Met a man from Nashville, TN, a couple of years ago that, for 3 decades, was very good friends with a person that was the primary suspect in a 9 yr old girls murder & rape in 1979. The suspect; 20 year old Jeffrey Womack, although later cleared for the crime, lives with the stigma over 3 decades later.
“Marcia Trimble Suspect Nabbed"
The File on 9 yr old Marcia Trimble
An Exhaustive Look at Nashville’s Most Notorious Unsolved Murder
by MATT PULLE
June 21, 2001 NEWS » FEATURES
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/the-file-on-marcia-trimble/Content?oid=1185778
Editor’s note: For the next two weeks, a Nashville Scene investigation into the murder of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble will disclose never-before-published details of what ranks as one of this city’s most infamous crimes. In this week’s installment, law enforcement officials, who continue to pursue the killer, painstakingly reconstruct the crime.
As well, Virginia Trimble, Marcia’s mother, speaks for the first time in detail about the day her child was murdered.
In the summer of 1979, most Nashvillians had finally started to put the gruesome murder and sexual assault of Marcia Trimble behind them. Four years earlier, on an Easter Sunday, Trimble—a feisty 9-year-old with straight blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles—had been found dead in a neighbor’s garage. But if the case had begun to fade away for most of Nashville, it was still front and center at the Metro Police Department. There, officers were obsessively—some would say mindlessly—focused on the case.
“Marcia Trimble Suspect Nabbed"...
At the time of the murder, the suspect, Jeffrey Womack, had lived at 4102 Copeland Dr., a block uphill from the Trimble home at 4009 Copeland Dr., near Harpeth Hall. Womack had seen Marcia the day she disappeared. Now the 20-year-old Hillsboro High School dropout was staying with his brother at the Parkside Apartments at 3212 West End Ave., a stone’s throw from what is now Tin Angel restaurant. When four police cars converged outside the building, their suspect was calmly standing in front his apartment. Meeting the officers at the door, the barefoot Womack was clad in cut-off jeans and a Spats Restaurant T-shirt. Sporting a fresh mustache, he wore his brown, bushy hair down to his neck.
“I have been expecting you,” he reportedly told police.
“This is your day of reckoning,” one of the seven arresting officers sternly replied.
Womack did not protest his arrest. In fact, he took it calmly, although police do remember teardrops moistening his eyes as he tried not to cry. Handcuffed, he was hauled to Juvenile Court—he was 15 years old when the murder occurred—and charged with first-degree murder. He then was set free on $25,000 bond. Expressing the pent-up emotions of an entire city, the next day’s Nashville Bannerfairly exploded. “Marcia Trimble Suspect Nabbed,” screamed the headline across the top of the afternoon newspaper, which not only broke the story of Womack’s arrest but meticulously reported its finer details.
The Police Department’s actions on that August night more than two decades ago embodied everything right and wrong about its investigation. The officers were dogged and tireless. They were motivated by a sense of responsibility that often transcended their calling as cops. But some would say that very same sense of responsibility and commitment made them at times unable to handle the case in a professional way. Consider, for example, one of the arresting officers’ “day of reckoning” comment to Womack—the Trimble case had clearly gotten personal...
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http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/the-file-on-marcia-trimble-part-ii/Content?oid=1185794
The File on Marcia Trimble Part II
The ongoing hunt for the young girl’s killer yields a few possibilities but no clear answers
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http://nashvillecitypaper.com/taxonomy/term/10512
Barrett convicted of second degree murder of Marcia Trimble
July 18, 2009
Jury deliberates for nine hours in a case that bring closure to Nashville mystery..
A Davidson County Criminal Court jury today found Jerome Barrett guilty of second-degree murder in the 1975 killing of Marcia Trimble. It imposed a sentence of 44 years.
The seven women and five men on the jury, nine of them white and three black, deliberated for nearly seven hours Friday and another two hours Saturday morning before reaching their verdict.
The key to the prosecution's case was the discovery of DNA on the murdered child's clothing that matched Barrett's with a probability of 6 trillion to one.
Judge Steve Dozier had instructed the jury to use the law in effect in 1975 as it considered the case and sentence. The death penalty was unconstitutional throughout the U.S. at the time the crime occurred.
Assistant Attorney General Tom Thurman, who has been working the case since 1990, said in a press conference that he was "extremely happy with the verdict for the Trimble family and for this community."
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