Black and Missing but Not Forgotten

No Amber Alert for 3 year old Masarasha Ross…

Authorities from several law enforcement agencies continue to investigate the disappearance of 3 1/2 year-old-Masaraha Ross, but they have not issued an Amber Alert.

Sgt. Brad Coleman, a spokesman for the Winter Haven Police Department, said Friday morning that an Amber Alert has not been issued because this case doesn’t quality. He said Masaraha is with her mother, Ronkeya Holmes, 29, who has legal custody of the child.

Mother and daughter – whose age was corrected by police from 2 1/2 years old to 3 1/2 years old Friday afternoon – were reported missing late Wednesday afternoon.

According to Coleman, Masaraha lives in Savannah, Ga. with her mother, but she was visiting her father in Winter Haven. Holmes had come to pick up her daughter after the visit.

Coleman didn’t release the name of the father.

“We had information that there was supposed to be a child exchange in Wal-Mart in Haines City,” Coleman said.

Coleman said authorities reviewed surveillance tapes from Wal-Mart but didn’t glean any information from them.

“The quality of the video didn’t allow us to see clearly if anyone involved was there,” Coleman said.

Initial reports from Winter Haven police described the child as “missing and endangered,” although authorities didn’t say why.

Masaraha is black with black hair and black eyes, according to a missing persons flyer released by the police department. She stands about 38 inches tall and weighs about 30 pounds.

There were conflicting stories about the last known location of the missing girl and mother, but witness statements placed them in either the Winter Haven or Haines City areas, Coleman reported Wednesday.

[Source]

What is the media not telling us? I think important information is being left out…

Law enforcement officers are looking for a 27-year-old man reported missing on Friday by family members.

Brian Lee Trester last was seen when he left to go to work about 6:10 a.m. Thursday, according to information from Lyon County Sheriff’s Detective Jarrod Fell.

Trester was described as a black man, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 155 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. He may have a mustache.

Trester reportedly was driving a 1989 orange full-sized Chevrolet pickup truck with a license plate of QSF 026.

Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of the vehicle stuck on Road R5 at Road 75. The truck was unattended and was removed from the scene, Fell said.

Trester was reported missing the following day. His family told officers that behavior was unusual.

Officers returned to the area where they found the truck and searched again, but did not find Trester.

Anyone with information on Trester’s whereabouts is asked to call the sheriff’s office at 342-5545 or call Lyon County Crime Stoppers at 342-2273.

[Source]

She was missing for at least a year, but nobody seemed to notice. Even in February, after a prison work crew found the skeletal remains of a small-framed female in a thicket near U.S. 64, no one stepped forward to claim the body.

Eight months later on Oct. 12, when authorities finally identified the remains, the medical examiner concluded the 33-year-old Rocky Mount woman had been dead at least a year, maybe longer.

Elizabeth Jane Smallwood — a woman seemingly without a family, without a history, without a home — was never reported missing.

Aside from a lengthy criminal record, Smallwood left behind few clues that might explain who she was or how her body ended up discarded under a brush pile off Melton Drive near the border of Nash and Edgecombe counties.

A pending death certificate at the Nash County Health Department reveals a void of available information about the woman.

Name: Elizabeth Jane Smallwood. Date of birth: blank. County of birth: blank. Date of death: blank. Occupation: blank. Mother’s name: blank. Cause of death: blank.

A secretary with the Nash County Register of Deeds shook her head and frowned at the incomplete document.

“So sad,” the clerk said. “We don’t see cases like this that often.”

Neither do police.

Smallwood matches the profile of six other Rocky Mount women found dead in similar circumstances since 2003. Each of the victims, including Smallwood, was known to have peddled sex to feed drug habits, according to criminal records and family. A task force of federal, state and local investigators has been probing the murders the past several months for possible connections.

Smallwood is the only woman among the seven victims never reported missing to police. It took a number of investigative leads and an extensive background check, police said, simply to identify Smallwood as a possible victim.

Authorities said they successfully tracked down Smallwood’s biological father, eventually making phone contact with him in the Georgia town where he lives. He hadn’t spoken to his daughter in years, police said, declining to release the man’s name.

No other family have been identified.

‘Wasn’t she loved?’

