Your e-mail address will be used to confirm your account. Payne was shot at about 9:40 p.m. June 12 at 117 Klugh St. Officers arrived on scene with a medical bag, sealing two bullet wounds to his chest. That's all we've got. "Every time I open up the evidence room door, I see the bike and it's haunted me. "We're now awaiting requests from law enforcement for further assistance. Unsolved Cases - City of Columbia Police Department Unsolved Cases If you can help solve any of these crimes or think that you may know something no matter how small, please contact the Violent Crimes Against Persons Unit - VCAP at: (803)545-3525. Low 44F. Hampton confessed to committing three child abductions in a northern Georgia town, and even confessed to killing a child out on a farm. Pity us if we don't! By September 15th, Kia had been missing for four months. Investigators had been pursuing clues as far away as California, and trying to tie Kia's disappearance to other stories of missing children in the surrounding states. Newspaper reports indicate that she was born with two holes in her heart, but she would turn out to be stronger than she knew. It is what life is made of. Get more stories delivered right to your email. I am not criticizing the authorities, who are working hard to solve the case. In 1990, sadly, her remains were found by a deer hunter. By this point, her family had begun to fear the worst. This means that, between the time of his plea and now, Charles Wade Hampton has likely served his time and since been released. They wanted to keep their options option, should more evidence be found against him, so they didn't want him to go free and then lose any chance at a prosecutor under double jeopardy laws. Greenwood's law enforcement now working 4 unsolved homicides By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com Jun 5, 2019 Zykevious Ramsey's sister, Jada Leverette, said her brother was a. These tips carried the investigation outside the Greenwood area, with investigators pursuing leads to as far away at California. No one knows what really happened in that short span of time. Coroner IDs man killed in Greenwood shooting, Greenwood police identify suspect in Taggart Avenue slaying, Father of firsts: Man's life is a walk through Black history in Greenwood, Greenwood man gets 23-year sentence in death of 18-month-old, Calhoun Falls man faces federal drug count, PTC Foundation lacing up sneakers for Spring Forward 5K, Pi Day Lecture at the Arts Center of Greenwood, EAA and AMA sponsors Build and Fly project. Kia was a third grade student at Merrywood Elementary School. Unfortunately for them, as soon as Hampton went to jail for Peeping Tom, he stopped cooperating with investigators. Upon receiving Bernettas call, a bulletin was released, featuring the young girls description, which informed the countys officers that she was an African American female who stood at 42; weighed 60 to 70 pounds; and was wearing yellow shorts, a yellow-and-white polka dot shirt, and slip-on shoes. He recognized one of the men but wasnt able to give police a description before EMS staff arrived to treat him. The Greenwood County Sheriffs Office is working to solve the case of 18-year-old Tadarrius Robinson, who was found fatally shot on July 25, 2018 at 103 Wheatfield Drive. It all pointed to a very confusing puzzle, which police didn't know how to make sense of. Over the coming weeks, the leads that Sheriff Giles Daniel was excited about began to dry up, either leading to dead ends or going nowhere at all. Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password. With these two most recent homicides, the number of unsolved slayings in recent years for Greenwood County climbs to four. It began to seem to police like he was making things up as he went along, but they were constantly reminded by the facts that something was amiss. Between the 2002 indictment and this, he had accrued nearly five years of time served. This was when he was transferred to a jail in Greenwood county - the same county where Kia Logan had disappeared from in 1988. The families and friends of those slain deserve answers, and Chaudoin said he asks investigators to revisit these open cases every now and then. The witnesses had described his hair as having a light glow to it, but they couldn't definitively see it. The Murder of Malakia Logan - Stories of the Unsolved When you get a case like, for example, in 2006 if we havent developed any suspects then I think we need to release a little more information and try to bring a little more to the board and see if we get some more probability of striking someones memory.. The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Greenwood is 1,836 to 1. By Thursday, May 19th, the mood in the Georgetown apartment complex had changed dramatically. They searched pretty exhaustively for around three weeks, unable to locate any more remains other than the skull. Georgetown has always been a family-type community. They did, however, share a similar suspect description of a middle-aged white man with grey stubble, a pockmarked complexion and a tattoo of either a dragon or a snake on one of his biceps. On May 15th, 1988, all seemed to be well in the world. It's a town of roughly 20,000 people - a population level that hasn't really changed in over thirty years. However, no evidence has been found to link him to Dail's case and interviews with him have been sadly uninformative. Video from the area showed a car with someone hanging out of the back passenger window and firing. Hampton would plead guilty to his original felony Peeping Tom