Another pointless article in the Raleigh News & Observer. What, was this written by the Associated press? You’d think they were doing a national news roundup for all the care and detail they don’t give the piece.

Hello? News & Observer? This isn’t some regional news bon-bon, it’s the story of eight nine people who have turned up dead less than 30 miles from your outskirts. This is likely the work of a serial killer? Raleigh? this is your problem too.

News and Observer, March 13, 2010

Skeletal remains found a week ago in a wooded area in Scotland Neck have been identified as a Rocky Mount woman missing for nearly four years.

Christine Marie Boone, 43, was last seen Aug. 25, 2006, in Rocky Mount by a family member. Law enforcement officials recovered her remains in a wooded area behind a vacant mobile home at 98 Nasturtium Lane, Scotland Neck, and her identity was confirmed by the Greenville medical examiner.

Antwan Maurice Pittman lived in that mobile home in 2006, according to a Rocky Mount Police Department news release. But, on Friday, Pittman had not been charged with Boone’s death.

Pittman is currently being held at the Edgecombe County jail, arrested in September and charged with the strangulation death of Taraha Shenice Nicholson, 28, one of six homicides dating back to 2005. Boone is the seventh.

All of the victims were black women, most with troubled pasts of drug abuse and prostitution.

Five of the bodies were recovered from a swampy, wooded area in rural Edgecombe County, about 60 miles northeast of Raleigh. The sixth woman’s body was discovered about seven miles from where the others were found.

A task force of local, state and federal law enforcement officials was formed last June to investigate the possibility of a serial killer.

Two women who fit the profile of those slain remain missing.

Joyce Renee Durham, 46, was reported missing in June 2007. Yolanda Renee “Snap” Lancaster, 37, was reported missing in March 2008.

Anyone with information about Boone’s death should contact Halifax County Sheriff Jeff Frazier or Major Bruce Temple at 252-583-8201. Callers also may contact Twin County Crime Stoppers at 252-977-1111 or the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office at 252-641-7911.

Police found the remains of Christine Marie Boone behind a residence once occupied by Antwan Maurice Pittman. That brings the total to 9 bodies found in the area surrounding the small town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Explain to me how police do not have yet enough evidence to charge Antwan Maurice Pittman? Just how badly have police botched these cases?

ROCKY MOUNT (WTVD) — Police say they’ve identified skeletal remains found in a wooded area behind 98 Nasturtium Lane in Scotland Neck on March 5 as 43-year-old Christine Marie Boone.

She was reported missing to the Rocky Mount Police Department on January 16, 2007 and was last seen on August 25, 2006 at 801 S. Grace Street in Rocky Mount by a family member. Police said the address at 98 Nasturtium Lane is a vacant mobile home presently, but they said Antwan Maurice Pittman lived there in 2006. Pittman was arrested in September 2009 for death of Taraha Nicholson and is in the custody of the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Department.

He has not been charged in Boone’s death and police said the investigation is ongoing.

Six other women found slain

Pittman is just charged with the single murder. Police have not called him a suspect in six other deaths.

In addition to Nicholson, Ernestine Battle, 50, Jackie Nikelia Thorpe, 35, Melody Wiggins, 29, and Jarneice Hargrove, 31, were all found between 2005 and early this year in the same rural area outside Rocky Mount.

The body of the first woman – Wiggins – was found in May 2005 on Noble Mill Pond Road. She’d been beaten and stabbed.

Thorpe was found in August 2007. Her head and an arm had been cut off.

In February, skeletal remains that have yet to be identified were found, and then Battle was found in March, 2008 in some woods. The medical examiner said it was not possible to determine a cause of death.

Nicholson was found in March, and Hargrove was found in June by a farmer.

Two other women are missing.

Yolanda Lancaster, 37, and Joyce Renee Durham, 46, have not been heard from by their families for months.

The victims all had similar backgrounds. All were linked to drug abuse and possible prostitution.

Investigators have refused to speculate on whether the killings are the work of a serial killer.

Public’s help needed

Police say they need the public’s assistance in providing any information they may have. Anyone with information in the Boone death investigation is asked to contact Halifax County Sheriff Jeff Frazier or Major Bruce Temple at (252) 583-8201.

