Examiner confirms identity of remains

Officials positively have matched human remains found last week in Edgecombe County with a 31-year-old Rocky Mount woman who went missing two months ago, the Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Tuesday.

Dental records from the skeletal remains found June 29 in a wooded area off Seven Bridges Road matched those of Jarniece Latonya Hargrove, who was last seen in Rocky Mount on May 2, officials said.

Autopsy results are incomplete, according to the examiner’s office in Greenville, and a cause of death has not been released.

The Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office, which is leading a task force investigation of this and a series of similar incidents, would not confirm the body’s identity. Sheriff James Knight did not return Telegram phone messages.

State investigators for several months have been probing the discoveries of women’s bodies found in the same area near Rocky Mount during the past four years. Hargrove is the fifth such victim since 2005.

Knight previously said each of the five women found since 2005 were murdered. The specific causes of death have not been released, and the cases remain unsolved.

The bodies of the first four victims, like Hargrove, were identified as black women from Western Edgecombe County.

A farm worker found Hargrove last week in a wooded area off Seven Bridges Road.

District Attorney Robert Evans and Rocky Mount police met last week to discuss their offices’ potential involvement in the investigation. The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation already is involved, Knight said in a previous interview.

The first four victims were identified as:

• Melody Wiggins, 29, found May 30, 2005, in an area south of U.S. 64. She died from a blunt strike to the head.
• Jackie Nikelia Thorpe, 35, found Aug. 17, 2007, between the Battleboro community and Whitakers. She had been reported missing May 8, 2007.
• Ernestine Battle, 50, found March 14, 2008, also between Battleboro and Whitakers.
• Taraha Shenice Nicholson, 28, of Rocky Mount, found March 7, 2009. Authorities said she was strangled.

A crew of inmates also discovered skeletal remains in February near Melton Drive in Rocky Mount, but that person has not been identified, officials said.

Investigators said they don’t know if the murders are related and would not speculate Wednesday on potential motives.