CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As Lynn Thomas walked to the Police Department with a friend Friday morning to meet with homicide detectives, it had to feel very similar.
It's been 23 years since her sister Kim Thomas was killed in her home off Wendover Road in south Charlotte but the case is still open, and she is still looking for answers.
"There's an injustice. Someone's been walking free for 23 years who killed my sister, and that doesn't work," said Thomas about the case that has become her life's mission.
It was a vicious crime. Kim Thomas was found in her house handcuffed with her throat slashed.
Police eventually arrested her husband, a Charlotte doctor named Ed Friedland, but prosecutors later dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.
Friedland's attorney had insisted Kim Thomas' killer was a man named Marion Gales, a handyman who lived nearby and had done odd jobs in the neighborhood.
But police never charged Gales, who is now in prison for another murder and not talking about the Thomas case.
And so Lynn Thomas came to find out where police are with the case and do what she can to help.
'I gave them ideas of possible places to look or people to interview, it was more of a sharing of information," Thomas said.
The major in charge of the investigation said both Friedland and Gales have not been ruled out as possible suspects in the case, and they are still working on it.
"It's still an active case for us, a case that we're vigilantly working on and want to solve. I conveyed that to Ms. Thomas today," Smathers said.
Lynn Thomas will be in Charlotte on Saturday for a memorial to her sister in Freedom Park, and then will go back to Boston, but until the case is solved, will always have a part of herself here.
"I miss her dearly. She brought of joy to my life," she said.
WSOC
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