charge, meaning that he would be spending the next five years in state prison. The shooting on Sumter Street happened at 8:45 p.m. May 22, and while a car and two apartments were damaged, no one was injured. And, if his father was a physician in Canada, wouldn't he have been looking for them? She had one sister, named Renee, and the three lived in an apartment complex just north of Greenwood, South Carolina. James and Margaret Barnes walked into the bank together just after 1 p.m. and at 1:30 p.m. the panic button had been pushed. South Carolina's Number One Unsolved Mystery - OnlyInYourState They are asking local law enforcement to. Murdered Paul Murdaugh reportedly had more brushes with law - New York Post Little else could be determined of the victim or how they had died, as the skull showed no signs of obvious trauma or any bullet holes. 1966 triple murder still sends shock waves through Hendersonville Create a password that only you will remember. He also soon recanted all of his prior confessions, meaning that police had to start back from square one. Jessica, a pretty little girl with brown hair and sparkling brown eyes went to bed on June 5, 1986, along with her two sisters. But Mr. Murdaugh, part of a prominent family of South Carolina lawyers, has denied any involvement in the unsolved killings . Officers heard several shots on April 6, 2013 while at the Greenwood County Detention Center, then saw two men running up from 606 Tabor St., one of whom had been shot in the arm. Learn how your comment data is processed. There were approximately 17,721 homicides in South Carolina between 1980 and 2019, according to the Project: Cold Case website for unsolved homicide statistics. Three other people were shot that day and taken to the hospital by others, but many in the crowd said they saw nothing and police couldnt confirm the nature of the shooting. Charles Wade Hampton were eventually charged with Malakia's murder, but the mystery remains unsolved. In 1996, the testing of mitochondrial DNA was performed at a genetics lab in North Carolina. Detectives will re-interview witnesses and relatives of victims to try and find any new leads. When officers arrived, they found two men with gunshot wounds. Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in. CID Email Anonymous Tip Submission Crime Stoppers. When her sisters were questioned, only the 6-year-old stated that a man with a 'magic' hat came and took Jessica away. In-between her 1988 disappearance and the 1998 confirmation that the skull belonged to her, they had prepared for the worst but anticipated Kia returning home. People with information are encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC. Renee arrived home approximately 15 to 20 minutes later and it was discovered that Kia had not returned. But that optimisim would be short-lived, as weeks began to bleed into months. They all decided to put the money to good use, allowing education or nursing majors to receive the scholarship in times of hardship. The Sorority Murder - Greenwood County Library System - OverDrive ", Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster also shared his thoughts, referring to the active state of the investigation or rather, the lack of one: "I can't think of anything worse than losing a child to an act of violence, then on top of that losing a child which you really don't know what happened.". You see, in 1981, he had been arrested and convicted for the rape of a sixteen-year old, telling interrogators that his seminal fluid had been used to convict him. A witness spotted two men running from the area after the shooting, and they got into a small silver four-door vehicle parked at a nearby gas station. While he had previously confessed to the crime, he recanted, resulting in the rape charge being dropped due to a lack of evidence. ddominguez@indexjournal.com. An initial search of the area around the apartment complex by investigators led to the discovery of Kias bicycle, which was located in the parking lot, just outside of the apartment office. 1-888-CRIME SC (1-888-274-6372) Sadly, South Carolina and other states in the United States have hundreds, if not thousands, of unsolved cases. Her father was the mayor of Saluda, a small town in South Carolina, and her mother was a teacher at a local middle school. She lived with her mother and her sister, Renee, in an apartment complex just north of the rural city of Greenwood, South Carolina. To this day, the case remains open and unsolved. Does it not bother you, as it does me, that our community, with a few exceptions, seems to be showing little aggressive concern over the mysterious disappearance of one of our children, Kia Logan? They had been shot. Anyone with information on any of Greenwood's homicides is asked to call law enforcement at 911, or police detectives at 864-942-8407. They had held out hope that someone had abducted her for ransom, or perhaps - just perhaps - she actually had run away. Link said Maj. Hugh Butler, who oversees the detectives division, said officers are making progress with the evidence they have, but there is no new information detectives can release right now. Greenwood's law enforcement now working 4 unsolved homicides, By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ Rewards are being offered. The DNA testing from the six sexual assaults linked them together, indicating that a single suspect was behind each of the crimes - however, none of those samples matched up with Hampton himself. It took police a while to line up the suspect description because the vehicles in-question