A full two weeks after forensic scientists matched the remains with Smallwood’s medical records, her body remains unclaimed at the morgue. Eventually, an area funeral home will be called in to take control of her arrangements.

Meanwhile, some residents in the Rocky Mount neighborhoods Smallwood once frequented are asking how a woman could go missing for more than year without notice.

“I saw her a couple times around town, but I didn’t know her,” said Jackie Wiggins, whose daughter Jackie Thorpe was one of the seven victims. “How can it be that someone would be missing for a year, and nobody would report it?”

Wiggins was among a handful of residents in East Rocky Mount who vaguely recalled seeing Smallwood now and again, but little more. Smallwood was known to hang around motels along U.S. 301, and in a few neighborhoods off North Raleigh Street.

“She used to hang around on the street with my daughter,” Wiggins said. “If I ever approached my daughter, (the other women) usually would walk away, either out of courtesy or maybe out of shame. I don’t know. Either way, I never actually talked to the Smallwood girl.”

Not many people did, it seems.

The landlord who manages the Hill Street residence where Smallwood claimed to have lived as recently as 2007 said he has no record of her living at the duplex. The man who had rented the residence the past six years moved out earlier this year, leaving the property vacant.

Former neighbors didn’t recognize Smallwood’s name when asked. Family members of other victims said her name was new to them, and a few other women who still trade their bodies for crack said last week they knew of Smallwood, but nothing more.

“A lot of the girls who work out here keep to themselves,” said Darlene Owens, who recalled occasionally bumping into Smallwood a few years ago while flagging down cars at the Sunshine Inn. “It’s a turf thing. I only sort of knew of Liz through another girl. That’s messed up that nobody said nothing about her missing all that time.”

Each of the deaths considered in the investigation is a tragedy, Owens said, but Smallwood’s seems somehow worse.

“Wasn’t she loved?” Owens said. “Wasn’t there no one close to her? That’s horrible.”

Police worked for days to track down Smallwood’s birth father, but officials would not release his identity or exact location. Multiple sources said Smallwood had children in the area, but authorities would not confirm or deny the claim.

The Telegram made several unsuccessful attempts to locate Smallwood’s March 24, 1976, birth certificate, but it is unclear where she was born or if Smallwood is her birth name. The chief medical examiner also refused to release any personal information about Smallwood, pending further investigation, a spokeswoman said.

William Solomon, a Rocky Mount attorney appointed to defend Smallwood on prostitution charges in 2007, said there was little he could share about his former client.

“I hated to see her name in the news in connection with this case,” Solomon said. “That’s about all I can say.”

Crimes didn’t define her

Aside from a criminal record that included several prostitution and drug arrests in both Nash and Edgecombe counties, little is known about Smallwood’s background.

The only insight into the victim’s personal life was offered by a 39-year-old Rocky Mount woman who shared a jail cell with Smallwood for a few weeks in the spring of 2007.

Gail Nelms said Smallwood “was a real nice girl” who had “a big heart” and cared about others.

“But she was a fighter, too,” Nelms said. “I know whoever did this must have had a fight on his hands, because she didn’t take anything from anybody.”

Smallwood was awaiting trial at the Edgecombe County Detention Center when Nelms met her. The two quickly bonded, and when another inmate started picking fights with Nelms, Smallwood stood up for her. It was good to have an ally in a place like that, Nelms said.

The two women reconnected for a short while a few months after their release from jail. Both Smallwood and Nelms were staying at the Sunshine Inn off U.S. 301, a former hot spot for prostitution in the city. Smallwood had a drug problem, Nelms said, but her addiction didn’t define her.

Nelms said she cried when she learned the few known details of Smallwood’s death.

“Nobody even cared enough to report her missing,” Nelms said. “I couldn’t believe that. We weren’t that close, and she never mentioned anything to me about family. But I wish I could have done something. It breaks my heart to know her body is sitting around unclaimed. That’s a shame.”

Nelms, like others familiar with the illegal sex trade in Rocky Mount, said Smallwood and most women wouldn’t dare step into a vehicle with a man they weren’t at least slightly familiar with. Smallwood rarely worked away from a secure motel room, Nelms said, and she didn’t take rides with strangers.

