Editor’s Note: Third and Final Part of a Series
Danny Noe, a Ferry Division employee who was a key witness in a federal investigation, is found dead at his home. Officials think Noe might have committed suicide, but family members and friends think he might have been slain. Meanwhile, an investigation continues.
RALEIGH — Many of the questions arising from the state Ferry Division’s controversial purchase of a new boat for ferry service in Currituck County cannot be answered because a key state employee who was involved in the transaction — and who was a witness in a federal investigation — was found dead.
Last August, the 50-foot, 49-passenger pontoon boat was delivered to the State Shipyard in Manns Harbor, but ferry service could not be started because the boat did not perform as expected in trials, and no dock is available for it at Corolla.
N.C. Department of Transportation Ferry Division employee Danny Noe, 59, was found dead April 15, 2005. His hands were tied behind his back and a plastic bag was tied over his head. A note was found at the scene, but Noe’s wife, Connie, told Carolina Journal that while the handwriting on the note might have been his, the message didn’t make sense to her.
While the details of Noe’s death may never be known, there is a consensus that his death is associated with his job as marine quality assurance specialist.
Noe did not have an engineering degree, nor did anyone else in the Ferry Division, but according to friends and co-workers he was a self-taught engineer. He dealt with the specifications on new boats and was a liaison to the Coast Guard. Noe was also the liaison to the boat builder for the Currituck-to-Corolla passenger ferry until division Director Jerry Gaskill pulled him off the project in June 2004. Noe was moved to a small office and was given little or no work to do.
Noe told CJ before his death that Gaskill’s action was retaliation for Noe’s attempt to expose corruption.
The project called for a 49-passenger pontoon boat, able to operate in 18 inches of water and capable of going 30 mph. Numerous problems with the boat have emerged, and the ferry service that was planned primarily for schoolchildren may never operate as planned (see related stories).
Connie Noe told CJ that she and her husband had gone to bed together the night before she found him dead. He was snoring heavily and she was coughing frequently because she had a bad cold, so she later moved to another bedroom on the other side of the house, she said. When she got up that morning about 8, she noticed her husband’s truck was in the driveway and she went looking for him. She found his body on the floor in his office above the garage. He was dressed as though he was going to work. She removed the bag from her husband’s head and called EMS, but he was already dead.
Detective Frank Galizia of the Carteret County Sheriff’s Department handled the investigation of Noe’s death. According to a report prepared by the examining doctor, Dr. Charles Garrett, there was no sign of trauma. Noe’s hands were bound behind his back with three zip ties, but there was no skin breakage or signs of struggling to get free. In addition, “Due to unusual circumstances of finding body, fact that he is a witness in federal case, autopsy requested by police,” Garrett stated. He initially checked “pending” as the probable cause of death. Garrett’s report was sent to the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill.
Chief Examiner John Butts ruled Noe’s cause of death was “asphyxiation utilizing a plastic bag.” Of the possible contributing conditions — natural, accident, homicide, suicide, or undetermined — Dr. Butts checked suicide in his final review. Butts told CJ that after talking with Galizia and looking at the detective’s report, he thought Galizia “conducted a reasonably thorough inquiry, but certainly not a full-court press in the sense of what you might expect to see in a novel or on CSI.” He also said many of the people who kill themselves using plastic bags often do so in conjunction with an overdose of pain medications, but toxicology reports by his office found no drugs in Noe’s system.
“To be perfectly fair, this is unusual and when I saw this report, I scratched my head and said let’s check to make sure they are looking into this,” Butts said. “It is not the usual mode of exodus. The binding of the hands and all, again we do see it. It is the kind of thing that cries out for looking at it carefully to be sure nothing else is going on.”
The Ferry Division’s business officer, Charlie Utz, said he thinks Noe committed suicide because of problems with his job and the Currituck-to-Corolla ferry project. “There was no wrongdoing by the State of North Carolina. There was no conspiracy. There was no wrongdoing by the ferry director or anyone else in the Ferry Division. The contractor was thrown up roadblocks by Danny Noe, who was purposely sabotaging the project to go ahead and make the Ferry Division look bad. Because he was disgruntled, because he felt so bad about it, he killed himself,” Utz told CJ.
Utz said in July 2005 that he was resigning to “take on a new challenge by starting a business in the window treatment industry.” He also said in his resignation letter to all employees, “This is in no way related to the incidents of the past year, but is more the fact that I believe the time is right to explore other career opportunities. I truly believe that the Ferry Division is the best-run organization in the State.”
Utz, 40, was widely regarded as the No. 2 person at the division, and over the past few years told a number of people he expected to be the director when Gaskill retired.
