Smallwood's brother in prison for serial killings

The brother of one of seven Rocky Mount women found dead since 2003 is a convicted serial killer two states away, officials in Lexington, Ky., confirmed Friday.

Robert Franklin Smallwood Jr. was sentenced in November 2007 to three life sentences after pleading guilty in the murders of three women from December 1999 to April 2006. Robert Smallwood, the 35-year-old brother of Elizabeth Jane Smallwood, is considered Lexington’s only known serial killer.

Rocky Mount police are aware of the brother’s background, Capt. Laura Fahnestock said, pointing out that Robert Smallwood had been incarcerated since October 2007, prior to the deaths of his sister and three other Rocky Mount women considered in the probe.

Robert Smallwood, 35, pleaded guilty in 2007 to nine separate counts connected to the deaths of Doris Roberts in 1999, Sonora Allen in 2002 and Erica Butler in 2006, as well as the 2003 rape of retired school teacher Viola Greene, all in Kentucky.

All of the Kentucky murder victims, as in the Rocky Mount cases, were known to have traded sex to feed drug addictions, according to criminal records and 2007 media reports.

“For a victim of a suspected serial killer to also be the sibling of a serial killer, that’s very rare,” said John Kelly, president of the New Jersey-based System to Apprehend Lethal Killers, which has been studying the case. “You don’t see that. Here you have two damaged people, in different regards, coming from the same family. It’s tragic.”

Robert Smallwood is being held at a medium-security prison in Sandy Hook, Ky., according to Kentucky Department of Corrections officials.

The confirmation of the family connection came a day after dozens of Rocky Mount residents gathered to remember Elizabeth Smallwood, eight months after a prison work crew uncovered her skeletal remains off Melton Drive. Authorities finally identified the body earlier this month, but a cause of death has not been determined.

Rumors of a serial killer stalking poor, black women have spread through East Rocky Mount the past few months, ever since June when authorities publicly connected the dots between the unsolved murders of Jarniece Hargrove, 31, Taraha Nicholson, 28, Ernestine Battle, 50, Jackie Thorpe, 35, Melody Wiggins, 29, and Elizabeth Smallwood, 33. Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight, the lead investigator in the case, announced last month that the 2003 death of 21-year-old Denise Williams also is included in the probe.

Elizabeth Smallwood first arrived in Eastern North Carolina around 1999, community members said, around the same time Robert Smallwood committed the first of the three murders in Kentucky. Elizabeth Smallwood, having severed ties with family years ago, was never reported missing to police prior to the discovery of her remains earlier this year.

Known by friends as a drifter, Elizabeth Smallwood wasn’t close with family, and it is unclear how or why she arrived in Rocky Mount a decade ago.

The tragedy inspired the group Murdered or Missing Sisters to hold the service for the woman Thursday, inviting the entire community to pay respects to the former stranger among them.

“Although most of us did not know her,” the Rev. Jody Wright prayed at the start of the service Thursday, “we are grateful that you knew her, Lord, and that even in those long months when she was forgotten, you did not forget her.”