A copy editor for The Sentinel was stabbed to death within two blocks of her office before dawn yesterday.
The victim was Deborah Brotherton Sykes, 26, of Mooresville. Her body was found on a grassy slope off West End Boulevard, across the street from Crystal Towers, a high-rise apartment building for senior citizens.
Dr. Lew W. Stringer, the chief Forsyth County medical examiner, said Mrs. Sykes suffered multiple stab wounds in the upper body. An autopsy is scheduled for today at Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill.
Police issued a lookout around 7 p.m. yesterday for two unidentified men who may have been involved in the stabbing. They were described as black men 20 to 25 years old, 6 feet to 6 feet 3 inches tall, medium build and wearing dark clothing.
Her acquaintances described Mrs. Sykes as a statuesque and attractive woman. She was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 150 pounds. Because of her size, acquaintances doubted that a man of average build could have overpowered her.
Mrs. Sykes came to The Sentinel on July 9 from the Chattanooga News-Free Press. She and her husband, John Douglas Sykes Jr., had been living with his parents in Mooresville while they looked for a house in Winston-Salem.
According to her co-workers, Mrs. Sykes left her house at 5 a.m. yesterday and drove her blue Opal Kadett north into Winston-Salem. She parked the car in West End Boulevard just north of Sixth Street -- 1 1/2 blocks from the newspaper's office -- shortly before 6 a.m., when she was due at work.
Before she could reach her office, however, Mrs. Sykes was intercepted by one or two men, who lured her or forced her north onto West End Boulevard, witnesses have told police. Her body was found about 150 feet from her car, lying just beyond a 4-foot wooden wall.
Police and reporters searched for her for more than two hours before her body was found by a child who was wandering through the area.
Although the spot is not visible from West End Boulevard, it can be seen clearly from Seventh Street and Cherry-Marshall Expressway. Employees at E.B. Graham & Son Plumbing on Seventh Street said that they saw what appeared to be a pile of clothes lying on the slope and did not realize it was a body until after the police arrived.
The stabbing may have taken place before dawn, but there was enough light for at least four witnesses to see Mrs. Sykes before she died, Lt. Jerry Raker of the Winston-Salem Police Department said.
According to Raker, the witnesses saw one or two black men with a white woman on West End Boulevard early yesterday morning. They did not see the stabbing, he said.
Mrs. Sykes had been wearing slacks, which were found several feet from her body, Raker said. He said the rest of her clothes had not been removed. He said the autopsy would reveal whether she had been sexually assaulted.
When Mrs. Sykes did not arrive at The Sentinel, her supervisors assumed that her car had broken down and that she was having trouble getting to a phone, said Fred Flagler, the newspaper's managing editor. After a few hours, however, one of her fellow employees spotted the blue Opal.
After Mrs. Sykes husband positively identified the car, Flagler said, the newspaper called the police. Her body was found between 1:45 and 2 p.m.
Police detectives and narcotics agents combed the block for clues until after dusk. Raker said that some evidence was found near her body, but he declined to elaborate.
The slope where Mrs. Sykes' body was found lies in the shadow of Crystal Towers, with the Integon Building and the First Baptist Church one block to the south on the corner of Spruce and Fifth streets.
Alcoholics and vagrants frequent the grassy areas on both sides of that block of West End Boulevard, but police have been cracking down on them lately, according to Crystal Towers residents.
Many reporters and editors at The Sentinel and the Journal routinely park on West End Boulevard because it is the closest street without parking meters. The newspapers provide parking for employees, for a fee, in company lots.
Some residents of Crystal Towers said West End Boulevard is not safe after dark. "I don't think it's the winos so much as outsiders," said Charles Rumley, who lives in Crystal Towers. "It's mostly teen-agers," added John Weatherman, another resident there.
In all of 1983, only three assaults were reported in the block surrounding Crystal Towers, according to police statistics. Police received 12 complaints about prowlers and four reports of disturbances in the neighborhood last year.
Cathy A. Ferrell, the assistant news editor at The Sentinel, said she has parked on West End Boulevard safely for 10 years. "I've been followed a couple of times, but not in a long, long time," she said.
Yesterday's incident has changed Ms. Farrell's mind, however.
She said she may try to rent a space in the company lot on Fifth Street.
Joe Doster, the publisher of The Sentinel and the Journal, said it is company policy to give female employees who work before dawn or after dusk preference when renting spaces.