Mother gets tip on where missing Fayetteville man's body was dumped

The mother of a Fayetteville man who went missing in March said Monday that she recently got a tip as to where his body is.

Charles Anthony Fuentes, 31, was last seen leaving Izzy’s Sports Bar, at 150 Andrews Road, in the early morning hours of March 3. Grainy security video from outside the bar shows a man believed to be Fuentes leaving with two men in a dark-colored 2007 Lexus with license plate PCE-2228.

Police considered the other two men, identified as Mark Allen Verhasselt, 42, and Ryan Dewain Chavis, 23, as persons of interest in the case. But Verhasselt was shot to death in July in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Chavis was arrested in August and charged as an accessory after the fact to murder. He remains in the Cumberland County jail under a $250,000 bond.

Mayra Fuentes said Fayetteville police told her her son was murdered in an apartment behind some businesses in the 4800 block of Ramsey Street – about a mile from where he was last seen – and thrown in the Cape Fear River.

Police searched the river in early September. Although they didn't find Charles Fuentes' body, they did load something heavy into a plastic tub and hauled it off as evidence.

Mayra Fuentes said she now believes police were searching in the wrong place. She said she received a phone call last Thursday from an unidentified caller who told her where her son's body was dumped.

"I know for a fact that your son is not in the Cape Fear River and is in this specific pond, in the bottom," she said the caller told her.

The caller sent along a Google photo of a pond behind the former Regal Industries Inc. industrial buildings north of the intersection of Oakland Avenue and Camden Road.

"That is the pond where, supposedly, my son – his body is dumped," she said. "I want it drained. I want it drained because I believe – I don't want a team of divers there, that is a man-made [pond] – I want to know what is down there."

Mayra Fuentes said investigators told her they plan to find and question the person who provided the tip and the picture of the pond. Police weren't available Monday to say whether they plan to drain the pond or put divers in the water.

The wait has been frustrating for Fuentes.

"This is eight months – on [Nov.] 3, it's going to be eight months – that my son is missing, and he's here somewhere," she said.