Potential serial killer causes community to rally together

Turning tricks and the crack pipe have been her way of life for the better part of two decades, Denise Shae said last week, leaning forward on a leather couch in her disheveled Rocky Mount living room.

Prostitution isn’t the most virtuous way to pay bills, Shae admits, but that doesn’t mean she or others like her deserve to die.

“It doesn’t matter what you do or what you’re into,” Shae said. “Nobody has a right to kill. Nobody needs to die like that, naked out in the woods.”

Since police publicly connected dots this month between a series of missing women and murders in her community, Shae said she has locked herself inside, terrified she’ll become the next in a line of small-framed, black women whose unclothed bodies have been dumped along rural Edgecombe County roads the past few years.

“It makes me scared,” said Shae, 45, whose name has been changed for confidentiality. “We’re all terrified.”

Whispers of a possible serial killer and rumors of more missing women have been on the lips of many throughout East Rocky Mount the past month, ever since a worker found the body of 31-year-old Jarniece Latonya Hargrove abandoned in the woods off Seven Bridges Road.

Authorities will not definitively say if the murders of Hargrove and five other women found dead over the past four years are related, but a series of similarities seems to link the cases.

All of the confirmed victims were black women found in remote locations near the eastern boundary of Rocky Mount, and each had a history of drug or alcohol abuse, according to criminal records. Each also was a known prostitute, according to Shae, who claimed to have “worked the same streets” and smoked crack with the victims.

Hargrove’s family said deputies told them each of the women was found without clothes, although authorities will not confirm the statement.

“The killings must be connected,” Shae said. “It’s too much similar between all them girls to just be coincidence.”

Profile of a Killer

While investigators seem reluctant to use the term “serial killer,” at least one national expert on such crimes says the murders almost certainly are related. John Kelly, profiler

and president of the New Jersey-based System to Apprehend Lethal Killers, or STALK, said he’s convinced a serial killer is preying on vulnerable women in East Rocky Mount.

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 officials are wise to have formed a task force. The Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office is leading a joint effort of area law enforcement and state investigators to determine if the murders are related, Sheriff James Knight said, declining further comment.

Kelly said the next step should be an active canvass of wooded areas where the bodies have been found, extending the search radius to a quarter of a mile or more.

At least three other women who match the profile of the victims — Yolanda Lancaster, Joyce Durham and Christine Boone — have been reported missing to Rocky Mount police the past several months. Each has yet to be found.

“When you have a potential serial killer, you really have to push a full-court press investigating missing persons reports,” Kelly said, “especially when they match the profile.”

As more information becomes available, Kelly said he and his organization are willing to assist authorities in developing a potential profile of the killer.

“In most cases, the girls know this guy,” Kelly said. “They may not know they know him, but he’s addicted. Like someone who’s addicted to heroin, he’s addicted to being around the area, fantasizing about the girls. His drug is sexual power and control over these women, and he’s never satisfied.”The killer doesn’t feel remorse, Kelly said, and his chief motives are power, control and sex. He’s a slave to those desires, Kelly said.

“This guy is local,” he said. “And he will kill again. No doubt. Unless he’s in jail or dead, he will kill again.”