FirstAlerts

Norfolk Best charged in December 1991 killings of Leslie and Gertrude Baldwin

Norfolk Best faces murder, rape, burglary and robbery charges in connection with the 1991 deaths of Leslie and Gertrude Baldwin.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 17, 2026, 6:35 p.m. ETWritten Aug 19, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ET
Norfolk "Fuzzy" Best, 72, has been with two counts of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, robbery with a dangerous weapon and first-degree burglary in connection with a December 1991 case. The matter is at the charging stage. The charges are allegations, nothing has been decided, and Best is presumed innocent. Court documents say 82-year-old Leslie Baldwin and 79-year-old Gertrude Baldwin were beaten and stabbed to death inside their Burkhead Street home in December 1991. Prosecutors said Best had been doing yard work at the Baldwins' home on the day of the killings. According to court documents, Gertrude Baldwin was raped before she was killed, and approximately $1,500 was taken from the home. Court documents also state that Best's left thumbprint was found on a bloody paring knife beneath Mr. Baldwin's body, and that 2015 DNA testing on evidence collected from Gertrude Baldwin matched Best's DNA profile. These accounts come from prosecutors and from court filings, which set out one side of the case. Best's response to the allegations is not reflected in the material available.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 119 Aug 2026, 22:04current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.