Sleepy Hollow murder: Three arrested
By Jerry Sena

Watauga County Sheriff Mark Shook said he already knows why a 19-year-old Appalachian State University student was murdered sometime in the dark hours of Tuesday morning but an ever-evolving investigation has persuaded him to keep it quiet for now.

“I know what happened. I know exactly what happened,” Shook said Wednesday afternoon. “We aren’t releasing the motive, but we know why this happened.”

He said a confession from one of three suspects implicated in the murder of Stephen William Harrington contained information about the crime scene that has not been released to the media.

Because the investigation is still ongoing, Shook wouldn’t reveal whether it was Neil Matthew Sargeant, 24, Kyle Quentin Triplett, 21, or Matthew Brandon Dalrymple, 20, who had confessed and named the other two.

Court documents quoted associates of Harrington as saying he’d gone to Sargeant’s house at 121 Poplar Hill Drive to sell him cocaine. Harrington reportedly left home at about 11 p.m. Monday.

In a statement to police, Triplett claimed he was asleep when he heard Harrington cry out, “Why me?” By then, Triplett said, his hands were already bound behind his back and his face and head wrapped with duct tape.

Dalrymple followed in another car as Triplett and Sargeant drove Harrington’s Subaru to the spot near Mill’s Ridge, between Boone and Foscoe, where his body was later discovered.

 Shook said an autopsy should show whether Harrington was alive when he was placed in the trunk.

The murder investigation began just before eight Tuesday morning when the report of a vehicle fire on Sleepy Hollow Lane summoned a Watauga deputy to the scene. He discovered Harrington’s body after prying open the trunk of the victim’s 2000 Subaru Legacy.

The cause and time of death remain undetermined until the report from a state medical examiner is released, most likely within the next week.

One sheriff’s department document indicates Harrington may have been beaten to death before being set afire to aid in covering the crime.

Shook said the car’s registration led them to Harrington’s family in Raleigh Tuesday morning. They also got a search warrant for Harrington’s Seven Oaks Road home.

A search of Harrington’s home, which court documents indicate he shared with a female roommate, turned up a number of clear plastic bags with a white powder inside. They also found a message on a dry-erase board reading “Total Neil – 3400.”

Coincidentally, the Boone Police had placed Sargeant’s home under surveillance after receiving a tip a week earlier that drugs were being dealt there. A Boone officer had passed by the home a number of times the night Harrington was abducted, but investigators remained unaware of the connection between the house and the murder until after the search warrants were executed.

Most of their leads began to materialize, Shook said, when detectives began delving into the sophomore business accounting major’s network of acquaintances and friends.

 “We just started doing interviews and connecting one thing to another, and that led to the individuals,” he said. “It came together quicker than we thought it would.”

The investigation has moved quickly, with less than 24 hours between the estimated time of the murder and the arrests. Sargeant was booked at 1 a.m. Wednesday, and Triplett, of 5735 N.C. 194, was delivered to the magistrate a little over an hour later.

Dalrymple’s booking time wasn’t noted on a sheriff’s department arrest report, though it did record he also was arrested Wednesday. Dalrymple listed an address in Bessemer City, just west of Charlotte, as his current residence.

The three were arraigned on first-degree murder charges in a hearing that was unusual only because it took place in the cramped confines of the Watauga County Jail instead of one of the courtrooms across the street.

Shook said District Court Judge Greg Horne had ordered the arraignment moved to avoid construction at the courthouse. The secured entrance used for transporting inmates between the jail and courthouse has been blocked by renovations to an adjacent  parking lot.

The move also kept the suspects out of reach of media lenses which had gathered from as far away as Charlotte to cover the case.

Horne has ordered Dalrymple, Triplett and Sargeant held without bond until a Dec. 12 probable cause hearing.

Shook said detectives from his office, Boone and ASU police, and the State Bureau of Investigation were continuing to collect evidence, and more charges are possible.

Harrington graduated from Wakefield High School in Raleigh in 2004. The Raleigh News & Observer reported Harrington was an Eagle Scout and had no criminal background.

Friends remember Harrington as a lover of the outdoors a

Gene Charville, a former scoutmaster in Raleigh, told the News & Observer that Harrington accompanied a scout backpacking trip in June along the Appalachian Trail.

“When a younger Scout was struggling to make it through the day, he would offer to lighten their load," Charville said in the newspaper article. “He was as fine a young man as I've met, just a tremendous person.” Charville had known Harrington since the sophomore was 10.

At Wakefield High, Harrington joined the swim and cross country teams and played in the band.

“He would bring levity to situations," band director Josh Potter told the News & Observer. “Harrington was a quiet kid but one with many friends. He liked cracking jokes and making people laugh.”

Jeff Eason and Marie Freeman contributed to the report.

• Jerry Sena may be contacted

at jtsena@wataugademocrat.com.