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.”

CNN) — Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch man once considered a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, is the suspect in the killing of a woman in Peru, Peruvian police officials said Wednesday.

There is “incriminating evidence” linking van der Sloot to the killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez, who was found dead in a Lima hotel room Wednesday, Cesar Guardia Vasquez, of the criminal investigations unit said at a news conference.
The hotel room where Flores was found was registered in van der Sloot’s name, he said.

A hotel guest and an employee witnessed the pair entering the hotel room together at 5 a.m. on Sunday, Guardia said.
Police have video of the previous night, May 29, of van der Sloot and Flores together at the Atlantic City Casino in Lima, he said.

According to immigration officials, van der Sloot fled to Chile over land on Monday, Guardia said.

“We have all the evidence to show that the killer is this man,” the victim’s father, businessman and race-car driver Ricardo Flores told CNN en Español.

But van der Sloot’s attorney, Joseph Tacopino, told CNN it was too early to make any conclusions.

“If history teaches us any lesson from van der Sloot/Holloway case, it’s that there have been way too many false facts that have been leaked and rumors that have been proven untrue,” Tacopino said. “We need to take a step back. I have not been contacted and the family has not been contacted. Joran has not been asked by anyone to surrender.”

Ricardo Flores said that police found his daughter’s car about 50 blocks from the hotel, and that inside, they found pills like those used in date rape cases.

Similar to the Holloway case, van der Sloot allegedly met at a night spot, in this case, a casino. Ricardo Flores said he did not believe that his daughter knew the Dutch citizen from before.

Both of them speak English, and at the casino they struck up conversation, he said.

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.

Forgive me for the tracheal vomiting: North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue has called in the National Guard to aid in the search for the remaining 2 missing women from the total of 11-ish persons who have turned up dead in Edgecombe County.

This reminds me of the dangers of overkill. When I was a kid I often trampled my mother’s flower garden, then tired to fix the problem by overcompensating: I once replaced her petunias with a maple tree – earnest, but conspicuous.

For all my criticisms of the Surete du Quebec, I have always admired their cunning dealing with problems. When I brought to their attention that they were in need of a cold case squad, did they acknowledge the problem? Hardly. They initiated a cold case squad, then pretended the idea was theirs all along, even going so far as to suggest that such a unit had been in place for years before the public was screaming for the need…

… gotta admire the balls.

Which brings us back to the case of the alleged Rocky Mount Serial Killer. You don’t just call in the National Guard without some implicit acknowledgment of the associated guilt: yada-yada-yada these were minority victims… yada-yada-yada we did nothing FOR YEARS until the public finally caught on to the obvious negligence of our inaction.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to fill in the rest. Here is the article from today’s News & Observer:

N.C. National Guard to aid in search for two missing Edgecombe women

BY THOMASI MCDONALD – STAFF WRITER
RALEIGH — Calling for a “more boots on the ground” approach, Gov. Bev Perdue has activated the North Carolina National Guard to help the Edgecombe County Task Force search for two missing women, the governor’s office announced today.

Edgecombe County Sheriff James L. Knight requested the assistance, according to a press statement from Perdue’s office.

Knight first contacted over the weekend, Rueben Young, the state’s secretary of crime control and public safety, asking for the National Guard’s help with finding if the remains of two other woman who have been reported missing, Yolonda Reee “Snap” Lancaster, 37, and Joyce Renee Durham, 26, are among the the bodies of five women who have been found in the woods off Seven Bridges Road in Northern Edgecombe County. Two were found not far away. A third was found near Scotland Neck.

Lancaster’s family has not seen her since March 2008. Durham was reported missing in June of 2007.

The guardsmen will be searching around Seven Bridges road near Whitakers, where the remains of five women have been found since August 2007.

“Having more boots on the ground will help law enforcement agencies cover a larger area and speed up search efforts,” Perdue said.

“We started to get more boots on the ground this morning,” Chrissy Pearson, a governor’s spokeswoman said today.

The National Guard provided about 100 soldiers who searched today for Lancaster and Durham. The soldiers are from the 1132nd and 514th military police companies, headquartered out of Rocky Mount and Greenville respectively. The task force, which has local, state and federal authorities, will be searching throughout the week.

