A two-hour NBC Dateline special about the2014 Fayetteville murder of James Allan Chambers II will air Friday at 9 p.m.
The special will include exclusive interviews with 28-year-old Chambers' parents, Pete Chambers and Rachel Wellhouser, along with private investigator David Marshburn and Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West.
During the special, NBC's Andrea Canning will explore Chambers' disappearance and murder, along with his family's years-long search for justice and his body, which has been missing since the case first came to light in 2014.
"We sympathize with all our victim's families, but particularly this one because this family, to this day, is just very desperate to find the remains of their son that they love very much," West said over the phone Thursday.
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The last time Chambers, who worked as a civilian construction worker at Fort Bragg, was seen alive wasAug. 15, 2014, at his Fayetteville home by his former girlfriend, West said.
Howard Adrian Ashleman, 28, worked with Chambers, and the former girlfriend believed he was takingChambers to a weekend job as a lifeguard at a lake out of town.
Ashleman and Chambers had an ongoing dispute, and the animosity allegedly came to a head in Ashleman's pickup as he drove Chambers to his weekend job.
According to Ashleman, he stoppedthe truck and retrieved a gun from the truck bed and fired it into the cab to frighten Chambers, but the bullet hit him and killed him.
Chambers' family reported him missing just over a week after Ashleman claims he killed Chambers, and the years-long investigation into his disappearance began.
Ashleman later moved to Florida, where heallegedly developed strong religious beliefs and began to feel guilty about Chambers' killing, said Assistant District Attorney Robby Hicks, who prosecuted the case.
Ashleman discussed the homicide on several occasions with a woman he would go on to marry, and she recorded him talking about it at least once before telling police in Florida about her husband's confession.
Police interviewed Ashleman, but did not immediately arrest him because Chambers' body had still not been found and the evidence against Ashleman was insufficient, Hicks said.
"(The case)was weak, and we wanted to be very careful before moving forward on that," Hicks said.
Ashlemanthen got a lawyer in Florida and a lawyer in Cumberland County, and negotiations for him to surrender and plead guilty began in January 2017.
These negotiations failed several times before Ashleman was eventually arrested in Randolph County on Feb. 12,2018.
"We did not have a solid confession from him," West said. "We made the decision that if he would not go ahead and turn himself in, then we would go ahead and arrest him. We basically wanted to make sure we had a solid enough case to convict him before we made the arrest."
Just eight days later, Ashleman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced toat least 15 years, six months, but no more than 19 years, eight months in prison.
According to West, it's uncommon that someone is convicted of murder with no body as evidence.
"I have seen it on occasion, but it is certainly the exception and it's certainly very rare," West said. "It's just hard to prove the case if you can't prove the person is actually dead, and certainly the best way to do that is to have a body and a medical examiner and all that, and we never had that in this case."
According to North Carolina Department of Public Safety records, Ashlemanis currently incarcerated at Columbus Correctional Institution in Whiteville.
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Ashleman told investigators that he initially burned and buried Chambers' bodyin the Wade area of Cumberland County, but later dug it up, dismembered it, and dropped it in plastic garbage bags from a remote bridge andinto the Cape Fear River, West said.
As a part of his plea, Ashleman agreed to show investigators where he dropped the body, West said.
Ashleman allegedly also destroyed his pickup in a salvage yard. Police eventually tracked down thetruck's remnantsbut were unable to recover any evidence of Chambers from the vehicle.
Chambers' body has still not been found.
"I'm glad that we were able to provide some measure of justice," West said. "But I'm disappointed that we have not been able to give the family that closure, in being able to discover Mr. Chambers' body."
Friday night's NBC special, titled "The Bridge," will recount the details of the case as well as document Chambers' parents' search for closure as they continue to look for their son's body.
"It's just tragic, my heart broke for the family," Hicks said. "I just felt so sorry for all of them, the mother and father, not being able to find their child, and that just pains me to this day."
Crime Reporter Jack Boden can be reached at jboden@gannett.com.
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