GREENVILLE, S.C. — More than three decades after an 80-year-old descendant of one of Greenville's leading legal families was found in her kitchen stabbed to death, prosecutors and police have closed the case, satisfied they unraveled a mystery that haunted two generations of detectives.
It took scientific advancements in DNA technology and painstaking detective work to finally name a killer in a brutal murder that stunned Greenville.
Alice Haynsworth Ryan died in her Tudor mansion beside Greenville's Cleveland Park on an October afternoon in 1988.
She was stabbed 37 times.
The killer eluded investigators due to a number of missteps, little evidence left behind and a randomness not normally seen at that time in a small Southern city like Greenville.
Police now believe Ryan's house — not Ryan herself — was targeted because days-old newspapers were left on her porch. The killer likely did not suspect she was inside.
"You just don't have that type of murder every day," said Buddy Burgess, one of the detectives who worked on the case in the early years. "Lot of legwork. We worked every angle. We just couldn't put it together."
One reason: The man now identified as the killer was shot and killed only a few months after Mrs. Ryan was murdered. Now, more than 30 years later, investigators say they have finally pieced together the story of what happened on that fall afternoon.
A socialite murdered
Greenville native Alice Haynsworth was the daughter of Harry Haynsworth, who founded the law firm that still bears his name. Hers was a life of privilege, growing up in a mansion on North Main Street that is now the Thomas McAfee Funeral Home.
Her nephew was Clement Haynsworth, a federal judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was scuttled during Richard Nixon's administration. A great-nephew is Knox White, Greenville's longtime mayor who was a city councilman when Ryan was murdered.
She married Joseph Ryan, a New York native, who would take over his family's textile business in Greenville. They had three children, Joseph Jr., Katherine and Rhoda.
On Oct. 8, 1988, Ryan had been a widow for 30 years, living alone in the 7,000-square-foot house she and her husband built on 2 acres not far from downtown Greenville. Suffering from cancer, Ryan had been an inpatient receiving chemotherapy at St. Francis Hospital.
Before picking up her mother from the hospital that day, Katherine Stribling ran errands and stopped by Ryan's house to borrow serving items for a party she was having at her Columbia home. Stribling used a screwdriver to open a stuck cabinet while she was there.
Once mother and daughter returned home, Ryan sat down to watch a baseball game, and Stribling left to pick up hot dogs for lunch and a few items from a small grocery near her mother's house.
She was gone for perhaps 40 minutes.
When she returned, as she walked toward the house, she saw a piece of glass in the back door was broken. Stribling moved to insert her key into the lock, but the door opened on its own. Then she saw her mother lying on the floor, wounds on her abdomen. Stribling ran back out the door to summon help.
The investigation
Police and EMS converged on the Ryan house. It soon became apparent EMS was not needed. The elderly woman was dead.
When Knox White arrived, he noticed Ryan's car was missing, and within an hour, someone reported the car abandoned in the middle of a road, not far from her house.
Officers searched the area and in some brush found a screwdriver that had been wiped off, a bloody dish towel from Ryan's house and a house key. No car key. A few days later, detectives went back to the site and found a knife they believed had been used in the attack, wiped clean.
Four of Ryan's wounds would have been fatal, the autopsy showed. As suspected, she was stabbed with a screwdriver and a knife. There wasn't much blood despite the savage attack. Authorities came away with one thought: overkill. She had been stabbed many more times than it took to kill her, often a sign of anger, causing them to wonder, did the murderer know Ryan?
The police chief at the time, Mike Bridges, told The Greenville News nothing tied the family to the murders.
Despite hundreds of hours, months of interviews, the case went cold.
Renewing the search
By 1999, Greenville Police were ready to look again. It fell to Greenville Police investigator Buddy Burgess to see if a killer could be identified.
"You just don't get those type of murders every day," he said recently. "It upset the whole community."
Detectives started fresh. They worked every angle, every lead and just could not put it together.
The paperwork on the investigation ultimately would fill four or five storage boxes.
Despite the lack of resolution, the case was never closed.
In 2017, Greenville's new police chief Ken Miller formed a cold case unit due to a backlog of more than a dozen unsolved murder cases. Alice Ryan's case was the first to be investigated.
Former Greenville Police Detective Rick Woodall came into it knowing Ryan's case was among the longest unsolved murders in the city's history. He knew Joe Ryan, who became a reserve police officer after his mother died.
They started by interviewing every officer who had taken part in the earlier investigation and painstakingly went through the evidence boxes. It took months.
They called on a forensic investigator from the State Law Enforcement Division to look at the evidence to determine what should be sent to the crime lab for testing.
Science had grown into a powerful investigatory tool by then. Investigators were counting on new technology to show them the way.
Technology points to a suspect
In early 2018, they elected to send to the crime lab clothing, the screwdriver, the butcher knife and a cigarette butt labeled "debris." It had been found in Ryan's car, stored away for decades in a police evidence locker.
It took months, but DNA on the cigarette matched that of Brian Munns, who lived in Columbia for a time and in Americus, Georgia. He had a record of convictions for larceny, strong arm robbery and criminal sexual conduct and had been in Greenville for a few weeks during that time period around Ryan's murder.
Woodall and retired police lieutenant Don Belue had already interviewed Munns in Georgia. They obtained a warrant for his arrest and charged him with stealing Ryan's car and accessory after the fact of murder. Once the DNA tests came back, the charge was upgraded to murder.
Police also were hearing about a fellow named Lamar Green, who was seen with Munns on the day Ryan was killed. He had a record of burglaries.
Green had been a suspect from the early days of the investigation but died a few months after Ryan. His mother-in-law shot him, as he held a gun on family members, including her daughter.
Justifiable homicide, police said.
Munns was placed in the Greenville County Detention center under a no-bond hold. Months passed. He remained silent.
Proving the charge
Meanwhile, the 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office prepared for trial. They had witnesses who put Munns in Ryan's car, and his DNA was found inside it. They told him they were ready to proceed.
By early 2021, Munns had fired his first lawyer who told him to keep quiet. His new lawyer encouraged Munns to tell what he knew. At last, Munns told investigators he did ride around with Green on that day in Ryan's car. Green wanted to sell it to him, he said.
Other witnesses saw the two men together in the car in a neighborhood not far from Ryan's house. Munns said he was not in Ryan's house, that Green was the murderer.
"Based on the evidence, we felt this all made sense," Deputy Solicitor William McMaster said this month.
In September, Munns pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony — or not reporting a crime — and was sentenced to four years. Time served.
And with that plea, 33 years after Ryan's death, police closed the book on their investigation.
The police, the family feel some amount of closure, McMaster said.
It was a crime of opportunity.
Nothing more, nothing less.
