who killed theresa?

GQ story on alleged serial killings splits opinions
By Brie Handgraaf
Rocky Mount Telegram

The people interviewed for a recent national story on Rocky Mount’s alleged serial killer case are divided on the published product.

Jackie Wiggins, mother of victim Jackie Nikelia ‘Nikki’ Thorpe, spoke with the author of the article in June’s issue of “Gentleman’s Quarterly” last fall and said she has mixed opinions about how it turned out.

“I was pleased with it as far as the publication about the girls and stuff, but his interview with this cabbie person was kind of shocking to me,” she said. “He came out with a whole lot of information that could have been useful earlier (in the investigation).”

She said she is reserving judgment on some of the quotes from officials used in the article.
“I think they said some things that now I hope they regret,” she said. “I guess the reporter reported as he heard it, but I’m waiting to hear their version of it.”

Rocky Mount Mayor David Combs was negatively portrayed in the article. Combs said the author took him out of context.

“Most people assume the mayor knows everything that is going on, but I’m not always aware of what the police department is working on,” he said. “He also made a comment about how I wasn’t at the candlelight vigil, but I really didn’t know about it. Nobody called me so I never knew about it.”

He added the article was skewed to overplay the race issue.

“I’m not sure I realized the direction he was going with it,” he said. “He wanted to paint a picture between Edgecombe and Nash counties, but I think, overall, that as a mayor, I look at it as all one city. I think because he is writing a book on race in the South, the whole article was based on race more than anything.”

Wiggins said she also believes the focus on race was dramatized.

“When he talked about the train tracks diving the blacks and whites, I think it could have been worded better,” she said. “I guess that was just his way of getting the point across, but our schools are integrated. I feel like some things were stretched.”

Rocky Mount councilman and local NAACP president Andre Knight said race does play into how much media attention, or lack thereof, the case has gotten.

“I think (the author) used race as a backdrop,” he said. “I think when it comes to African-American women and children (as victims of crime), they don’t get near the coverage other nationalities get in the media.”

Knight and Wiggins commended the author for his portrayal of the girls — not just how they died, but how they lived as well.

“He gave the women a real face. He talked about not just their addictions, but how these women were actually engaged in society. They were good people,” Knight said. “He was trying to actually put a face other than a mugshot on these women. I think he gave them some dignity as well.”

Wiggins actually was pleased with the relatively graphic portrayal of the victims’ deaths in the article.

“He was printing that to make people see just how tragic and demeaning the bodies were left,” she said. “He described what it was like. He put it like it was. I think the readers can see what we saw and how we felt.”

Knight said he hopes the national media attention will help the investigation.
“This case hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it needs,” he said. “We don’t need this to go by the wayside. It is still very important to the families and the community.”
Combs said the attention will likely taper off.

“Other communities have had similar things happen and I hate to say this, but soon the national media moves on to something new,” he said. “Hopefully, someone will see this in the media and come forward with new information.

“I just hope people take it for what it is. It is a magazine article by someone trying to write a book.

“He took a lot of liberty along the way. It is what it is.”

GQ’s a day late and a dollar short on this one. (well, 9 months at least to be precise)

What you will: They certainly know how to package a story:

The elderly black woman sits on her couch and rummages through a cardboard box until she finds the newspaper article—raggedy and faded like the town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where her daughter Melody spent her final years. The headline reads, POLICE SEEK MORE CLUES IN MURDER.

“That’s what Melody’s son used to ask me all the time,” says the woman. Her weary voice assumes the pitch of a little boy: ” ‘Grandma, have they found out who did it to my mama?’”

And then she mimics a grandmother’s loving cadence: “I’d say, ‘Not yet. But the Lord knows who did it.’”

She falls silent. Then the woman points to a large photograph propped against the wall of her modest home. Below her grandson’s name and grinning face are the dates “October 15, 1997-November 15, 2008.” A tornado had engulfed their house that November night while she and her husband and her murdered daughter Melody’s son were all asleep. She remembers how the astonishing white light made her gasp, “Jesus…” Then she remembers her grandson flying away from her, as her daughter had three years earlier.

“Now he’s up there with her,” the grandmother murmurs as she looks down at the newspaper clipping on her lap. “Now he knows, too.”

The farmer who discovered the second body found off Seven Bridges Road, a few miles north of Rocky Mount, had been taking down his electric fence, and what drew him to the tree stump was a foreign odor. He initially mistook the carcass in the woods for that of a rotting deer. But then he saw the hands raised above the small round skull, as if waving for help. The skeletonized woman lay facedown, naked. Maggots and beetles dug into what was left of her leathery flesh.

