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Edgecombe County Sheriff’s deputies escort Antwan Maurice Pittman from the Edgecombe County Courthouse in Tarboro in April. Pittman, 31, is charged with first-degree murder in the March 2009 strangling death of 29-year-old Taraha Nicholson.

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National media report on alleged serial killings splits local opinions
Rocky Mount Telegram
Friday, June 18, 2010

The people interviewed for a recent national story on Rocky Mount’s alleged serial killer case are divided on the published product.

Jackie Wiggins, mother of victim Jackie Nikelia ‘Nikki’ Thorpe, spoke with the author of the article in June’s issue of “Gentleman’s Quarterly” last fall and said she has mixed opinions about how it turned out.

“I was pleased with it as far as the publication about the girls and stuff, but his interview with this cabbie person was kind of shocking to me,” she said. “He came out with a whole lot of information that could have been useful earlier (in the investigation).”

She said she is reserving judgment on some of the quotes from officials used in the article.

“I think they said some things that now I hope they regret,” she said. “I guess the reporter reported as he heard it, but I’m waiting to hear their version of it.”

Rocky Mount Mayor David Combs was negatively portrayed in the article. Combs said the author took him out of context.

“Most people assume the mayor knows everything that is going on, but I’m not always aware of what the police department is working on,” he said. “He also made a comment about how I wasn’t at the candlelight vigil, but I really didn’t know about it. Nobody called me so I never knew about it.”

He added the article was skewed to overplay the race issue.

“I’m not sure I realized the direction he was going with it,” he said. “He wanted to paint a picture between Edgecombe and Nash counties, but I think, overall, that as a mayor, I look at it as all one city. I think because he is writing a book on race in the South, the whole article was based on race more than anything.”

Wiggins said she also believes the focus on race was dramatized.

“When he talked about the train tracks diving the blacks and whites, I think it could have been worded better,” she said. “I guess that was just his way of getting the point across, but our schools are integrated. I feel like some things were stretched.”

Rocky Mount councilman and local NAACP president Andre Knight said race does play into how much media attention, or lack thereof, the case has gotten.

“I think (the author) used race as a backdrop,” he said. “I think when it comes to African-American women and children (as victims of crime), they don’t get near the coverage other nationalities get in the media.”

Knight and Wiggins commended the author for his portrayal of the girls — not just how they died, but how they lived as well.

“He gave the women a real face. He talked about not just their addictions, but how these women were actually engaged in society. They were good people,” Knight said. “He was trying to actually put a face other than a mugshot on these women. I think he gave them some dignity as well.”

Wiggins actually was pleased with the relatively graphic portrayal of the victims’ deaths in the article.

“He was printing that to make people see just how tragic and demeaning the bodies were left,” she said. “He described what it was like. He put it like it was. I think the readers can see what we saw and how we felt.”

Knight said he hopes the national media attention will help the investigation.

“This case hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it needs,” he said. “We don’t need this to go by the wayside. It is still very important to the families and the community.”

Combs said the attention will likely taper off.

“Other communities have had similar things happen and I hate to say this, but soon the national media moves on to something new,” he said. “Hopefully, someone will see this in the media and come forward with new information.

“I just hope people take it for what it is. It is a magazine article by someone trying to write a book.

“He took a lot of liberty along the way. It is what it is.”

Related Stories

Unraveling a Mystery

The Lost Girls of Rocky Mount by Robert Draper, Gentlemen's Quarterly

Police chief responds to criticism over comments about alleged serial killings

Comments

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freedom to live

we should have a freedom to live, no matter whom we are or our lifestyle unless convicted by law to die. i like rocky mount and had some good and bad times. for the most part i felt safe despite my drug addicted lifestyle. i have since left rocky mount and i am in recover for two years so far, but not without several, several attempts. when i came to rocky mount in 1995, i was clean, looking for a fresh start, i had a clean criminal record, obtained work, but soon my addiction took over. i was directed across the tracks, i met a street walker women who directed me. i felt safe, unlike the city dc where i had been getting high. i am a black male and yes this women had never saw me before in her life, i had never been in this neighborhood or knew no one in it, yet we both were under the control of our addiction, and after giving each other a brief check, like if we were police? give our street name, and then and sixth sense detection test that tells if you are an addict, some sort of bond, and we were off. before i became addicted i did not understand addicts, now i know addiction does not play the race card, nor can you blame any one, it just is. addicts should have a freedom to live, and not be voilently murdered. there are certain street rules that if crossed may get you killed. but this is something different, there is a sick person(s) murdering vunderable women.

