After 45 years, South Carolina police officer’s killing remains unsolved
CHARLESTON, S.C. November 26 2019 It has been four-and-a-half decades since a Charleston County Police officer was gunned down during a grocery store robbery.
The shooting happened at the Sam’s Red & White on James Island, which has long-since shut down.
To this day, investigators are still hoping his killers will be found and brought to justice.
It was Nov. 15, 1974, at Sam’s Red & White store on James Island. Two off-duty Charleston County Police officers had stopped by the store to shop.
Police said the scene turned from a casual shopping trip into a battle for life and death at approximately 6:30 p.m. when two men armed with guns walked into the store.
A scream alerted the officers to trouble.
“They confronted the individuals and they got into a fight there,” Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said during a 2010 interview.
During the fight, a third man who had apparently been acting as a lookout shot Cribb.
“He shot Bill Cribb in the neck and basically incapacitated him,” Cannon said. “He fell to his knees.”
One of the other robbers shot Cribb in the chest. The 29-year-old officer was pronounced dead at an area hospital a short time later.
According to the old case file, the killers ran out of the store with cash soaked in Cribb’s blood, never to be seen again.
The Officer Down Memorial Page states Cribb’s fellow officer, who was not armed at the time, grabbed Cribb’s gun and fired at the robbers but they escaped.
Composite drawings of the suspects failed to flush out any leads.
Cannon was a North Charleston Police officer at the time of Cribb’s killing. He worked with then-Charleston County Police officer Mickey Whatley on the case, but it eventually went cold.
In 2010, private investigator Howie Comen convinced Cannon to reopen the case in the hopes that new attention might uncover new leads.
They went back to the scene of the crime, the old store that had long been vacant, to examine the scene against witness statements.
Cannon said it was possible the killers may have fled from Charleston to New York City. In the 1970s, Cannon said many criminals in the Charleston area had connections to the Big Apple. It’s even possible the men were part of a gang that was moving through town, which means the men may not have been from the area or may never have returned since.
In April 2010, months before her own death, Cribb’s 86-year-old mother, Winifred, recalled the night of her son’s murder, remembering it as if it had happened just days earlier.
“My son Jack called me and told me,” she said. “He said, ‘There’s been a policeman killed at the Red and White and they think it might be Bill.’ I said, ‘Oh, no,’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ I found out it was Bill and I’ll tell you, I have never forgotten that night. The most awful night of my life was when that child got killed. I’ll always remember him.”
She said he had just recently visited her home before his death.
“He talked and he said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ but I never got to see him later,” she said.
Cribb left behind a pregnant wife and a three-year-old daughter. Cribb’s mother had to set aside her own grief to break the horrible news to Cribb’s young child.
“She was standing right there on those steps and cried for Bill,” Cribb said of her granddaughter. “Oh, that broke my heart because I knew he was gone.”
She said she hoped for the opportunity to confront them to ask: “Why would you do it? Why did you have to kill my son? Why?”
Winifred Cribb died in June 2010, 36 years after her son’s death, without ever seeing his killers brought to justice and without ever getting to ask those persistent questions.
“This is a perfect example of a case where there was tremendous pressure outside and internal pressure to find the people that committed this murder,” Cannon recalled. “The more time goes by, the more difficult it becomes.”
Anyone who thinks they may recognize anyone in the sketches or who may know something about the killing should contact the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office at 843-743-7200 or Crime Stoppers of the Lowcountry at 843-554-1111.
WCSC