“If there is one guy doing this, I really do feel like it has to be someone who they all knew,” Nelms said. “Either way, that’s no way to die.”

For Smallwood, Nelms said, that’s no way to be remembered.

[Source]

UPDATE:

Even as her body lay discarded in a field for months without notice, Elizabeth Jane Smallwood was never forgotten.

Smallwood’s sister, Belinda Whitaker, fought tears as she repeated that message. Speaking over the phone Tuesday from her home in Georgia, Whitaker attempted to explain how her older sister — the bright woman whose facial features she shares, born and raised in Central Kentucky — wound up abandoned in a brush pile in Rocky Mount, gone for more than a year without a single police report.

“You have to understand,” Whitaker said. “I loved my sister very dearly. But when you try to help someone, and when you have exhausted everything that you can do for that person — when that person no longer wants anything to do with you — what are you to do? What can you do?”

When a prison work crew stumbled across the skeletal remains of a small-framed woman earlier this year off Melton Drive, authorities could not identify her. The 33-year-old woman had severed ties with family years earlier. She lived around Rocky Mount for more than a few years, but she seemed to have moved through shadows, never staying in one place for too long and making few close friends in the process.

When Smallwood went missing, it seems nobody noticed she was gone. In death, though, her profile has been elevated.

Smallwood matches the profile of six other Rocky Mount women found dead in similar circumstances since 2003 — each of the victims a black woman with a history of drug abuse and prostitution. Among the seven victims, Smallwood is the only woman never reported missing to authorities. It took a number of investigative leads and an extensive background check, police said, simply to name Smallwood as a possible victim. The medical examiner finally identified the body Oct. 12.

When the phone rang at her father’s house that day, Whitaker said, it brought the family to its knees.

“None of us were expecting that,” Whitaker said, pausing for a moment to compose herself. “Maybe it sounds naive, but I never thought her lifestyle would actually lead to her death.”

Smallwood’s family has been overwhelmed by the attention focused on the mysterious death, Whitaker said. They have attempted to maintain privacy in the face of a story that is making splashes in national media reports. Smallwood, like the other victims in the case, has earned more attention through her death, it seems, than through her life.

“I see how, from the outside looking in, it could look like she was forgotten,” said Whitaker, who contacted the Telegram to clarify a previous report that said Smallwood’s body had been left unclaimed. “But to answer the question posed in the newspaper story, ‘Was she loved?’ Yes. She was truly loved. But sometimes love isn’t enough. That’s one thing everybody needs to grasp. Love isn’t always enough.”

Whitaker isn’t sure how her sister ended up in Rocky Mount. She recalled the move had something to do with a man, but then Whitaker stopped herself.

“I don’t want to go into very specific details and air my sister’s troubles out there,” she said. “The point is, we lost track of her probably about three years ago. She no longer wanted any help from us. She didn’t want to hear what we had to tell her.”

When Smallwood arrived in Eastern North Carolina years ago, she sporadically would check in with family in Georgia, Whitaker said. Then the calls became fewer; her whereabouts more obscure. Smallwood grew less interested in hearing family advice about her personal life, about her addiction to drugs and the promiscuous lifestyle she took on to satisfy that addiction, Whitaker said. By 2006, Whitaker said, “total communication was lost.”

The next contact came earlier this month when police called to say Smallwood was dead.

“Of course that was hard,” Whitaker said. “I was very close with my sister, but she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. At the same time, I want to be clear, she was loved. She was dealt a life that I don’t wish upon anyone, and it consumed her.”

The family has been working the past two weeks to plan arrangements for Smallwood’s remains, Whitaker said. Although the family gave a Rocky Mount group permission to host a community memorial service tonight in Smallwood’s honor, Whitaker said, “we are planning our own, private memorial.”

It will be an opportunity to finally say farewell to a cherished family member, lost years ahead of her own death.

“I hate that she is no longer here on Earth,” Whitaker said, again stopping herself to maintain composure. “But what I can tell you is our mother has passed away, and my sister is there with her now. She doesn’t have to worry anymore about drugs or addiction or prostitution or anything. She’s free of all of that.

“I loved my sister, and my family loved my sister. And she was never forgotten.”