varied based on each witness: two described the vehicle they had been abducted in as a champagne-gold Mazda, while others pointed out either a white Toyota Corolla or a white Chevy Celebrity. Higher means more crime, U.S. average is 254.8. Winds light and variable. They sent it off for continued testing at the University of South Carolina, where a forensic anthropologist was able to tell investigators that the skull belonged "to a six-to-eight-year-old African American.". Police recovered six shell casings and spoke with witnesses who heard the shooting, but didnt see the car the shooter drove by in, according to a report. Victims advocates play an important role in communicating with the families of people killed, and officers work to be up-front and communicate often with the families. Needless to say, Charles Hampton was now on their radar. The physical search didn't produce any leads or clues. Along Mount Pleasant Road also known as the S.C. 34 Highway he came across a badly decomposed human skull, which prompted him to contact the Newberry County Sheriffs Office. He and. DNA testing confirmed her identity. A Mother and Son Are Found Murdered, Deepening a Mystery in South Carolina. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. This was a random act, which seems to be his technique.". He had been previously terminated due to unexcused absences and excessive tardiness, but that didn't stop him from getting into trouble. South Carolina murderers list | Murderpedia It is reported that a neighbor saw him standing outside by the road with his bicycle as if he were waiting on the bus, but he didn't have school that day. Murdaugh undergoes cross-examination in his own murder trial. The man was covered in blood, and Perez made the shape of a gun with his hand to show police that he and the other man had been shot. They haven't made any positive identification yet. After 11'000 days, 30 years and 29 of those years on death row, Edward Lee Elmore was freed in 2012. When does she have the time, you ask? Charles Wade Hampton later plead guilty to obstruction of justice charges, which stemmed from him lying to investigators. Edward Lee Elmore: Free After 29 Years On Death Row - Crime Traveller Sheriff Foster continued: "We are reasonably sure, at this point, the skull was not dug from a grave." Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster told the media: "It was obvious that it was the skull of a child. They're going to search for other skeletal remains in identification.". On Sunday, July 17, 1966, a brutal triple murder took three lives in Henderson County, N.C. To this day, after-effects from the grisly slayings of Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass and Louise Davis. On October 1, 1990, Malakia's remains were found in a wooded area on U.S. Forest Service property in Newberry County. In the past 21 years the departments digital records system goes back, there were 55 murders reported to the police. In most cases, they were sexually assaulted before being abandoned in a public setting, but at least one of the girls wasn't she was simply abducted and then dumped off at a gas station, where she was able to call for help. Set in the middle of Greenwood itself, the reward fund started with a $2000 donation in her name. Investigators with the S.C. Highway Patrol ( SCHP . Despite this overwhelming sadness experienced by Bernetta and her family at this moment in time, the article had a profound effect on the community. Welldo you really need that much sleep? Prosecutors, once-confident that the case against him was looking rock-solid, were now worried about not having enough evidence against him. Thank you! Sadly, he wasn't too far off. He'll be back on the street. Get Alerts Map; Browse By State; Submit a Crime Tip Square with arrow pointing upper right. Police were later able to link him to a farm, which was owned by a friend. Sam Riley, who had been a Major in the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office, had recently been elected Sheriff. Witnesses said they heard the shooting and one gave a description of a suspect but left before officers could question them further. Somewhere out there is someone who knows something about each one of these mysteries and it is up to us to not let them grow cold. Major Sam Riley was quoted as saying: "These leads have carried the investigation outside of the Greenwood area.". They combed around the Georgetown Apartments for most of the night, until the lack of light eventually led to them turning it around. [6] Greenwood, SC Area Cold Cases | SpotCrime As of this episode's recording, the abduction and murder of Malakia Zali Logan remains unresolved. You can not have good without a bad. Officers spoke with several witnesses who described the vehicle the shooters were in, but have been unable to identify any suspects. If you know any information about this crime, you can contact the Greenwood County Sheriff's Department at (864) 942-8600. The family, to their credit, was steadfast in their conviction, wanting to to see Hampton in a court to face the charges levied against him. And of course, we have our legendary tale of the "swamp man.". After a few days, the Director of Greenwoods Emergency Preparedness said the group would be suspending their involvement in the search and would wait for law enforcement to request further assistance before getting involved again. It is known that her friends lost track of her in the crowd so they assumed that she had a ride home and left. On the northern outskirts of the town is the small country airport, which