When Corneta Battle saw the news that day in March 2008, she knew that her prayers—Lord, you’ve got to show me where my sister is. Let me dream it. Let me see it—had finally been answered. Corneta called the authorities. They asked her to swab her mother’s mouth for DNA. After the tests came back indicating a 99.9 percent probability of kinship, the police showed Corneta the photographs taken out at Seven Bridges Road. Corneta Battle looked at them and nodded silently. Though there was almost nothing left of her sister, she still recognized Ernestine.

For almost six weeks, Ernestine Battle had been missing. It was well known that she walked the streets of Rocky Mount all night, selling her body to support her crack habit, that she had stopped taking care of her two young children, that she had been in and out of jail for the past nine years on drug- and prostitution-related charges, that when her family gave her food, she would trade it on the streets for a rock of cocaine. Her disappearance was nonetheless alarming for two reasons. The first was that Ernestine, no matter how strung out, always managed to stay in touch with her family. The second was that in the past five years, several other African-American women who wandered the streets of Rocky Mount at night had never been seen alive again.

Among the disappeared, Ernestine had known Nikki Thorpe best. Nikki lived down the street from her. And on her way to the park to score some drugs, Ernestine would wave to Nikki’s mother sitting on the porch drinking a Pepsi and call out, “Hey, Miss Jackie! Nikki there?” Or “C’mon, Miss Jackie, I know you’ve got another cold Pepsi.” As with Ernestine—who once had a respectable job with the cable company and took pains to do herself up, almost like a fashion model—there had been something to Nikki before all this. Nikki grew up playing football with the boys in the projects on Stokes Street. She’d been a cheerleader in high school. She wrote poetry and spent entire evenings at the O 64 Bingo Parlor. Nikki’s talent for braiding hair was highly regarded by the crack dealers, who sometimes gave her a rock in exchange for a hair job instead of a blow job.

Then, in the summer of 2007, Nikki’s became the first body left to rot away alongside Seven Bridges Road. So little remained of her, or of Ernestine the following year, that the pathologists who examined the corpses could not determine a cause of death. All that could be said with certainty was that the Rocky Mount women had died far from home—like Denise Williams, whose bloated body was discovered floating in a swamp southeast of town in 2003; like Melody Wiggins, found in the woods in May 2005; and perhaps like Christine Boone and Joyce Renee Durham, who in 2006 and 2007, respectively, simply vanished from the streets.

Someone was apparently taking drug-addicted black women from the drab streets of Rocky Mount—women who were not well connected or captivating to the media—and ending their sad lives and gambling that it would not matter.

Six years running, someone’s bet was paying off.

The cabbie believed that the someone was like him. Someone who knew the girls. Someone they would feel comfortable with. Let their guard down with. Jump in a car with, no problem.

He’d been driving these girls—Nikki, Ernestine, Denise, pretty much all of them—for years. Sometimes the cabbie (who asked not to be named) would drop them off at one of the grubby motels on Highway 301, where a john had bought them a room and where they’d turn tricks and smoke crack till checkout time. Then the cabbie would get a call on his cell and pick them up. In their state of dubious afterglow, he would see them strung out beyond comprehension, bruised and cut up, their clothes reeking from having been worn days in a row. Oftentimes they had no money despite their long evening of work, and the cabbie would give them a few bucks or drop them off at a church where they could get a hot meal.

Les Peacekeepers de Kahnawake, sur la rive-sud de Montréal, ont confirmé vendredi que les restes humains retrouvés plus tôt cette semaine dans un secteur boisé de la réserve mohawk sont ceux de Tiffany Morrison, une femme disparue depuis l’été 2006.

Mme Morrison avait 24 ans au moment de sa disparition. Son corps a été découvert lundi après-midi près d’une voie de service des routes 132/138.

Elle a pu être identifiée grâce à son dossier dentaire.

La cause du décès n’a pas encore été déterminée, précise un communiqué de presse du service des Peacekeepers de Kahnawake, soulignant que les enquêteurs mènent maintenant une enquête criminelle (plutôt qu’une enquête sur une personne manquante).

Mme Morrison, une Mohawk, est disparue en 2006 après avoir quitté un bar de LaSalle pour retourner à Kahnawake avec un homme de la communauté

Lack of media coverage indeed; I’d never heard of this case:

Human remains found in an aboriginal community south of Montreal on Tuesday have been identified as those of a woman missing since 2006.

The bones have been identified as those of Tiffany Morrison, 25, from the Kahnawake reserve, officials with the local police force confirmed on Friday.