[Source]

The District’s Metropolitan Police Department spent more than three months inside the Northwest home of 47-year-old Pamela J. Butler. Forensic teams, in strategic shifts, worked every hour of the day and night fingerprinting the house and tearing through its floors and walls looking for evidence of either her death or an explanation for her sudden departure. The computer analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency is single, educated and has no children, no vices, or patterns of behavior that establish motives, suspects, or causes. In fact, Butler’s “All-American girl” lifestyle has left investigators baffled and after eight months of investigation, has helped stall it.

At a prayer vigil for Butler Sunday night outside the old First District Police Station on Fourth Street in Southwest, her family and friends gathered to raise awareness and again, ask the public’s help in bringing her home. As the months go by, family members weigh all possibilities: human trafficking, foul play, and a boyfriend who continues to be their prime suspect. Butler’s brother Derrick, 46, said despite its local and global reach, he feels it unlikely his sister was abducted for human trafficking purposes.

“We are seeing cases like Elizabeth Smart’s where she made it home, or the woman who was missing for 20 years and was finally returned. Those instances give us hope that she is still just missing. But deep down inside, I don’t feel that trafficking enters into this,” Derrick Butler said.

And while many of the roughly 50 people who attended the vigil expressed concern that her ex-boyfriend was either responsible for her disappearance or withholding information, there still remains little concrete evidence to support them. In fact, there is little evidence that a crime has actually been committed.

“I knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up for Valentine’s Day dinner. She and her boyfriend were supposed to pick me up, and never did. I called continuously, between the house phone and cell phone until the 11 o’clock news came on,” Pamela’s mother, Selma said. “By the Tuesday after Valentine’s Day, mail had piled up outside her front door and it confirmed my suspicions.”

Family members said they initially thought the couple opted out of dinner to go out of town together, but later the boyfriend was seen on Butler’s home surveillance entering and exiting the home following her disappearance.

Still, with no physical evidence to support foul play, the surveillance data becomes circumstantial.

Still, those close to the case know there is cause for alarm, including Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier who commented months ago that Butler “is not a person who should just go missing,” and Police commander Rodney Parks, who commented that “There is cause for concern — her being missing is highly unusual for her pattern of behavior.”

Derrick Butler said that while it was clear the police were doing everything possible to determine what happened to his sister, her race, has kept her from being a top priority among local and national media. Butler’s comments come as Newsweek magazine devoted an entire section to a possible serial killer targeting Black women in North Carolina, which, based in part on the race and neighborhoods of the victims, no major news media chose to cover.

“If my sister were White or Asian, the national media would have found her being missing newsworthy enough to cover it. We are watching CNN and these major news networks and the missing are never Black women. At this stage of things, the family just wants closure – whatever that means,” Deerrick Butler said.

Pamela Butler is described as a dark complexioned African American female, 5’3” tall, weighing about 120 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair. It is unknown what she was last seen wearing.

[Source]

Winter Haven Police Department detectives are searching for a 2 1/2-year-old girl who they say might be in danger.

The girl, Masaraha Ross, was last known to be in the company of her mother, 29-year-old Ronkeya Holmes, who also is missing, the police department reported late Wednesday afternoon.

Masaraha is black with black hair and black eyes, according to a missing persons flyer released by the police department. She stands about 38 inches tall and weighs about 30 pounds.

There are conflicting stories about the last known location of the missing girl and mother, but witness statements place them in either the Winter Haven or Haines City areas, according to Sgt. Brad Coleman, a spokesman for the police department.

“Multiple law enforcement agencies are involved in this case and information is currently being filtered from a variety of sources,” Coleman said in a news release.

Anyone with information about location of the girl or her mother is being urged to call police Detective Sgt. Chris Ford at 863-291-5733 or 863-412-5973 or Detective Amity McGee at 863-291-5312 or 863-287-1961.

The police department had no further additional information to release Wednesday evening.

[Source]

I wanted to hold off posting on this until Megan speaks, but I believe this article sums up everything that I was thinking:

Prosecutors are used to doubting convicted felons who recant their confessions, but it’s rare for them to ignore the victim of a crime who says she made up the entire story that sent six people to prison.

Authorities say, despite Megan Williams’ new denial, there is overwhelming evidence that she was indeed held captive in the rural West Virginia shed where she originally said she was raped and tortured over the course of several days.

