Michelle Bullard Case - Update

This is why each family and organization should obtain a certificate of funds from the bank in regard to any reward promised and also a written complete understanding of how the reward is to be paid and under what conditions; everything else is worthless and further victimized families after a recovery or tip is provided/proven. Rewards are great media interest for cases; however must be taken seriously by all involved.
Reward money still is in limbo


Catherine Pritchard
Q: I was told I’d get the reward for finding Michelle Bullard’s body, but that’s never happened. — R.H., Fayetteville

A: Yes, R.H. is Roylee Hunt, who found the missing woman’s remains while hunting in woods around Cross Creek last October.

In response to a question about the reward in a previous column, Hunt said Bullard’s parents told him repeatedly that he’d be given a $10,000 reward that had been posted since he found their daughter’s remains.

But the reward never materialized.

“It wasn’t the fact of the reward,” he said. “It was the fact of them telling me I was going to get it. They should have held to their end of the bargain.”

The reward initially was billed as being for anyone who gave authorities “any information leading to the recovery of Julie or any information leading to an arrest and conviction.”

But Amanda Cristello Williams, the family friend who started the reward fund, recently told Live Wire the money was not intended for someone who happened to find Bullard. Instead, she said, it was intended to help coax forth information that would lead to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Now Bullard’s father, Julian Bullard, says he “would think” that the money eventually will be awarded to Hunt “after the investigation is completed.”

When that will be, he said, he doesn’t know but “it’ll come sooner or later.”

Currently, he said, investigators “don’t have a whole lot to go on.”

The 23-year-old woman disappeared from her home in Lee County in January 2006 in what was believed to be a kidnapping. An autopsy of her remains found she’d been killed by a blow to the head.

Julian Bullard said the reward initially was intended as payment in case someone was holding Michelle Bullard alive.

But “the way things were written and said” about the reward, Hunt should be given it “when everything is said and done” — whenever that is.


Monica Caison
CUE Center for Missing Persons
PO Box 12714
Wilmington, NC 28405
(910) 343-1131
(910) 232-1687 24 Hour Line
Email: cuecenter@aol.com
Website: http://www.ncmissingpersons.org/