The remains were found by a construction worker in a wooded area near the Mercier Bridge, which links Montreal to the South Shore region, said Warren White, an investigator with the Kahnawake Mohawk Peacekeepers.

The bones had been covered with some branches, White said.

Morrison was reportedly last seen in a taxi with a man on the Kahnawake reserve, southwest of Montreal, on June 18, 2006.

Morrison’s family had been critical of what it said was a lack of media coverage of her disappearance.

Kahnawake Peacekeepers are investigating human remains discovered Monday afternoon near the Mercier Bridge.

A construction worker found bones and a skull on the south shore, between routes 138 and 132.

The remains were hidden underneath saplings and branches, leading police to declare the area a crime scene.

A forensics investigator is examining the remains, and trying to determine whether they belong to a man or a woman, and the approximate age of the person.

Police hope that preliminary results will be available as of Thursday.

The Crown says it has strong evidence in its case against the man accused of having abducted and killed Corrections Canada worker Natasha Cournoyer last fall.

Claude Larouche made a brief appearance at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday, where he learned that he will face a preliminary hearing starting October 18.

The backbone of the case is based on DNA evidence, said Crown prosecutor Éliane Perrault.

Larouche was tracked down by investigators thanks to a sample he was forced to provide following his conviction for the attempted abduction of a seven-year-old girl in 2003.

“The DNA evidence is pretty strong – evidence without any doubt,” said Perrault.

“The evidence will primarily be technical,” said Perrault. “There is also video surveillance from the place where [Cournoyer] worked.”

Larouche, 48, was arrested in November following the discovery of Cournoyer’s body in east-end Montreal on October 6.

The 37-year old woman was last seen leaving her workplace less than a week earlier.Claude Larouche pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder last November at the Montreal courthouse. (Montreal Police / CBC)

Larouche is also facing charges of attempted murder in connection with an assault on a prostitute following Cournoyer’s disappearance, but before his arrest.

In that case, Perrault said the Crown will present Larouche’s eye glasses, which were allegedly broken during the attack.

Those charges against Larouche will also be used to support the evidence in the Cournoyer case, Perrault said.

Meanwhile, investigators are continuing the DNA testing to see whether Larouche can be linked to other crimes.

Larouche, who is a drug addict, also has a prior conviction for sexual assault in 1991.

Slow news week in this world. I figure I better post something (I’m down to 50 hits per day). Here’s a nifty little article about dating teeth:

Teeth As A Forensic Clock

With the right analyses, they can point to date of birth — and of death By Janet Raloff Web edition : Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Here’s something we’re likely to see that endearing techno whiz kid, Abby Sciuto, whip out of her forensic arsenal next season on NCIS. They’re chemical and nuclear technologies to date teeth. And when paired up, new research indicates, they’ll identify not only when people were born but also the age at which they clocked out — thereby pointing to the general date of death.

It’s a bit gruesome to contemplate why coroners and others need these data. We’d all like to hope that when people die, it’s going to be among family or friends who can vouch for the deceased’s identity. But bad things happen to lots of people — sometimes in groups. And identifying them may hinge on knowing their age and how long ago they succumbed — both of which can prove especially challenging when the tissues are decomposing or when all that remains are partial skeletons.

The older of the technologies is known as aspartic acid racemization. A mouthful. The amino acid aspartic acid is a building block of proteins throughout the body. It comes in mirror-image forms — what are conversationally known as left- and right-handed versions. They tend to start out present in roughly a racemic — or 50:50 — mix. Throughout life, all left-handed aspartic acid in the body tends to slowly convert to the right-handed conformation.

This racemization — slow conversion of lefties — is a slow process, Bruce A. Buchholz of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his coauthors note in the May Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. At 25 °C, it would take about 100,000 years for all left-handed aspartic acid molecules in the body to become righties.

But what has made this molecular clock so useful for forensic anthropologists over the past quarter-century is the fact that it stops dead when someone dies. And by focusing on the enamel of teeth, which is laid down over a short period as each adult tooth forms, chemists know when this outside shell of a tooth developed, which would be during the time that tooth erupted — a fairly predictable age.

By analyzing how much racemization of its aspartic acid occurred, scientists can determine how old the tooth’s owner was at death — generally accurate to about 5.5 years, plus or minus 4.2 years.

What it doesn’t tell you is how long ago that death occurred. But for people born since the mid-1940s, there is a second technique that can deliver a fairly precise age (within about one year) of when a tooth’s enamel was laid down. It looks at the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 in that enamel to stable C-12. This technique’s use on teeth was first described by Buchholz and his colleagues in a 2005 Nature paper.

