November 17, 2007
By nightfall on Aug. 10, 1984, investigators had only one lead in the rape and fatal stabbing of Deborah Sykes. Someone had called 911 that morning to report an attack. "My name is Sammy Mitchell," the caller said.
The police knew Sammy Mitchell well. His criminal record included assaults, robberies and petty crime dating back 10 years. He was a tough guy, with wounds all over his chest and arms to prove it. He had grown a beard to cover up the two scars that ran down either side of his face.
"You get a reputation by growing up through the years like that, kicking ass, going to jail,''
Mitchell had once told a newspaper reporter. "For the streets, it's good. For getting a job, it's bad; it can't help. But for the streets, man, hey, it's beautiful."
That night, two officers went to find Mitchell.
They looked first at the apartment of his mother, Mattie Mitchell, on Patterson Avenue. When no one answered, the police tried the Service Distributor Gas Station at the corner of Chestnut and Liberty streets. Mitchell had a girlfriend, a prostitute who worked the streets around the service station, known as "The Block." Sooner or later, Mitchell would show up at the corner store. He always did.
The officers left a business card with the store clerk. Later that night, Mitchell turned up with his running mate, Darryl Hunt. The clerk called the police, and Hunt waited while Mitchell went up the street to Pooky's Lounge, to pay off his tab.
"I was just standing there and they pulled up," Hunt said. "They asked me was I Sammy. I said, 'No, but he'll be right back.'
"So they asked me did he make a phone call. I said, 'Not that I know of.'"
He said that he and Mitchell had been together all that morning and the night before on the "east side" of town and that he would have known if Mitchell had called 911.
For the moment, Hunt's answer was enough. The police didn't bother to wait for Mitchell. When four days passed and police still hadn't figured out whose voice it was on the 911 call, an officer again left a business card for Mitchell at the service station. Once again, Mitchell and Hunt replied.
This time, Mitchell flagged a police car when he and Hunt were downtown. Detective Jim Daulton, the lead investigator on the Sykes case, met them outside a pool hall on Trade Street. Daulton had the 911 tape in his police car, and he asked them to listen to it. Hunt didn't recognize the voice.
"They only played the part where it said, 'This is Sammy Mitchell.'"
Mitchell didn't recognize the voice, either. And Daulton, once he heard Mitchell's voice, could tell that it wasn't the same as what was on the tape.
"Both of these guys were laughing and they didn't take it seriously," Daulton later told the State Bureau of Investigation.
Daulton was right - Hunt said that he and Mitchell didn't take the tape all that seriously. Why should they? They didn't know that Daulton was investigating a murder.
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