Carthage Nursing Home Shooting - Perpetrator

Perpetrator

Robert Kenneth Wayne Stewart was born in Robeson County on September 12, 1963. When he was a young boy, his family moved to Eastwood in Moore County. His father was a house painter, and his mother worked at an office of a paving company in Pinebluff. After finishing middle school in Aberdeen he attended Pinecrest High School, but dropped out before graduating. Among his peers Stewart was known as a quiet loner with a very bad temper every now and then.

At the age of 18, Stewart married for the first time, though his marriage lasted only for a few months. In 1983 he married then 17-year-old Wanda Gay Neal, but this marriage also failed within three years, due to Stewart's extreme possessiveness, his drinking habits and his violent temper. Wanda Neal's mother Margaret Neal later stated: "He had a rage, it would just explode over everything. He would be good and then something would just set him off." However, both Margaret Neal and Wanda Neal's 14-year-old daughter Jamie said that, as far as they knew, Stewart had never hit his wife. In 1986 Stewart married again, though he still carried a torch for his former wife. According to his third wife, Sue Griffin, Stewart would often compare her to Wanda Neal and complain that "Wanda doesn't do it like that."

Stewart worked as a house painter and had his own painting business, but had filed twice for bankruptcy. He had been out of work for over a year before the shooting, after injuring his back and leg. He served six years in the National Guard and never rose above Private rank before receiving an honorable discharge. In 1995 he joined the Clay Road Farm Hunt Club in Moore County, where he soon alienated the other members because of his drinking problem and his temper. He was eventually thrown out of the hunting club, after threatening Larry Allred, one of its founders, stating that "he wasn't scared of no damn Allred. He'd cut Larry Allred's guts out and watch."

In 2001, after 15 years of marriage to Sue Griffin, Stewart divorced again and returned to Wanda Neal. Promising her he would change, stop drinking and treat her well they married a second time in June 2002.In the end Stewart wouldn't let his wife go anywhere alone. Wanda Neal finally left her husband three weeks prior to the shooting, after he put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. After his wife had left him, Stewart began calling her family, sometimes at 2 or 3 am, claiming there was an emergency and he needed to see Wanda and her parents. He also tried to contact his former wife, Sue Griffin, through her family, telling them that he was suffering from prostate cancer, that he was preparing to “go away” and “was planning on leaving town to visit places he hadn’t seen.” According to Mack Hancock, who had seen him in the last week before the shooting, Stewart seemed very depressed, saying that “everything had gone to hell.”