Charges against a man charged with the murder of an 89-year-old Stoney Creek woman earlier this year will now go before a Carter County Grand Jury following a court hearing on Friday morning.

Chad Anthony Benfield, 44, of Elizabethton, appeared in Carter County General Sessions Court for a preliminary hearing on Friday. Benfield faces charges of first degree felony murder and especially aggravated burglary in connection with the assault and death of Mary Nolan in her home in July.

At the conclusion of Friday’s hearing, Judge Keith Bowers Jr. ruled that the state had met the burden of proof for the purpose of the hearing and bound the case over to the Grand Jury.

Six witnesses took the stand for the prosecution during the hearing, including law enforcement officers, a forensic nurse, Benfield’s former fiancée, and one of Nolan’s granddaughters.

The investigation into Nolan’s assault and subsequent death began on July 14 when her granddaughter Melanie Harold found Nolan injured in her home.

On July 10, Nolan underwent cataract surgery, and Harold testified she had gone to her grandmother’s home that morning to visit with her and clean the house, a job which she said Nolan typically did for herself.

Harold said when she arrived she knocked on the door and called out, but her grandmother didn’t answer. Harold’s sister, Melissa Allen, arrived and the two women knocked and called out again. At first, they thought maybe their grandmother had gone somewhere, but when Harold tried to open the storm door, she found it was locked.

“I looked at my sister and said ‘Oh my God. Something’s wrong. She’s in there,” Harold said.

Harold said she broke the storm door open but was not able to open either the front door or the back door to the home. The sisters called their mother, Judy McKinney, and she came to unlock the door along with her sister Susan Limb.

“I wouldn’t let my mom come into the house, or my aunt, because I didn’t want them to see her if something was wrong,” Harold recalled.

Harold then walked through the trailer searching for her grandmother. She found her in her bedroom laying across her bed wearing a mint green nightgown that had been folded up over her legs. Harold said she could see her grandmother did not have any underwear on and the sheets, blankets, and pillowcases were missing from the bed.

“I screamed,” Harold said, adding she then “leaped” to the bed to check her grandmother. “She had no color to her eyes. All you could see was the pupils. I didn’t want to touch her because I knew she was hurt.”

Harold said she saw blood around her grandmother’s mouth and that her grandmother couldn’t move either of her legs and could only move one arm.

As she sat on the bed, Harold said she heard her grandmother say “Help me. Help me.”

Afraid that her grandmother was dying, Harold said she screamed for someone to call 911 and went to get her mother and bring her inside.

The Carter County Rescue Squad was called to the house and the emergency medical personnel asked the family about any medications Nolan was taking. Harold said she went to get her grandmother’s purse from the living room where she always kept it and it was not there.

“That’s when it clicked that somebody else had been in that trailer,” Harold said.

Harold and her mother located Nolan’s medicines in the kitchen and gave them to the medics.

“The ambulance driver told me to call 911 again and tell them we needed an officer here immediately,” Harold said. “I said ‘Somebody done this to her,’ and he said ‘I already know.’”

After Nolan was taken to the hospital, Harold said her father asked her questions about what happened. Harold said her grandmother was only able to shake or nod her head and say “uh-uh” for no and “uh-huh” for yes.

Nolan told her family she did not know who had hurt her but indicated it was just one person.

“He asked her ‘Did he rape you’ and she nodded and said uh-huh,” Harold said.

Nolan’s health continued to deteriorate following the incident, and she died on July 26 at the hospital, having never regained the ability to communicate details of what had happened to her. According to the autopsy report, Nolan died as a result of complications of blunt-force trauma to her head and neck.

Tessa Proffitt, and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner at the Johnson City Medical Center testified regarding the examination she performed on Nolan after she was brought to the hospital. In addition to performing a rape examination, Proffitt said she was asked by investigators to get swabs and nail clippings from Nolan’s fingernails to be sent for DNA testing.

During her testimony, Carter County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Penny Garland testified it was the fingernail clippings and swabs of the fingers that led investigators to Benfield.

When the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation tested DNA samples collected from the clippings and swabs they ran the DNA profile through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and got a “hit,” Garland said. The test matched the sample collected from Nolan’s nails to a DNA profile in the system belonging to Benfield.

During an interview with investigators, Garland said Benfield denied being in Nolan’s home or having anything to do with the assault. Assistant District Attorney Mark Hill asked Garland what Benfield’s response was when confronted with the fact his DNA had been recovered from Nolan’s body. Garland said Benfield replied: “My DNA should not be in there.”

Benfield’s former fiancée, Donna Gay, testified that she and Benfield had been drinking and had argued on the night of July 13 about text messages she found on his phone between him and other women. She said she went to bed and didn’t know where he went. Around 6 a.m. on July 14 she said she heard Benfield taking a shower and later drove him to his brother’s home so he could go to work. She said she then packed his belongings and took them to Benfield’s sister-in-law.

Gay said she had decided to end the relationship and move back to South Carolina. While she was packing items in her home, she said she found some sheets that did not fit her beds and a bathrobe and clothing that she described as looking as though they belonged to “an older lady.”

Due to the text messages she had seen, Gay said she assumed they belonged to one of the women Benfield had been contacting. Gay said she then bagged the items up and threw them away.