Content note. This case file discusses homicide, firearm and knife injuries, and a family’s loss. The linked autopsy contains clinical descriptions.

People in this chapter · Matthew Ryan “Matt” Stewart · Angela “Angel” Stewart · Cornell Harris

A lifelong Mooresville man

Matthew Ryan Stewart was born in Mooresville on March 14, 1978, and lived there his whole life, according to his family’s obituary, published in the Mooresville Tribune on June 12, 2009. He was the son of Mike and Bonnie Stewart. He graduated from Mooresville Senior High School and earned an associate degree in nursing at Mitchell Community College in Statesville.

Matt went to work as a nurse at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, the Mooresville hospital that Duke Health bought in 2025 and renamed Duke Health Lake Norman Hospital. Angela worked as a nurse at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. WBTV reported that the couple had been married eight years. They were raising three children.

Sources: Mooresville Tribune obituary, June 12, 2009 · WBTV, June 12, 2009 · WFAE on the 2025 hospital sale

Postcard2013

Main Street, Mooresville: a vintage postcard and the same downtown in 2013. Drag to compare. Left: Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards, UNC Libraries, public domain. Right: Cdtew, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

What his family wrote

The obituary is the fullest public portrait of Matt in his family’s words. It describes a man with “a servant’s heart for people, most especially children.” He gave each of his three children a nickname. He liked to surprise Angela with small things, such as flowers or a clean house. It also describes how central his Christian faith was to his life.

The family received friends at Cavin-Cook Funeral Home on Friday, June 12. The funeral was held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 13, 2009, at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Mooresville, with Pastor Byron Wicker officiating. Instead of flowers, the family asked for gifts to River Life Fellowship, designated for the Stewarts.

“The most wonderful guy you’d ever want to meet in your life.”Brenda Haire, Angela’s mother, to WBTV, June 11, 2009

The friend who keeps his name alive

Seventeen years later, Cornell Harris still keeps a wedding photograph with Matt in it. Matt was a groomsman at Harris’s wedding. Harris told WSOC in October 2026 that Matt would come by to talk with him about what was happening at church. He said he knew of no enemies Matt had. Unforgotten, the podcast covered in Chapter 5, describes Harris as a childhood friend.

A friend’s inability to name an enemy is not evidence of who the attacker was or why the attack happened. It does explain why a killing with no public motive has stayed so personal for the people who knew him.

Sources: WSOC, October 30, 2026 · Unforgotten S1 Ep5 notes

Gabriel Estates

The Stewarts lived in Gabriel Estates, a subdivision in Mooresville. On the day of the killing, WBTV found neighbors holding their children’s hands as they walked toward the house. Residents told the station they were afraid, and police had little information that could ease those fears. A year later, a neighbor told WSOC, “we saw Matt, like, almost every day.”

This case file starts with Matt instead of the crime scene for a reason. The rest of the record is made of times, wound numbers and lab requests. The case maps mark only public places and the general neighborhood. The family home is not marked. The family’s photographs of Matt appear in the original obituary and the WSOC report linked above.

Sources: WBTV, June 9, 2009 · WSOC, June 9, 2010