Rachel Crook

Many know the story of Rachel Crook, who gives her name to the Chapel Hill restaurant, Crook's Corner.




By some accounts she was the daughter of a Confederate general. She came to Chapel Hill in 1930 and studied at UNC. While at school she lived in a tiny house on Ransom Street. She is believed to have opened a produce and fish market in 1943, then the first launderette in town in 1947. At the age of 50 she went back to school to get a graduate degree in Economics. At some point she moved to the sight of Crook's Corner, then a refurbished gas station and sold fish, fabric remnants and laundry services.

On August 29th, 1951 she was murdered, some say on the site of Crook's Corner, but her body was found in a pool of dried blood on a dirt road 4 miles north of town. Police suspected that she knew her attacker because she got into a car. Crook struggled; there was flesh under her fingernails and bits of hair on her clothing. She was beaten beyond recognition.

In 1952 Hobert Lee was arrested, then acquitted of the crime. Lee was an Alamance County construction worker who had previously been convicted of assault on a female. He had fresh scratches on his face and arms, and the tire tracks near Crook's body matched those on his truck. Crook's case is the oldest unsolved murder in Chapel Hill.