CullmanTimes.com, Cullman, Alabama

Local News

April 7, 2009

Murder victim remembered for caring heart

By Patrick McCreless

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Sarah Wren did not have much money. She did not care much for material possessions.

But she did have plenty of love in her heart, which she gave freely to everyone she met.

“You can’t go anywhere in Cullman without anybody knowing her,” said Teresa Walker, Wren’s daughter. “I was approached by the owners of several stores. ... They recognized me because we spent quite a bit of time together. When you can walk in town and people automatically know who you are, that tells me my mom made an impact.”

Wren, 63, of Good Hope, was shot and killed Saturday evening outside her home in a trailer park on Megan Lane. The apparent killer and Wren’s neighbor, 46-year-old Johnny Ellis Mayo, shot and killed himself a short time later.

“We’re all still absolutely in complete shock,” said Wren’s older sister, Louise Hale. “There’s just two of us left out of the family ... me and just a brother left.”

Walker said her mother, who was born in West Point, was very comical and a lover of antiques and toys — as she pointed out an old train set in Wren’s living room.

“She really liked antiques and would buy things for other people if she thought it was something they’d really like,” Walker said. “She was so caring and giving.”

As Walker described her mother’s caring nature, a man she had not seen in four years and who was impacted personally by Wren’s kindness, came by to pay his respect.

Jerry Pilgrim said when his mother was sick, Wren would stop by and console him often, despite how she did not know either him or his mother very well.

“It didn’t take long for you to know Miss Sarah,” Pilgrim said. “She would offer to cook for me. She was very free-hearted.”

Pilgrim said at one point, Wren gave her some miniature dolls.

“They’re little sentimental things,” he said. “I’ve still got them.”

Wren even showed kindness to the man who would eventually murder her.

Hale said Wren knew Mayo mainly through his sister. When Mayo’s wife died a month ago, Hale said Wren went by to visit him and his sister and attended the funeral.

“If she hadn’t seen somebody in 20 years and saw their obit in the paper, she’d always go to the funeral,” Walker said. “She would always show respect.”

According to Cullman County Sheriff’s reports, Mayo walked across the street to Wren’s home around 8 p.m. Saturday and shot her on her front porch with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Wren’s husband, Carl, said his wife liked to sit on the porch to cool off after taking a hot bath. He said he was sitting in his chair when his wife opened the door and was shot almost immediately.

“I couldn’t get to my gun,” he said. “I grabbed my bat and would have tried to get behind him to break his neck, but he saw me.”

Wren said he then ran to the back of his home while Mayo continued to pump rounds through the doorway.

“He unloaded and I guess he thought he got me too because he left,” he said.

Mayo was a sex offender convicted in 1991 of raping a 28-year-old woman in California. Earlier in the year, sheriff’s investigators discovered Mayo had been living in Good Hope for two years as an unregistered sex offender.

Sheriff Tyler Roden said his investigators suspect Mayo killed Wren partially because he believed she had turned him in — a belief that was completely false.

“After he got busted for being non-registered, he went off into a different kind of person,” Wren said. “We hadn’t talked to him for a month.”

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