Oh well

Folks have reported me because I use the d... word and the h... word. Foul language. Oh well ministers and other folks use these words. But there has been some here who has tried to silence me from speaking out on this forum and other forums in Pitt and Wilson Counties. They have tried some other things.

Funny it is said in all other

newspapers on radio and tv stations almost daily but just because folks want to silence me they don't have anything else they can do. LMBAO

CAN YOU SAY CHEESE?

would you like some cheese with your WHINE?

Saunders: Please explain, chief

Say, Chief. I understand why you didn't call me back. Really, I do. Heck, nobody could blame you if you chose never to speak to another reporter again - not after what you allegedly said to the one from that national magazine. Here's the deal. In a story in this month's GQ magazine about 11 missing and murdered women in Rocky Mount, that city's police chief, John Manley, was quoted as saying the families of the victims bore some responsibility for the slow or inadequate police response. The bodies of several women were found within the same area before police realized they might have a serial killer on their hands. So, what responsibility do family members bear, you ask? "They've got to stay on law enforcement," Chief Manley was quoted as saying. "They have to stay on us. Let us know that you're not going away until you know we've done everything we possibly could do. Because if you don't care, I don't know why we should." Great day in the morning! How about you should care because those were real human beings who were murdered. So are the survivors who - despite their and the victims' lack of social status - are grieving. How about because it's your job, and justice demands that you care. Finally, how about because the death of any woman - even a strung-out streetwalker who spends her nights getting into cars with and taking off her clothes for strange men - diminishes each of us. Since reading the chief's comments, I've called his office several times, not to excoriate him, but to give him the opportunity to say that the national fashion rag misquoted him or took his comments out of context. (You're right: It is hard to imagine any context where it would be appropriate for the city's top cop to say, "Because if you don't care, I don't know why we should.") Andre Knight, president of the NAACP in Rocky Mount and a city councilman, doubts that Manley, who is black, would've denied it even had he called back. The story, Knight said, "pretty much told it like it was. The police have been rather hostile from the beginning" when it came to aggressively pursuing leads in the case or reassuring residents that the case was a priority. "They should've told us, 'We've got Seven Bridges Road [the area where some of the bodies were found] under surveillance' or, 'We've got men on the street.'" Cops have a tough job - no, the toughest - and they're never going to satisfy everyone. That's why I'll always try to give them the benefit of the doubt and why I don't want to believe they ignored the obvious evil lurking among some of their citizens until it couldn't be ignored any more. Last year, though, when several hundred Rocky Mount residents gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Park for a candlelight vigil to pray for the disappearances and killings to stop, I asked a top police official why none of them appeared or spoke at the event. In a remarkable display of candor, she admitted that they didn't even know about it. Oy. Double Oy when you consider that the park is mere blocks from the police station - where I'd stopped to ask directions. You know how they say any publicity is good publicity? Don't tell that to Rocky Mount Mayor David Combs. "I'm certainly not happy with the way the writer portrayed Rocky Mount. I think he took this situation as an opportunity to come to our area" to bolster a book he's writing on race in America. "He painted it as 'east side' and 'west side.' We're all Rocky Mount, and I'm the mayor of the wholecity. Overall, it was an unfair portrayal. He tried to make it totally a race issue. I don't agree." In the magazine, Mayor Combs was quoted as saying, "I don't want everybody in town just to focus on the murders. ... Because life has to go on ... and we've got a lot of great things here. And I don't want everyone that thinks about Rocky Mount to think that, well, that's where those murders occurred." Combs told me he became aware of the possible connection of the six-year series of murders and disappearances only in June 2009. "People assume the mayor knows everything that's going on in thecity," he said. "We had all these 'missing person' cases until the bodies started turning up. We should have had some press conferences after that, but when we decided to, the SBI told us to hold off." The one time the mayor, usually an even-tempered fellow, sounded livid was when he talked about the GQ article's implication that Antwan Maurice Pittman was not the real killer but merely a scapegoat arrested to get the city and police off the hook. "He [the writer] made it look like police just went out and arrested somebody," he said. "We have a very good D.A. who wouldn't do that." Of the anonymous sources upon whom the writer relied for some information, Combs said, "If this cabdriver knew so much, maybe he should've gone to the police." So far, Pittman has been charged only with the murder of Taraha Shenice Nicholson. But Knight, the city councilman, said he and other residents fear the cases of the murdered Rocky Mount women might become "like the Atlanta child murders." Nearly three decades after Wayne Williams was convicted of the deaths of two black males in Atlanta and police closed the remaining 25 cases, many people still feel that Williams was a convenient scapegoat who was responsible for few, if any, of the deaths. Despite its unflattering national portrayal of his hometown, Knight said, "I think we're getting more momentum since the GQ article came out. I still think more could've been done, that more resources could've been put to this case, but I think we're of one accord now." If you go looking for the GQ issue with the story on "The Lost Girls of Rocky Mount," it's the one with a nearly naked model on the cover seductively taking off her Victoria's Secret bra for strange men. Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/14/531818/please-explain-chief.html#...

