who killed theresa?

My two cents? A complete failure of the Quebec / Canadian public safety system:

Nurse heard confession in Julie Surprenant disappearance, hearing told

MONTREAL – The way Annick Prud’Homme tells it, a special room at Cité de la Santé Hospital in Laval serves as an unofficial confessional.

The auxiliary nurse was one of the people Richard Bouillon confessed to days before he died of cancer, on June 21, 2006, admitting he killed Julie Surprenant, a 16-year-old student who disappeared in November 1999.

The girl’s body has never been found and Quebec Coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier is holding a public inquiry at the Laval courthouse to determine why Bouillon’s confession was only revealed in 2011. The coroner said one goal of the public inquiry is to find out why information about the confession was not passed on to police immediately.

Last year, after the confession came to light, the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec said nurses can’t divulge such information because of rules that govern “professional secrets.”

Bouillon was never charged with Surprenant’s disappearance or her death, but Sûreté du Québec investigation into it produced sexual assault charges against him from two different women. In 2003, he received a 10-year sentence for those crimes and was stricken with cancer three years later. He was transferred from a penitentiary in Drummondville to Cité de la Santé Hospital in Laval eight days before he died. The SQ tried to get him to confess before he was transferred, but Bouillon told the investigators nothing.

At that point it was widely known that Bouillon had been at the centre of the investigation into Surprenant’s disappearance.

Prud’Homme testified Tuesday morning that Bouillon confessed to her three times during his eight-day stay at the hospital. She said he made the admissions to her while asking for a chance to talk to Claude Poirier, a well-known TVA journalist who is often contacted by criminals. Prud’Homme said she assumed Bouillon’s request to talk to Poirier would eventually put the two men in contact. She said she assumed Correctional Service Canada handled the request because the special room at the hospital is under their jurisdiction. She said the room in which Bouillon made the confessions is designed like a prison cell. It is used to treat up to two inmates from federal penitentiaries at any given time and a guard is always in the room when an inmate is present. Laval is home to three federal penitentiaries.

A lawyer for Correctional Service Canada, who is part of the inquiry, was asked by the coroner on Tuesday to see if personnel records about who guarded Bouillon at the hospital are still available.

Prud’Homme said Bouillon added details the third and final time he confessed to killing Surprenant. He said he placed her body in a sports bag, added bricks to it and tossed it into the Mille Îles River in Terrebonne, behind a church. She also said it wasn’t until January 2011, after seeing Poirier host a show about Surprenant’s disappearance, that she “fully realized” Bouillon never talked to the journalist. She said she previously assumed Poirier and Bouillon had spoken and that is why she didn’t come forward until 2011.

Last year, police divers searched a section of the river they believe Bouillon was referring to but found nothing.

Prud’Homme said she shared the information with colleagues in 2006 and said that she “would be surprised” if the guards assigned to the room on one of the three occasions didn’t overhear Bouillon’s confessions.

She said Bouillon also told her he had raped “girls and boys” in a park in Laval’s Vimont district – crimes he was never charged with. She testified she never felt Bouillon’s confession was protected by a code of “professional secrets.”

She said that, in her opinion, only a patient’s medical information is confidential.

She also said she regrets not having done more in 2006.

“I didn’t even think of it,” when asked if she ever felt Bouillon’s confession was protected by an obligation on her part to respect “professional secrets” as her professional order claimed last year.

Prud’Homme also said inmates dying of a terminal illness often confess their past sins to nurses in the room. Lawyer Marc Bellemare, representing Julie’s father, Michel Surprenant, at the inquiry, asked Prud’Homme if the hospital has any protocol in place to deal with such information. Prud’Homme worked in the room from 2005 to 2008 and said she had never heard of such a protocol while she was assigned there and hasn’t heard of any since.

Johanne Dubois, a nurse’s assistant at Cité de la Santé, testified after Prud’Homme and said Bouillon also confessed to her about two days before he died.