Williams’ story made national headlines in 2007, when investigators said the young woman had been beaten, stabbed in the legs, raped and forced to drink urine and eat animal feces. Williams is black; all of her alleged attackers were white.

Seven people, including Williams’ then-boyfriend, Bobby Brewster, all confessed to their crimes and pleaded guilty. All but one was sentenced to jail.

Williams’ lawyer, Byron Potts, told reporters Wednesday that his client made up the story to get back at her boyfriend for hitting her.

“She is recanting the entire incident. She says it did not happen, and she’s scared,” Potts said. Potts said Williams stabbed herself with a straight razor to help embellish her original story.

“She told me the only thing not self-inflicted were the bruises on her face,” Potts said.

Authorities, however, do not believe Williams made up the whole story.

“I can’t believe what she is saying now,” said Brian Abraham, the former Logan County district attorney who prosecuted the case.

“What Williams initially told the told the police is substantiated by overwhelming evidence against them. They confessed to their own crimes and made statements against each other. And everything they said was further substantiated by physical and forensic evidence.”

None of the accused ever denied responsibility, maintained their innocence or attempted to appeal their convictions, he said.

“To a person, everyone admitted it,” he said.

Rape Victim Recants, but Prosecutors Doubt Her
At the time, Williams’ mother described the woman as “slow.” Abraham called her “a special education-type student.”

He said Williams, who now lives in Columbus, Ohio, had a history of making changes to her story, and early on in the case he decided not to rely on her testimony but on the physical evidence and the confessions of the suspects.

Each of the seven suspects were put in separate rooms by police and questioned independently.

“They were all interviewed separately. None knew what any of the others were saying. And all their evidence went along with exactly with what the others were saying,” said Logan County Sheriff Eddie Hunter.

In an interview in July, Williams told a West Virginia news blog that her captors “never made me eat any feces or perform oral sex on the women, either.”

Frankie Brewster, mother of Bobby Brewster, pleaded guilty to sexual assault after confessing that she forced her son’s girlfriend to give her oral sex in front of her.

Valencia Daniels, who lives with and takes care of Williams, told The Associated Press that the young woman regularly “goes back and forth, back and forth” about the allegations of being beaten, raped and tortured.

Daniels said Williams sometimes says the story is true and other times denies it happened.

Williams’ case became a cause célèbre at the time, with prominent black leaders rallying to her side, and sympathetic people across the country sending her money.

The Rev. Al Sharpton urged the suspects tried for hate crimes, and gave Williams a $1,000 gift.

Hunter said his office still, two years later, receives letters of support addressed to Williams.

“I wonder if she’s going to give all the donations back that she’s got,” he said.

Abraham speculated that Williams decided to recount in an effort to garner more public attention.

The current Logan County prosecutor did not return calls to ABC News, but Abraham said Williams’ lawyer’s statement did not make her denial official.

If she is to recant officially, Williams will have to make a sworn statement.

None of the lawyers for the convicted captors contacted by ABC News would comment on whether their clients are planning to appeal based on Williams’ new story.

[Source]

KUDOS to those that can point out the BS in this article. I’ll just bold some parts to think about and then I’ll tell you what I think in a later post

Every day, nearly 2,500 missing-persons reports are filed across the United States.

Few of those reports receive any media attention. Yet the disappearance of Virginia Tech student Morgan Dana Harrington went from local newspaper and television stations to cable television’s “Nancy Grace” in 48 hours.

According to some television and digital journalism experts, Harrington’s case skyrocketed because of a confluence of circumstances including her connection to the site of the largest mass school shooting in U.S. history.

Those experts say that the disappearance of the 20-year-old from Roanoke County made national news because:

– Harrington is a young, pretty, blue-eyed woman, not unlike other missing females whose disappearances have received widespread media coverage in recent years.

– The fact that she disappeared from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville on Saturday lends a national element to the story. Metallica, one of the most popular heavy metal rock bands of all time, featured a posting on its Web site headlined “One Of Our Fans Is Missing.”

– Social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter spread the news quickly among users nationwide.

– Harrington is a student at Virginia Tech, a place that many Americans still associate with the mass shootings of April 16, 2007.