consists of a single elongated runway. It happened around 9:15 p.m. at a home. The days in which the victims were abducted varied, with three of the crimes happening on a Saturday, a Friday, and a Monday. Police have long theorized that the abduction - and later murder - of Kia Logan was a crime of opportunity. Her picture appeared on ADVO cards in August and the story was recently on television. In each crime, the suspect was described as a middle-aged white man, with some kind of gray stubble on his face and a pockmarked complexion, as well as a unique tattoo on a bicep - which some of the young victims called a "dragon," and others a "snake.". Online"10 Books to Cozy Up With This December"PopSugar A popular sorority girl. At around 8:15pm, Kia decided she wanted to return home and thus grabbed her bike and left. Hampton plead not guilty almost instantly. He also had scars along his right arm and stomach, which matched up with what one of the younger victims had described. Trending pages Kari Lynn Nixon Dana Satterfield Superbike Motorsports Murders Jessica Gutierrez Michele Whitaker A clear sky. When the police finally arrived they found all three of the victims in a utility room in the back of the bank. It was early morning, October 2001 on Interstate 526. Throughout the beginning of the search for her daughter, Bernetta begged the kidnapper to show some mercy toward Kia. However, the criminal trial would never come to be. He was sentenced to eight years, with time already served. They tried to use the dental records and skull reconstruction techniques available to them, in an effort to determine if the skull was Kia's, but nothing was positively confirmed. When they continued their rounds of questioning, Hampton was eager to talk. "Normally there would be a family get-together in Saluda. Contact staff writer Damian Dominguez at 864-634-7548 or follow on Twitter @IJDDOMINGUEZ. The killings also led the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to open a new inquiry into the unsolved death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old whose body was found on a rural road in the area in . This year my daughter Renee will go, but I will stay here to answer the phone, just in case. They wanted to take their time, and waited until his holding period for the 1995 warrant was nearing its end to finally strike. It was August 9, 1976, on a deserted road in Sumter County, SC, when a trucker happened upon the scene of the murders. Her granddaughter, Ashley, had been friends with both Kia and Renee Logan, and had actually been playing with the two on the basketball court shortly before Kia disappeared. Greenwood Police Chief T.J. Chaudoin said he keeps a file in his office of the departments unsolved homicide cases, to keep them fresh in his mind and revisit them when he can. His hair was dark blonde, which could vary anywhere between blonde and dark brown. This was in 1996, where he plead guilty to having drilled a hole into a womens restroom at a Georgia rest stop and was sentenced to five years. Police department Public Information Officer Jonathan Link said investigators are continuing to work with the information theyve gathered in each of these cases, and that theyve tried to get more information through interviewing witnesses and other people of interest. The Murdaugh Murders, Money & Mystery | Unsolved South Carolina on SLED - South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Sometime in the middle of the night, a man stole her from the bedroom without waking her. A man and a woman (who have come to be known by Jacques and Jane) were shot three times each. Greenwood's Emergency Preparedness Director Herbert Vaughn spoke to the local press, and talked about the searches his department had helped conduct in the area on Monday and Tuesday. They had reason to believe that Hampton had been responsible for some truly terrible crimes, but they had no prove any of them. Greenwood is the type of town you imagine when you think of rural America: a downtown comprised of brick buildings, a railroad track that separates the storefronts from the industrial area, and a large suburban population. He admitted to committing three child abductions in northern Georgia and confessed to having killed a child at an out-of-state farm. Kias case was featured on a 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Malakia Kia Zali Logan was born on August 1, 1979 to parents Richard and Bernetta Logan. The results were testing alongside DNA taken from Kia's parents, Bernetta and Richard, and this time, it proved consistent. Other paranormal phenomena are also regularly reported here. It was a Sunday in Greenwood, South Carolina - a small town roughly an hour north of Augusta, Georgia and about an hour-and-a-half west of Columbia, South Carolina. Perez took police to another man lying on a concrete pad behind an apartment. Crime rate in Greenwood, SC - City-Data He lifted his shirt and officers saw Perez had two gunshot wounds on his right side. Throughout the 30+ year investigation, various leads and suspects would come and go. According to our research of South Carolina and other state lists, there were 13 registered sex offenders living in Greenwood, South Carolina as of March 04, 2023. "Cold cases" isn't the term Greenwood Police Chief T.J. Chaudoin likes to use for his department's unsolved homicides. Winds light and variable.. A clear sky. South Carolina's unsolved mysteries Greenville, SC 29601 62 Light Rain 90% MORE No Alerts & Closings in Your Area Sign Up to Get Future Alerts 1 / 2 Advertisement TOP PICKS South.