In all, eight bodies have been found.

The skeletal remains of the latest victim, Roberta Williams, 40, was found March 27, in the woods off Seven Bridges Road by a group of all-terrain vehicle riders.

It’s not clear how Williams was found, but sheriff’s investigators are treating it as a suspicious death.

Earlier that month, on March 5, authorities found the remains of Christine Marie Boone, 43, in a wooded area in Scotland Neck in Halifax County.

After Williams’ body was found, Knight said his office notified the families of Lancaster and Durham.

But Williams had not been reported missing. When investigators probed her disappearance they obtained her medical records and the state medical examiner’s office used the information to identify her body, Knight said.

A task force consisting of the sheriff’s office, Rocky Mount police and the State Bureau of Investigation, began working together in June to determine if the women’s deaths were related and possibly the work of a serial killer.

In September. a grand jury indicted Antwan Maurice Pittman in the slaying of Taraha Shenice Nicholson, one of the women whose bodies have been found in the rural section of the county. Authorities have not said if Pittman would be charged with any of the other deaths.

The first victim, Melody Wiggins, 29, was found by police May 29, 2005 on Noble Mill Pond Road.

The partially skeletal, nude remains of Jackie Thorpe, 35, were found Aug. 17, 2007 in a trash heap behind a burned out crack house off Seven Bridges Road.

On March 13, 2008, the remains of Ernestine Battle, 50, were found facedown in the woods. Her remains were unclothed.

The skeletal remains of Jarneice “Sunshine” Hargrove, 31, were discovered June 29 by a migrant farmer working in a field.

The remains of Elizabeth Jane Smallwood, 33, were discovered in February of last year by Rocky Mount city employees and state prison inmates in a wooded area on Melton Road.

All of the women were African American and living on the margins of society with a history of drugs or prostitution and had disappeared. Family members and friends have said that some of the women knew each other.

Two disappointments cloaked as victories this week (the other I’ll get to shortly)…

The first is the discovery of remains in Edgecombe County last Saturday that have now been positively identified as those of Roberta Williams. I have avoided commenting on this recent newsoid for fear of flogging the Rocky Mount Missing Women story into the ground. My contempt for how authorities have mishandled these cases is hardly a secret, so let’s just spell it out:

Blatant racism… 11 black people are murdered or go missing in an area the size of a postage stamp and for nearly a decade no one manages to give a tinker’s cuss about the matter. Yes, deja shades of Robert Pickton and the Vancouver downtown Eastside murders all over again. It only took the Olympic games for B.C. to recover from that tragedy, so what do you think is in store for the tiny impoverished East Carolina region of Rocky Mount? I will tell you: the trauma of endless fear, self-loathing and humiliation.

It is no balm that Rocky Mount chief of police has finally… glacially… come forward and stated what has been obvious to my five-year-old child all along:  ”It’s clear that we are dealing with a suspected serial killer.”.

Thank you chief, you can go back to whatever busy work has occupied you for the last decade (perhaps there’s an abandoned vehicle that needs towing?). This week NC Wanted anchor Gerald Owens finally grew a pair and boldly asked of the chief, “how many more victims are there?”. Thanks for showing up Gerald, where have you been? This isn’t about giving your Kodak image the perfect frame for tragedy: this is a real story, with real families that are suffering: you should have been in the game years ago.

While we all sit and wait for this to play out (ya, as if it’s some kind of parlor game), the prime suspect, Antwan Pittman has been sitting in jail for 8 months. What are authorities waiting for? For a gun to literally smoke? Meanwhile victims’ families continue to be traumatized daily by the mistakes and missteps of an uncaring and insensitive media and justice system.

Let’s not forget that in the midst of this madness Newsweek got it right 5 months ago:

“For the families who just want to locate their daughters or bring closure to their murders, the investigation has been a long, drawn-out process. Tucker speaks about her daughter in the past tense, quickly catches herself, and shifts to the present tense, emphasizing her commitment to finding her daughter. “As far as the investigation goes, I just hope they continue to do the best they can to put closure to the missing girls and the girls that have been found,” Tucker says. “Whatever it is, we are here waiting.”

