Court documents: homicide victims found lying in bed, shot in head

Posted in Related Deaths

11-8-2012 North Carolina:

Clyde and Ida Valentine were found lying in the bed of a back bedroom of her northern Charlotte home last week, dead from gunshot wounds to the head, according to a search warrant obtained by the Observer on Thursday.

Still, police have not said who they believe is responsible for the deaths. Clyde Valentine had tape over his mouth. Police say the case is classified as a death investigation and spokeswoman Officer Jessica Lawrence said investigators were not looking for a suspect.

Authorities said a man called police on Nov. 1 and said he’d found his parents’ bodies in the home on Swift Arrow Lane. The search warrant identified that man as Malcolm Valentine, who came to his the house after his girlfriend said she couldn’t get anyone to come to the door.

Records show the Valentines had divorced in 2004, and Clyde Valentine had remarried three years ago.

Officers at the scene told reporters they believe the deaths were domestic-related. But they would not comment about whether the deaths were related to child sex charges filed against Clyde Valentine earlier this year.

Clyde Valentine was arrested in June on three felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. In September, he was charged with one count of statutory rape. He was expected to appear in court Nov. 13 on the charges.

Detectives said during the summer that the charges against Clyde Valentine involved a relative, and not a student at Phillip O. Berry Academy where he once taught electronics. ..Source.. by Cleve R. Wootson Jr.

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Man found dead with wife had protection order against family member

A day after Clyde Valentine and his wife Ida were found in their home neighbors are still wondering what happened.

"It gave me goose bumps just to hear about it," said neighbor Darcy Farman.

The bodies were found Thursday inside the home on Swift Arrow Lane by the couple's son.

Details of trouble inside that home are starting to unravel.

A source confirmed to Eyewitness News that Clyde Valentine had a domestic violence protection order against a family member who was not his wife Ida.

Autopsy: Man who killed former girlfriend at Duke clinic committed suicide

Posted in Related Deaths

5-10-2010 North Carolina:

The Durham man who exchanged gunfire with police in May after fatally shooting his former girlfriend at a Duke clinic died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Burnett Taylor, 51, died of a contact gunshot wound to the right side of his head, the autopsy report states.

Taylor was confronted by police about two blocks from the clinic at 3116 N. Duke St. where 40 minutes earlier he had fatally shot 49-year-old Charlene King six times.

When police confronted Taylor, the autopsy states, he was holding a gun to his head.

Shots were also fired by police, the autopsy report states. The autopsy describes a second gunshot wound to the left hip. ..Source.. by Staff Reports

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Man shoots, kills girlfriend at Duke health clinic

5-6-2010 North Carolina:

DURHAM (WTVD) -- A Duke Medicine employee was shot and killed by a gunman who came to her workplace in Durham Tuesday afternoon.

The shooting at the Duke Health Center at North Duke Street happened just before 3 p.m. at the corner of N. Duke Street and Frasier Street. That's north of I-85 near the Durham Regional Hospital.

Panicked 911 calls immediately began flooding into emergency operators.

"We're all hiding in a room here," a doctor told a 911 operator.

Click here to listen to the calls

"The guy with the gun came in and somebody fell through the door," said another caller. "A man came in behind her and shot."

Witnesses reported hearing four shots. They said medical staff were attempting to give the woman CPR, but she was unconscious.

Durham police identified the victim as 49-year-old Charlene Bullock King. Relatives told ABC11 that she worked at the center for 27 years as a phlebotomist. They said the gunman was her ex-boyfriend.

Police identified him as 52-year-old Burnette Taylor of Durham.

"Charlene was very sweet, very sweet," King's stepson Steven Shealey said. "She didn't deserve this at all. Even at one point when I was going through some things with my fiancé, she took me in."

He said she had recently had a fight with Taylor and decided to leave the relationship.

"I guess he realized he had lost something that was a jewel, something that was precious as she was, and that's why he couldn't let go," Shealey said.

After the shooting, Durham police quickly swarmed the area trying to find Taylor who took off on foot.

"We happened to have officers training not too far from here at that point in time, so they were able to respond at a very quick rate," Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said.

Witnesses reported the gunman ran into a wooded area behind a house on Carver Street. They reported hearing multiple gunshots before Taylor was seen lying on the ground.

As police tracked Taylor, Lopez said he "engaged police officers in a gun battle" at Carver and Broad streets.

Taylor was shot by officers and Lopez said he was taken to Duke Hospital where he later died.

Lopez said the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation would be assisting in the case - as is standard in any officer involved shooting.

Taylor had a long criminal record. According to the North Carolina Department of Corrections, he was a registered sex offender after convictions for second-degree rape and kidnapping in 1993. He also has convictions for car theft, larceny of firearms, resisting arrest, and drunk driving.

After serving time for those crimes, he was released and apparently began dating another woman, who late-last year accused him of assault. The woman even requested a temporary restraining order, describing a violent episode in which Taylor beat her unconscious. In court documents she wrote, "He continued to slap, kick, punch me with his fists. Blackening both my eyes, fracturing my ribs, my liver was cut due to a kick."

Probation officers put out warrants for Taylor's arrest beginning in November of last year.

State correction officials say Taylor's probation officer made every attempt to locate him, but officers never managed to track Taylor down, until six months later when Durham police officers shot him Tuesday.

