Raleigh man was found headless in freezer

A Wake County sheriff’s investigator looking into the disappearance of David Ruben Green Jr., 52, discovered his body while searching his Ray Road home a week ago.

Green’s live-in girlfriend, Wendy Edmond Green, 41, was arrested last Thursday and charged with first-degree murder.

Search warrants in the case indicate he suffered severe injuries from several weapons and cutting instruments. Sources, speaking to WRAL News on the condition they not be revealed, said Green’s decapitated head was found with the body and that it had likely been cut off so that the body would fit inside the freezer.

A preliminary autopsy report found the cause of death to be severe head trauma, Sheriff Donnie Harrison said last week.

Neighbors reported that they thought they last saw Green in April, but search warrants indicate the body might have been in the freezer since January.

Harrison said Green’s brother reported him missing Sept. 1 and that authorities walked through the home six days later.

It was last Wednesday, though when an investigator and a crime scene technician returned to the home for an extensive search that they opened the freezer and found the body.

Search warrants indicate that power to the freezer had been shut off.

“It’s unreal,” said Jean Gray, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years and knew the couple since they moved there in 1993. “It’s such a strange situation, a bad situation. I hope at some point there will be a resolution.”

Harrison said Wendy Green and David Green never married but that they did have two children, a daughter, Alexis Green, 17, and a son, David Ruben Green III, 15.

Investigators questioned Alexis Green, who has been in the Wake County jail since last month on charges unrelated to the case.

Her brother was located in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, and a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said investigators were interviewing him Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re talking to everybody we can – the family, everybody else who we think may know something about this case,” Harrison said last week.

He added that more arrests are possible as the investigation continues.

“I was just really upset. I had difficult sleeping that Wednesday when we found out about it,” longtime neighbor Mary Lou Beeker said. “It’s very disturbing to know that people are just that mean and that it was so close to my home.”