“Regardless of drug addiction or other problems, that still doesn’t give a person the right to kill another,” says Knight. “If we can give a terrorist a day in court, we can get these women justice.”"

Is anyone surprised by this news?  No. Because we still have a police culture so set in its ways that they’d prefer to rely on memory, scratch pads and file boxes to solve problems when more than adequate tools are practically begging for utilization. Tools that could save lives:

PC News by David Murphy

MINNEAPOLIS – A new online database promises to crack some of the nation’s 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren’t aware of it, and others aren’t convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.

Janice Smolinski hopes that changes — and soon. Her son, Billy, was 31 when he vanished five years ago. The Cheshire, Conn., woman fears he was murdered, his body hidden away.

She’s now championing a bill in Congress, named “Billy’s Law” after her son, that would set aside more funding and make other changes to encourage wider use of NamUs. Only about 1,100 of the nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide are registered to use the system, even though it already has been hailed for solving 16 cases since it became fully operational last year.

“As these cases become more well known, as people learn about the successes of NamUs, more and more agencies are going to want to be part of it,” said Kristina Rose, acting director of the National Institute of Justice at the Justice Department.

Before NamUs, families and investigators had to go through the slow process of checking with medical examiner’s offices one by one. As the Smolinski family searched for clues to Billy’s fate, they met a maze of federal, state and nonprofit missing person databases that weren’t completely public and didn’t share information well with each other.

NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, allows one-stop sleuthing for amateurs, families and police. Anyone can enter all the data they have on a missing person, including descriptions, photos, fingerprints, dental records and DNA. Medical examiners can enter the same data on unidentified bodies, and anyone can search the database for potential matches that warrant further investigation.

So far, about 6,200 sets of remains and nearly 2,800 missing people have been entered, said Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center in Largo, Fla., which runs NamUs for the Justice Department.

Detective Jim Shields of the Omaha, Neb., Police Department hadn’t heard about NamUs until he saw a presentation at a conference in 2008. He then had a local volunteer associated with NamUs input his data on several missing people.

Among them was Luis Fernandez, who had been missing for nearly a year before his family went to police in 2008. Shields didn’t have a lot on Fernandez, a known gang member who’d been in and out of jail — only gender, race, height, weight, age and some data on his tattoos.

It proved to be enough. Just a few weeks later, similarities were spotted with the unidentified remains of a homicide victim found in a farm field in Iowa in 2007. In January, a lab informed Shields it had a DNA match — and that he could break the news to Fernandez’ family.

“I could say fairly certainly that this would never have been solved if not for NamUs,” Shields said.

Some other recent successes:

• Paula Beverly Davis, of the Kansas City, Mo., area, had been missing for 22 years until a relative saw a public service announcement on TV in October for NamUs and told her sister, who gave it a try. Among the 10 matches her sister found were a body dumped in Ohio in 1987 that had the same rose and unicorn tattoos as her sister. DNA tests confirmed the body was Davis.

• Sonia Lente disappeared in 2002. Last June, an amateur cybersleuth with the Doe Network, a nationwide volunteer group that helps law enforcement solve cold cases, noticed similarities between Lente’s description in NamUs and an unidentified body found near Albuquerque, N.M., in 2004. Dental records later established it was Lente.

Detective Stuart Somershoe of the Phoenix Police Department said his agency, which has over 500 open missing persons cases, just finished entering 100 cases into NamUs. He’s hopeful his department can make a match.

“It’s kind of time-consuming but I think it’s a worthwhile program,” Somershoe said.

NamUs grew out of a Justice Department task force working on the challenge of solving missing persons cases. One need that the task force identified was to give people who could help solve cases better access to database information.

“Billy’s Law” sailed through the House late last month and is pending in the Senate, where supporters are confident it will easily pass.

The bill would authorize $10 million in grants annually that police, sheriffs, medical examiners and coroners could use to train people to use NamUs and to help cover the costs of entering data into the system. It would also authorize another $2.4 million a year to run the system and ensure permanent funding.

The bill would also link NamUs with a major FBI crime database that’s now available only to law enforcement, partly because it contains sensitive information about ongoing investigations. That confidential data would be withheld from NamUs when necessary.