Lasko

Thank you for your appreciation of my expression. I would like to respond to the question you posed to Dancy. I think the comment Manley made was highly irresponsible and I feel if he had thought about what he was saying he wouldn't have said it. That was a huge faux pas but something tells me he doesn't even realize it.

Bliss2010

"Realize it" How does one open the eyes of those who have them but can not see, how does one open the ears of those who have them but can not hear (realize) the cries of the city?

Its a sad fact that some if

Its a sad fact that some if not all of these women (not girls) were prostitutes. Their lifestyle placed them at a high risk to die a violent death. Their race had nothing to do with it, their lifestyle did. They chose how they lived, a decision that contributed to their deaths...it didn't cause them. As for the blame game that everyone wants to play, the only one to blame for their deaths it the sick individual that took their lives. Its all about personal responsibility. We are all responsible for our own actions. All the rest of this name calling and race baiting is pointless and just serves to further divide a city that can't stand much more of a downward slide.

So realist

you think it's that simple? Here'a a little experiment you may want to try so you will have some-what of an idea of what being addicted will do. Only drink water and eat fruit for for a week and post your findings. Or better than that try walking in the shoes of one of the women as Bliss2010 suggested and then post your findings. I can tell you what it tastes like but you will never truely know until you taste it yourself.

Simple it is

You see lasko, it is that simple, however, it may be very difficult. I have an addiction to tobacco...I know its bad for me...but I like it. I know I should give it up...but I don't want to. This is a conscious decision on my part. If at some point I develop some health issues because of it...its my fault! Now, I know what you're thinking...this is nothing compared to the situations these women were in...and you're right. Their lives were most likely very messed up to say the least, but as long as you draw a breath there's the possibility to turn things around. It happens every day. Someone makes that difficult decision to stop drinking or smoking or using drugs or whatever. And, there are organizations out there to support and help. It's a personal decision. It's taking personal responsibility. So, the decision is simple although the process to carry it out may be very difficult. As for your suggestion that I only drink water and eat fruit for a week...I may try it. It might increase my will power and I could possibly finally make the decision to give up tobacco. Plus...I could stand to loose a few pounds.

Simple it is

It's by force not choice, just as when a bank robber tells you to "GET ON THE FLOOR!!!!" you had no choice in the matter if you obeyed or not. Your addiction to tobacco forces you to reason within your self that you, "like it and you don't want to stop" I say this because when you said "(If) at some point I develop some health issues because of it...it's my fault!" You know for a fact this addiction will cause some health issues and even death, but just as these women knew the risk of their forced life style, (being missing and found dead) they just as you were forced by the calling of the addiction that made and makes the chioces for them. Be real, no one makes a conscious choice to become a drug addicted prostitute no more than someone who has suffered the long and painful effects caused by use of tobacco. The conscious and responsible (choice) would be to stop and seek that help from the organization you mention, but the power of the addiction made it impossible not difficult. That little experiment was to show you that you can't make that chioce even with all the benfits that come with it. So you choose not to be responsible for the sake of your own health? You've consiously decided to destroy your health? I think not.