With six protons and six neutrons, carbon normally has an atomic number of 12. But sometimes a cosmic ray will collide with a nitrogen atom, giving it an extra neutron. It quickly becomes carbon-14 (with six protons and 8 neutrons). This radioactive element has a half-life of some 5,700 years. Over time, that carbon-14 will decay to regular carbon-12.

Through most of Earth’s history, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 was fairly constant — at least until the nuclear-weapons era started. Bomb blasts created a surfeit of C-14 that quickly dispersed around the globe. And the enamel of teeth that erupted since the period of those blasts, basically the mid-1950s — has incorporated an elevated ratio of C-14 to -12 in all of its tissues, including tooth enamel.

But the ratio has varied. Over time, some of the excess C-14 has become buried or incorporated in biota around the globe. And by knowing the rate of its relative disappearance, for want of a better term, physicists can date how long since the mid-50s a tooth formed, based on the ratio of the two carbon isotopes within its enamel.

Again, by knowing the age at which a particular type of tooth erupts — front teeth earlier, molars later — scientists can calculate back from when the tooth formed to determine the year in which a tooth’s owner was born.

Until his group’s new report, scientists hadn’t compared racemization and C-14 analyses on the same teeth, Buchholz says. So they collected teeth that had been extracted by dentists from 40 individuals, people whose age was known (between 13 to 70), and compared the technologies’ relative accuracy in dating choppers.

Overall, C-14 analyses gave superior age-at-birth dates, but only for people whose teeth erupted after the bomb blasts, meaning individuals about 60 and younger. However, when the researchers applied both techniques to teeth, they realized that the racemization offered an additional useful detail, a good gauge of an individual’s age at death.

And they applied it to teeth from a homicide victim in Sweden (where one of the scientists worked). By pairing information from both techniques, they could determine that the victim was born in 1942 and lived for an apparent 46.8 years. That put the victim’s death late in 1988 (plus or minus 2.1 years). Although police have not identified the man, Buchholz’s team reports that owing to the dates they came up with, police think they know who this person might be: “a foreigner believed to be in his forties who was suspected for having set fire to a restaurant in 1988 but then disappeared.”

For people born in the last 50 years or so, the C-14 test can by itself sometimes identify dates of both birth and death, Buchholz notes. Indeed, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary recently employed the technique to help home in on the age of another homicide victim.

Hikers happened onto a lone skull in a wooded area in far eastern Canada on May 17, 2001. For several years, the police worked to identify the victim using a range of techniques, including DNA analysis, facial reconstruction, dental analyses and more. But they had a hard time narrowing their search because they didn’t know when the man had died.

Recently, RNC Inspector John House was looking for other forensic techniques that might be employed when he ran across a paper by Buchholz’s team on the C-14 analysis. He recruited the scientists’ assistance in analyzing some of the skull’s teeth — and hair.

Because the police had some of the man’s wavy black locks, with roots intact, the scientists could subject them to C-14 dating as well. Explains Buchholz: Because hair grows at about a centimeter per month, “the hair root and about an inch of growth gives a good idea of carbon intake over the last couple of months.” And that allows a fairly accurate date of death. In this case, June 1995, plus or minus 1.7 years. Based on the dental enamel’s C-14 ratio, they calculated that the victim had been born between 1955 and 1961.

Alas, the physicist notes, many skulls don’t come with hair. And in these instance, racemization can really come in handy.

By the time the numbers came in for the Newfoundland victim, House says, “The case was very cold” — as in frigid. Now, he says, “it’s become an active investigation again.” And explains why, he says, C-14 analysis “is something I’d definitely use again.”

It isn’t a panacea. The victim still remains unknown. But based on all of the information House’s group has assembled, his police department was able to issue a poster last December with a projected likeness of the man and a host of information that they hope will bring out new leads in their investigation.

By the way, if you’re curious about why racemization is so much less accurate a clock than C-14 for dating a tooth’s age, part of the explanation has to do with temperature. Unlike C-14, the clock runs faster for aspartic-acid racemization when it’s hot. So being in a fire will totally distort a tooth’s apparent age via this technique — as might being left in a desert. Even the placement of a tooth — in the front of the mouth versus the back — can provide a degree or two difference in the temperature at which it’s incubated during an individual’s life, Buchholz notes. “And over a period of 40 years or so, that few degrees can be significant” — enough to alter a tooth’s apparent age by a several years.

The Vermont State Police say a search in Richford for a 17-year-old Sheldon girl who disappeared in 2004 was unsuccessful.

