Sunday, January 11, 2004
Additional DNA testing will be done in in the rape and killing of Deborah Sykes, as authorities try to answer a question that may be impossible to resolve: Was there ever a second attacker on West End Boulevard the morning of Aug. 10, 1984?
The latest testing is part of the investigation of Willard E. Brown, who confessed to stabbing Sykes after DNA testing last month linked him to the crime. His confession led to the release of Darryl Hunt, who had served about 18 years of a life sentence for a crime he always denied committing.
Forsyth District Attorney Tom Keith said that he asked the Winston-Salem police to send untested fingernail scrapings and hair samples to the state crime lab for possible DNA analysis.
Keith said that he expects to have the results in time for a Feb. 6 Superior Court hearing that could determine whether Hunt's conviction should be overturned.
According to court documents, Brown confessed to acting alone and expressed remorse about the murder and about Hunt's mistaken conviction.
He specifically said that Hunt had no part in the crime.
A spokesman for the State Bureau of Investigation and Police Chief Linda Davis declined last week to discuss the scope of the investigation or any details. A gag order signed Dec. 24, 2003, by Judge Anderson Cromer prohibits investigators and attorneys involved with the case from discussing any new developments.
Keith said that investigators with the SBI and the police department continue to work at substantiating Brown's confession and ruling out accomplices. But he said that investigators may never know exactly what happened 19 years ago, including what part of testimony by eyewitnesses was accurate and what part was not.
Police never had physical evidence to link Hunt to the crime. The case against Hunt was built totally on the testimony of eyewitnesses, among them a man named Johnny Gray, who called 911 to report the attack and who eventually became a suspect himself.
"Maybe they mistook Brown for Hunt. There still could be multiple people. Maybe it's Brown and Hunt. Maybe it's Brown and Johnny Gray. Maybe it's Brown and his brother and maybe it's Brown alone," Keith said. "Maybe we'll find a 1984 picture of Brown and he will look like Hunt. A lot of this material you don't have because the first investigation was not that good, so maybe you'll never know."
From the start, police believed that more than one man attacked Sykes. That belief was based in part on the crime scene - an overgrown park bordered by a fence of tall wooden posts and a path covered with broken glass. Sykes' body was found several feet from her shoes, and the medical examiner concluded that she was carried because there was no glass in her bare feet and her shoes were neatly arranged and not simply thrown aside. He argued that it would have taken more than one man to carry her, because she was 5 foot 10 inches tall, which led to the theory of multiple attackers.
Only two of the six eyewitnesses that morning ever reported seeing Sykes with more than one man. The three witnesses who saw the attack itself reported a single attacker, and a fourth witness saw her with one man and other people in the distance.
At Hunt's trial in 1985, prosecutors put more weight on the evidence that suggested a single attacker. The verdict was overturned on appeal and by the second trial in 1990, after Hunt's friend Sammy Mitchell also had been charged with the murder, the state gave more significance to evidence of two attackers.
One of the witnesses who reported two attackers always insisted that neither man was Hunt; the other was nearsighted, and not wearing his contact lenses.
In 1994, DNA testing cleared Hunt, Mitchell and Gray of the rape. That's when prosecutors began to argue a theory that included three attackers - Hunt, Mitchell and a third person never identified by any eyewitness.
In spite of the evidence that suggested a single attacker, the theory of multiple attackers stuck. The N.C. Supreme Court and the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals used the idea of multiple attackers to deny Hunt a third trial, arguing that the unidentified attacker could have been the rapist and Hunt the accomplice.
Brown's confession contradicts this long-held theory. But Hunt's attorneys are worried that authorities may still be trying to find a way to link Hunt to the crime.
"I am very disappointed that the district attorney is still clinging to a theory which has been disproven by concrete DNA evidence and a spontaneous confession," Mark Rabil, Hunt's attorney of 19 years, said in a written statement. "It is time to set aside the wrongful conviction of Darryl Hunt and proceed with the healing in this community."
Eric Saunders, the assistant prosecutor who has handled the case for Keith since 1993, said he is not completely satisfied that Brown was by himself, because he doesn't see how one man could have subdued Sykes.
"Apparently, Darryl Hunt was misidentified and maybe only one person was there," Saunders said. "I don't think it will ever be cleared up unless someone (else) comes forward after 19 years and says he was there."
Brown was identified as the sole attacker by the victim of another rape in early 1985.
The second case had similarities to the attack on Sykes - it occurred downtown in the early morning, and the victim, a young white woman, was stabbed several times. In that case, the victim escaped. She declined to press charges and Brown was never prosecuted.
Now that Brown has confessed to the Sykes killing, only one other person - Gray, the man who called 911 - is known to have been at the scene. In an interview with police, Gray described how he walked by the park, peered over the fence and saw a man attacking Sykes.
Two weeks after the murder, he identified a man named Terry Thomas, who was never charged because he was in jail the morning of the murder. Two weeks after that, Gray identified Hunt.
The witnesses who saw two men at the scene may have seen Gray either with Brown or walking by. Gray died in prison two years ago.
"If it was Gray, he's dead, and why would Brown protect Gray?" said Richard Rosen, a law professor at UNC Chapel Hill who has followed Hunt's case. "I think it wouldn't astound me if we never knew."
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com