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A Special Report
THE ATTACK AT THE SILK PLANT FOREST
NAVIGATION
PROJECT TOOLBAR
Part Five: The Questions
Questions keep tragic case alive
Kalvin Michael Smith had been imprisoned for more than six years when he was transferred to the Piedmont Correctional Institution outside Salisbury in July 2003. As soon as he arrived, he looked for Darryl Hunt.
He knew Hunt's story, how he had been convicted in the 1984 rape and stabbing of a young newspaperwoman in Winston-Salem, a conviction upheld even after DNA showed Hunt wasn't the rapist.
Now, Hunt had won a new round of DNA comparison testing that he hoped might lead to his freedom. He seemed to know how to work the system. Maybe, Smith thought, Hunt could help him. If nothing else, at least he would understand.
Smith spotted Hunt across the prison yard, a quiet man in a knit skullcap who stayed to himself. After 18 years in prison, Hunt had grown leery of inmates who asked about his case, wondering about their motives.
But later that day, Smith caught up with Hunt in the canteen. Smith told him how he had been badgered by the police in Winston-Salem into making a statement that put him at the scene of the brutal beating of Jill Marker at the Silk Plant Forest store in December 1995.
Keep the faith, was Hunt's simple advice to Smith.
