Bobby Glenn McLamb, 62, loved filling up on Brenda’s menu of country cooking, which included country ham and beef liver, among other dishes. He seldom missed a night at the couple’s dinner table.

“He loved to complain about my wife’s cooking,” James said with a laugh. “He always said she was making him fat with all the homemade biscuits. He loved those biscuits, and he loved her collards, turnips and fatback too. I never saw him turn anything away that she cooked.”

One of the rare nights McLamb missed dinner was last Tuesday. James said his friend, whom he considered a brother, called his wife that evening to tell her he wasn’t hungry. McLamb assured her he would see his friends the following day.

But on Wednesday morning, word spread quickly that McLamb had been found murdered inside his mobile home on N.C. 242 between Benson and Dunn.

Tammy Amaon, spokeswoman for the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office, said last week that a friend of McLamb’s found him about 8 a.m. She didn’t say who discovered McLamb’s body. But employees of McLamb’s LP Gas, where he had worked for about a year, said several co-workers went to McLamb’s house when he didn’t show up for work at his usual time.

Wayne McLamb, no relation, is co-owner of McLamb’s LP. He described McLamb as “unique” and an “honest friend and worker.”

“Bobby was a humble man,” Wayne McLamb said. “You could ask him to do anything, and he’d do it, no questions asked. He was a fun human being.”

A woman, her son and his girlfriend were arrested last Wednesday and charged with robbery and murder. Not long after McLamb’s death, authorities said, Luis Angel Reyes Hernandez, 27, of 6928 Godwin Lake Road was captured in a wooded area several miles from McLamb’s home.

Also charged were Hernandez’s mother, Nancy Hernandez, 48, and his girlfriend, Amanda Jean Russell, 28, also of the same address. All three remain in the Johnston County jail without bond.

“It’s just a shock to all of us that something like this could happen out here,” said the Holders’ daughter-in-law, Jessica Holder. “This is a close-knit community of farmers and close friends where everybody knows everybody. Stuff like this happens in Raleigh or Fayetteville, but not here, not among us.”

But there were exceptions. Amaon said McLamb’s trailer had been broken into in March 2005. A month before, Amaon said, McLamb called authorities after someone stole property from his front yard.

McLamb hadn’t reported any other trouble in the past three years, Amaon said. But friends said McLamb had begun keeping a .38-caliber handgun inside his house and a wooden stick by the door.

Still, the Holders and others said McLamb was a giving person and might have offered his attackers whatever they wanted, if they had only asked. Amaon said the suspects took several guns from his house. A few of the weapons were recovered in the woods where Luis Hernandez was arrested, she added.

“I guess in times like this we can’t really ask why things like this happen,” James Holder said. “I guess it was just his time to go. But Bobby was so friendly and easygoing toward everyone, and he would literally give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. I just can’t understand why anyone would want to do something like this to such a good man.”