Here’s an interesting perspective. This is a Google photo of my former house at 500 Robin Road (the red “A”:  where they thought Debbie Key was murdered (read Bad Dream House):

That monstrosity to the left? That would be former Senator John Edwards’ spread. A house is not a home?  I saw him a couple of weeks ago at the Harris Teeter buying his own groceries. Things change.

Rocky Mount deaths could go unsolved

RALEIGH, N.C. — The deaths of several women found in a 10-mile radius near Rocky Mount may never result in a conviction of the person or people responsible for their deaths, if they are determined to be homicides.

That’s according to retired Raleigh police detective Chris Morgan, who says there might not be enough evidence to build a case.

Morgan, who isn’t connected in any way to the investigation, says that based on what he can tell from autopsy results on the six victims – each discovered within a four-year period – prosecutors face an uphill battle in taking the cases to trial.Morgan talks about the challenges of a conviction.)

That’s because, of the six women, medical examiners have only been able to determine how two of them died.

“Undetermined cause of death is a huge challenge,” he said, adding that most prosecutors are reluctant to take a case to court without it. “You have to be able to articulate something from the witness stand about how an individual died. You have to have some workable theory about how the murder happened.” (Morgan talks about the challenges of an undetermined death.)

Of the two cases where a cause of death is known, Morgan says there is little likelihood that physical evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA, could have been recovered to help link the victim to her offender. (Morgan talks about the importance of evidence.)

All of the bodies were found in a rural area that is abundant with wildlife and insects, and they have been exposed to the elements for weeks, months and in some cases, years.

“All these things, once death occurs, start working against the investigator,” Morgan said. “A body that’s been left out for a week, in particularly in the warmer months in North Carolina, is going to be, in many cases, devoid of some of the most useful evidence that investigators look for in homicide investigations.”

A special task force of local, state and federal authorities is looking for possible links among the six cases.

The victims – Melody Wiggins, Jackie Thorpe, Ernestine Battle, Taraha Nicholson, Jarniece Hargrove and Elizabeth Smallwood – fit a similar profile. Each was black, had a history of drug use, prostitution or both, and family members and friends said many knew each other.

Investigators, however, have said very little about the case publicly, and family members say they have not heard much else.

The last time authorities spoke of the case was in September, when they charged Antwan Pittman in Nicholson’s death; an autopsy found she died of strangulation.

Hoping for further developments in the investigation – possibly more charges against Pittman – family members say they are now frustrated and upset that questions about their loved ones’ deaths remain unsolved.

Hargrove’s skeletal remains were discovered June 29 in a wooded area off Seven Bridges Road – more than a month after her family reported her missing.

“It’s just sad that it’s taken all this many months, and they haven’t succeeded on anything. If they have, they haven’t let us know anything,” her sister, Pepita Hargrove, said. “I know they can’t let out but so much information, but they can let the families that are grieving and crying constantly every day – they can let us know something.”

Autopsy results were inconclusive about how Hargrove died.

“They’re saying (her death) can’t be determined. That’s not enough information for me, and I’m not going to rest until somebody says something more,” Hargrove said. “My sister wasn’t out in the field picking daisies and fell on a rock and hit her head and rotted out there in the woods.”

Investigators can also look at circumstantial evidence to help in the investigations.

“You start looking at the circumstances — where these women were, who they were seen with, how they knew each other – and start trying to link cases and find common links,” Morgan said.

He says that after physical evidence, the next step is to build a profile and a timeline on a suspect and for investigators to reach out with as much information as possible. (Morgan on reaching out to the public.)

“You have to engage the public,” Morgan said. “They are your best weapon in working a case like this, because people see things. It’s just sometimes they don’t realize what they’ve seen.”

One of Morgan’s biggest unsolved cases, the 2002 rape and murder of Stephanie Bennett in Raleigh, was solved after more than three years, in part, because he kept the case in the media spotlight.

Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight, who is overseeing five of the six cases, has generally declined to comment about them, and calls to his office have gone unreturned.

Rocky Mount police, who are handling the investigation into Smallwood’s death, as well as the missing persons cases of three other women fitting the same profile, are “actively working those cases” and seeking new leads from the public, a spokeswoman said.

