justice4stacey.com

Officially, Pitt County man drowned; cover-up suspected

Jim Nesbitt, News and Observer

GRIMESLAND - On the frigid November night Stacey Pollard died, he was in the heated barn behind his house, working on the vintage, banana-yellow Corvette he was restoring for his wife, Michelle.

Bundled in a brown coat to ward off the cold, he finished up just before 10 p.m. and walked toward the house, skirting his in-ground swimming pool.

Minutes later, he was dead, floating face-down in the deep end of the pool. It was Nov. 18, 2005. Stacey Pollard, a burly, boyish and easygoing contractor who learned to build homes working for his late father, was 33.

At the time of his death, sheriff’s investigators found no sign of foul play. An autopsy found Pollard died from drowning, with a seizure as a potential contributing factor. He had been epileptic since his early teens.

But an explosive and sexually explicit civil lawsuit filed July 5 in a Greenville federal court alleges Michelle Pollard, then a deputy in the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office and now a lieutenant, told investigators two different stories about her husband’s death. The lawsuit also combines allegations of a cover-up by law enforcement with steamy passages about group sex and extramarital affairs that have the flavor of a tawdry beach paperback.

In her first account, Pollard said she found her husband floating face down in the pool’s deep end as she brought him a cup of hot chocolate. But in her second account, given just after she failed a State Bureau of Investigation polygraph exam in June 2006, she said she pushed him into the pool as a joke and found him dead 15 minutes later, the lawsuit said.

Filed by Stacey Pollard’s mother, Barbara, a widow who lives in Winterville, the 19-page document also alleges two top officials in Pitt County Sheriff Mac Manning’s department impeded the initial investigation because of past romantic relationships with Michelle Pollard, a gang intelligence officer. The lawsuit names Michelle Pollard, Manning and the two deputies as co-defendants.

Stacey Pollard’s family members say they filed the lawsuit only after Pitt County District Attorney Clark Everett decided earlier this year there was insufficient evidence to press criminal charges against Michelle Pollard and let them review the SBI report, on which they say they based many of their allegations.

The family has also set up a Web site — justice4stacey.com — which includes the lawsuit.

“We wish this didn’t exist,” said Lynn Pollard Sutton, Stacey Pollard’s sister. “We wish we had gone to the sheriff’s department and they told us everything had been investigated properly.”

Manning vigorously denied the suit’s allegations in a July 10 news conference, defending Michelle Pollard and his department’s investigation.

The lawsuit claims Michelle Pollard received the proceeds of a $200,000 life insurance policy well before revising her story to SBI investigators. And, it alleges, she engaged in group sex at the couple’s home the day of her husband’s funeral and had an affair with a married man who, public records indicate, has a lengthy criminal history in Pitt and Beaufort counties.

Stories spark questions

Courthouse regulars say these racy allegations have created a splash in Pitt County’s law enforcement, political and legal circles, where online versions of the lawsuit have made for spicy desktop and laptop reading.

“This will make a good movie,” said Pitt County Commissioner Eugene James, who considers himself close to the family. “I’ve been hearing rumors about what’s been going on for two or three years.”

But James and other county officials are more concerned about the two stories Michelle Pollard told investigators about the night of her husband’s death. They say the accounts create a credibility problem for Manning’s department because of the appearance she may have lied to investigators.

Manning says his embattled subordinate has not violated department regulations that require deputies to be truthful. He also says the SBI report contains a “plausible explanation” for the two accounts, but he declines to reveal it.

He needs to, said Beth Ward, chairwoman of the Pitt County Board of Commissioners.

James and Ward also wonder why Manning didn’t immediately request an SBI investigation of Stacey Pollard’s death, a move other North Carolina sheriffs say they routinely make when a case involves “one of their own” to avoid charges of bias and cover-up.

Manning waited about two months to request an SBI investigation, days after a tense meeting between investigators and Stacey Pollard’s family in late January 2006. SBI special agent Dwight Ransome didn’t start until late March 2006, a state justice department spokeswoman said.

By then, Ransome told family members, his investigation was “like hunting Easter eggs in August,” the lawsuit said.

Stacey Pollard’s family members say he and his wife were a study in contrasts.

A diminutive woman with a mane of reddish-brown curls, she was curt and aggressive, they say, with a son from a previous marriage.

Stacey Pollard was a first-time husband who shied away from confrontation. He was also a tender-hearted kidder who loved to hunt, fish and four-wheel with teens and adults in the fields and woods surrounding the couple’s rural Pitt County home.

“Stacey was kind of a big kid,” said Lynn Pollard Sutton. “Kids loved him because of that.”

The couple had a troubled marriage of about eight years, his family members say, marked by rumored affairs between Michelle Pollard and other deputies and a short separation.

Michelle Pollard, 37, declined interview requests. But her MySpace.com profile paints a softer portrait.

The profile site has a pink-hued background, festooned with pink roses and her name in script. In a tiny photo, she sits on a hobby horse. There’s a picture of a vintage red Corvette. Favorite songs include “The Corvette Song,” by country legend George Jones.

There’s also this motto: “Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear.”

(News researcher Becky Ogburn contributed to this report.)

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