Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Mayor Allen Joines and several Winston-Salem City Council members plan to ask the State Bureau of Investigation to take the lead role in the investigation of the 19-year-old murder of Deborah Sykes, which was re-opened this month with the identification of a new suspect in the case.
Joines said that he still needs to talk with Police Chief Linda Davis before making a formal request, but he and several council members said last night that an independent review will help restore public confidence that the case will be fairly prosecuted.
"I think there is an opportunity here for the community to heal itself," Joines said last night. "I was not embarking on this as any criticism of the police department or its administration."
Sykes, 25, was raped and stabbed to death in August 1984 on her way to work as a copy editor in the downtown Winston-Salem offices of The Sentinel, the afternoon newspaper that closed in 1985. A month after her death, police arrested Darryl Hunt.
Davis said last night that Detective Mike Rowe has been assigned as lead investigator in the present investigation because of his experience as a homicide detective. "That's why he was assigned to this case," she said. "And he had no involvement in the other two investigations (of Darryl Hunt)."
Police never had any physical evidence to tie Hunt to the crime, but instead relied on eyewitnesses who put him at the scene with Sykes. Hunt has been convicted twice in the murder, but has maintained his innocence ever since his arrest.
With the charges yesterday against Willard Brown, new questions have emerged about the police investigation into the case.
The current charges against Brown stem from testing last week that matched his DNA with the evidence in the Sykes case. Police had looked at Brown as a suspect in 1985 and again in 1986 because he was identified in another downtown rape, but ruled him out because they thought that he was in prison on the day that Sykes was killed. Police did not learn until last week that he was on parole and had been released from prison in June 1984, two months before the murder.
Also yesterday, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a statement criticizing the previous investigations.
"We also believe this case should be investigated by the FBI because, among other reasons, the SBI has already investigated the case and did not discover that Mr. Brown was not incarcerated at the time of the incident," the statement said. The FBI does not generally investigate local cases.
The SBI investigated the case once before, in 1986, but never released it findings.
Frank Brown, the special agent in charge of the regional office of the SBI, said yesterday he assigned agent Scott Williams to the case this month at Davis' request. "We're going to work hand-in-hand with the Winston-Salem police on it and keep an open mind the best we can," he said.
Joines said last night he has not decided what role he thinks the police department should play in the continuing investigation, and council members were divided on that issue.
"I think they don't need to have any involvement," Council Member Joycelyn Johnson said. "The comment can't be, 'We knew it wasn't going to come out all right because the Winston-Salem police did it.'"
Council Member Robert Clark said he supports the idea of asking the SBI to take a lead role, but he wasn't certain of the details.
"I just think this is so controversial that we have to make sure everything is done aboveboard," Clark said.
But Council Member Nelson Malloy, a longtime supporter of Hunt, went one step further last night, saying that the police and the district attorney should remove themselves from the case.
"To be quite frank," he said, "I can't say I have 100 percent confidence in the SBI or anyone else. In this instance, I don't think we have any options."
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com
• Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com