N-Mart at 2413 Hope Mills Road early on July 12, 2017, when someone began shooting at them, Fayetteville police said.

The second woman was shot in the hand but was able to drive away. Carter was unable to get back into the car, however, and wasn't seen alive again.

Presuming Carter was dead, Fayetteville police charged her ex-husband, Jimmy Lee Proffitt II, with first-degree murder three months later. Investigators said they had evidence that Proffitt ambushed the women, put Carter in his vehicle and fled the scene.

But her remains were never found.

After recently reaching a plea agreement with the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, Proffitt agreed to show detectives where Carter's remains were buried, in a wooded area along Davis Bridge Road in Robeson County.

Police said the remains were recovered on last Friday and were positively identified through dental records on Wednesday.

Proffitt, 32, pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, possession of a firearm by a felon and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle and was sentenced to 10 to 13 years in prison. The murder charge was dropped as part of the plea deal.

Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Rob Thompson told WRAL News that a key witness in the case had died, and prosecutors had other evidence problems that would have made a murder conviction difficult to obtain. So they negotiated the plea in an effort to give Carter's family some closure.

Thompson said Carter's father was kept informed about the negotiations throughout and signed off on the deal.

"He was not happy with the amount of time," Thompson said, "but he understood the need, given the situation we were in strategically, with the evidence thinning out."

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