News-Record.com

Nothing from me this Sunday, but my colleagues in Greensboro and around the state have plenty of good stuff on tap. First and foremost, this comes from Taft Wireback:

GREENSBORO — State highway builders plan to buy and demolish part of a new neighborhood in northeast Greensboro, displacing about 15 families and adding millions of dollars to the cost of Greensboro’s Urban Loop.

Meanwhile, agents for the marketer of Quail Oaks subdivision — Keystone Group Inc. — are not telling interested home buyers that they sit squarely in the Urban Loop’s bull’s-eye. In fact, at least one company representative continues to offer lots directly in the new interstate’s path.

“They (Keystone Group) told us it would be coming, but it wouldn’t affect us,” said home owner Janice Chapman , whose three-year-old house is within feet of an Urban Loop exit ramp planned by the state Department of Transportation.

“They were like, it’s been a thought for 15 years, but nothing’s ever been done with it,” said Rachel Wilson, who bought in Quail Oaks in June. “We’re royally screwed.”

As recently as last weekend, one Keystone sales aide told a pair of prospective buyers she knew of no highway — even when asked point blank about any in the works nearby.

The story, by the way, was helped along by a former N+R staffer who did some undercover work for Taft.

Click here for the whole story.

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Fayetteville's Paul Woolverton uses a Sunday blog post to write through the Cary Allred saga thus far.

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The N+O's Mandy Locke tracks down the investigation into former Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John Edwards:

John Edwards marched toward the White House in 2006 seeking an arsenal of millions collected a little at a time.

He also gathered more ammunition, about $11 million, collected in larger chunks by nonprofit groups conceived and operated to further his aspirations. He also courted a girlfriend.

Federal investigators are trying to connect those dots, sifting through Edwards' financial records to probe whether he used any donations solicited for his campaign to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Click here for the whole story.

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Asheville's Jordan Schrader writes through the latest news on the state's video poker laws.

RALEIGH – State lawmakers could soon return to their pursuit of an elusive goal: wiping out video gambling in North Carolina.

First, they want to figure out how to avoid inflicting collateral damage on businesses from Pepsi to McDonald's to Food Lion.

The General Assembly banned video poker in 2006, heeding arguments that it invites corruption and preys on the poor. But a Guilford County judge has blocked law enforcement from weeding out the Internet-based games that have popped up in many convenience stores since the ban, even after the Legislature intervened again last year.

Legislation under consideration this year threatens a more blanket ban on games of chance, but even the lawmakers who introduced the bills call them overly broad.

Worries about hurting retailers have led Rep. Ray Rapp, a Mars Hill Democrat, to shelve his bill for now and Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand to try to rework his.

Click here for the whole story.

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On this next one, I came for the headline, stayed for the story:

Headline: Why is Ronald Adrin Gray still alive?

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Twenty-three years ago, Linda Jean Coats made a fatal mistake.

She opened her door.

The 22-year-old Campbell University student had been lying on her sofa when a neighbor came to her home in Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park.

Army Spc. Ronald Adrin Gray asked to use the phone.

Coats had likely seen Gray many times. He lived a few streets away with his wife and stepdaughter. He jogged through the neighborhood almost every day, lifted weights in his yard and listened to rock music on his front steps.

That night — April 27, 1986 — Gray became a murderer.

Coats let him in.

In the nine months to follow, Gray would rape eight women and murder three of them.

In those months, Gray sent terror through Fairlane Acres and Fayetteville.

By the end of 1986, people were fleeing the mobile home park, off Bragg Boulevard, by the dozens.

During a five-day stretch that December, Fairlane Acres resident Tammy Wilson was raped and fatally shot in the head. Another resident, Pfc. Laura Lee Vickery Clay, disappeared; her home was burned and her car found parked a block away.

Click here for the whole story from the Fayetteville Observer.

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Finally, Charlotte's Mark Johnson writes a profile of Rick Killian, a legislator I didn't know much about until this morning:

Rep. Ric Killian, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, had already scoped out the unfriendly terrain.

He was proposing a bill that would tighten the driver's license regulations on older drivers, frequent voters whom politicians alienate at their peril. And the opposing party, Democrats, controlled the committee hearing the bill.

Killian, a Republican from Charlotte, anticipated hefty opposition. So he delivered an extensive presentation on accident statistics and the potential benefit of older drivers taking a driver's license test more often. Then he got outflanked, not by a Democrat, but by a fellow Republican. Rep. Bill McGee, a 73-year-old from Forsyth County, gutted Killian's bill.

Call it legislative lesson No. 52 for Killian. He has made himself a walking case study for what a junior member of the minority party in the legislature can accomplish, what he can get passed into law and what gets shot down, often along party lines, but not always.

Click here for the whole story.