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Pastimes : Murder Mystery: Who Killed Yale Student Suzanne Jovin? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (1155)	12/24/2003 1:59:46 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 1397

Re: 11/17/03 - The Deborah Sykes Murder Les Gura, the award-winning former editor of the Hartford Courant (for his piece about the Jovin murder), recently, as the editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, published a detailed investigation into the rape and death of Deborah Sykes. It's really an amazing story with top notch reporting and an impressive web site: extras.journalnow.com. Here's the beginning of the story: Room for Doubt Nineteen years later, a brutal crime downtown remains a study in contradictions and uncertainty By Phoebe Zerwick \| Journal Reporter Page 1 of 9 next » Darryl Hunt packed up his things. He took his Quran, two bags of letters from friends and the most recent briefs that his lawyers had filed on his behalf. Everything else - his hair oils, deodorant and books on Islam - he gave away to fellow inmates at the Harnett County Correctional Institution. They would need them more than he would. Hunt was going home. It was November 1994, and though Hunt had spent almost 10 years in prison for his role in the rape and murder of a young newspaper editor, he was still only 29. Finally, Hunt knew, he had proof that he hadn't raped Deborah Sykes on the morning of Aug. 10, 1984. The DNA report had come back a month earlier. The semen collected from her body wasn't his. Hunt could have used such evidence in court to defend himself, but DNA testing was still in its infancy at the time of his two trials. When his lawyer called with the news, his heart jumped. Witnesses can make mistakes. They can lie. That's why he was sitting in prison on a life sentence, after all. But DNA doesn't lie. The scientists said so themselves. Here, Hunt believed, was the proof that he had been telling the truth all this time. He hadn't raped Deborah Sykes. He hadn't stabbed her 16 times. "This will be the end of it," he thought. All that was left was for a judge in Winston-Salem to overturn his conviction. Yet despite the DNA, neither the judge nor any appellate court after him has given Hunt a new trial. Nine years later, he's still in prison. ===== I'm happy to say, within the past week, DNA evidence finally conclusively showed Hunt was not the rapist and thus he'll soon be set free. If you like mysteries, read the entire eight part series and clues and see who you think may have done it. Then read the "latest updates" to see if you are right. - Jeff