This week marks the four-year anniversary of the murder of local man Timothy Shatley and authorities feel that they are a step closer to solving the case once and for all.

They now feel that the murderer may already be behind bars serving consecutive life sentences for murders he committed in 2008.

Shatley, 30, was murdered on Nov. 19, 2005 on N.C. 16 in Crumpler a little before 11:30 p.m. He was returning home after his first night on the job at Pa Paw’s Bar-B-Que restaurant in North Wilkesboro. Shatley was driving a 1993 Chevy Astro van approximately two miles from his home, near the intersection of N.C. 16 and Old Field Creek Road, when he was fired upon with what investigators determined to be “a large caliber firearm.” One of the rounds struck him in the upper torso, mortally wounding him. According to authorities he then managed to drive a few hundred feet north before going off the road and hitting a concrete barrier past a bridge that was under construction at the time. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they initially thought they were responding to a fatal car wreck and reported it as such. Authorities then said that a second group of paramedics further investigated the scene and discovered what appeared to be a bullet hole in the driver’s side door and the sheriff’s department was immediately contacted. The case was treated as a homicide from that point on.

Rumors concerning Shatley’s death have circulated the county since his passing. Authorities did not get their big break in the case until this past August when admitted triple-murderer Frederick P. Hammer admitted to also killing Jimmy Blevins, his nephew by marriage. Hammer admitted to the murder while serving five consecutive life sentences at Powhatan Correctional Center in State Farm, VA. He also admitted to killing Shatley, but authorities were less than convinced of his story at the time.

Hammer previously stated that he “had nothing to do” with the murders of Jimmy Blevins or Timothy Shatley after pleading guilty in May to the Grassy Creek tree farm triple murder that took the lives of Ronald Hudler, Frederick Hudler, and John Miller in January 2008.

His story changed entirely in August when he finally broke down and confessed to murdering Blevins.

At the time, authorities were skeptical that Hammer was responsible for Shatley’s murder. Local authorities believed that Hammer was simply trying to “put another notch in his belt” by boasting of additional murders. Following a second interview with Hammer a month ago, everything changed.

“We’re a little more confident with the case at this point,” Sheriff James Williams said Thursday morning. “I’m more optimistic that at some point he will be charged with his (Shatley’s) murder.”

Williams would not disclose the details of the interview but stated that Hammer revealed an additional piece of information to investigators. Williams said that Hammer told authorities during the second interview that he had thrown the weapon used in Shatley’s murder into the New River near the Virginia state line. A dive team was then brought into the area two weeks ago to search the river but to no avail.

It is unclear what Hammer’s motive would be in murdering Shatley. Blevins lived a few hundred yards away from where Shatley was found murdered and was last seen leaving his home with Hammer on Feb. 24, 2007, over a year after the Shatley murder. Hammer said that he killed Blevins over a dispute of “back owed wages.”

Authorities have not linked Blevins disappearance to Shatley’s murder.