“(The media) is the best weapon I’ve got to communicate with large numbers of people throughout the community and if I’m not willing to talk with news reporters, then I’m not using one of the most important potential weapons that I have in getting information,” Morgan said.

“You’ve got to replace that lack of physical evidence with something else, and that is most often times information that is buried somewhere deep in the community,” he added. “But it’s in that community, and you’ve got to pull it out.”

Just because a corporate profiler says it’s so don’t make it right (remember, he’s working for his own interests). Still, it might be time to add Travis RaRagus Harrison to the map:

Profiler: Crossdresser likely a victim of same killer as women

By Mike Hixenbaugh

Rocky Mount Telegram
Wednesday, December 09, 2009

A crime psychologist says he believes a crossdresser found dead in Rocky Mount three years ago likely was the victim of the same killer who claimed the lives of seven area women between 2003 and earlier this year.

The parents of 24-year-old Travis RaRegus Harrison said this week that Rocky Mount police are looking into possible connections between their son’s death and the unsolved deaths of seven women, as well as three other missing women. A fisherman and his son found Harrison’s naked body on June 25, 2006, discarded in a thicket along the Tar River off East Virginia Street.

“I’m believing that this murder, more probably than not, is related to the others,” said John Kelly, profiler and president of the New Jersey-based System to Apprehend Lethal Killers.

Kelly has followed the Rocky Mount case closely since June, when investigators announced a state and local task force investigation into the series of missing women and murders in the community. Kelly said the fact that Harrison was a known crossdresser would have made him a potential target for a habitual killer who typically stalks women.

Like the seven other victims, Harrison was black, known to abuse cocaine and sometimes traded his body to pacify his addiction.

“The guy matches the profile of all the female victims,” Kelly said. “He had the same drug of choice, was out in the same areas around the same timeframe, and he was a crossdresser. I have to believe it was probably the same killer, because for that size population, how many sexual murderers could you possibly have in the same area?”

That’s the question Harrison’s mother, Lillian Clark, said she has been asking herself. Clark sat with her husband, Joe, in their Branch Street living room Monday and tried to explain how she felt when she realized her son’s body had been found, naked except for his socks and discarded by the river a few miles from their home. She couldn’t find the words.

The Clarks were surrounded by framed photos of Lillian’s three children. As his wife recalled stories from her son’s childhood, Joe Clark reached above the couch and pulled down a picture of Harrison, his stepson.

“We didn’t know what he was into,” Joe Clark said. “You know kids. They don’t tell you what they do when they leave the house. It wasn’t until afterward that we found out.”

It had been several months since the Clarks had heard from authorities regarding the investigation into Harrison’s death. That was until two weeks ago, they said, when investigators from the Rocky Mount Police Department showed up asking for a new photo of their son. Capt. Laura Fahnestock said the visit was part of the department’s recent effort to re-examine unsolved cases, declining to speak in further detail about the case.

“They said they didn’t know anything new, and that they were out of leads,” Lillian Clark said. “And they said they were investigating to see if his death had anything to do with the other killings.”

Federal, state and local investigators have been careful not to say whether or not they have evidence showing the deaths are linked, but authorities said they believe similarities in the victims’ backgrounds and the circumstances of their deaths are enough to at least raise the suspicion of a possible serial killer.

Kelly, who played a role along with his partner Frank Adamson in helping profile and catch the Green River Killer in Seattle earlier this decade, said he’s almost certain the deaths have come at the hands of a habitual killer.

If he’s right, Kelly said, Harrison’s death wouldn’t be the first time a serial killer known for stalking women attacked a female impersonator. Kelly referenced the Tamiami Strangler, a Miami man who killed six prostitutes in 1994, including one crossdresser.

“It’s rare, but there are a few cases out there,” Kelly said. “It’s very plausible.”

When asked a couple of weeks ago about any possible connections between Harrison’s death and the seven women found dead since 2003, Rocky Mount police declined to detail their ongoing investigation. Because most of the bodies were found outside city limits, Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight is leading the probe, but Rocky Mount police are heading the investigations into the deaths of Harrison and Elizabeth Smallwood, both found within city limits.