The Virginia Tech connection may be as important as any factor in making Harrington’s disappearance national news, said Robert Thompson, one of the country’s most-respected media experts and the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

“Part of this is when you think ‘Virginia Tech,’ it carries certain sacred overtones to the country,” Thompson said. “Not only do you have a young college student in danger, but when you attach the words ‘Virginia Tech’ … Virginia Tech is one of those sets of words like ’9/11′ and ‘Oklahoma City.’ It means more than just the college name.

“The whole country has strong sympathy and empathy for the university. It’s still recent in their minds, the last big national story to happen there.”

Claudette Artwick, an associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, agrees that Harrington’s looks and her connection to Tech probably have contributed to the national media’s interest. However, the Internet also has played a huge role in making the story too big to ignore, she said.

“Social media are a huge part of young people’s lives,” Artwick said. “Everybody’s tweeting about it, not only people who know her. Who’s the reporter and who’s the source anymore?”

The Associated Press story about Harrington’s disappearance, which included a photograph, was picked up by most major newspaper and television Web sites Wednesday. Harrington’s disappearance was among the top five most-viewed stories on CNN.com’s Web site for much of the day.

Artwick also notes that Harrington’s parents, Dan and Gil Harrington, were quick to reach out to national media to draw attention to their daughter’s disappearance and to ask for help finding her. Gil Harrington was interviewed by telephone on HLN’s “Nancy Grace” on Tuesday. Grace, a former special prosecutor from Georgia, covers legal issues and crime on her show, HLN’s top-rated program.

In a video clip posted on the CNN.com Web site, Grace described Morgan Harrington as “beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. She looks like a fairy princess.” While speaking to Gil Harrington, Grace choked up when she spoke of her own young daughter and the thought of someone “making off with her.”

Grace’s show, as well as other cable news programs, have been criticized for past excessive coverage of missing white females who are young and pretty, but not covering disappearances of minority women or missing men. TV and social critics have referred to such coverage as “Missing White Woman Syndrome.”

However, several law enforcement agencies have credited shows such as “Nancy Grace” for keeping missing-person cases in the news and for helping them solve some cases.

Plus, as Thompson said, the disappearance of a young person “is every parent’s worst nightmare,” regardless of race or sex.

The National Center for Missing Adults, a nonprofit organization that acts as a clearinghouse for information about missing adults, reports that nearly 2,500 missing-persons reports are filed every day. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center reported 102,764 active missing-person records at the end of 2008.

When a story makes the national news, you can expect it to be covered for a while, Thompson said.

“Once it makes ‘Nancy Grace,’ it’s almost unstoppable,” he said.

[Source]

Ten women have been found slain or have been declared missing in Rocky Mount, N.C., in recent years. But the rest of the country hasn’t heard about a possible serial killer stalking the young women in this Southern town of 60,000. The latest victim, Elizabeth Jane Smallwood, was identified on Oct. 12. Why have the Rocky Mount homicides been largely ignored?

“When you think about the famous missing-person cases over the last few years it’s Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway, and Laci Peterson,” notes Sam Sommers, associate professor of psychology at Tufts University. All these women had a few things in common—they were white, educated, and came from middle-class families. The victims in Rocky Mount—which residents describe as a “typical Southern town,” and is about 40 percent white and more than 50 percent black—were different. They were all African-American, many were poor, and some had criminal histories including drug abuse and prostitution.

“If it was someone of a different race, things would have been dealt with the first time around; it wouldn’t have taken the fifth or sixth person to be murdered,” says Andre Knight, a city-council member and president of the local NAACP chapter. “All these women knew each other and lived in the same neighborhood; this is the sign of a potential serial killer. When it didn’t get the kind of attention it needed, it made the African-American community frustrated.”

Police have not officially linked all the murders and disappearances, but community members claim the similarities among the women, their lifestyles, and the location of their bodies make a connection all too obvious. “If you find two bodies in the same location, this could be the work of the same person or people,” says Rocky Mount Police Chief John Manley, who would not comment on a connection, but implied the possibility.

