McCutcheon testifies in murder trial that she did not kill her husband in 2016

Mackenzie Wicker
Asheville Citizen Times
Feb. 2020

ASHEVILLE - Brenda McCutcheon says she didn't know anything was wrong until she
smelled gunpowder in the TV room.

She said she awoke in the night to a sound she couldn't identify and her dog barking.
She thought maybe a heavy picture frame had fallen from a wall in the house. She
went downstairs, through each room and was in the TV room, where her husband, Dr.
Frank "Buddy" McCutcheon Jr., always slept, when the scent hit her.

“Up until that point, nothing seemed unusual," she said. "But at that point I knew
something had happened because there shouldn’t have been a gun in our TV room,”
she said through tears.

That was her testimony Feb. 11. Almost three weeks into her trial for first-degree
murder, the 69-year-old had taken the stand the day before in Buncombe County
Superior Court.

She is accused of killing her husband on July 16, 2016, at the couple's home on Tree
Top Drive in Arden.

The allegations

Buddy McCutcheon, a well-known plastic surgeon, was found dead at the age of 64
with a single gunshot wound to the head. He was on the couch in the first-floor room
where he always slept because he liked to have the TV on at night and Brenda
McCutcheon did not, she said in testimony.

In interviews with detectives in 2016, Brenda McCutcheon denied shooting her

husband or placing the handgun found outside their home in rows of ivy, warrants
said.

Warrants and court documents showed the McCutcheons were being investigated for
possible embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretense related to Buddy
McCutcheon's practice at Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville. They were served with a
court order days before he died.
Brenda McCutcheon was indicted for first-degree murder more than a year after her
husband's death and turned herself in to authorities the same week.

On the stand

In court, Brenda McCutcheon and her defense attorney, Sean Devereux, of Asheville,
made an effort to distance her from the financial issues of her husband's practice.

Frank McCutcheon had primary control over expenses while she was a part time
worker not listed as a corporate officer at the business, she testified. She said she
trusted her husband to pay the appropriate taxes, but tried to fix the problem when
she discovered he had not.

She testified that she learned in late 2017 that authorities believed her motive in
killing her husband was that he hadn’t paid taxes. Before that, she said, she wasn’t
really thinking about the taxes.

Assistant District Attorney Meghan Lock drew attention to a set of documents

indicating Brenda McCutcheon had dealt with the Department of Revenue on the
business’s behalf in at least 2010 and 2012.

Brenda McCutcheon acknowledged she was having “some conversations” with the
agencies, but insisted she wasn't heavily involved in finances. She said she "might
have glanced at" bank statements before they went to her husband.

The defense also explored the week before Buddy McCutcheon’s death, during which
Brenda McCutcheon said the couple kept to their normal routines, despite a recent
visit from Department of Revenue agents.

“Nothing was abnormal,” she said.

Devereux played a video the couple took of a bear in their yard the evening of July
14, 2016. Both could be heard commenting casually as the bear ate from a bird
feeder, dug a hole and fled after disrupting a bee’s nest.

Devereux pulled up crime scene photos of the McCutcheons' house, asking Brenda
McCutcheon to point out areas she and her husband had spent time.
Brenda McCutcheon grew tearful as he reached an image of her husband’s body in
the TV room and another that focused closely on his head wound. Her attorney
offered her a drink of water and she declined, taking a moment to compose herself.

The hours surrounding a murder

On Friday, July 15, 2016 — the night before Buddy was found dead around 3:30 a.m.
— Brenda McCutcheon testified that she and her husband had Subway sandwiches for
dinner in front of the TV.

She said Buddy was already asleep on the couch when she headed upstairs, probably
around 9 p.m. She usually read in bed and estimated that she fell asleep around 11.

“The next thing I remember is waking up to a loud sound,” she said.

She told the court that she thought it was thunder at first, but looked outside and saw
there was no storm. She went downstairs and through several rooms before entering
the TV room to find Buddy McCutcheon on the couch, she said.

Brenda McCutcheon said she noticed that the backdoor of the house was slightly ajar,
but that they did not always lock it and it wasn't out of the ordinary. She said she later
learned from detectives that a gate in their yard was also open, which was much more
unusual.

Brenda McCutcheon said she called her husband's name to wake him, but then she
saw blood. She could tell he was already dead and did not attempt CPR due to years'
experience as a nurse, she testified.

She ran to a neighbor's to get help, she said, but they didn't answer the door. So she
went back to her house and called 911.

As she spoke, Brenda McCutcheon choked up. Her attorney pulled up a crime scene
photo of her husband’s body.