“We investigate each case on its own, and we are not going to publicly link together any cases unless we have evidence showing that there is, in fact, a connection,” Fahnestock said. “Of course, we do consider other cases for any possible similarities when we investigate.”

Authorities in September arrested Antwan Maurice Pittman, 31, and charged him in one of the deaths, the March murder of 28-year-old Taraha Nicholson. Investigators won’t say if they believe the Rocky Mount man, a registered sex offender, might be involved in any of the other deaths.

N.C. Superior Court Judge Toby Fitch ordered that all arrest and search warrants related to the case be sealed from the public, making it difficult to surmise what evidence investigators might have linking Pittman to the murder.

The case, which grabbed national headlines this summer, has shined light on the city’s fight against the illegal sex and drug trade and has inspired a local coalition of community advocates working to raise awareness about murdered and missing women.

A $20,000 reward is offered to anyone with a tip leading to an arrest in the women’s deaths. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Twin County Crime Stoppers at 252-977-1111.

WITN News:

A bizarre twist in the investigation of the unsolved deaths of seven women in Rocky Mount and Edgecombe County, which some say is the work of a serial killer.

The parents of 24-year-old Travis Harrison, say Rocky Mount Police are looking into whether their sons death three years ago is linked to the women found dead, according to the Rocky Mount Telegram. The paper says Harrison was found dead in Rocky Mount in June 2006.

His stepfather tells the telegram, Harrison was a cross dresser, and like other victims, has been linked to drug abuse and prostitution.

I take great issue with Executive Editor, John Drescher’s grotesquely self-serving editorial in Saturday’s Raleigh News & Observer on the the Missing Women of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Drescher’s counters the report in Newsweek which offered that the media and authorities aren’t doing enough to shine a light on the situation primarily because the victims are black and marginalized by suggesting that the N&O has done an “adequate” job of covering the story of a possible serial killer in the Eastern part of the state.

Hogwash.

1. Drescher suggests ( through the indirect assuagement of a Rocky Mount council person) that the 12 articles that have been published in his paper are sufficient coverage for a town of 56,000. Mr. Drescher I will not put a quota on what is sufficient coverage, I will simply sat this: How many is sufficient? The number it takes to capture the perpetrator of these despicable acts; you are not done yet.

2. None too subtly the N&O’s executive editor tells us that Barry Saunders has covered the story more than once. Yes, we get it, you put your number one black reporter on what are potentially black crimes: you don’t get bonus points for that.

3.   We have nine cases of missing women / unsolved murders in this little town of 56,000: now is not the time for News & Observer attaboys for “adequate coverage”

4.   On the weekend of the most family oriented holiday for Americans in the year  you choose to run a story on missing women that is essentially patting yourself on the back? Learn a little sensitivity. Go back to Rocky Mount and ask those families what it’s like to spend another holiday without their loved one and without any sense that law enforcement is getting closer to solving the crimes.

Here is the paper’s article:

Killings Weren’t Ignored
Raleigh News & Observer

BY JOHN DRESCHER – EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Tags: local | news
Earlier this year, police quietly formed a group from several agencies to investigate whether six unsolved homicides in and around Rocky Mount were connected.

That city of 60,000 is 55 miles east of Raleigh, and we don’t often report from there.

But on July 8, we published our first of a dozen stories about the investigation. The article, which ran on our front page, gave the basics of the case and information on each of the six women.

In general, they led troubled lives; some had been involved in prostitution and illegal drug use. All were African-American.

On Sept. 1, Antwan Maurice Pittman, a convicted sex offender, was charged with murdering one of the women. Police won’t say whether they think he was involved in the other slayings.

Some people in Rocky Mount and beyond think news outlets did not give this story enough coverage.

An article on newsweek.com last month asked: “Why have the Rocky Mount homicides been largely ignored?”

It noted that the disappearances of Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson became national news, but the story of the Rocky Mount women did not. In contrast to the women in Rocky Mount, Levy, Holloway and Peterson were white, educated and from middle-class families.

Even though Rocky Mount is outside our primary coverage area in the Triangle, we thought this story was worth covering. Serial killers are rare. If one were on the loose, we wanted our readers to know.