Vermont State Police Search and Rescue Team with help from a K-9 dog unit searched Prive Hill Road on Monday for evidence linked to the disappearance of Brianna Maitland. But authorities say no evidence was found.

Maitland was last seen on March 19, 2004 at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, where she worked as a dishwasher.

Her car was found the next day a short distance away, but she has not been seen since.

Police believe she was the victim of foul play.

The Maitland family continues to offer a $20,000 reward for information leading to her location and to the person responsible for her disappearance.

(May 10) — Investigators in Vermont launched a ground search today in a renewed effort to locate Brianna Maitland, whose baffling disappearance six years ago sparked national media attention.

The new sweep, which focuses on an area not previously searched, was prompted by information that authorities received “as part of the ongoing investigation,” Sgt. Tara Thomas, public information officer for the Vermont State Police, told AOL News.

Police have said there is a strong possibility that Maitland, who was 17 when she vanished, was the victim of foul play.

Dozens of searchers, including crime scene technicians and search and rescue personnel, are concentrating today on an area along Prive Hill Road in Richford. The location is a few miles from where Maitland is believed to have gone missing, Thomas said.

Maitland was last seen at approximately 11:20 p.m. on March 19, 2004, as she was finishing her shift as a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery.

The following day, Maitland’s car, a green 1985 Oldsmobile 88, was found backed into a barn at an abandoned farmhouse on Route 118, roughly one mile from the Black Lantern Inn. The keys were missing, but two uncashed paychecks were on the front seat, and other miscellaneous belongings were found strewn on the ground around the car.

During a search of the area, investigators found a gun and drug paraphernalia inside the farmhouse, which had stood vacant for roughly six years.

According to the Cue Center for Missing Persons, it was not the first time investigators been to the farmhouse. In 1986, Myron and Harry Dutchburn, two brothers who lived at the home, were brutally beaten and robbed. The brothers were later placed in a nursing home due to their injuries. The crime remains unsolved.

More than 500 police officers and volunteers searched the woods around the farmhouse, but found no further signs of the missing teen.

Vermont State Police Capt. Glenn Hall said there is “no evidence” to indicate that Maitland had vanished on her own accord. On the day of her disappearance, she had passed her General Equivalency Diploma exam and was making plans to enroll in college.

Authorities thought they got a break in the case in October 2007, when a weathered pair of blue jeans was found in a wooded area not far from where Maitland went missing. Her parents told police they were the same brand and style their daughter would have worn. But state police technicians were unable to collect enough DNA from the jeans to determine if they were hers.

Maitland’s parents, Bruce and Kellie Maitland, were unavailable for comment today. Both have been critical of the investigation in the past, especially when police decided to block a potential search by Texas EquuSearch, a missing-persons search and recovery group that has been involved with several high-profile cases, including that of Natalee Holloway in Aruba.

Investigators did not comment publicly on that decision, other than to say they were still following up on leads.

“I wish that no other parents would have to suffer what my husband and I have been through,” Kellie Maitland said in a 2008 statement to the media. “I wish that somehow this whole thing could have been prevented.”

According to Thomas, Maitland’s parents, who now reside in New York, are believed to be en route to Vermont today. It is not yet known if they will be making a statement to the media.

As of late afternoon today, Thomas said it is too soon to determine how long the search will continue. “It all depends on whether we find anything,” she said.

According to a state police press release issued today, the Maitland family is offering a $20,000 reward for information, which includes $10,000 for anyone who can identify where Brianna is and $10,000 for anyone with information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for her disappearance. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Vermont State Police at 802-524-5993.

Man accused in murder of Montreal woman faces new charges

THE GAZETTE MAY 4, 2010

MONTREAL – The man accused in the murder of Natasha Cournoyer has been charged with attempted murder in connection with an attack on a sex worker.

Claude Larouche, a 48-year-old carpenter, is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Cournoyer, 37. Her body was found last October in thick bushes in Pointe aux Trembles.

The woman told police Larouche beat her in her Hochelaga-Maisonneuve home Oct. 17, 16 days after Cournoyer disappeared from the Laval office building where she worked.

Larouche told the sex worker he didn’t want sex, but wanted to talk.

After taking some drugs, he allegedly hit the woman in the face and tried to strangle her. Larouche took off after the woman knocked his glasses off. Police identified him through a DNA sample found on the glasses.

Larouche is no stranger to the criminal justice system, with charges dating back to 1984 in Chicoutimi, Trois Rivières, Joliette, Quebec City and Montreal.

He’s being detained and is due back in court May 25.