News

Warrants detail intensity of manhunt, murder probe

Michael Stroupe

By Bill Moss, Published: August 22, 2017

Phillip Michael Stroupe II got out of prison in May 2015 after serving 15 years for three armed robberies in McDowell County. Just as he never had before, he couldn’t stay out of trouble. He was charged on June 28 in Buncombe County with second-degree kidnapping.

A known gang member with a violent past, according to Buncombe County sheriff’s detectives, Stroupe was believed to be involved in a breaking and entering in Mills River on Saturday morning, July 22. The Henderson County sheriff’s office broadcast a “be on the lookout” (BOLO) alert for the silver SUV Stroupe was driving. The vehicle belonged to his father, Phillip Michael Stroupe, who would figure later in a dramatic manhunt and criminal investigation that came to a sorrowful end when searchers from the Skyland Fire Department found the body of Thomas A. “Tommy” Bryson in a cornfield in Arden.
A review of search warrants, arrest warrants and other records by the Hendersonville Lightning showed that law officers deployed every means possible to find Stroupe during the five-day manhunt, that they tracked him using old-school tactics and heat-seeking helicopters, getting close once; that his father and other relatives attempted to help him escape; and that Stroupe, caught and jailed after one last attempt to run from law officers, pleaded with his father to retrieve and hide Bryson’s body.
Eventually, trained law enforcement personnel and volunteers from at least 37 agencies joined the manhunt for Stroupe, who goes by Michael. Small-framed but wiry, with a large menacing tattoo running down his chin to his neck, Stroupe if nothing else possessed an iron-willed determination to avoid capture and, once captured, a habitual felon’s instinct to avoid responsibility. In jail at last, he made post-Miranda admissions that the murder of Bryson “was not ‘premeditated,’” according to a search warrant application. Aware of the massive search across two states for Bryson, Stroupe demanded “a deal with all the district attorneys.”

Massive manhunt

The manhunt would shut down Pisgah National Forest and its heavily visited tourist attractions for five days. Although the phrase “armed and dangerous” gets used a lot in police news releases, the description turned out to be starkly
started when Transylvania County Deputy Nathan Whitmire spotted the silver SUV described in the BOLO. Stroupe sped away, leading the deputy on a chase down a forest road that narrowed and turned to gravel. Stroupe stopped the vehicle long enough to steal a mountain bike at gunpoint, toss is it in the back of the SUV and drive off again. He turned the SUV sideways so it blocked the road, jumped out and rode away on the stolen mountain bike.
Henderson County SWAT team members, who had joined the manhunt, found bicycle tire tracks and a hex-patterned tread from “a smaller sized shoe.” The officers believed “that the tracks were made by Stroupe II.”
After vanishing into the thick woods of the national forest, Stroupe avoided capture for several more days. Then deputies got a call from a man who reported seeing the fugitive off of North Mills River Road walking along the bank of the Mills River. The SWAT team members began searching that area and found what appeared to be Stroupe’s footprints near an abandoned barn. A search helicopter “picked up an object on thermal imaging that they believe could be a person but they were not 100 percent sure.” At daybreak, searchers start at the area of the possible thermal imaging hit near L.L. Moore Road. Using K9s, they pick up fresh tracks along the riverbank but lose them after about 2 miles.

Accessory after the fact

Investigators believe that Bryson did not survive for long after Stroupe kidnapped him. Once he was caught, Stroupe denied killing Bryson, saying that he had last seen him at his mailbox. But the detectives knew otherwise when they watched what happened when Bryson’s father came to visit Michael at the McDowell County jail.
Investigators knew that Phillip Stroupe had a history of helping his son run from the law. Phillip parked his car on the Blue Ridge Parkway while his son was at large, flashing his lights and honking his horn in an effort to rendezvous with Michael and help him escape. Henderson County Detective Michael Lolley had received a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on the senior Stroupe’s Ford Focus. But it was Michael Stroupe’s decision to drive the stolen Honda Ridgeline close to his father’s house in Burnsville that cost him his freedom.
SBI agents watching the area spotted the Ridgeline and gave chase. Stroupe drove off again until stop sticks disabled the car in McDowell County. He jumped out and ran. Law officers formed a perimeter and started hunting for the fugitive. This time they caught him and arrested him.
Two days later, on Saturday, July 29, Phillip Stroupe visited his son at the jail. The two talked through a telephone handset. The conversations are recorded and signs are posted notify visitors of that.
Michael Stroupe began speaking urgently to his father.
Michael: “I need you to, uh, I don’t have anybody else and I need you to do this, OK?”
Phillip: “If I can.”
Michael: “You can and if you can’t get Mama. You tell her she can.”
Michael told his father to stand, coaching him to move in a way that would block a video camera. He urged him to move closer and read something in his hand.
“Take a left and go to the next one,” Michael said.
Phillip confirmed that he saw the words. “What’s your lawyer saying?”
Instead of answering, Michael again pressed his father to read the directions: “Do you get this? Do you know where it’s at?” Of the attorney, he said: “She’s saying as long as they don’t have him, they don’t have nothing. Bottom line.”
Deputies watching the father and son conversation were immediately suspicious. They listened to the tape and checked Michael’s cell for maps or notes. They found nothing but when they asked to see his hands he resisted and had to be restrained. They saw smeared words on his palm and made out one, “exit.”
His father apparently didn’t pursue the job to move the body.
The next day, Sunday, July 30, Cpl. Aaron Lisenbee of the Henderson County sheriff’s office and SBI agent Chuck Vines charged Phillip Stroupe with accessory after the fact of murder.
Searchers found Bryson’s body that night.
On Monday, July 31, Lisenbee arrested Phillip Michael Stroupe II for first-degree murder.