News coverage makes a difference. It can help solve a case by provoking tips and new evidence. It can prompt reward money and the involvement of well-connected people. It can cause police agencies to put more investigators on the case.

Before Pittman’s arrest, we published six stories on the Rocky Mount case; two of them ran on the front page and another was a column on the front of Triangle & Co. by Barry Saunders.

After Pittman was arrested, we published six more stories, including two on the front page (one was another Saunders column) and two others on the Triangle front.

I think we did a good job in recognizing this was a story of interest to our readers in the Triangle and Eastern North Carolina.

Andre Knight, a member of the Rocky Mount City Council and president of the local chapter of the NAACP, credits The Rocky Mount Telegram and WRAL for breaking the story of the investigation in late June. Mike Hixenbaugh, the Telegram’s lead reporter on the story, has published many of the best stories on the killings.

Knight is critical of the national media. CNN aired a story, but Knight said the Rocky Mount killings have not received the attention of cases involving other women. He thinks race and class were factors in the story receiving little national coverage.

“We had some national attention but not nearly the attention we thought should have been brought to the women,” he said in a phone interview. “Historically, when we look at women who have been abducted that have been killed – non-African-American women – I think the story has been reported by the national media.”

Of The N&O he said: “I think that’s adequate coverage, especially for The N&O to cover Rocky Mount a dozen times.”

We could have done better. We would have liked to have broken the story about the investigation.

Even better would have been to identify the pattern of these deaths – the bodies were discovered in the same general area – months earlier and published those findings. We will continue to follow this story.

All lives have value, and every murder is a tragedy.

But not all homicides are as newsworthy as others. Making those coverage decisions is subjective. We have our own inclinations, as do each of you.

It’s healthy for us to question the assumptions we make about which homicides we cover and which we do not.

Killings Weren’t Ignored
Raleigh News & Observer

It’s healthy for us to question the assumptions we make about which homicides we cover and which we do not.

The local weekly independent newspaper here in North Carolina (the aptly named Independent Weekly) has a front page feature on civilian oversight of police forces. Who’s Watching The Cops profiles attempts in Durham and Chapel Hill by civilians to bring some level of transparency to allegations of police misconduct.

I’ve written so much on this subject – most recently a couple of weeks ago, I’ve included that post at the end of this one - I’m in danger of broken-record syndrome.

Anyway, let’s first note two delicious ironies in the Independent piece:

1.   One of the authors calling into question the Durham police department is none other than Samiha Khanna. Formerly with the Raleigh News and Observer, Khanna is the report who jumped-the-gun on the Duke Lacrosse scandal – she was the first local to appear on CNN – and took at face value everything that was alleged by the victim in that case. I hardly think Khanna is the best judge of anything having to do with the Durham PD.

2.   While some Chapel Hill residents call for police oversight in the small burg - and notably newly elected Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt seems to be being led by the nose on this issue – former Chapel Hill police chief and 31-year veteran of the force, Gregg Jarvies was the top cop called out of retirement to Spring Lake to clean up the NC town’s police force after allegations of corruption.  So I question the alleged charges of Chapel Hill’s long history of internal corruption.

 No one wants to see law enforcement held accountable for their actions more than myself. But let’s keep things in perspective. It is regrettable that some people got dusted-up by officers in Chapel Hill and Durham, but I don’t believe these cases warrant full scale public inquiries (never mind that Durham’s Civilian Police Review Board needs to do a better job of record keeping before it can be taken seriously).

When the police break the law, and even go so far as to commit crimes? That is another matter. A full inquiry was conducted in Quebec’s Matticks Affair in the 1990s which lead to the Poitras Commission Report; a $20 million dollar taxpayer dissection of Quebec’s Surete du Quebec police force, and even then citizens did not get the one most important thing they wanted: a civilian intermediary between the Justice Minister and the police.

Now in Quebec they are at it again, with the Surete du Quebec investigating the Montreal police. As they should; young Freddy Villanueva lost his life in a police altercation. But when it’s all over don’t expect to be happy with the outcome. This is an airing of laundry, not an opportunity to make any significant change to the manner by which law enforcement in Quebec are held accountable for their actions.

When citizens in Durham and Chapel Hill have a legitimate complaint against their local police, let them come forward with those allegations, but now is not the time for such actions.