Rumors are running rampant around the town about the identity of the serial killer. There is not much physical evidence, leading some to speculate it’s a former law-enforcement officer or someone in the military. Others have deduced that the killer is targeting specific women as a form of revenge for contracting HIV from a prostitute. Along with Smallwood, the murders of Taraha Nicholson, 28, Jarniece Hargrove, 31, Ernestine Battle, 50, Jackie Nikelia Thorpe, 35, Melody Wiggins, 29, and Denise Williams, 21, remain unsolved. Authorities are also searching for Yolanda Lancaster, 37, Joyce Renee Durham, 46, and Christine Boone, 43.

One man is in custody for the murder of Nicholson, who was the fourth victim, discovered back in 2005. This past September, police charged Antwan Maurice Pittman, 31, with her murder. He is accused of strangling Nicholson and dumping her partially clothed body in the woods. So far, authorities have not linked Pittman to the other murders. “There’s a lot of mixed sentiments about Pittman,” says Knight, referring to community speculation about whether police have charged the right man.

“In this Information Age, cases get solved through sheer publicity, whether it’s an Amber Alert or America’s Most Wanted, anyone could have a tip or be a potential source of information,” Sommers says.

But the national media did show some interest in the story after it was revealed that five women were murdered in or around the town. “Nancy Grace called and wanted to have some of us on her show, but before it aired there was a white woman from Georgia that went missing. The Nancy Grace show was canceled,” Knight says. HLN network, which broadcasts Nancy Grace, confirmed that Knight was booked for the show, which was ultimately canceled to profile the disappearance of Kristi Cornwell, a white woman from Blairsville, Ga., who went missing during an evening walk. Representatives from Nancy Grace told NEWSWEEK, “The booking was changed due to news that was breaking that day,” and emphasized the change had nothing to do with the race of the victim. On Aug. 12, Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees covered the story.

That bit of media exposure brought new resources to the investigation. Originally, only a small amount of reward money was collected for information about the case. After the story aired on CNN , New Jersey philanthropist Peter Pinto, of the Kefalas-Pinto Foundation, donated $10,000 from a personal trust. In late September, the city donated an additional $5,000, which was matched by a $5,000 county donation, bringing the amount of reward money to $20,000. If there were no media coverage, there might have been no reward. The money isn’t just going to help with the investigation, it’s helping the families of the victims, specifically their children.

The money proved to be a blessing for Jurary Tucker, the mother of Yolanda Lancaster, who has been missing since February 2008. “We were able to use some of the money to get [Yolanda's] children ready for school,” Tucker says. “They have to wear uniforms to school and they are very expensive; the money came at a good time.” Tucker became the primary custodian of her granddaughter and grandson after Lancaster’s disappearance.

When Annie Le, a 24-year-old Yale pharmacology graduate student, went missing on Sept. 8, it only took three days for the university to offer a $20,000 reward. In the case of the Rocky Mount women, it took more than six years to raise that same amount of money for 10 women.

Concerned residents of the town tried to promote the case by distributing fliers and purchasing a billboard advertisement featuring the women, but their efforts may have backfired. Mug-shot photographs of the victims, many pictured in orange jumpsuits, sometimes appearing disheveled or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, were used in their efforts. Unlike the images of a smiling Annie Le, these images showed the women during darker times.

“Everyone has a dark side at some point, but you want to put your best out front when you are trying to appeal [to the public] for help,” Chief Manley says. “When you look at obituaries in the newspaper, [the photos] show a bright time in someone’s life; you really want to show the person when they are doing well.”

Manley says the police department used the victims’ driver’s license photographs to help with search efforts. “You don’t need to air dirty laundry. Seeing someone’s dark side doesn’t appeal to the conscience of other people,” he says.

Concern over the buried headlines and lack of national media attention isn’t the only thing upsetting residents; some say there are deeper festering racial tensions in the community. When a candlelight vigil was held to commemorate the murdered women, only black community officials attended. When other vigils were organized for deaths in Rocky Mount, there was no racial divide, and community members, both black and white, attended the events in droves. “When a prominent attorney’s wife died, we all came together and the church was full, but when the community was coming together to share their pain and reach out to these families, only black elected officials were there,” Knight says. “They [white officials] didn’t have an excuse, they just didn’t come.”

White officials, including the mayor, say they weren’t invited to the memorial. “It’s hard to attend something that you don’t even know is occurring,” says David Combs, mayor of Rocky Mount. “I was glad that we had the vigil and had people who were involved.”