But contrary to Utz’s claim, CJ could find no evidence that Noe had anything to do with the projects’ three main problems. The first was that the project feasibility study submitted to the General Assembly by Gaskill omitted important details about past permitting problems with building a dock at Corolla. The second was when Ferry Division employees led by Bill Moore illegally dredged a channel at Corolla, which triggered a federal investigation. The third problem is that the boat, which was delivered last August, might not perform as expected.
Family and friends of Danny Noe don’t accept Utz’s explanation. “I will never believe Danny killed himself, and nobody in the family can,” Connie Noe told CJ. “He loved his job and he loved helping people in the Ferry Division. He was straightforward.” She said her husband thought that what was going on in the Ferry Division was wrong and that he did what he thought was right for the taxpayers of North Carolina. She said she hopes that the investigation is thorough but that she is disappointed with the length of time it is taking authorities to process evidence.
“I never met a man so dedicated and hard-working,” said Robert J. Sharp, a friend of Noe’s and a former Ferry Division employee. “When they moved him out of his office they would not let him accept phone calls or receive mail. He was placed in an office the size of a closet. Danny told me that someone tampered with his computer almost every night. I believe he would not have given the Ferry Division management the satisfaction of thinking they drove him to suicide.” Sharp also said he thought that a state auditor’s investigation was not thorough enough and that there were still numerous problems within the division.
Quentin Lewis, another close friend of Noe’s, told CJ that Utz’s allegation that Noe tried to sabotage the project was absurd. Lewis, who has a degree in marine transportation and is a licensed boat captain, reviewed Noe’s personal files from the Ferry Division as well as examined the file on the purchase of the boat. “All the evidence in the file shows Noe did everything by the book,” he said. “The boat builder was out of his league trying to build a boat to Coast Guard specs and was looking to share unexpected costs. The boat does not meet specs, and Danny did not cause those problems. I will never believe he committed suicide.” Lewis said Noe had nothing to gain by killing himself.
Disgruntled
Danny Noe was a disgruntled employee, but apparently not for the reason stated by Utz. He had told CJ about his concerns on several occasions. Noe said he was concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse involving a few senior employees of the Ferry Division. While CJ has a policy of not revealing confidential sources, Connie Noe said she thought it would be appropriate to do so since her husband was dead.
Noe talked with CJ two days before he was found dead. At the time, Noe said he understood that the federal investigation of the illegal dredging would soon trigger indictments or other federal action. He was right. According to sources, who wish to remain anonymous, lawyers for the men involved in the illegal dredging started meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh this summer.
Earlier this year State Auditor Les Merritt’s office conducted an investigation into several allegations involving the Ferry Division. The allegations were made by Noe and other Ferry Division employees. The results of the investigation were released June 2, two weeks after Noe’s death. The report reviewed 44 allegations, but with the exception of several findings concerning the misuse of state vehicles, the investigation could not substantiate most of the allegations. Noe had told CJ that after state auditors interviewed him he thought they were not thorough enough in their investigation.
The most substantial finding was that Gaskill was commuting to work in a state vehicle without authorization. The auditor recommended that Gaskill reimburse taxpayers nearly $13,000 for the benefit derived over an 18-month period.
Investigation continues
Galizia told CJ in July that he had not completed his investigation. The SBI lab is still analyzing evidence gathered from the scene where Noe died. Galizia has seen the report by the state medical examiner, and said that normally he would be guided by that conclusion, but that this case was different.
“The case will receive a number of reviews from other agencies. We are still waiting for reports from the SBI, including fingerprint evidence,” he said. Galizia, who is also planning to run for Carteret County sheriff next year, said all the information will eventually go to the district attorney.
N.C. Department of Justice Public Information Officer Noelle Talley told CJ in late July that while the SBI laboratory has examined a document found at the scene, the analysis of the other evidence “will likely take several months, as there are other cases awaiting latent analysis that are in line ahead of this one.”
“Ultimately, it is the DA’s responsibility” to make the final decision on the cause of death, District Attorney David McFadyen told CJ. “At the appropriate time I will meet with the family. Sometimes the family raises questions. I ask them to put their questions in writing. There will always be a fair number of questions that cannot be answered, because the person who can answer them is no longer alive.”
Noe was a resident of Carteret County. He and Connie had been married for 40 years and had one daughter and two grandchildren. They had a home on the water, 12 miles from his office. Danny had worked for the Ferry Division since 1982. Connie had worked there for 28 years, but recently retired. According to Connie, Danny did not need to continue working at the Ferry Division. He had accumulated enough vacation time and sick leave to retire and could have left anytime he wanted.
Don Carrington is executive editor of Carolina Journal.