Final note, for an excellent read on police oversight check out Carl Klockars’ The Contours of Police Integrity (I haven’t read it yet, but anything by Klockars is excellent)

Here is the older post:

—————————————————————–

CTV does a profile on why public inquiries don’t work; especially when police are conducting them. When I was considering completing a PhD in criminal justice my thesis was going to be the role of public inquiries in society… and I had already pretty much figured out they area waste of tax payer money ( you only have to look at Quebec’s Poitras Commission to figure that one out).

Yet, here is Quebec again throwing good money away at in inquiry into Montreal police conduct in the Freddy Villanueva shooting, with another police force, The Surete du Quebec leading up the commission.

Who Polices The Police indeed?

Recall Plato’s Noble Lie from The Republicwhere the guardians of the State would be told they are better than ordinary citizens and that this lie would maintain a Rawlson balance in society. Or, in a more negative and contemporary spin – and I’m totally geeking out here – in Alan Moore’s Watchmen the illusion of order is maintain by the threat of destruction (if the earth don’t stay peaceful Dr. Manhattan will come back and finish the job.) This might be the more appropriate analogy under present circumstances in Quebec.

Read on:

CTV Montreal – Special Report: Who Polices the Police? – CTV News, Shows and Sports — Canadian Television

Highway of Tears: this is a lesson; a lesson in regionalism (Theresa Allore investigation) and racism (The Missing Women of Rocky Mount, North Carolina):

“It’s premature at this point to say anything other than there are a lot of people that have too many unanswered questions,” [but] “we’re in an investigation process,” de Jong told The Province.

Pressed on whether an inquiry could proceed, de Jong said: “I don’t rule it out.”

B.C. private eye Ray Michalko is a retired RCMP officer, but he’s no fan of the way the Mounties have handled the Highway of Tears murders.

That’s why he has been “poking around” an unnamed Prince George-area hamlet, conducting interviews about a man whose name “keeps popping up” — all part of Michalko’s personally funded investigation into nine of the 18 Highway of Tears cases.

With a database of 600 people, Michalko has interviewed hundreds. The vast majority won’t talk to the police, he says, because they don’t expect to be taken seriously.

“When I’m asking [tipsters], ‘Have you gone to the police?’ and they say, ‘Are you nuts?’ — that’s a problem,” Michalko said.

All but one of the missing women are aboriginal, and First Nations Highway of Tears co-ordinator Mavis Erickson hints that racism could be a factor in botched cases.

Erickson recently met with de Jong and B.C. Solicitor-General Kash Heed, pushing for a public inquiry into the Highway of Tears investigations.

“As a First Nations mother and grandmother, I feel really angry because not a lot has been done to solve these murders,” she says. Investigations went cold because more than once young women were reported missing and police didn’t act, Erickson said.

The case of Ramona Wilson seems to bolster Erickson’s point.

Her sister, Brenda Wilson, told The Province that the 16-year-old said she was going to visit a friend on Saturday, June 11, 1994. Her family became worried when they didn’t hear from her the next day, and they reported her missing to Smithers RCMP. But police didn’t respond until two weeks later, according to Wilson.

“We were told, ‘She’s probably just with some friends,’” she said. “We felt very helpless.”

And four months before Wilson’s remains were accidentally turned up by off-road sport drivers, a tipster believed to be an aboriginal male called the Smithers RCMP, saying the teen’s body was near the Smithers airport. But the RCMP did not tape the call, and couldn’t follow up the lead, Wilson’s mother, Matilda Wilson, said.

While there are theories that a serial killer, possibly a trucker, is the murderer behind the disappearances, Michalko believes at least several men living near the highway are involved.

On Oct. 26, 35-year-old Jill Stacey Stuchenko — a Prince George prostitute with addictions problems — was found dumped in a gravel pit outside town.

RCMP say it is too early to link the case to the 18 Highway of Tears files, but cold-case investigators are receiving information on the Stuchenko murder.

RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said she can’t comment on criticism that past Highway of Tears investigations by the RCMP were flawed, but she maintained Mounties are now pursuing the cold cases vigorously.

E-mail reporter Sam Cooper at scooper@theprovince.com

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