In my post “Missing in small towns” I wrote about women who disappeared and were later found murdered. The cases were from North Carolina and Louisiana.
I am more than pleased to be able to update you now on the North Carolina cases:
Investigators in North Carolina have reason to believe that Antwan Maurice Pittman was involved in the murders of at least five Rocky Mount women, according to a search warrant filed this month by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation. Authorities searched Pittman’s former residence August 20, 2010 after Halifax County deputies found the remains of Christine Boone (43) behind the home earlier this month while searching for another missing person. According to the search warrant, investigators believe that Boone, a Rocky Mount woman missing since 2006, might have been killed at the property.
Pittman is in prison awaiting trial after authorities charged him in September 2009 for the murder of Taraha Nicholson (28). Nicholson was one of seven other Rocky Mount women found dead in swampy and wooded fields around the east border of the city since 2003. According to the search warrant filed in Halifax County this month, authorities relied on DNA evidence to link Pittman, a registered sex offender, to Nicholson’s murder. His semen was found on her remains, the search warrant said.
A few weeks after Nicholson was killed, a N.C. Highway Patrol trooper reportedly found Pittman the morning of April 25 in a ditch off Seven Bridges Road sleeping in his car. Pittman had dirt on his boots, the search warrant said, and his pants were unzipped. It was the same day that Jarniece Latonya Hargrove was last seen by her family. Her body was recovered in June 2009 in a field off Seven Bridges Road, about 200 yards from where the trooper said that Pittman’s car was parked. The remains of Jackie Thorpe, 35, and Ernestine Battle, 50, also were found along the stretch of rural farm land and woods a few miles northeast of Rocky Mount.
In June 2010, authorities revealed that a federal, state and local task force, led by Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight, had been investigating possible connections between the unsolved deaths of Hargrove, Nicholson, Battle, Thorpe, Melody Wiggins, 29, Elizabeth Smallwood, 33, and Denise Williams, 21. All of the women, including Boone, were black, had a history of drug abuse and prostitution and moved through the same social circles, according to family and friends.
As soon as more information becomes available, we will post it here at DCC. Read more here. Pittman is being held at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. His trial has been delayed, see here.