Simple again

First let me say that I have enjoyed our debate. You, unlike others, have made valid points without loosing your mind. Thank you. Now, I still stick to my original point. Your bank robber illustration for example. You do have the choice not to get on the floor. The consequences for choosing not to may be fatal. I will concede that no one consciously decides to become an addict, but, they do make that initial choice to try the item that leads to the addiction. I may be wrong but I don't think prostitution is an addiction...its a lifestyle choice. These unfortunate women made a string of poor decisions which led to their demise. Unfortunately, they never got the chance to decide to escape from those decisions.

These women were criminals

These women were criminals multiple times over, from remnants of families that had traveled past broken to actively enabling them. Every family member quoted in the article, plus the cab driver chosen as the narrator, contributed to these womens' deaths. Yet it's the mayor of the city of over 55,000, and the police chief who, along with the Edgecombe County sheriff and the federal authorities they called in to help solve the case, are demonized. As the police chief said, "If you don't care, why should we?" This GQ article is a lazy joke. Mr Draper wrote it to trash the city of Rocky Mount, not to help the victims. He should be ashamed. Would he agree that the sizeable caseload of unsolved murders in his own Washington, D.C, stand as a metaphor for his home?

To Navigator

So their "criminal activity" and lack of a good up-bringing warranted them the death in which they suffered? The statements the Mayor and Chief made "demonized" themselves. The office they occupy hold them to higher standards than the average citizen. It's their duty to care and to know when no one elese does. The city of Rocky Mount don't need help in "trashing" it's self it does fine by the hand of the city council. My question to you. Do you think the death these women suffered was just punishment for their "criminal activity?"

What I'm saying

No, just punishment would have been the Fountain correctional facility. My point is that any city in the USA has a certain percentage who, by their voluntary, criminal activities, are more likely to suffer violent deaths. No reason to pick out ours as a unique example. As I pointed out in the link, Washington D.C. has scores of the same, unsolved, today. And no, it's not the job of the Mayor or the Police Chief to care about people. Their job is to run the city, and enforce the law. Caring about people is the job of their families. These women trashed themselves, and their families helped.

Navigator

"voluntary" How do I get you and others to "realize" (As Bliss2010 stated) that the life styles this group of people lived are as different from yours as day is to night, so the same principles you and I live by don't exist in their world. It would help you better understand that world if you were to stop looking upon them as "trash" but rather with compassion and you to will see that through all the "trash" burided deep within there's a soul that cries out for help that fall on eyes that can't see and ears that can't hear. One more thing, The job of the police and the elected officals is to serve and to protect all the citizens not just the good ones. You're right that 10+ black women found dead in the same manner in racially divided Rock Mount North Carlonia is not unique if you're living in the day of slavery.

No one held a gun to their heads.

"the life styles this group of people lived are as different from yours as day is to night, so the same principles you and I live by don't exist in their world." So their relatives shouldn't come crying to "my world" for relief when their family member's "lifestyle" and "principles" fail them. Citizens have duties to other citizens, part of which is not to act as criminals. You live a life of offense against that, and you get what you get. These women led criminal lives, and died horrible deaths. But they were just more headline-grabbing than the doom that awaited them anyway. And slavery? Oh, brother. Wake up, lasko - it's 2010, and the excuse-making is past old.

Navigator

It seems to me you're in a world all by your lonesome. You actually believe the deaths of these women should go unpunished? I just don't understand why a person with a soul would feel the way you do and say the things you say, yes it's 2010, but your malevolent views are of old.

What Mayor

The Mayor sounds extremely ignorant and in deep denial. It also seems the entire city is in denial. Rocky Mount, be it Edgecombe or Nash, IS still very racially divided and there has been no real progress in race relations. It may be less openly displayed but it remains nonetheless. That is a fact that no amount of denial can erase. I was born here in the late 50's and have lived here most of my life. I remember segragation and I witnessed the White Flight. I've watched this city eat itself up with the very thing the author of the article discribed...the great divide that people actively keep alive while denying it's existence. There are no easy answers for those who struggle. The easy answers seems to be reserved for those who sit in their "ivory castles" and throw stones at the less fortunate all the while denying the role they play in the state of things. If only people could really walk a mile in the shoes of those they see as undeserving or as the earth's scum.

I found out about

the candlelight vigil by reading the Rocky Mount Telegram. I decided to go at the last minute and I videoed the event for my collection. Obviously the mayor does not read the Telegram daily to keep up with what is going on. However since he didn't attend for whatever reason, it still does not change any of the facts as it relates to the women being murdered or missing. Yes racism is alive and well in the Twin Counties. It does not matter what type of lifestyles these girls lived they didn't deserve to be killed.