Billy Smolinski, of Waterbury, Conn., was last seen Aug. 24, 2004, when he asked a neighbor to look after his dog. His pickup truck was later found outside his home, though not where he usually parked it. His wallet and other belongings were still inside.

The Smolinski family first struggled to get police to take a missing adult case seriously. It took a long time for investigators to finally conclude Billy had been killed, perhaps as a result of a love triangle gone sour. The family put up reward posters, searched places where they thought his body might have been hidden and kept pressure on police.

Smolinski said she came to see how police were often overwhelmed, but to her NamUs is a “no-brainer.”

“If they find remains I’m hopeful they’ll identify him through NamUs,” Smolinski said.

On the Net:

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System: http://www.namus.gov

Police have a suspect in the case of Louise Chaput, the Sherbrooke social worker who disappeared and was found murdered in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 2001. NH police aren’t saying much other than that the suspect is male and lived in the NH region at that time.

There is DNA evidence from the crime scene that could link the suspect.

- TVA film footage here.

- Details on Chaput from the NH cold case website here.

Well this certainly throws a spanner in the works:

Police are looking for another missing woman in the same city that Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd was from. Belleville authorities issued a release late Saturday asking for information about Deborah Rashotte, who was last seen about a month ago.

Rashotte’s disappearance came two weeks before Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd vanished on Jan. 27. Lloyd’s body was discovered two weeks ago and her death has now been linked to Col. Russell Williams, the former base commander of CFB Trenton.

Rashotte’s family reported her missing on Friday. Her last known location was St. Thomas Church in Belleville.

Ashley Clancey, a friend of Rashotte’s for about eight years, says her friend is a free spirit and for a long time, everybody in her life assumed that she was staying with somebody else.

It was the Williams case that alarmed Rashotte’s friends and family about the length of time she was missing, and they fear something is very wrong, Clancey said.

“She’s a very outgoing person, very friendly,” Clancey told CTV Ottawa. 

“She’d probably talk to about anybody. That’s the kind of person she is.”

Abandoned cell phone in bathroom

Rashotte’s cell phone was left in the bathroom of her father, where the 27-year-old was living. The last call on it was made on Jan. 23, and on Feb. 4 service was suspended due to non-payment, Clancey said.

Belleville police were not immediately available for comment. In the case of Lloyd, her cell phone and purse were also left in the house where she was staying prior to her disappearance and death.

Rashotte is described as five feet seven inches and 130 pounds. She has long, red hair and blue eyes and was last wearing a white jacket.

Anyone with any information should contact the Belleville Police Service at 613-966-0882.

New commander takes over at Trenton base

Lt.-Col. Dave Cochrane, a Toronto native, will take over Williams’ position at CFB Trenton. Williams is currently charged with causing the murder of Jessica Lloyd, whose funeral was on Saturday, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau.

He is also accused of sexually assaulting two women in Tweed, a small town just outside of Trenton.

Police said in previous days that they are combing through cold cases in all of his previous locations, which include academics at Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto and postings at the Royal Military College, with postings in Portage la Prairie, Man., CFB Shearwater in Nova Scotia, the Middle East and Gatineau.

His name was Russell Sovka for part of his youth, when his mother divorced and then re-married his then-stepfather, Jerry.

Members of the Sovka family told CTV News Channel that the charges did not fit with the picture of the boy they knew.

His mother, Nonie, still lives in Toronto and works at Sunnybrook Health Centre. His wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, is the associate executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Court appearance set for Thursday

As investigators searched Williams’ Ottawa home, two properties his wife owns and a lakeside couple that belongs to the couple, reports said Williams was placed under a suicide watch at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee, Ont., which is about 60 kilometres east of CFB Trenton.

The Ottawa police told CTV Ottawa that they and the OPP will share files as the scope of the investigation widens.

“To date, we’ve talked to people in break and enter and sex assault, but we’re merely in the preliminary stages of this invesigation,” said Insp. Al Tario of the Ottawa police.

With files from CTV Ottawa’s Kimothy Walker, Karen Soloman, CTV.ca and the Canadian Press