“Did you do that? Did you cause it?“ he asked her.

"No,” she replied.

The silver gun

Lock, with the prosecution, took issue with Brenda McCutcheon's choice to run to a
neighbor's yard after finding her husband's body, fleeing out the front door past
multiple loaded firearms, but not taking any of them with her.

She noted that, when Brenda McCutcheon got no answer at her neighbor's door, she
went back into the house where her husband lay dead without turning on any lights
to grab a cordless phone and call law enforcement from the dark yard.

"And you went back out the front door and walked past the weapons again,” Lock
noted.

When deputies arrived, Brenda McCutcheon testified, they asked her whether there
were any guns in the house. She pointed out the ones she knew were there, including
a silver one they usually kept in a kitchen drawer, she said.

It was the gun detectives later found in the yard.

At the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office, detectives asked Brenda McCutcheon

about the visit she and her husband had received from the Department of Revenue
agents. They brought up the embezzlement allegations. She testified that she didn't
know until then that those allegations existed.

Two days after her husband died, Brenda McCutcheon went into his surgery office
with two other employees to begin canceling appointments and selling off medical
equipment to other practices.

She said she needed to close the practice quickly because she didn’t have an income
of her own.

“It was all I could do to just put one foot in front of the other," she testified. "I had an
office to deal with. I had a home to deal with. And I had lost my husband. And the only
way I could do it and get one more thing done that I had to do was to just lock (up)
my sorrow and just put it in the closet and deal with what I had to deal with."

After Buddy's death

Brenda McCutcheon sold the house on Tree Top Drive for $420,000 and moved to
Tennessee to live near her sisters.
Lock noted that she submitted application documents for a new apartment on July
30, 2016, though the widow testified that the lease did not begin until September and
that she did not move in until October.

After Buddy died, she received $224,000 from his IRA account. She testified that she
transferred the money into an account in her name, which had a balance of about
$128,300 as of the end of December.

“I’ve made withdraws just to live on,” she said.

In cross examination, Lock asked Brenda McCutcheon about the early years of her
relationship with Buddy. Brenda McCutcheon acknowledged that she'd moved with
him to several different cities.

“During that time, Buddy was making decisions about where you would live?” Lock
asked.

"Yes," Brenda McCutcheon replied.

She acknowledged that the couple drained her IRA to buy their home in Arden.

Buddy McCutcheon established his practice in 2001 and Brenda McCutcheon helped
there on and off. She did not get a paycheck, she said, and eventually took another
job. But until that point, the Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville was the couple's only
income.

After she was interviewed by detectives about her husband's death, Brenda
McCutcheon did not follow up with law enforcement to find out whether they had any
leads in the investigation.

Asked about it by Lock, she said her attorney had been in communication with
authorities and relayed information to her, so there was no need.

What's next in the trial?

Devereux told Superior Court Judge Peter Knight, who is presiding over the trial, that
he would likely wrap up his case the morning of Feb. 12. Jury selection in the case
began the week of Jan. 20.
After the defense rests, both sides will present closing arguments. The jury of 10
women and two men will likely begin deliberation this week.

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Opinion Column: The skull in the lake

Mackenzie Wicker
The Daily Courier
May 2018

All we knew last Wednesday morning was that a human skull had been found when
workers drained the lake at the new Yogi Bear Jellystone Park in Golden Valley.

Our editor, Jean, laid the information on us during a newsroom meeting.

“Y'all hear about the skull?” she asked casually, like it was a baseball or an old tire or
anything besides a fairly integral part of the human anatomy and, as I saw it, the first
clue in what could be the most important investigation in Rutherford County history.

I had not heard about the skull, but suddenly it was all I could think about.

Jean said it had been sent to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center for
testing and that the results were expected later that day. I volunteered (ok, begged)
to make some calls once I finished the rest of my work. I already had an interview in
Ellenboro, a column, an article, and a town budget meeting on my schedule, but I
figured I could make some time to dig up details on a murder mystery.

I rushed to finish my other assignments.

Around me, people speculated who the skull might belong to: a girl who went
missing in Cleveland County 20 years ago? A man who double-crossed bootleggers
who used to live on the property? Could it be something more recent? Something
that had been kept secret?

Anything was plausible. I was thrilled by the prospect of discovering whodunnit and
seeing justice served. And I would get to be there on the scene, asking for all the
gruesome details.

To say that I'm obsessed with true crime is probably overstating it, but I suppose it
says something about my interests that my favorite podcast is called “My Favorite
Murder.” Um. It's a feminist comedy podcast. About murder. (I know. It's weird. Stick
with me here.)

