RALEIGH -- Nearly two decades have passed since Jacquetta Thomas was found stripped and beaten to death, her body dumped on a dead-end street in Southeast Raleigh.
Now several weeks after Greg Taylor, the man wrongfully convicted of her murder, has been freed and exonerated of the crime, a team of Raleigh police detectives will take a fresh look at the cold case.
As part of their investigation, detectives plan to test the clothing Taylor wore on that September night in 1991 that Thomas was found dead. Police Chief Harry Dolan said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the department was not challenging Taylor's innocence by doing the testing.
The detectives want to process all the property collected in the case using science and technology that is far advanced from what it was nearly two decades ago when the homicide occurred, Dolan said.
"My position is it's a fundamental part of a complete investigation," Dolan said.
Taylor, the first man to be exonerated by the fledgling Innocence Inquiry Commission process, is frustrated by the plans to test his old clothes as he seeks to rebuild his life.
But since his release from prison in February, after 17 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit, the 47-year-old Wake County man has not been able to get a driver's license because of an old DWI case and unable to seek state compensation for the wrongful conviction. Taylor has sought a pardon from the governor, but the process has been slower than he would like.
Dolan said Wednesday that he was trying to work out an arrangement with the state innocence commission to share any testing they did on the cold case property in their investigation of Taylor's case.
Though detectives have reviewed the case in recent months after the innocence commission unanimously decided to send the case to a three-judge panel for a hearing, Dolan said it was not until the judges' exoneration of Taylor that the department decided to reopen the homicide investigation.
"Just as we're the first state to have an innocence commission, we're the first department to have a case come back to us," Dolan said.
In addition to retesting the clothes and property in the case, detectives plan to interview witnesses again with an eye toward new details.
Sister's feelings mixed
Yolanda Littlejohn, Thomas' sister, had a mixed reaction to the news.
"I'm very happy they're reopening the case," Littlejohn said Wednesday. "I'm just not happy that they're continuing to focus on Greg. How do you go right back to the person you wrongfully convicted? How do you start there?"
Littlejohn said she hopes investigators will contact her as they proceed with their review.
Anyone with information that might be helpful, Dolan said, is asked to call the police department or Crime Stoppers at 919-834-4357.
