Billboard keeps spotlight on young mother's murder

Jennifer Nielsen was slain in June

RALEIGH -- Two days after Jennifer Kathleen Nielsen was stabbed to death behind a South Raleigh convenience store in June, police released a sketch of a "person of interest," a man in his late teens to early 20s, with a thin build and black hair in a ponytail.

The sketch was included on more than 20,000 fliers that Nielsen's family distributed in the Triangle and has been widely broadcast on TV and the Internet.

On Tuesday, workers with the Fairway Outdoor Advertising of the Triangle East unfurled a billboard at South Wilmington Street and Circle Lane featuring the sketch of the man with the ponytail who police think might have either killed Nielsen or know something about who did.

At the billboard's unveiling, Raleigh police Maj. Ken Mathias said a witness saw a man matching the sketch at the convenience store about the time Nielsen, 22, was attacked.

"The eyewitness was confident that it was a male," Mathias said. "They saw the person walking across the parking lot sometime between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m."

In the early hours of June 14, Nielsen 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, a married mother of two small children, was stabbed in the neck behind the AmeriKing Food Mart and Exxon station at Lake Wheeler Road and Centennial Boulevard, across from the State Farmers Market. She was eight and half months pregnant with a son she had already named Ethen.

On Tuesday, Mathias said police have fielded about 1,000 phone calls at a hot line solely devoted to receiving tips about the case. He said that with the return of DNA tests and other forensic evidence, investigators are "closer" than they were three months ago to finding the killer.

"We are confident that in the future, we will have resolved this case," Mathias said.

The popular TV crime show "America's Most Wanted" secured the billboard donated by Fairway in Raleigh. Paul Hickman, Fairway's general manager, said the billboard will rotate around the city after three weeks at its present location.

The billboard, facing north on South Wilmington Street, is less than three miles from where Nielsen was killed.

Close to spot

Her father, Kevin Blaine of Lillington, said the family wanted the billboard close to where his daughter died. Blaine said the billboard is a major step in tracking down his daughter's killer.

"This is a way we can get it into the public eye all day long and all night, 24 hours a day," Blaine said. "One phone call, that's what we are looking for."

The billboard, with its black background, asks, "Who Killed Jennifer Nielsen?" It also has a contact number for "America's Most Wanted" -- (800) CRIME-TV -- for people who might have information about the crime.

Blaine noted that there are other unsolved homicides in Raleigh and Wake County, including that of another young pregnant mother, Michelle Young, who was found beaten to death in her home in November. Nielsen's family does not want her case to fall out of the media spotlight the way some of the others have.

"We don't want anyone to forget about her," Blaine said. "The other thing we want everybody to know is that there's a killer on the loose."