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.”

[Source]

Hello all, and welcome to all my new visitors!

I don’t usually do this, but I need your help. As some of you may know (If you added Black and Missing on Facebook – a link is provided on the sidebar), I will be going back to school SP 10 for my Bachelor of Biology with a concentration in Forensic Science. This will allow me to go further with my blog by going behind the scenes and working directly with missing and unindentified persons. I hope to work in a crime lab by the time I’m done so that I can more quickly help locate missing persons as I post about them.

Some of you also know, that I have a 8 month old daughter. Her picture is below:

She is the reason for me keeping up with this blog and also the reason for this post. I need your help in paying for her tuition at daycare. Right now I am short on funds, having to pay my own tuition and other bills. If you would like to donate, I created a paypal button below. You can also donate if you just like the blog and would like me to keep going with it.

I will also post this button on the sidebar. Any amount will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for your help and more posts to follow!

This is one of the reasons I’m going for my Bachelor of Biology with a concentration in Forensic Science Spring 2010. Photoshop isn’t just for making skinny models look good!

According to the US Department of Justice, over 2,000 children are reported missing every day. And while most of them don’t stay missing for that long, it’s a terrifying experience for any parent or guardian to go through. For the past quarter century, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private non-profit established by Congress, has acted as a resource for people who have lost a child. One of cool things the Center does is age progression — the creation of computer rendered images that show what a child might look like now. We saw this most recently with the horrible case of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped in 1991 by a sick criminal who kept her captive and raped her for 18 years. Last week, People Magazine revealed the first real photo of Dugard at her current age, and it was strikingly similar to the age progressed photo that the NCMEC had created.

The NCMEC has a 97% recovery rate of all missing children reported to it, with over 900 safely returned children whose age progressed photos were advertised on TV and on milk cartons. So how do they do it? Turns out there’s a small team of retired forensic detectives using Photoshop and fine art skills to re-imagine what these children might look like as they grow older.

Glen Miller, NCMEC: I supervise the forensic imaging unit here at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I’m a retired police forensic artist — I’ve been here since 1992. As a detective in the police force, I often created composites from witness memories of bank robbers and rapists. Here at the Center, the emphasis is on aging faces of long-term missing children. It’s different than working from memory, but there isn’t a software available that automatically ages photos.

When a child goes missing, we usually get a photo with the report. As time goes on, though, the photo becomes less and less valuable, especially if the child was very young when he went missing. That’s where age progression comes in. To come up with the best possible progressed image, we begin with a photo of the child and of the biological parent &mdash the father if it’s a little boy, the mother at if it’s a girl — at the age that the child would now be.

My colleague Joe Mullins worked on the most recent image of Jaycee. He had to study 11-year old Jaycee’s face closely, and become familiar with all her unique features — the eyes, the eyelids, the shape of the nose. 80% of likeness is recognizable in the eyes. We’re constantly dealing with the subtleties of aging. What makes someone appear 15 and not 29? He battled that while holding onto the unique facial qualities that set Jaycee apart.

We use Adobe Photoshop CS4 to manipulate the photos. We stretch the face to approximate growth, blend it with parental photos, and put a hairstyle on each child. The clothes are transformed to be more appropriate for that age. We use powerful Macs with lots of memory and speed, and drawing tablets instead of mouses. With this technology, we can complete one age progression in about three hours.

When we look at the child’s face and family photos, we pretty much know what we’re going to do with it right away. We try to do an age progression every two years until age 18, and then every five years after that. We continue to age progress children unless we’re specifically told not to or until the child is located. Last quarter, we produced 131 age progressions. I enjoy seeing the transformation as I manipulate the photos.

We build faces in virtual environments for people to recognize, but the only way we really know we’re successful is by having results. We can compliment each other on how great an age progressed image is, but the public is the true test of success. To say we love feedback is an understatement. We crave it. It encourages parents of long term missing kids that there’s hope, and that’s one of the most important things about what we do. We’re giving people their identity back.

Joseph Carson was abducted by his non-custodial dad as a toddler and was missing for about five years when a customer at an auto parts store saw that a PSA showing his age progressed image was strikingly similar to a kid who just happened to be in the store at that exact time.

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