Grief a catalyst for victims' kin

From common ground, families try to uncover new leads in unsolved Raleigh killings

RALEIGH -- With police unable to find the killers of their loved ones, the family members of three Triangle homicide victims have joined together for support and to keep their cases from being forgotten.

The families of Jennifer Kathleen Nielsen and Leroy Jernigan will gather in a parking lot next to the N.C. State Fair today to distribute reward fliers they hope will generate new leads. Nielsen and Jernigan were both killed as they worked alone in the early morning hours -- Nielsen delivering papers, Jernigan cleaning a fast-food restaurant.

Nielsen's family also has been in contact with the mother and sister of Michelle Young, a 29-year-old pregnant mother found dead in the bedroom of her home south of Raleigh on Nov. 3. Young's murder also remains unsolved. The two families plan to get together next month when Young's mother visits Raleigh.

"We all need each other's help to help find the people that murdered our loved ones," Nielsen's father, Kevin Blaine of Lillington, said Friday. "There's more strength in numbers."

In the early hours of June 14, Nielsen, 22, left her apartment to distribute copies of USA Today in newspaper boxes in South Raleigh and Garner. Soon after beginning her route, police said, Nielsen was stabbed in the neck behind the AmeriKing Food Mart and Exxon station on Lake Wheeler Road near the State Farmers Market. Nielsen, a mother of two boys, was 8 1/2 months pregnant with a son she had already named Ethen.

One year earlier, Jernigan, 40, of Clayton was shot by a single bullet in the Circus Family Restaurant, a fast-food eatery on Wake Forest Road where he did cleaning work overnight. His body was found in the dishwashing area the morning of June 3 by a co-worker who arrived to open the business.

The Nielsen case has attracted nationwide attention, with the story of the pregnant mother's stabbing airing several times on the popular crime show "America's Most Wanted." Producers of the show also sponsored billboards on South Wilmington Street, not far from where the woman's body was found, and on U.S. 70 East in Durham. The billboard features a composite sketch of a pony-tailed young man police are looking for. They say a person fitting his description was in the area about the time Nielsen was stabbed to death.

Chasity and John Jernigan of Four Oaks said after the initial flurry of news accounts about their brother Leroy's death, the case has largely fallen from public view.

John Jernigan said the family held two events last year to raise reward money and has since raised enough to offer a $10,000 reward. A local television show, "N.C. Most Wanted," interviewed the family in May to help draw attention to the murder, but the Jernigans said the show featuring their brother's case keeps getting postponed.

"It's a little frustrating," Chasity Jernigan said.

Soon after Jennifer Nielsen's billboard was posted on South Wilmington Street, Chasity Jernigan contacted Blaine to ask how the family might get a billboard for her brother. As a result, the two families decided to team up about two weeks ago.

"We had to figure out a plan," Chasity Jernigan said. "We figured the State Fair would be the thing to do because there's a lot of traffic."

John Jernigan said he hopes all the families of unsolved homicide victims in Wake County will unite to remind the public that there are other victims of unsolved murders in the region.

"It's just not one family hurting," he said. "It's everybody."