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tool goes here Task force looks into Rocky Mount killings
A woman tells of her narrow escape; sisters deal with devastated children
BY THOMASI MCDONALD AND BARRY SAUNDERS
Staff Writers
Posted: Friday, Jul. 10, 2009
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Tynatta James holds the high school graduation photo of her little sister, Ernestine Battle, one of six women found dead along Seven Bridges Road since 2005. Edgecombe and Rocky Mount authorities and the SBI are investigating the cases.
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Williams says an abductor took her to Seven Bridges Road.
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More Information
The women who were killed [rockymount0710_20090710]
• Jarniece Latonya "Sunshine" Hargrove, 31, was identified Tuesday after a man working off Seven Bridges Road found skeletal remains in the woods June 29. She had not been seen since May 2.
•Taraha Shenice Nicholson, 28, of 218 N. Raleigh St., was found dead March 7 off Marriott Road by people riding all-terrain vehicles through the woods. Nicholson was reported missing Feb. 22 by her father, Lougene Williams, who told police that he saw his daughter leave their home on foot at 12:30 a.m. Feb. 21.
• Ernestine Battle, 50, of 619 Branch St., was found dead March 13 in the woods off Seven Bridges Road, more than a year after she had been reported missing by her sister. Corneta Battle told Rocky Mount police that she last saw her sister in front of her home, where she got into an unfamiliar car with an unknown man.
•Jackie Nikelia "Nikki" Thorpe, 34, of 117 Owens Circle, was discovered in the woods off Seven Bridges Road on Aug. 17, 2007. Thorpe's mother had reported her missing May 22, 2007, and told police that her daughter frequented areas where drugs were sold.
• Melody Wiggins, 29, of 343 S. Grace St., was found in woods beside a field on Old Farm Road. Wiggins' boyfriend, Mitchell Williams, reported her missing June 2, 2005, and told police that she had left home to borrow a friend's bicycle. An autopsy report indicated that Wiggins was stabbed and cut repeatedly by her attacker, killed her by a blow to the right side of her head by a blunt object.
• One of the six women has not been identified. Her skeletal remains were found Feb. 13 on Melton Drive by state inmates and city workers cleaning up debris. Police say she was between the ages of 27 and 45.
The women reported missing
• Yolanda Renee "Snap" Lancaster, 37, of 507 E. Grand Ave., was last seen Feb. 5. Lancaster's mother, Juray Tucker of Tarboro, told Rocky Mount police that her daughter had not made contact with her family members.
• Joyce Renee Durham, 46, of 1505 Harper St., has been missing since June 17, 2007, police reported. Durham was reported missing by her brother-in-law, Winston Kemp, who told police that she frequented drug areas, according to police reports.
• Christine Marie Boone, 43, was reported missing on Jan. 16, 2007 by her daughter in-law, Susan Ann Boone. Susan Ann Boone told investigators that her mother in-law was suicidal.
ROCKY MOUNT Marriott Road near Battleboro is lined on both sides by woods, tobacco and corn fields, strewn with a handful of houses. Signs of life are few; signs of death along that dark stretch resonate now.
Since 2005, six women have been the victims of unsolved killings. Five have been found dead and dumped near where Marriott intersects Seven Bridges Road. At least three other women are missing who match the profile of those found dead -- black, most existing on society's margins.
Many residents say they know little or nothing about the killings. But each grisly discovery is a brush stroke that might form the portrait of a serial killer.
Late last month, after the discovery of Jarniece Latonya "Sunshine" Hargrove's body, the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office, the State Bureau of Investigation and the Rocky Mount Police Department formed a task force to investigate whether the killings are connected.
"Everything came to light when we found this," Sheriff James Knight said.
The dead women can't tell what happened to them, but police want to talk to a woman who may be a surviving victim of the killer they seek.
Lanessa Williams, 38, of Rocky Mount, said she was taken on a ride down that stretch of road last summer by a man with an angry voice who threatened to kill her unless she performed the sex acts he demanded.
