Sister of Kim Thomas comments on NC suspect in unsolved Charlotte murder going free
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Who killed Kim Thomas?
A young doctor’s wife was slashed to death in her Charlotte home in 1990. The case remains unsolved, though new evidence may be coming out. The Observer dug deep with these stories in 1995 and 2003.
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A suspect in the unsolved 1990 murder of Charlotte mom Kim Thomas was released from a North Carolina prison Friday morning, state officials said.
Marion Gales was a 28-year-old handyman when Thomas, a 32-year-old women’s rights activist, was found slashed to death in her Cotswold home in southeast Charlotte. He was reportedly homeless and occasionally worked on the house where Thomas lived with her 10-month-old son and the other suspect in her murder — her doctor husband.
Her death remains unsolved and the case has unfolded over years of developments in Charlotte courtrooms.
Gales has never been charged in Thomas’ murder, but he’s long been a suspect. Thomas’ husband, Dr. Ed Friedland, once faced charges in her murder, but they were dropped and never refiled.
Friedland in 1997 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Gales. A civil jury found Gales liable for Thomas’ murder and awarded Friedland $8.6 million in damages.
Gales, who is now 62, served more than 20 years in North Carolina state prisons after being convicted of killing a pregnant homeless woman. The state lists him as a “habitual felon.” He has also served time for stealing a car, assaulting a woman and felony burglary.
He was released from Brown Creek Correctional Institution — about an hour east of Charlotte — on Friday at 11:30 a.m, according to the N.C. Department of Adult Correction.
For more than a decade, Charlotte mourned and buzzed as details in the mystery of “Who killed Kim Thomas?” played out after Friedland’s arrest and during Gales’ civil trial.
After nearly 35 years, Lynn Thomas has never gotten an answer to one haunting question: “Who killed my sister?”
Gales’ release, she told The Charlotte Observer on Monday, seems “irrelevant” and inconsequential in the case.
“If the police have a strong enough case against Gales, don’t you think they would have charged him with Kim’s murder when he walked out of prison? Or maybe when he was still in prison, so he’d just stay in jail?” she said.
She feels Thomas’ case will remain open until police do more DNA testing on evidence preserved from the 1990 crime scene. Recent tests sparked hope, but ultimately didn’t point to a concrete suspect.
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 6:08 PM.