Dancy

Question, Do you think it was well thought out the statement Chief Manley made. (If they don't care, why should we?) Question 2. Why id it take Knight so long to "tell someone?" He was told of these missing women 6.5 years ago, so why all the TV, News paper and Radio now? why not 6.5 years ago or until after WRAL broke the story did he plaistered his UGLY face all over the place like he give a dam?

Police chief responds to criticism over comments about alleged

serial killings. So now you have. I don't need to say anymore the chief has spoken. LMBAO

Dancy Dancy

If you accept that lame zz explanation you're more dense than thought of before. The chief now have both feet in his mouth.

Accept?

I don't give a darn about his comments. I was not there and as I said the Chief has spoken. Obviously you have a problem with his comments. I do know what I know and I am going to leave it at that.

lasko

In re: "They need to stay on law enforcement," he said. "You have to stay on us. Let us know that you're not going away until you know we've done everything we possibly could do. "Because if you don't care," said the chief, "I don't know why we should." I do not know what the chief was talking about. I would need more clarity before I speak on that statement. I can't answer for Chief Manley. You need to ask him that question. Knight said he told someone and I don't know how long he is referring to so again you can ask him. So do you know when he was told about the missing women? I will say that he and anyone can talk about it but until the families report someone missing what in the hell can anyone else do? Ask him if you are so concerned?

Bliss2010

WOWWW, Thank You, So articulately given, touched the marrow and depth of my soul. Please countinue.

dancy

dancy I can now say for sure that you are either the most naive person in the Twin Counties or the most dimwitted. This has been going on for years and EVERYONE from city council to the village idiot was aware of it. Both blackwell john manley, james knight and andre knight have blood on their hands for their failure as so called leaders of the community to curtail these operatins.

Knew I would get

ignant responses. Those are not the people whom I am talking about however since you knew what in the hell did you do? I was talking about those were in their inner circle and some whom were close to them. Ignant your turn to come back with more ignance.

So whose fault is it the girls were lost?

As I began to re-read the article on today I became disgusted when I got to the 2nd page of the interview with the cabbie. The cabbie talked about how he knew these girls and how he transported them to one of the grubby motels on Highway 301. He said a john had bought them a room whereby they would smoke cocaine and turn tricks. Now I find it hard to believe that this cabbie was the only one who was aware of this. Why didn’t the cabbie, the motel owners and others who were aware of this not report what was happening at the motel to the police?

Dancy

For the same reasons dope selling stores in black communities are allowed, (every boby was making money and the police do and did know but did'nt care) You so-called well-to-do blacks need to open your eyes and see how the black have-nots live. And as for the black community the "Councilmember" Lamont Wiggins has FAILED the people of his ward and the city of Rocky Mount. Don't think for one second that your little buddy Knight don't know, he know's but his only agenda is to get his ugly face in the news.

For the same reason

that white crime goes unreported. Now I am a well-to-do black person been called a many of things but believe this is a new one. Ignant I read in the local newspaper and heard Councilman Andre Knight say on the local tv and on the local radio that he was told that the women were getting missing and he told someone. More ignance from those who continue to make ignant comments.

Example please

Mr. Dancy...can you provide an example of "white" crime that has gone unreported?

How ignant

enough said.

OK

I guess that means you can't support your comment. And...whats with the name calling. You don't know me. You don't know my race, where I live, what I do, what I have experienced, yet you proclaim me as "ignant". Your opinion of me I would see as prejudiced. Likewise, I know nothing about you except what you write. Although I most often disagree with you, I would not show you disrespect by calling you a name.

Dancy

Not talking about white crimes not being reported, no one has called you a well-to-do black man because you're not and nor was I refering to you as such. Example of a well-to-do black man: That conning so-called preacher who brain wash dumb ss people named Bernod Grant and those like him. You I would categorize as a slave unto Honeywell.

Again how

ignant.

Dancy

"Again how?" Are you a slave to Honeywell? Don't go to work nor call in for a week. No one is free, we all have some type of chain that controls us, that hold us down, that allows us to exist, that allow us to exceed and that causes us to fail. It's called MAN and the love he has for money and power.

More ignance.

JU&DLMBAO
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