"He took me out there. He wouldn't stop," she said. "He told me he was going to kill me if I didn't do what he told me," she said matter-of-factly. "I tried to get out about four times."
When he stopped on the dark road for what he thought was a sexual assignation, Williams said, her survival instinct kicked in.
"When I got out, I ran and hid in a ditch. He came back. ... I could see him looking for me" before he gave up and left, she said. "I got a ride back with some Mexicans in a truck. I was crying."
Williams said she called Rocky Mount police. They were not sympathetic, she said. "They told me it was my own fault for getting in a car with somebody I didn't know," she said.
Rocky Mount police said they had no report on file of Williams' abduction, but they did investigate a sexual assault reported by her in April of last year. Williams said that was a separate incident.
"I'm going to have to get a detective to talk with her," Capt. Laura Fahnestock with the Rocky Mount police said Thursday. "We would love to talk with her."
Crack and the corner
Williams stood in the midday sun this week on a street corner in the south section of the city, near downtown. It's where many of the victims and missing women walked the streets, got in cars with strange men, used drugs and did what they could to survive.
"I told them what kind of truck he was driving" -- a black pickup with "Chevrolet" written on the back in large white letters -- "and what he looked like," Williams said. She described him as "thin and real dark-skinned." He was also, she said, "sucking on a stem," slang for a crack pipe.
She admits that less than a year ago, she often got into cars with men she didn't know. Soon after her encounter with the man in the black pickup, she said she found a place to stay and stopped smoking crack.
While the deaths and possibility of a serial killer in the city are hot topics in some parts of Rocky Mount, they seem to hardly register elsewhere.
"Ain't nobody saying nothing because of their lifestyle," Williams said. "Just because you smoke don't mean you have to die. Don't nobody deserve to die just because they smoke."
A sister's heartbreak
Tynatta James, the older sister of victim Ernestine Battle, is quick to say her sister did not deserve to die because she used drugs, even as she attempts to clean up collateral damage from her sister's 20-year crack habit.
James said her younger sister's 11-year-old son was diagnosed with hypertension because Ernestine Battle was using cocaine while carrying him. Her 13-year-old son began acting up in school and hanging out with gang members after his mother's unclothed, badly decomposed body was found last year by a farmer in a field near the intersection of Seven Bridges and Wells roads.
It wasn't always that way.
Ernestine Battle's high school graduation picture adorns the mantle of her sister's home on Branch Street, south of downtown Rocky Mount. She joined the U.S. Army Reserve after graduating from Rocky Mount Senior High School in 1977. She moved to Raleigh shortly afterward and found a job as a customer service representative with Time Warner Cable. She stayed with the company for a little over 15 years.
In the early 1990s, Battle met "some guy in Raleigh" who introduced her to crack, James said. The drug devastated her.
"She lost her car, her job and her house," James said. "She called me with a sob story about how somebody stole her rent money."
The older sister rented a U-Haul and moved Ernestine back to Rocky Mount.
On Seven Bridges Road
James said Knight, the Edgecombe sheriff, told her a farmer who was untangling wire found Battle about 10 feet from where Jackie Nikela Thorpe was found.
Thorpe, 34, was found less than a year before behind a burned out house in the 6700 block of Seven Bridges Road.
"I'm praying they find whoever done this," James said. "I believe it's the same person, and they are from around here because they know the area as remote as it is."
Juray Tucker, 58, of Tarboro said she last spoke with her daughter, Yolanda Renee Lancaster, 37, on Feb. 2. More than a month passed before Tucker reported her missing to the police on March 30. She is still missing.
Now Tucker, a health-care worker who has raised Lancaster's 10-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son since they were small, is "hoping against hope," especially after police announced that city workers and state inmates found another unidentified woman's remains on Feb. 13.
"It's just something that worries me every day, every minute. I can't get it out of my head, out of my heart," Tucker said Thursday.
News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.
thomasi.mcdonald@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4533
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