Anyone with "information leading to the discovery and apprehension of the person(s) responsible for the deaths of" Christina "Kristin" Bennett, Rhonda Jones and Megan Oxendine could now be eligible to receive $75,000, the FBI said Friday.
The reward for information on the deaths of three women found dead in Lumberton, North Carolina, in 2017 has been increased substantially in the hope of finding answers to the six-year-old mystery, the FBI has announced.
Anyone with "information leading to the discovery and apprehension of the person(s) responsible for the deaths of" Christina "Kristin" Bennett, Rhonda Jones and Megan Oxendine could now be eligible to receive $75,000, the FBI said in a press release Friday.
That reward previously stood at $40,000.
The bodies of Bennett and Jones were discovered on April 18, 2017. Bennett was found dead inside a small, blue home on Peachtree Street that stood vacant at the time. Jones was discovered in a nearby trash can on East 5th Street that same day. Oxendine's body was found outside a home on East 8th Street on June 3, 2017. Their bodies were found in a four-block radius.
The women's causes and manners of deaths remain undetermined. Their loved ones previously told Inside Edition Digital that their remains were found unclothed.
In the wake of Jones and Bennett's deaths, Oxendine spoke to a local news reporter about the women.
“I ain’t never seen her act out or nothing,” Oxendine said of Jones to CBS North Carolina on April 19, 2017. “She’s just quiet. She didn’t really mess with too many people... I don’t understand how somebody could do somebody’s child, mother, niece, like that.”
She appeared shaken by Jones' death, Nate Rodgers, a reporter who worked for CBS North Carolina at the time, told Inside Edition Digital in 2018.
“She walked away from the interview — although she didn’t say it to me — I sensed a fear in her, from that very moment,” Rodgers said. “Her walking away from the interview, thinking, 'What could happen next? This could happen to any one of us.’”
Megan Oxendine was found dead six weeks later.
In the years following the deaths of Bennett, Jones and Oxendine, their loved ones have remained driven by the hope they one day know who was responsible for taking the lives of the three women.
"They changed all of our lives," Oxendine's mother, Shelia Oxendine, said of the person or people who killed her daughter, in an interview with Inside Edition Digital in 2018.
"It's just hard... and it's like they just dropped everything and they don't care," her sister Khelia Oxendine said during that same interview of the investigation into the deaths of her sister, Bennett and Jones.
“Of course, somebody knows something,” Jones' sister, Shirlyn Whitaker, told Inside Edition Digital in 2018. “Somebody knows what happened. And when it happened. And how it happened. That’s what we’re praying for, that somebody just comes forward.”
Whitaker and her and Jones' mother, Shelia Price, have since become advocates for others whose loved ones have gone missing or have been found murdered. Their grief has driven them to fight for others.
“I’m so mad and angry and tired. This ain’t my job. Ain’t no one paying me to be a private investigator,” Price told Inside Edition Digital in 2021. “But we ain’t going to stop.”
“How many other families are not getting the help they deserve?” said Whitaker, who, with her mother, founded Shatter the Silence, an organization dedicated to shedding light on the missing and murdered in Robeson County.
Authorities last week said the case is not classified as cold, despite the amount of time that has passed.
“Special agents and detectives have interviewed hundreds of people and followed countless leads," Robert M. DeWitt, the special agent in charge of the FBI Charlotte Field Office, told WPDE-TV. "We will utilize every possible resource to uncover the facts and bring answers to the victims' families. If someone in the community has been hesitant or fearful to come forward with information, we hope increasing the reward may encourage them to contact us."
Anyone with information concerning these cases is asked to call the FBI's toll-free tipline at 1-800-225-5324 or the Lumberton Police Department at 910-671-3845. "You may also contact your local FBI office, the nearest American Embassy or Consulate, or you can submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov," the FBI said.
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