Saturday, December 20, 2003
State authorities said late yesterday that they have a new suspect in the 1984 murder case for which Darryl Hunt has been in prison for 18 years.
It was not immediately clear if the news might lead to freedom for Hunt, 38, who is serving a life sentence in connection with the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes. But in fact, a new tangle already was brewing over the disclosure of the suspect and the tactics of law enforcement.
Hunt's attorney, Mark Rabil, said early today that state officials had told him that the state crime lab made a positive match between the new suspect's DNA and the semen sample recovered from Sykes. "They did a DNA test on him. He is a perfect match," Rabil said. "They have the rapist."
Sykes, a 25-year-old copy editor, was raped and stabbed to death in August 1984 on her way to work in the downtown Winston-Salem offices of The Sentinel, the afternoon newspaper that closed in 1985. Tom Keith, Forsyth County's district attorney, and James J. Coman, North Carolina's senior deputy attorney general, declined last night to discuss the evidence against the new suspect, but they did not deny there was a DNA match.
"I'm not allowed to say what evidence I have in a pending case," Keith said.
Rabil, however, spoke out angrily against Keith, saying that he broke an agreement reached between a judge and the two sides Wednesday by announcing the news of a new suspect to the Winston-Salem Journal and other media last night.
The agreement between the two sides and the judge who had ordered the new round of DNA testing, Rabil said, was intended to make sure that any new suspect identified would be properly questioned. "Before I could be told the results, Tom Keith was on the phone to the press and not even giving full information,'' Rabil said.
"Protocol was breached.... Now we don't know what's going on. We don't know the name of the suspect, we don't where he is, we don't know if he's been interviewed,'' Rabil continued. "We don't know if he has an attorney, we don't know if the interview was recorded, we don't know if any promises of leniency were made, if he (the new suspect) pointed the finger at Darryl Hunt or Sammy Mitchell.''
Hunt has been convicted twice of murder in the case, and his friend Mitchell was charged in 1990, but never tried.
An eight-part series in the Journal last month documented problems and inconsistencies in the case against Hunt, who has maintained his innocence in the crime since he was first accused a month after the killing. The series showed how law-enforcement authorities relied on questionable witnesses and other tactics to zero in on Hunt, to the exclusion of others, and how the legal system worked against Hunt.
DNA testing in 1994 and again in 1995 proved that Hunt was not the source of semen found on Sykes, but the courts turned down his requests for a new trial, saying that the DNA evidence did not rule him out as Sykes' killer or even a participant in her sexual assault.
The case helped define race relations in Winston-Salem for nearly 20 years, with Hunt's supporters insisting that he was railroaded because the state wouldn't let the brutal murder of a white woman go unpunished.
One key Hunt supporter was cautious last night.
"Hopefully, everything will come to an end. We have believed in Darryl's innocence," said Larry Little, a former alderman and now a professor of political science at Winston-Salem State University. "You just hope that people will do the right thing. Sometimes it's difficult for people to admit that a mistake has been made, and we just hope that people are big enough to do the right thing," Little said.
Reached at home last night, Keith declined to name the new suspect or say whether the suspect has a connection to Hunt. Keith said that the police have talked with new witnesses who had not been interviewed previously when the investigation focused on Hunt.
Keith was not ready to acknowledge Hunt's innocence, instead repeating an old theory in the crime. "We've all known that there's a third person since 1994," he said. "This is that third person." Rabil said he has already lodged a complaint with Judge Anderson Cromer of Superior Court about Keith's tactics.
"This shows that Keith, that Tom Keith has still got tunnel vision. They're trying to prove a theory that has been proven wrong time and again."
Rabil also said that Keith's stance was different than what he was told by the N.C. Attorney General's Office.
"My understanding from the attorney general's office is there's no evidence of any connection with Darryl Hunt or Sammy Mitchell," Rabil said. "Therefore, this should end this and begin the prosecution of the real killer."
Rabil said that the attorney general's office told him that the state crime lab found a partial match with the DNA evidence in the case earlier this month and sent the sample to the crime lab in Alabama this week for further testing.
That partial match, however, was so close that investigators decided to question relatives of the man whose DNA nearly matched the evidence in the case. Rabil said that the suspect, whose DNA does match, is a relative of the man whose DNA nearly matched.
Keith said that the Winston-Salem police and an agent with the State Bureau of Investigation were still interviewing witnesses last night and would continue to work the case over the weekend. He said he expects an arrest next week.
The database search was ordered in April by Cromer without opposition from Keith. The order was for new DNA samples to be taken, and that they be compared against a database of 40,000 violent felons in North Carolina and more than 1.5 million nationwide.
Sykes was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death about 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 1984, while on her way to work as a copy editor.
In 2000, a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Hunt's request for a third trial based on the DNA results. He is serving a life sentence at Randolph Correctional Center in Asheboro and will be eligible for parole in 2005.
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com