ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (AP) – Neighbors of a man accused of killing one of six women found dead on the outskirts of rural Rocky Mount say he kept mostly to himself, but many are convinced he’s innocent.
Antwan Maurice Pittman, 31, was charged with first-degree murder Monday in the death of 29-year-old Taraha Shenice Nicholson who was found strangled, her body dumped down a rural stretch of road where five other women have been found dead. Nicholson, like most of the slain women, had a history of drug abuse and prostitution.
The Edgecombe County sheriff formed a task force with the State Bureau of Investigation and asked the FBI to consult after the sixth body was discovered in June.
Neighbors in Pittman’s run-down neighborhood in Rocky Mount, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, said they don’t know Pittman well, but they’re skeptical of police.
“I wouldn’t even believe he killed the first one,” said 56-year-old neighbor Leroy Silver from a yard sale in his backyard, just around the corner from the house where Pittman lived with his mother and girlfriend. “I would see him around – he’s just a normal person.”
Other neighbors sifting through card tables filled with glassware and old T-shirts jumped in to speculate that the murder was pinned on Pittman and that the police have no evidence. “They’re just assuming!” one woman shouted before asking the price of a fishing rod.
Other neighbors say they’re scared because they think the real killer is still out there and three women are still missing.
“I don’t think that boy ever had a car,” added Silver, wondering how Pittman could have picked up Nicholson and dumped her body on the outskirts of town without a car.
Silver’s wife, 49-year-old Charlene Silver, agrees. People around here don’t trust the police, she said, recounting a time she says she was thrown in jail because she resembled a police suspect. Counting out a fist-full of dollar bills – proceeds from her yard sale – she asked, “Where is the evidence?”
The sheriff’s office declined to comment on Pittman’s arrest or the investigations into the other homicides.
Thomas Moore, Pittman’s court-appointed defense attorney, said the case is in the initial stages and he knows “next to nothing.
“He seems to be very scared, just like anybody would be in that situation,” Moore said of his client.
Gloria Pittman, the suspect’s mother, came to her front screen door but said she had no comment about her son. Pittman’s uncle, seated on the front porch, said he knows his nephew didn’t do it because “he’s too scared.”
Pittman is a registered sex offender, convicted in November 1994 of taking indecent liberties with a 2-year-old. He spent about 16 months in prison and was released in April 1997. He has also been arrested in years past on misdemeanor charges such as simple assault, larceny, and trespassing and resisting a public officer.
From May 2008 until he was fired in July, Pittman worked at a Perdue Foods plant in Lewiston. According to Perdue spokeswoman Julie DeYoung, Pittman worked in the production line. Plant work would have involved slaughtering live chickens, cutting them up, deboning them and preparing them for the consumer.
Nicholson was reported missing in February and her decomposing body was found less than a month later. An autopsy report identified abrasions indicating her body had been dragged, a fractured bone in her throat and a toxicology test positive for cocaine. She was wearing only a bra, pulled up to her neck, and a pair of white socks.
Dr. Michael Teague, a former forensic psychologist for the state, dismissed the notion that police charged Pittman on “flimsy evidence,” but he added that, “Everybody is so hooked on CSI, they think we have this ’Star Wars’ technology, but sometimes when you’ve got just smoldering bones, it’s pretty hard to put something together.”
Rake Shell, who lived in the same apartment building with Pittman for about two months over the summer, said, “He didn’t talk to nobody else over here. He was just straight up a turtle in his shell.”
Shell said Pittman didn’t drive a car or have a job and lived in an apartment with several other people, including his girlfriend, with no lights and no furniture. “They were the only ones we didn’t know too much about,” he said.
Officials won’t say if Pittman is a suspect in the other murders, but victims’ family members are hoping for closure. “We’re praying to God this is the one that did all this,” said Patsy Hargrove, mother of Jarneice Hargrove whose body, found in June, was the last one discovered. “I do believe it’s a serial killer ... I think it’s one man,” Hargrove said.
Teague agrees with her. “It would be highly coincidental” to dump Nicholson’s body in the same spot as all the other victims, he said. “I’m not sure (the killer) is sophisticated enough to say, ‘I’m going to throw the cops off and put the body where all those other bodies were dumped.”’
Pittman is being held without bond in the Central Prison in Raleigh. A probable cause hearing is set for September 16.
