Sunday, December 21, 2003
A man who was picked out of a lineup but was never prosecuted in a downtown rape six months after the murder of Deborah Sykes is the new suspect in that case, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.
The victim in the second case, which bore striking similarities to the Sykes rape and stabbing, did not press charges, and authorities mistakenly believed that Willard E. Brown was in prison at the time of Sykes' death, so they never pursued him as a suspect.
Law-enforcement sources confirmed yesterday that Brown's DNA matches the semen evidence in the Sykes murder.
Sykes was raped and stabbed to death on Aug. 10, 1984, while on her way to work at The Sentinel, the afternoon newspaper that closed in 1985. Darryl Hunt was convicted twice in her death, but has maintained his innocence ever since his arrest a month after the murder.
Brown, 43, was in jail last night on a probation violation and has not been charged in connection with Sykes' killing. Details in the case against him remained sketchy last night. It is not clear whether the police believe that there is a connection between Brown, Hunt and Sammy Mitchell. Mitchell, a close friend of Hunt's, was charged with Sykes' murder in 1990 but has never been tried.
Hunt's supporters said yesterday that the identification of a new suspect should be enough to prove Hunt's innocence and lead to his release, but many remain distrustful of local law enforcement.
A group of ministers held a press conference at Wake Forest Baptist Church to call for an independent investigation, but city officials said that the police are capable of investigating the case.
Hunt learned about the new suspect yesterday morning when he called his wife from prison, as he does every Saturday morning. He said that the positive DNA match offers him his best chance at freedom, but he worries that police will still try to link him to the crime.
"I'm very elated about it," he said in a telephone interview from the Randolph Correctional Center in Asheboro. "My faith is that this is it. My experience with the system in Winston-Salem makes me wonder what they'll try to do next."
District Attorney Tom Keith did not return telephone calls yesterday. He declined late Friday to provide the suspect's name or say whether police had linked him to Hunt or Mitchell or were trying to do so.
"I don't know whether there are or aren't connections to those two people," Keith said Friday. "I've got my hands tied. I cannot say what I have."
Police Chief Linda Davis did not return telephone calls yesterday.
Mark Rabil, Hunt's attorney since 1984, said that he was still waiting for details. He said he thought that he had reached an agreement last week with the SBI that the name of the new suspect would not be made public until after someone from Hunt's defense team had a chance to interview the suspect along with the police. It remained unclear yesterday whether police have already interviewed Brown.
Case marked by discord
Sykes grew up in Statesville, and had just moved back to North Carolina to work at The Sentinel when she was killed. She was 25. Her mother, Evelyn Jefferson, said yesterday that she hopes that Brown is prosecuted in her daughter's death, but she continues to believe that Hunt played some part in the crime.
"If we have convicted the wrong person we should certainly be ashamed. I personally don't think we have," she said in a telephone interview from her home in northern Georgia, outside Chattanooga. "I'm very confused. After 20 years, we're reliving the whole issue again and it's certainly very tough."
The weekend's developments are the latest in a case marked by discord. After three police investigations, two trials and 15 years of appellate review, both sides remain entrenched.
Earl Biggers, a retired detective with the Winston-Salem police, said that the new DNA evidence that links Brown to the crime does not exclude Hunt as a participant.
"I feel like Darryl Hunt did it from the testimony," Biggers said. "I have no doubt in my mind." DNA testing in 1994 and again in 1995 ruled out Hunt as the source of the semen in the case, but the courts have refused to grant him a new trial, arguing that the DNA evidence does not exclude him as the killer or even a participant in the sexual assault.
Henry Frye, the former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court, wrote the dissent in 1994 when the court denied Hunt a third trial.
"If the evidence shows that you are not the one who raped her, then that is enough for a new trial," he said yesterday. "If the DNA shows that it was somebody else, then that is pretty serious. The fact that they have another suspect is strong evidence."
An eight-part series in the Journal showed how the 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 him.
A second rape
The Winston-Salem police and the State Bureau of Investigation reopened the Sykes investigation earlier this month after a new round of court-ordered DNA testing led them to Brown's brother, whose DNA was unusually close to the DNA extracted from the semen evidence in the Sykes murder, sources said.
The brother was excluded because his DNA was not a perfect match required by forensic scientists. But investigators began to look at the Brown family, which led them to test Brown's DNA. Sources said yesterday that Brown's DNA matches the evidence in the Sykes case.
Police had looked into Brown as a suspect in the Sykes murder after a second rape in downtown Winston-Salem on Feb. 2, 1985.
The two crimes were strikingly similar. Sykes was attacked shortly after 6 a.m., having parked her car on West End Boulevard to walk two blocks to work. She was raped and stabbed 16 times.
In the second case, a 20-year-old woman parked her car about 8 a.m. in a lot on Poplar Street and was walking to her office at Integon Corp., now GMAC, just a couple of blocks from where Sykes was attacked. She was accosted by a man with a gun and forced back to her car. He ordered her to drive to a drive-in movie theater on Old Greensboro Road, where he raped her and stabbed her in the face 12 times. She escaped to a nearby apartment complex.
Brown was on parole
The victim in that case identified Brown in a lineup, but decided not to prosecute. She could not be reached yesterday, but in an interview last month she said that she never saw the similarities between the two cases.
By the time she identified Brown, Hunt was already in jail awaiting trial in the Sykes case. Police checked Brown's prison record, which showed that he was in custody when Sykes was killed. They did not further pursue the connection between the two cases.
Had they checked further, they would have learned that although the record showed him in the custody of the N.C. Department of Correction until Sept. 26, 1984, he was actually on parole and had been released from prison three months earlier, on June 14.
Rabil said that he knew the middle of last week that the SBI had a suspect in the case, but didn't know a name. He said that he, the SBI, the police and Keith had agreed to keep quiet until the police and a representative from Hunt's defense team could interview the suspect.
Instead, Keith called media Friday night to announce that police had a suspect. He said he did so because he knew that the Journal was planning a story for Saturday's paper on the status of the DNA testing. Rabil said that releasing information violated the agreement.
Brown appeared in court on Nov. 14 for a misdemeanor probation violation for charges of second-degree trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He remains in jail serving the sentence, a jail spokeswoman said yesterday.
Lawyer Anthony Adaser of the Forsyth County Public Defender's Office represented Brown in court.
Access is denied
Pete Clary, the chief public defender, went to the Forsyth County Jail yesterday to try to meet with Brown. But Clary said that detention officers told him that Brown could have "absolutely no visitors," by order of a jail captain.
"I've never been denied access to see a client, or a potential client," Clary said. "We were his lawyers in a case that was recently disposed."
Sgt. Brad Stanley, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, which runs the jail, said he was not aware of the order and could not comment on it.
Rabil said that Hunt told him that he didn't know Brown, but he is concerned that police will find a link between them. The police said yesterday that Brown lived in the neighborhood near Dunleith Avenue where Hunt and Mitchell spent their time in the summer of 1984 .
A woman who knew Brown then, as well as Hunt and Mitchell, said yesterday that the three men frequented the same illegal bars, known as drink houses, and may have known each other.
Mary Howell, the sister of a man convicted with Brown in a string of crimes in 1977, said that she never believed that Hunt was capable of murder. Brown, however, was known for violence, she said.
"We know he has a temper, and he will fight a woman," Howell said.
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com
• Journal reporters Patrick Wilson, John Hinton and Theo Helm contributed to this story.