JournalNow Edition Winston-Salem, N.C. November 21-25, 2004

 

• Home
• Part One
• The Article
• The Crime Scene
• Marker Photo Gallery
• Lamoureux Document
• Part Two
• Article
• Brain Damage
• Smith Photo Gallery
• Smith Document
• Part Three
• Article
• Marker Audio
• Silas Photo Gallery
• Littlejohn Document
• Part Four
• Article
• Case Timeline
• Archived Article
• Investigator Document
• Part Five
• Article
• Marker Audio
• Marker Photo Gallery
• Archived Article
• The Epilogue
• Story Extras
• The Crime Scene
• Case Timeline
• Brain Damage
• Marker Audio
• Web Article
• Duke Innocence Project
• Archived Articles
• Documents
• Photo Galleries
• Jill Marker
• Kalvin Smith
• Aaron Marker and son
• Silas Creek Center
• Cast of Characters
• About the Series

PROJECT TOOLBAR

Increase text size

More info about this series

WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL & JOURNALNOW

WINSTON-SALEM

About the Series

The Journal spent six months re-examining the attack at the Silk Plant Forest on Dec. 9, 1995, the police investigation of the crime, and the prosecution and conviction of Kalvin Michael Smith. Jill Marker was an assistant manager at the artificial-plant store in the Silas Creek Crossing shopping center at the time of the attack. This report is based on hundreds of pages of police reports and court transcripts, as well as dozens of interviews with Marker and her family, Smith, witnesses, police and lawyers, and experts in police interrogation, head trauma and eyewitness identification. Among the findings:

• Police failed to thoroughly investigate evidence about another man who witnesses said knew Marker and who had been seen in the store by two different women an hour before the attack. Police ruled out other suspects without fully investigating their backgrounds and alibis.
• Police had no physical evidence to link Smith to the crime, relying instead on witnesses to make a case against him. Neither they nor prosecutors corroborated significant details in statements made by Smith and witnesses or investigated inconsistencies among those statements.
• The prosecution turned on Marker’s ability to remember the attack, yet to this day she says she remembers nothing except Smith’s face. Medical experts, including her own doctors, say today that her severe injuries make it unlikely that she could have remembered anything about the assault, including the attacker’s identity. That information was not clearly brought out at trial.

About the Author

Phoebe Zerwick, The Journal's metro columnist, came to Winston-Salem in 1987, and has covered business, health and medicine, and city hall.

She most recently won awards for her series Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt. She has also written an award-winning series on infant mortality and was one of the writers for a 1998 series about race relations in Winston-Salem.

Other Credits

Les Gura was the project's editor. He is the Journal's metro editor, responsible for coverage of Winston-Salem and topics such as education, health and religion. He joined the paper in 2002 and won awards for last years series on Darryl Hunt.

Katherine Elkins, Joe Murphy, Lee Rawles and Adam Howell, interactive media producers for Journalnow.com, designed and produced the online series and its components. Katherine and Adam won awards for last years online series on Darryl Hunt.

Charlie Elkins, an assistant managing editor, designed and paginated the pages for print. The graphics were done by Richard Boyd, Cassandra Sherrill and Nicholas Weir. Ted Richardson, David Rolfe and Megan Morr were the photographers. Katherine Elkins produced the online audio collected by Ted Richardson.