Locals don't believe theory slayings were murder-suicide
Therese Apel
tapel@jackson.gannett.com
Sharkey County residents are not buying that a woman and her 3-year-old daughter found stabbed to death in their home in 2009 was a murder-suicide.
A spokesman for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation confirmed Friday that the deaths of Karitha Carroll and her daughter, Jamya, are being investigated primarily as a murder-suicide.
The revelation is the second development this week in the case that shocked residents by its gruesomeness. Earlier this week, a relative was arrested for allegedly tampering with evidence at the scene.
Sharkey County Coroner Angelia Eason said she finds it medically hard to believe Carroll could have stabbed herself to death, especially under the circumstances and with the type of wounds she suffered. In addition, she said, she had known Carroll for years.
"She was my friend. We talked all the time and I would have never thought that she wanted to kill herself," Eason said.
Carroll had defensive wounds, Eason said. Preliminary autopsies found Carroll died from multiple stab wounds to her chest, and Jamya died from multiple slash wounds to her neck. They were found in a bedroom on Sept. 23, 2009.
Information obtained by The Clarion-Ledger from the autopsy reports from the Mississippi State Crime Lab show that Carroll was stabbed 13 times, and seven of the wounds penetrated her chest cavity. Three of the wounds came out of her back. The report lists injuries to her left lung, heart and esophagus.
Crime lab doctors determined the manner of death to be homicide.
But Department of Public Safety spokesman Jon Kalahar said the MBI investigation is angled toward a probability that Carroll killed her daughter and then herself. He said officials cannot comment on what changed the investigation.
"We will confirm that (murder-suicide) is the angle we're looking at right now," Kalahar said. "We'll go where the evidence tells us to go, and we're still looking at every possibility."
Angela Bailey, the manager at the Double Quick, where Carroll worked, said she couldn't believe Carroll would have killed herself or her child. She described the mother of three as friendly and said she "smiled all the time."
"I had heard that (suicide), but I don't agree with that at all," she said. "She never exhibited those signs here and we worked together on a daily basis. I knew her inside and outside the job."
Bailey raised questions that she said many in the community want answered, saying they believe authorities are just pushing to close the investigation. She pointed to the fact that she had heard Carroll was stabbed multiple times.
"Who in the world does that? And two of the stab wounds proved to be fatal?" she said. "Someone had to do it to her. If she gave herself a fatal stab wound, how do you stab yourself to death twice?"
Carroll's uncle, Tony Stamps, faces a charge of obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence in the deaths and was questioned Wednesday. Officials would only say that he "moved something" at the scene.
Stamps, who moved back to Mississippi from Arizona, where he went after the deaths, was the first to discover the bodies, Sharkey County Sheriff Lindsey Adams said on Wednesday.
Stamps was being questioned about the death, Adams said then. Adams could not be reached Friday.
Kalahar said Stamps is "not in any way involved" with the slayings.
Members of the family and Stamps' attorney, Mike Bonner, would not comment Friday.
Meanwhile, authorities have eyed Robert Lee King of Memphis as a suspect. Adams previously told the media that King had been seen in the county.
King is wanted in a double-stabbing in Memphis, where he allegedly killed his girlfriend and injured her daughter by stabbing and slashing them in the neck and chest.
"He's still a person of interest. Just because we're looking at this as a cause, it doesn't mean anything is firm or anything is set in stone," Kalahar said. "We looked at him early. We looked at him in the middle, and he is still being looked at."
No comments:
Post a Comment