There's a fairly large true crime community, which makes me feel like slightly less of a
freak, but it's an interest that is foreign to a lot of people. My parents included. My
paranoid habits of checking closets, ignoring strangers, and turning on all the lights
at night has drawn some criticism from my dad, who thinks listening to true crime
stories has filled my head with irrational fears.

But, my fears don't come from my interest in true crime. It's actually the other way
around.

Like a lot of true crime fans, my fascination with murder is the product of my anxiety.
Knowing all the facts makes me feel like I have some control over them. It's like, if I
know everything there is to know about these terrible things, I can stop them from
happening to me and to those I love. Knowledge is my armor. (Or knowledge is my
pepper spray, locked door, and cell phone carried with me at all time.)

Also, I'll admit, I'm a curious person. I like having answers. And last Wednesday, there
were suddenly two questions burning a hole in my head. Whose skull was that in the
lake? And who the heck put it there?

Around 4:30 p.m., I finally completed the rest of my work and dialed Sheriff Chris
Francis to get my answers. He was candid and gave me the details in chronological
order. I scribbled notes as he did, but, a couple of minutes in, I paused, pen lifted, to
confirm something I thought I'd misunderstood.

“Wait. A replica?”

“A high-quality replica,” he said.

It had been tested by at least three pathologists who had confirmed it. It was a fake.
There was no human skull found when workers drained the lake at the new Yogi Bear
Jellystone Park. It was a replica. There was no murder mystery. No whodunnit. No
justice to be served.

And just like that the case was closed.

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Opinion Column: Toward Wilmington
Mackenzie Wicker
The Daily Courier
Sept. 2018

They told them not to go back, but no one listened.

“I know it was hard to leave home,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday. “And it's even
harder to wait and wonder whether you even have a home to go back to. But please,
for your safety and the effectiveness of our emergency operations, do not try to return
home yet.”

But they were already on their way. Early that morning, my sister and her boyfriend
had packed up 10 gallons each of water and gas, a generator, a gas stove, a few
weeks of groceries and the four cats they evacuated with and headed east again,
toward Wilmington. They caravanned with friends who were doing the same thing,
defying government requests, braving roads that were recently underwater, taking
creative routes back to a place that was an island three days ago.

My Facebook feed was full of people exchanging information and plans. Which exits
are still blocked off? How high is the river at that bridge? Do you need anything? How
long did it take you? What did you find when you arrived?

All weekend, and Monday, too, officials had been saying, “Don't come here. Leave
roads open. Don't risk it.” They ignored them all.

By Tuesday evening, they were posting pictures of downed trees and empty streets
after sundown, the beginning of a citywide curfew. Some had power, some didn't.
They shared food and supplies. It was a rough situation to return to, but they were
there and they were together.

Wilmington was my home for five years – the longest stretch I've spent anywhere
since high school. Four of those were for college and an extra was spent trying to
figure out how grownups live (jury's still out on that, by the way). I arrived at UNCW in
August 2006 with little enthusiasm. It was my fallback school. I got into my dream
ones, but couldn't afford them, so I'd ended up in a beach town with too many pine
needles and too much red brick.

By September, though, I was in love. With night trips to Wrightsville, with the riverwalk
and the charming, historic town, with my freedom. Hurricane Ernesto hit Labor Day
weekend. Classes were cancelled on Friday. I attended my first hurricane party. We
watched the trees bend sideways out our dorm windows. A guy took his kayak out on
the flooded campus. We laughed and drank and watched movies in the community
room 'til dawn.

My time in Wilmington was filled with the strange, melancholy, finding-yourself stuff
that is inherent to young adulthood. But my experiences and friendships there were
also some of the best of my life thus far. In a town that is battered every year, to some
degree, by storms, people learn to be resilient and resourceful. They bounce back.
They develop a sense of humor. They work together.

Much has changed since I left in 2011. Old establishments have moved or gone. New
ones have been built in their places. Many of my closest friends live elsewhere now.
But a lot of what I loved about Wilmington still exists.

I have this urge, this week, to go there. To see what's different now and what is still
standing. To help the town that helped me. To do what I can for the people I know.

So, as much as I wish they'd waited for the safe green-light from officials, I understand
why they ignored the governor. I know why they had to go. To see what's left. And to
do what they do best: support each other as they laugh and cry and begin rebuilding
their lives.

(If you'd like to help them, you can donate to any number of charities dedicated to
hurricane relief. All Hands and Hearts at allhandsandhearts.org/programs/hurricane-
florence-relief/ and the American Red Cross at redcross.org and 1-800-733-2767 are
a couple of options.)