The Southerner Journal

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — ‘Tis the season of ghosts, werewolves, witches and zombies. Halloween waits at week’s end.

My wife carved the pumpkin at left, took its picture and sent it to me over the cell phone. She claims Halloween as her favorite holiday.

“There’s much less pressure than the other ones,” Tanya says. “It’s pure fun. And I like the origination of the holiday as an opportunity to commune with ones who are gone.”

Unfortunately, some people never know if their loved one is truly gone. They just disappear. From the other side, the system occasionally finds victims of crimes without knowing who the victim was.

For your Halloween treat, examine what happens to the unidentified dead in 21st century Arkansas through an article I wrote earlier this year.

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Tell Me, Who are You?
Tracking the Unidentified Dead
By Ronald Sitton

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Nobody knows the last thought that went through her head, but Little Rock homicide Detective John “J.C.” White knows the last thing was a bullet.

Have You Seen Me? — Little Rock Police still want to know who this woman was. If you have any information, contact Det. John “J.C.” White in homicide at 501-371-4660 or jwhite@littlerock.org.

She wore Arizona-brand carpenter jeans with a black leather belt and a large brown T-shirt. Over this, an extra-extra large dark blue windbreaker and jumpsuit pants while white-and-blue Reeboks clad her feet. A gold-and-silver link bracelet hung from her wrist. Standing between 5’3” and 5’7” with black hair and a nose broken earlier in life, the black woman could have been anywhere between 18 and 40.

On a walk with its owner in August 2002, a dog uncovered her tennis shoes and bones face-down under a pile of pink insulation behind an abandoned-looking house at 2772 Reservoir Road. The first responding officer would have started the investigation by preserving the scene, especially any physical evidence that would lead to identification of the victim or a suspect.

Dr. Cheryl May, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Criminal Justice Institute, estimated the victim’s body had been there for several months. Inventory of her various clothes would later help with educated guesses of her overall size.  Pictures of the scene show an apparently abandoned house, but crime scene investigators found nothing of evidentiary value like a bullet casing or murder weapon – though they did find more of her teeth.

“Once you’ve exhausted everything on the scene, hopefully by then you’ve got her identified. And we just haven’t even gotten to the point of getting her identified yet,” White says. “We don’t know where to start. We got initial phone calls about what could have happened, this, that and the other, but in following up on that information, we always found out that the person who we thought that might’ve been killed was actually alive. Therefore that lead has been exhausted, so we move on to the next. At this point we just don’t have anything, we don’t have anything whatsoever. It’s frustrating, very frustrating.”

Occasionally White works suicides, accidental deaths and deaths of homeless victims that result in an unidentified body prior to an examination by the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory. But the black female from six years ago represents the only unidentified homicide victim in White’s current caseload.

A walk through claustrophobic hallways occasionally turns passer-bys sideways within the four-story concrete and steel Pulaski County Administration Building. Garland Camper starts his third month on the third floor as full-time Pulaski County Coroner since assuming the post May 9 after nearly 14 years as chief deputy coroner. A grandson of a cemetery caretaker, Camper serves as the state’s only appointed coroner in 75 counties.

Family pictures dot the wall and various other nooks around his office; his Dell computer sits next to a window while current case files cover his desk. He also keeps a framed photo of the 2005 Asian tsunami’s carnage hanging on the wall. The surreal sight shows bodies littering a beach like match boxes emptied in waves over a floor. Read the rest of this entry »

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Moms carried small children on their hips while the pre-teens looked around in disgust. Elderly women moved ahead to sit down while their husbands kept their place in line. Younger men and women spoke in hushed tones. Though crowded, nobody wanted to leave and miss their chance.

Early Christmas shopping? Nope; the line that stretched around the inside lobby of Laman Library held hundreds of citizens taking the opportunity to vote early as Arkansas’ polls opened Monday, Oct. 20.

A Long Wait — As I got into the end of the line, I noticed it stretched along the library’s back wall and past the children’s library.

I arrived around 11:10 a.m. after purchasing $2.23 gas at the Indian Hills Kroger on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. I thought the gas line was long, but I wasn’t prepared for the line to vote. The last time I practiced early voting, it was an in-and-out affair as very few people took advantage.

That’s not the case this year. Luckily, I kept speaking with a corrections’ officer through the wait, passing the time and being continually amazed at the numbers of people who kept pouring in the doors. I’m sure he said something about the turnout first, maybe along the lines of “This just shows people want a change.” I just remember saying it did my heart good to see so many people wanting to exercise their Constitutional right.

We discussed the issues while moving inch-by-inch, around the outside wall while trying not to disturb the library patrons working on the computers but having no choice but to glance at their computer screens as we moseyed by. A middle-aged woman tried breaking in line. No one said anything to her, but she must have gotten hot under the collar as the stares could’ve sent knives into her back; she finally moved to the end of the line, all the way back across the lobby.

Keep on coming — This shot looks back to where the line started when I arrived at the right end of the bookshelf (where the man wearing a green shirt stands). By the time we left the lobby, the line stretched past the left end of the bookshelf into the foyer.

As 11:15 stretched to 12:20 and we’d made it but halfway around the lobby, I decided it’d be a good idea to call work and let them know I might be late. “It shouldn’t take too long. Now that I’m here, I want to make sure I vote,” I told Amy Meeks, the secretary of Arts & Humanities at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. She replied that it was not a problem and she’d let the dean know.

It takes roughly an hour-and-a-half to two hours for the 100-mile drive between North Little Rock and Monticello. I knew I’d be pushing it, but I’d already stood in line this long. Usually, I am not the type to wait in line at a grocery store; I’ll leave the buggy and come back later. The only similar-type lines I’ve ever found worth the wait were for student tickets to the University of Tennessee-University of Arkansas football game in 1998 and for student refund checks while an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. But to vote? I feel this election undoubtedly deserves the same rapt attention as refund checks and football tickets. Read the rest of this entry »