by Leah Justice
The murder trial for Travis Lee McGraw was rescheduled for May 19 during this week’s Polk County Superior Court session.
The trial originally was scheduled to begin on Monday, Jan. 27, but was postponed.
McGraw, 46, of Hendersonville, was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife, Vanessa Mintz.
Mintz was found at the Saluda Mountain Lodge with a fatal gunshot wound to the head on Feb. 19, 2011. McGraw was arrested four days later and charged with murder after investigators found a shotgun shell at the crime scene and another in McGraw’s truck that were the same brand.
There were six guns seized from McGraw’s Hendersonville residence with the state bureau of investigation’s western lab firearms section determining that McGraw’s camouflage Mossberg allegedly fired the shotgun shell collected at the crime scene, according to a report from the search warrant and probable cause documents.
McGraw was held in custody at the N.C. Department of Corrections in Raleigh for over two years. He is currently out after posting a $750,000 bond in May 2013.
Assistant District Attorney Alex Bass of District 29-A took over the prosecution of the case in August 2013.
Mintz was 53 at the time of her murder and was a realtor in Hendersonville. Her family owned Saluda Mountain Lodge, located off Holberts Cove Road in Saluda, and was doing renovations to the lodge at the time of the murder.
Mintz and McGraw were scheduled to work at the lodge on Friday, Feb. 18, 2011, with McGraw telling investigators he left the lodge at approximately 9:30 p.m. that Friday.
Mintz and McGraw were married in 2009. McGraw is a former police officer. He resigned from the Fletcher Police Department in 2010.