Deborah Sykes was 25 years old and had only recently returned to her home state to work as a copy editor at The Sentinel, Winston-Salem's afternoon newspaper, when she was raped and stabbed to death in a small park off of West End Boulevard on Aug. 10, 1984.
When a 19-year-old black man was charged with murder a month later, it set off a case that has helped define race relations in Winston-Salem for nearly 20 years. Hunt was convicted twice despite the lack of physical evidence. DNA evidence introduced in 1994, after his second conviction, showed that he was not the person whose semen was collected from Sykes' body.
Though such evidence has freed numerous others convicted in rape and murder cases, Hunt remains in prison.
In a six-month investigation, The Journal has found that the police used questionable tactics and relied on even more questionable witnesses to bore in on Hunt as a suspect. It shows how legal decisions kept piling up against Hunt, sometimes because defense tactics failed. And it reveals how the state changed its theory of the crime to fit the new DNA evidence rather than re-investigate the case.
With the passage of time, Hunt's story is no longer the cause celebre it once was. The case, however, hasn't gone away. A judge in April ordered that the DNA evidence in the Sykes case be compared with state and federal databases of DNA from convicted felons, an action that could definitively solve the crime.
In December 2003, Willard E. Brown confessed to the 1984 rape and stabbing death of Deborah Sykes after DNA testing linked him to the crime. His confession led to the release of Darryl Hunt, who had served about 18 years of a life sentence for a crime he always denied committing.
On February 6, 2004, Superior Court Judge Anderson Cromer vacated Hunt's murder conviction in the case. Cromer dismissed the case against Hunt "with prejudice," meaning he can never be tried in the murder again.
Phoebe Zerwick, The Journal's metro columnist, came to Winston-Salem in 1987, and has covered business, health and medicine, and city hall.
She wrote an award-winning series on infant mortality, and also was one of the writers for a 1998 series about race relations in Winston-Salem that touched in part on the Darryl Hunt case.
Les Gura was the project's editor. He is the Journal's metro editor, responsible for coverage of Winston-Salem and topics such as education, health and religion. He joined the paper in 2002.
Katherine Elkins, Jennifer Falor and Adam Howell, interactive media producers for Journalnow.com, designed and produced the online series and its components.
The series was copy-edited by Jo Dawson. Charlie Elkins, an assistant managing editor, designed and paginated the pages for print. The graphics were done by Jim Stanley and Nicholas Weir. Ted Richardson, Megan Morr and David Sandler were the photographers. Michelle Johnson produced the online audio collected by Ted Richardson.
• The online presentation of "Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt" has been chosen as a finalist in the fifth annual Online Journalism Awards (OJAs) in the category of Enterprise Journalism, small sites. The winners will be announced at the OJA Awards Banquet during the fifth national conference of the Online News Association, which will be held Nov. 12-13. The contest honors excellence in digital journalism
• "Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt" won the 2004 APMEOnline Convergence Award. This award, sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors, recognizes print-online combinations that exhibit the best applications of both in presenting the story.
• "Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt" won two Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The print entry won in the Investigative Reporting for newspapers under 100,000 circulation category and the Web site won in the Non-Deadline Reporting for newspapers under 100,000 circulation category.
• The print series also won the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) annual award for investigative reporting for newspapers of 100,000 circulation or less; and the Paul Tobenkin Award for outstanding achievement for newspaper reporting about race. The Tobenkin Award is presented by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. 
• "Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt," was chosen as the November 2003 winner in the Online Non-breaking News category of the Society for News Design's New Media Design Competition.
• The Web site also took second place in the Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Awards, which recognizes journalists in 11 southeastern states.
• "Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt," is a finalist in the category of "Best Special Feature in an Internet Service - News or Event, under 1 million monthy visitors" in the EPpy Awards, which are awarded by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek magazines.