Wood's murder fourth in neighborhood in two years
Amanda Wells
Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: News
The murder of UA English student Katharine M. Wood is the first in Fayetteville this year, according to the Fayetteville Police Department, but it is the fourth in a small area in the last two years.
The last known murder in Fayetteville before Wood's occurred about a half-mile from the Colonial Arms Apartment complex where Wood lived and where her body was discovered Sunday morning.
Colonial Arms Apartments is located at 1211 North Leverett Avenue. About one half-mile to the northeast is Club at the Creek Apartments, formerly the Law Quad Apartments, where residents Kevin Barkley Jones and Kendall Rachell Rice were found shot to death in April 2007.
Police arrested then 21-year-old Gregory Christopher Decay and then 20-year-old Jesse Lee Westeen on April 6, two days after the couple's bodies were discovered in their apartment at 701 West Sycamore Street. Decay was charged with two counts of capital murder, and Westeen was charged with two counts of being an accomplice to capital murder, according to the FPD.
Decay was scheduled to go to trial last month, but his lawyer, Julie Tolleson, asked for a 60-day delay after Washington County Prosecuting Attorney John Threet announced plans to seek the death penalty against Decay.
Threet will not seek the death penalty for Westeen, who prosecutors said drove Decay to Club at the Creeks to shoot the couple. Westeen's trial is set for April 21.
The murders of Jones and Rice were not the first at the Club at the Creeks Apartments, however. Their deaths were preceded by another homicide at the same apartment complex about a year earlier.
Nina Ingram, 21, was found strangled to death in her apartment April 22, 2006, at the same complex, which was then the Law Quad Apartments.
Ingram's killing is still unsolved, but FPD Detective Sgt. Tim Franklin said in a Dec. 10 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that similar killings around the country are being monitored in case of a possible link. He also said a DNA sample taken from the crime scene would be checked against CODIS, the FBI's DNA index system, to search for a possible match.
"We do have positive leads, and by no stretch of the imagination is this case closed," Franklin said in the article. "With all the fundamentals we're applying, and the technology being used, this case will be solved."
The DNA samples collected at the crime scene have been submitted to CODIS and will remain in the database until there is a hit or match, according to an e-mail from Sgt. Shannon Gabbard of FPD.
Ingram's death is the only unsolved homicide in Fayetteville since 1974. On Feb. 4, 1974, pharmacist Joe Bruce was robbed and murdered at the old Palace Drug Store at 624 West Dickson Street. Bruce was shot and killed, and his homicide remains unsolved.
Including the deaths of Ingram, Jones and Rice, a total of six people died by homicide in Fayetteville in 2006 and 2007, according to Gabbard's e-mail.
The last known murder in Fayetteville before Wood's occurred about a half-mile from the Colonial Arms Apartment complex where Wood lived and where her body was discovered Sunday morning.
Colonial Arms Apartments is located at 1211 North Leverett Avenue. About one half-mile to the northeast is Club at the Creek Apartments, formerly the Law Quad Apartments, where residents Kevin Barkley Jones and Kendall Rachell Rice were found shot to death in April 2007.
Police arrested then 21-year-old Gregory Christopher Decay and then 20-year-old Jesse Lee Westeen on April 6, two days after the couple's bodies were discovered in their apartment at 701 West Sycamore Street. Decay was charged with two counts of capital murder, and Westeen was charged with two counts of being an accomplice to capital murder, according to the FPD.
Decay was scheduled to go to trial last month, but his lawyer, Julie Tolleson, asked for a 60-day delay after Washington County Prosecuting Attorney John Threet announced plans to seek the death penalty against Decay.
Threet will not seek the death penalty for Westeen, who prosecutors said drove Decay to Club at the Creeks to shoot the couple. Westeen's trial is set for April 21.
The murders of Jones and Rice were not the first at the Club at the Creeks Apartments, however. Their deaths were preceded by another homicide at the same apartment complex about a year earlier.
Nina Ingram, 21, was found strangled to death in her apartment April 22, 2006, at the same complex, which was then the Law Quad Apartments.
Ingram's killing is still unsolved, but FPD Detective Sgt. Tim Franklin said in a Dec. 10 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that similar killings around the country are being monitored in case of a possible link. He also said a DNA sample taken from the crime scene would be checked against CODIS, the FBI's DNA index system, to search for a possible match.
"We do have positive leads, and by no stretch of the imagination is this case closed," Franklin said in the article. "With all the fundamentals we're applying, and the technology being used, this case will be solved."
The DNA samples collected at the crime scene have been submitted to CODIS and will remain in the database until there is a hit or match, according to an e-mail from Sgt. Shannon Gabbard of FPD.
Ingram's death is the only unsolved homicide in Fayetteville since 1974. On Feb. 4, 1974, pharmacist Joe Bruce was robbed and murdered at the old Palace Drug Store at 624 West Dickson Street. Bruce was shot and killed, and his homicide remains unsolved.
Including the deaths of Ingram, Jones and Rice, a total of six people died by homicide in Fayetteville in 2006 and 2007, according to Gabbard's e-mail.
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