Couple charged in 2020 concealing death case lived at home where human remains found
By Kimberly King
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CANDLER, North Carolina (WLOS) — Buncombe County investigators say they have connected the Candler mobile home where investigators found severely decomposed human remains on Thursday, April 14, 2022, to a couple charged with felony concealing a death in 2020.
The mobile home, located at 11 Beady Eyed Lane, where the human remains were found Thursday is the same home in which Mark Barnes and Angela Wamsley lived when they were charged in mid-December 2020 with concealing the death of Wamsley’s 92-year-old grandmother, Nellie Sullivan.
Investigators said they still have not found Sullivan’s body, but they confirmed Thursday that an autopsy of the human remains was underway.
Prior to moving to Candler, Barnes and Wamsley had lived with Sullivan on Mint Lane, off New Leicester Highway in west Asheville. Sullivan’s neighbor, Belinda Moody, knew Nellie well and said she’s now hopeful investigators are able to confirm that the remains found Thursday are that of Nellie Sullivan.
“She was like a grandmother to me and my daughter,” Moody said on Friday, April 15. 2022. “She was a kind, loving person, and she shouldn’t have been treated that way. There needs to be justice. She did not look well when they were living with her.”
In 2020, Moody told News 13 she knew Angela Wamsley and Alan Barnes and that they were living with Nellie in her trailer on Mint Lane. Moody said one day, Nellie disappeared without a trace and soon after her disappearance, Moody said in 2018, that Wamsley and Barnes quickly moved away.
Among a multitude of other charges, Barnes was charged with stealing more than $100,000 from Sullivan’s bank account, as well as concealing Sullivan’s death.
Both Wamsley and Barnes remain in jail on multiple charges.
A Candler neighbor of the Candler mobile home who spoke with News 13 off-camera at Beady Eyed Lane said 11 marked and unmarked Buncombe County Sheriff’s vehicles were parked at the scene Thursday.
A four-foot area of the trailer’s underpinning was gone near the trailer’s front steps. News 13 reported Thursday the renters had found something suspicious and after they reported it, investigators determined it was human remains.
A box wrapped in a black garbage back was taken away from the home and transported by EMS.
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