“He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘It was me who killed her’,” Dubois said, adding all the nurses in the department knew Bouillon was a suspect in Surprenant’s disappearance.

“Why did you believe him,” Bellemare asked.

“Because of the way he looked at me,” Dubois said.

Trudel-Tessier asked Dubois if she would handle such a situation differently now. Dubois said she would, but her answer was less than convincing.

“I think it would be different. I’d call the police or do something. I don’t know,” Dubois said.

During a break at the inquiry, Pina Arcamone, head of the Missing Children’s Network, said that Prud’Homme’s testimony was difficult to listen to.

“I think it is really upsetting that there were no protocols in place and there still are no protocols in place, especially in cases involving unresolved crimes,” Arcamone said. “It’s unexplainable at this point.”

At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, SQ Sgt. Sebastien Rousseau testified Bouillon was a suspect in Julie’s disappearance from Day 1.

He lived in the same building as Surprenant’s family and had a criminal record for several sex offences involving minors.

Rousseau said Bouillon underwent a polygraph test and it indicated he was not telling the whole truth about the disappearance.

Traces of human blood were found on Bouillon’s boots and in his car but tests done on them did not establish a link to the missing girl, the investigator said.

Michel Surprenant is expected to testify for the inquiry on Wednesday. A member of the SQ who is an expert on a sex-offender registry accessible to police is also expected to testify.

… and that’s the end of that sad chapter. I have blog pretty extensively about Andrew Dalzell, and where our lives intersect. I’m not going to tell the whole disturbing story again. You can read it here.

I DO like that when you Google his name, this blog is the first thing that gets tossed up. Otherwise he and his transgressions would die in obscurity. Thanks to Beth Velliquette of the Herald-Sun for keeping this story alive.

CARRBORO – A murder confession made by a Carrboro murder suspect came back to bite him during a sentencing hearing for a completely different case in federal court.

The man who made the confession, which was later suppressed in state court, was Andrew Douglas Dalzell, who grew up in and around the Carrboro area. He is serving about 26 years in a federal prison in South Carolina for attempting to lure an 11-year-old girl into a sexual relationship in Asheville.

But Dalzell was once in the news in Orange County when he was arrested in the killing of Deborah Leigh Key in Carrboro.

Key, 35, disappeared after leaving a Main Street bar in 1997, and witnesses told police they saw Dalzell talking with Key at the bar that night. One witness told police that when he left the bar after it closed, he saw Key and Dalzell in the nearby Bank of America parking lot.

Key was never seen again, and her remains have never been discovered. For seven years, police suspected Dalzell killed her, but investigators couldn’t get enough evidence to charge him.

Then in 2004, using a series of tricks, that included showing Dalzell a warrant and a letter indicating he was being charged with first-degree murder and could be sentenced to death, when in fact he was being arrested for stealing some figurines from a store where he previously worked, Dalzell confessed to Carrboro officers that he had killed Key and driven her body to Wilmington, where he dumped her body in a large trash receptacle.

According to documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Dalzell told Carrboro police that he and Key were talking in the parking lot. When he tried to hug her, she spun around and slapped him. Dalzell said he grabbed her neck and couldn’t let go. She collapsed and he scooped her into the back seat of the car and drove east to Wilmington where he put her body in a Dumpster behind a strip mall.

When the case came to court, Dalzell’s attorneys argued his confession should be thrown out because the officers did not read him his Miranda rights before questioning him. Superior Court Judge Wade Barber agreed and wrote a long order, citing multiple violations of standard police procedures and law that Carrboro officers violated, and he suppressed the confession. Without the confession, police didn’t have enough evidence to hold Dalzell on the murder charge and he was released

Seven years later, that murder confession was used against Dalzell in federal court after Dalzell pleaded guilty to the federal charge of coercion and enticement for attempting to entice an 11-year-old girl to pose for child pornography.

