JAM, thank god it was just a cat. When my old cat cried-I swear it sounded just like a baby!!!
Pam Kinamore's mother and sister were on The View a couple of days ago. Another good article I just had to post.
Today, I was passsing by the house of Gina Wilson Green and I see the Crime Scene truck outside! Gotta love the BR police for checking everything out so quickly. I mean, how long has it been since she was murdered? They say they are about to release some new info. but I don't know about all that.
Women's murders remain unsolved
By MELISSA MOORE
mmoore@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff writer
Related item:
Map of locations where bodies were found
There have been no televised briefings in the Gloria Stanford slaying investigation. No one organized a rally on behalf of Deborah Hunt. No task force was formed to hunt the killers of Priscilla Durden or Terry Jackson.
The killings of those four women and many others in the Baton Rouge area slipped out of the limelight almost as soon as they happened. About two dozen killings were overlooked even when the serial killer first focused attention this summer on the unsolved murders of women in and around Baton Rouge.
But detailed research and information provided by the Baton Rouge Police Department and the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office now show that at least 63 killings of women in the greater Baton Rouge area in the past decade remain unsolved.
That's up sharply from the 37 area cases reported last summer. When the serial killer task force formed in August, Police Chief Pat Englade mentioned only 37 city cases.
City police and sheriff's officials say lab tests have not linked the serial killer's DNA to any of the other killings in which investigators have DNA evidence. They won't say which cases have DNA evidence.
So far DNA shows only that the same man killed three Baton Rouge women -- Gina Wilson Green in September 2001, Charlotte Murray Pace in May and Pam Kinamore in July -- and a Lafayette woman, Trineisha Dené Colomb, in late November. Colomb's body was found in Scott just west of Lafayette.
Family and friends of the serial killer's victims are holding a rally at 3 p.m. today on the steps of the State Capitol. University of New Orleans criminologist and professor Peter Scharf will be a guest speaker.
More than one killer?
Col. Mike Barnett, the sheriff's chief criminal deputy, said detectives have gone all the way back to the 1985 murder of LSU graduate student Melissa Montz in their search for the serial killer. Montz disappeared during a morning jog and her skeletal remains were found weeks later near the LSU golf course.
They have examined methods, victim traits and other details of the crimes that might suggest whether some were committed by a single killer.
"We have our opinions of what crimes are linked together," he said.
Without naming particular crimes, Barnett said he believes the Baton Rouge area has been a hunting ground for serial killers.
"I think we have had more than one," he said.
However, Barnett said it's dangerous to link cases not tied directly by scientific evidence. A bad link, he said, can jumble facts "that are just as likely to lead you in the wrong direction as to lead you in the right direction."
Barnett said the man who killed Green, Pace, Kinamore and Colomb left no "signature" or unique feature beyond his DNA that allows investigators to connect those cases or any others.
Green was strangled, Pace was stabbed repeatedly, Kinamore's throat was cut and Colomb was beaten to death. Green and Pace were killed in their homes; Kinamore was kidnapped and her body dumped at Whiskey Bay; and Colomb's body was dumped in the woods, 20 miles from where her car was abandoned in Acadiana.
The Baton Rouge victims were white and Colomb was black. They ranged in age from 22 to 44.
Barnett said he is concerned that the Baton Rouge area seems to have a higher rate of unsolved slayings of women than other cities of similar size.
"There are more whodunits here than there should be," he said.
Renewed interest
Some of the unsolved cases have come under the microscope again since the realization in July that a serial killer is preying on women in the area.
Hardee Schmidt, 52, disappeared while jogging in Pollard Estates off Perkins Road in 1999. Her body was dumped in St. James Parish. She had been strangled and the back of her skull was fractured.
That skull fracture was mentioned in documents filed in court by investigators to highlight similarities between Schmidt's death and that of Eugenie Boisfontaine. Boisfontaine, 34, appears to have been abducted from near University Lake in 1997; her body was found in Iberville Parish.
The victims and the crimes have notable similarities, but police have not said whether they believe the same man killed the two women.
Police had formed another task force in 2000 to investigate another grouping of unsolved killings. They would not say which murders were under the task force's umbrella, but acknowledged similarities in the killings of six black women in late 1999 and the first half of 2000. Four of them were strangled - Tannis Walker, Florida Edwards, Patricia Hawkins and Veronica Courtney. The other two, Shirley Mikell and Dianna Williams, were beaten to death, according to police records.
