New cold case specialist aims to solve murders of both parents of Halifax County woman decades apart

A new cold case specialist is combing through decades-old murder cases for the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office, and they’ve already made breakthroughs in some investigations.

One family of two cold case victims in the county is hoping the new investigator can help bring them closure.

The Halifax County Sheriff’s Office lists 17 unsolved murder cases on its Crimestoppers page.

For the Ausby family in Weldon, two of those killings cut deep.

“My daddy and my mother were high school sweethearts,” Justice Ausby told WRAL News.

Ausby was seven years old back in August 2002.

She still remembers the day she found the body of her mother, Sherald Taylor, in their home.

“We missed the bus for school, and I knew something was wrong when she didn’t wake up,” Ausby said.

The sheriff’s office told WRAL News that at the time, the NC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner couldn’t identify a cause of death for Taylor and closed the case.

Justice Ausby grieved alongside her father, John Ausby, who she called a loud and outgoing man.

They had 17 more years together. Then came December 2019.

“That was another tragedy for me,” Justice Ausby said. “The worst day of my life, the way that he was found.”

After going missing, John Ausby was found shot to death and rolled up in a blanket near Sycamore Street in Weldon.

Investigators didn’t track down his killer, and for years the family was left wondering if they’d ever get answers.

“They deserve information as to what happened, holding somebody accountable,” Rich Somogyi told WRAL News.

Somogyi is the new Cold Case Investigator with the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office.

His job has been to pore over the office’s unsolved murder cases, looking for anything that investigators may have missed in the past, and using new technology to find clues that were out of reach before.

“Don’t forget, don’t forgive,” Somogyi said. “Just keep moving forward and try to establish any leads that we can with these cases.”

It’s already paid off: while looking into the murder of John Ausby, Somogyi decided to ask the NC OCME to reopen the case of Sherald Taylor from back in 2002.

This time, medical examiners found something new: Taylor had died from asphyxiation, and her death was now ruled a homicide.

More than 20 years later, Justice Ausby learned that her mother had been murdered too.

“To have both parents taken not by natural causes is a different type of pain and hurt and suffering that I do want people to understand,” Justice Ausby said.

Somogyi told WRAL News that he’s identified potential leads in the murder cases of Taylor and John Ausby.

It’s one step closer to what the Ausby family says they’re still waiting for.

“We do still want justice, we need it,” Justice Ausby said. “We need closure, we need peace, because we deserve that.”