According to law enforcement officials, Dalzell began communicating over the Internet with someone who he believed to be an 11-year-old girl named Megan. He initiated sexually explicit chats and solicited Megan to meet him for the purpose of taking sexually explicit photographs of her performing oral sex on a man.

Dalzell also sent “Megan” a modeling contract that would make her the property of the agency. If she stayed with him as his “pretty little slavegirl model,” he would pay her $300. He sent her a pornographic photo of a girl performing oral sex so she would get the idea of what kind of photographs he wanted to take, according to the federal documents.

“Megan,” however, was actually a detective with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office in Asheville posing as an 11-year-old girl, and when Dalzell showed up in the mobile home park where she supposedly lived, he was arrested.

That led him to federal court in the Western District last year where he pleaded guilty to the charge, which carried a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison.

Based on his criminal history, Dalzell was categorized as a Level II offender, and federal sentencing guidelines called for him to be sentenced to 253 to 293 months or about 21 years to 24½ years in prison.

However, during the sentencing hearing, federal prosecutors asked that he be sentenced at a higher level because of his “extreme conduct,” in which he stated during his Internet chats with “Megan” that he wished to turn her into his slave.

During the chats, he spoke of his willingness to torture and bind his slaves and described in graphic sexual detail the way he would murder a slave who was noncompliant, according to the prosecutor’s response to Dalzell’s appeal.

The judge denied that request.

Prosecutors also wanted the murder confession, which had been thrown out in state court, to be considered as part of his criminal history in federal court. They argued that Dalzell made the statement voluntarily and that the police tactics were not enough to overcome his will.

The court ruled that despite Judge Barber’s order suppressing his confession, it was still admissible for purposes of sentencing, and he granted the addition of three points to his criminal history, moving him from a Level II offender to a Level III offender, which calls for a longer prison sentence.

In the end, the judge sentenced Dalzell to about 26 1/2 years in prison.

Although when he pleaded guilty to the charge, Dalzell assured the judge that he knew he could not appeal his sentence, he appealed anyway.

He appealed the ruling that the murder confession could be used to increase the number of points in his criminal history.

The Court of Appeals considered first whether Dalzell had the right to appeal and found that his right to appeal was foreclosed by his appeal waiver that he made when he pleaded guilty to the charge in federal court.

It also ruled that there was no evidence that his defense counsel was ineffective and it declined to address the merits of that claim.

His attorney gave notice that the decision might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Brianna Maitland

DANBY, Vt. — Vermont State Police say it could be some time before investigators are able to determine the identity of the woman’s skull found by the side of the road in Danby.

Detectives and others scoured the area along Danby Hill Road on Wednesday where the skull was found on Sunday by a passer-by, but they found no additional clues.

The medical examiner’s office says the skull appears to be that of a young adult Caucasian female who could have been the victim of a crime.

Police are checking records to see if the skull could be from any open missing persons cases.

Police noted two particular cases: the 1991 disappearance of Heidi Wilbur from Middletown Springs and the 2004 disappearance from Montgomery of Brianna Maitland.

I’ll post in bullets:

• Rob Tripp from CanCrime caught wind of the Victims of Homicide survey and wants to pitch a story about it to the national press.
• I did a telephone interview today with a reporter with Avis de Recherche, an online video station about Canadien crime (ya… after 8 months my French was REALLY rusty… I am re-inspired by one of my daughters, Theresa who has announced that she will take French in middle-school). Story will be posted in the next 2 months.
• Another interview request! Someone from Northern Mysteries, a documentary TV series about unsolved mysteries, wants to do a story on Theresa (what is in the water?). Though I did have to correct her on the assumption that Theresa is missing (No, no… found, and very much DEAD).
• There is a general consensus that my voice has been very much missed (I’m touched! Thanks guys!). Nice to be back in the game.
• I will post something on what I’ve been up to in the past 8 months; in time, I’m still processing.
• I should have an announcement about the scholarship shortly.
• On a side note: since the release of The King of Limbs I am on a total Radiohead jag, just can’t get enough.

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.”"