Lt. Mike Morris, the city police chief of detectives, said no DNA links those cases and that investigators were not able to identify the killer. However, those killings appear to have stopped, he said.
The murder of 21-year-old Geralyn DeSoto of Addis a year ago also has received more attention because of the latest serial killer investigation. Her aunt, Jackie Robert, believes DeSoto was a victim of the same man.
Robert said the similarities between the murders of DeSoto and Pace are remarkable: DeSoto registered for graduate school on the day she was killed, and Pace had just finished graduate school; both women were stabbed; and both had their telephones taken from their homes.
West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Detective Charles Hotard said investigators are considering the possibility that DeSoto was a victim of the serial killer, but that they also are exploring other theories. The cases have their differences, he said.
Hotard said he is concerned that drawing a connection where none exists could lead investigators away from the real killer.
City police spokeswoman Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa said task force detectives have reviewed the DeSoto case and remain in contact with West Baton Rouge authorities on it.
The 1992 death of Zachary resident Connie Warner and the 1998 disappearance and presumed death of 28-year-old Randi Mebruer also have drawn speculation about their relationship to each other and to the serial killings.
Warner, 41, was apparently taken from her home in Oak Shadows Subdivision in Zachary, the same neighborhood where Mebruer later disappeared.
Zachary Sgt. Ray Day said his agency has been in touch with the Baton Rouge Area Homicide Task Force, but that there is no DNA in the Warner or Mebruer cases, so it's impossible to confirm any possible connections.
Zachary Police Lt. David McDavid, who has worked on the Warner case, said the key to solving it lies in a piece of information now held by someone other than the police or the killer.
"There's somebody who knows who did it," he said. "We'd like them to come forward."
Day said all new Zachary detectives are asked to review the Warner and Mebruer cases to see if they can find something others have missed.
"Nobody here is so bold that they can conclusively say, 'I've done all there is,' " he said.
Cold cases hard to crack
Forty-four of the unsolved killings of women in and around Baton Rouge in the past decade are city police cases.
Morris with city police said women are more likely than men to be killed out of public view and without witnesses -- such as in domestic attacks or during sex crimes -- making many murders of women hard to solve.
Men often are involved in public disputes that lead to violence, and killings in public are much more likely to be seen by others, he said.
"Even a drive-by, you're liable to have three witnesses," he said.
Morris said that earlier this year the Homicide Division started a project to review cases dating back to 1971 and rate them on how likely they are to be solved. That rating is based on availability of witnesses, suspects, relatives of the victim and the presence of forensic evidence.
City police Homicide Division Commander Lt. Keith Bauer reissues the cases with the highest solvability scores to new detectives. So far, he's distributed cases from 1995 to 2000, he said.
Morris said the serial killer investigation has consumed many of the resources he and Bauer had hoped to apply to the cold-case initiative. But, he said, "It's still one of our top goals."
Eleven of the unsolved killings are Sheriff's Office cases.
Barnett said the Sheriff's Office keeps murder cases under active investigation until the detective, his lieutenant and the chief of detectives all agree that every lead has been followed. Those cold cases are reviewed annually for new leads or possible connections to other crimes.
"Murder is the very highest priority here," he said.
The rest of the unsolved cases are under the jurisdictions of the sheriffs in Iberville, West Baton Rouge or St. Martin parishes or of Zachary police.
Among the Baton Rouge police cases are the killings of Gloria Stanford, Priscilla Durden and Terry Jackson.
Stanford, 45, and her boyfriend got a ride home from a bar about 2:30 a.m. six days before Christmas 1992. On North Foster Drive near Jackson Avenue, a shot was fired through the back window. It struck Stanford in the head and she died less than 24 hours later.
Durden, 29, was found dead from a gunshot wound in her upper body on Nov. 9, 2000, during a heavy rain. She was lying in the street at Weller Avenue and Mayan Street, off Plank Road near Mohican Street.
Jackson's decomposing body was found July 22, 1996, partially hidden on the roadside on North Acadian Thruway West. The 36-year-old woman had been strangled.
The Sheriff's Office has the killing of Deborah Hunt. Her family found the 30-year-old mother of five dead from a gunshot wound in her back in her home on Skysail Avenue near Gardere Lane on Aug. 7, 1995. She worked at a dry cleaner and had recently became engaged.
Hybrid Mode
