Sex offender charged in death

ROCKY MOUNT -- Police charged a convicted sex offender Tuesday with killing one of six women found dead over the past four years, their bodies dumped in the desolate, swampy woods about 60 miles northeast of Raleigh.

On Tuesday, a multi-agency task force charged Antwan Maurice Pittman, an inmate at the Nash County jail, with murder in the death of Taraha Shenice Nicholson, 28.

Pittman's arrest came nearly two months after the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office, Rocky Mount police and the State Bureau of Investigation formed the task force in June to investigate the homicides of the six women, whose bodies were found among the woodlands, corn and tobacco fields in a sparsely populated area of Edgecombe County, north of Rocky Mount between Battleboro and Whitakers.

Edgecombe County Sheriff James L. Knight, flanked by members of the task force at a news conference Tuesday, would not comment on whether Pittman, 31, is implicated in the other deaths. He said little else Tuesday after announcing that Pittman had been charged with Nicholson's death.

"I have no other comments due to this being an ongoing investigation," Knight said. "Hopefully, we will be able to answer more questions at a later date."

Pittman was convicted in 1994 for taking indecent liberties with a 2-year-old child. He served three years in prison, according to the state sex-offender registry.

The one-story, red brick home on Daniels Avenue where Pittman lived for three years following his release from prison is less than four miles from Seven Bridges Road where four of the women were found and even closer to Marriot Farm Road, where Nicholson's remains were found on March 7.

Pittman was arrested Tuesday at the Nash County Detention Center where he had been in custody since Aug. 12 under $15,200 bail after being charged with failing to register as a sex offender, driving while impaired, driving while his license was revoked and having no operator's license, according to Sgt. T.R. Lamm of the Nash County Sheriff's Office.

He is being held without bail at the Edgecombe County jail in Tarboro, according to police.

The state sex offender registry lists Pittman's last known address as 219 Anderson St. Several windows were open at the home Tuesday afternoon, but no one answered the door of the forlorn, wooden home with its tin roof and crumbling concrete steps near downtown Rocky Mount.

Families emotional

All of the victims were African-American, poor and living on the margins of society. Some, family members told police, peddled sex to finance their drug addictions.

Investigators began notifying the victims' families about Pittman's arrest about 12:30p.m. Tuesday. Several family members, including the mother of Taraha Nicholson, showed up at the Edgecombe sheriff's office for the news conference after finding out about Pittman's arrest from news reports.

Pepita Hargrove, the sister of victim Jarniece "Sunshine" Hargrove, said that she didn't know whether Pittman killed her sister but that she feels relieved by his arrest.

"When I asked the sheriff if this man was responsible for the other murders, the sheriff said 'no comment,'" Hargrove said. "I'm hoping he's the one. If it's someone else -- if he's not the one -- I want the one who's responsible found."

After Hargrove disappeared in early May, her mother, Patsy Hargrove, looked for her daughter in nearby places.

"She kept telling us to look under the steps of the house," Eunetta Whitaker, Jarniece Hargrove's sister in-law, said Tuesday. "She told us to look around the trailer park. Look over by the women's prison. She kept saying she felt her. 'I just feel her trying to get home.'"

A migrant farmer found Hargrove in a field off Seven Bridges Road, less than a mile from her family's home at the Country Estates trailer park on Battleboro Road.

"It's sad that she was that close to home," Whitaker, 33, said after Tuesday's news conference.

The other victims

The first victim, Melody Wiggins, 29, was found by police May 29, 2005, on Noble Mill Pond Road. She died of blunt-force trauma to the head and had been cut and stabbed repeatedly. Her body was partially covered by tree limbs, and the medical examiner wondered whether she was dragged or had run from a field into the woods where her body was found.

The partially skeletal, nude remains of Jackie Thorpe, 35, were found Aug. 17, 2007, in a trash heap behind a burned-out crack house. The head and an arm had been separated from the body. The medical examiner did not determine a cause of death.

On March 13, 2008, the remains of Ernestine Battle, 50, were found face down in the woods. Her remains were unclothed. No cause of death was determined by the medical examiner, who wrote that the likely cause was homicidal violence.

The skeletal remains of the latest victim, Hargrove, 31, were discovered June 29 by a migrant farmer working in a field. The man told police he found Hargrove's body just inside a wooded area off Seven Bridges Road. The medical examiner's office has not yet released a cause of death.

Police also discovered the remains of a sixth African-American woman in February on Melton Road. Investigators are not sure whether the case is related to the other five deaths, Capt. Laura Fahne stock of the Rocky Mount Police Department said earlier this month.

Pittman, in addition to being convicted of indecent liberties with a minor, has also been convicted of assault, resisting arrest, trespassing, driving while impaired, misdemeanor larceny and felony probation violation.

Pepita Hargrove said she does not know Pittman and never saw him before his arrest Tuesday. But Eunetta Whitaker said he was a "familiar face" that she had seen around Rocky Mount.

"I'm hoping he's the one," Pepita Hargrove said. "If it's him, he needs to suffer for what he's done."

News researchers Lamara Williams and Peggy Neal contributed to this report.

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