Even as a civil rights case was being settled in favor of the young man falsely accused of raping and killing 11-year-old McKenzie Sessoms, the trail to who actually took the young girl’s life grows longer.
It has been 13 years, in fact, since Sessoms was found strangled to death and raped in her Salemburg-area home where she lived with her family. She was found unresponsive on the couch in her living room where she had been sleeping while renovations were being made to her bedroom. Her father found her that September morning.
Her killer remains at large.
But Sampson County Sheriff’s investigators say they have not back-burnered the case. In fact, Thursday morning, Chief Deputy Marcus Smith and Sheriff Jimmy Thornton were adamant that they would never describe this case as “cold.”
“We have never considered this a cold case,” Smith said. “In fact, we have been diligently working the case since it happened.”
Thornton concurred. “We have never dropped this case, and we won’t drop this case until we get an arrest.”
Investigators, however, thought they had the case solved back in 2014 when they arrested and charged Antonio Trey Jones, a 14-year-old Lakewood High School freshman, with Sessoms’ rape and murder.
An allegedly falsely coerced confession by state and local law enforcement officer and eventual DNA evidence exonerated Jones, who had been incarcerated for some five years, awaiting trail. (See civil case reporting for details).
But Jones’ release returned officers to a trail gone dusty with time.
“This remains an open investigation with the Sampson Sheriff’s Office,” noted Ernie Lee, district attorney for the Fifth Prosecutorial District which includes Sampson, noted in an email response Thursday morning.
Interviewed just over a year ago, Lee said then that the Sessoms case had never been forgotten.
“It still bothers me a lot,” Lee said during that 2025 interview. “This was an 11-year-old girl. Nothing should have happened to her, yet it did. And the fact that it is still outstanding bothers me a great deal. I want closure, but more importantly, I want justice for her family, justice for McKenzie.”
Thornton said his office obviously wasn’t investigating the case during the time Jones was in custody, but once DNA evidence showed he had no involvement, officers returned to their investigation, determined as ever to find the killer.
“Today, this is as far from a cold case as one can be. We are working it and we will continue to do so,” Thornton stressed.
Lee said in the 2025 Independent article that the fact a murderer still roams free bothers him beyond belief, and he stressed that the case was far from closed.
“There is no statute of limitations on a murder case,” the district attorney stressed in the 2025 news article. “If new evidence surfaces, if someone comes forward, it can still help.”
And because of that, he, the sheriff and Smith continue to urge anyone who might have information on the case to come forward and share what they know.
“It’s never too late,” Lee said last year.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to call the Sampson County Sheriff’s Office at 910-592-4141.