Officials with the North Carolina Department of Correction also say their revue shows the probation officer made numerous attempts to find Taylor over the last six months, at his last known address and his family members, but Taylor was willfully fleeing supervision.

Meanwhile, Duke Medicine reopened on Thursday after it cancelled all appointments for all services at the Duke Health Center at North Duke Street for Wednesday. ..Source.. by WTVD.com

Warrant: Sex offender killed landlady after she found porn on computer

Posted in Related Deaths

1-24-2012 North Carolina:

WINSTON-SALEM — A convicted sex offender accused of strangling his landlady five years ago and setting her car on fire in Clemmons with her body inside killed her after she found pornography on his computer, according to a search warrant for his computer filed last summer (2011).

Scott Robert Speakman is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Loyola Strader, 63, in 2006 and faces the death penalty if convicted.

According to the warrant, Speakman told authorities that he killed Strader after they started arguing over pornography that Strader saw on Speakman's laptop computer in the room he rented from her on Konnoak View Drive in Forsyth County.

According to court documents, Speakman has said that Strader threatened him with a stun gun, and he killed her during a struggle. Speakman had recently been released from prison in Maryland after being convicted in 1995 of raping and sodomizing an 18-month-old girl when he was 15. He was tried as an adult.

Vince Rabil and Clark Fischer, attorneys representing Speakman, included the search warrant in their motion to suppress evidence found on the computer. The attorneys also argued that the court should suppress statements Speakman is alleged to have made to authorities that the argument between him and Strader was over pornography. The attorneys say there's nothing in the notes and summaries from Speakman's interviews to support that.

Detective J.W. Adkins of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office applied for the search warrant on July 26. Investigators had gotten a search warrant in 2006 to get Speakman's computer and have it examined by the State Bureau of Investigation.

But Adkins said in the search warrant application that the images retrieved from the computer were never forwarded to him or the Forsyth County District Attorney's Office. He said in the search warrant that Assistant District Attorney David Hall contacted officials at the State Bureau of Investigation, who told him they could not find the images. Hall could not be reached Monday for comment. Rabil declined to comment Monday.

Adkins filed the new search warrant to have the computer examined again for images of child pornography and any other material that Speakman mentioned in his statements.

According to previous motions, Speakman told investigators in one of his statements that Strader saw something on the laptop, and that was the "triggering event" that led to her death.

At a March hearing last year on pre-trial motions, Adkins testified that another investigator who participated in interviewing Speakman had turned over all interview notes and reports to Speakman's attorneys, last week's motion said.

"Either the statements set out and sworn to in the application for a fourth search by Detective J.W. Adkins are false or the state has failed to provide the defendant with discovery of all the statements of the defendant which were in the possession of the state as of March 17, 2011, and on November 19, 2006," the motion said.

Adkins could not be reached Monday.

Prosecutors have said that Speakman strangled Strader with a cord, put her body in her car and drove it to Clemmons, where he set it on fire. According to prosecutors, surveillance cameras from a nearby business showed Speakman setting the car on fire.

In December, Speakman's attorneys filed a motion arguing that he should not face the death penalty because he is severely mentally disabled. That motion is still pending.

Speakman's trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 27 and is expected to last three weeks to two months. It is not clear when pre-trial motions, including this latest one, will be heard. ..Source.. by Winston-Salem Journal

NC- Pregnant teen shot to death at bus stop

9-15-2009 North Carolina:

CHARLOTTE -- A Charlotte man wanted for raping his adopted teenage sister turned himself in Monday and was being questioned in connection with her shooting death at a Charlotte school bus stop, police said.

Royce Anthony Mitchell, 36, is a "person of interest" in the slaying of Tiffany Wright, 15, in north Charlotte, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police spokesman.

Tiffany, who was eight months pregnant and living in a foster home, was shot about 6 a.m. Monday while waiting to catch the bus to her high school.

Medics rushed her to Carolinas Medical Center, where doctors were able to deliver her baby girl. Wright died at the hospital, and the baby was listed in critical condition Monday.

Police issued warrants against Mitchell for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a minor Monday, based on their investigation into Tiffany's death. A police spokesman said Tiffany was the victim of the alleged sex crimes, and that she had been adopted into the Mitchell family.

Police were at Royce Mitchell's home late Monday, as homicide detectives questioned him at police headquarters. Police also said they're looking into whether Mitchell is the father of Tiffany's baby.

Records show Mitchell has no criminal record in North Carolina. In 2008, his wife took out a restraining order against Mitchell, alleging domestic violence, but the case was dismissed.

Federal prison records show a Royce Mitchell, age 36, had been sentenced in 2002 to six years in prison for conspiring to sell drugs in Buffalo, N.Y. Charlotte police couldn't confirm whether that was the same man charged in Monday's case, but records show Mitchell previously lived in Buffalo.

Accounts in the Buffalo News said Royce Mitchell was a quarterback for the semi-professional Buffalo Lancers football team, before being busted on federal drug charges.

The shooting occurred less than a block from her apartment.

Late Monday, five of Tiffany's friends visited the bus stop where she was shot. They wept and hugged one another near the stop, marked by a single bouquet of flowers.

They described Tiffany as goofy and fun, and a good student. She ran track at Bessemer City High, where she previously attended school, and she liked to dance.

"She couldn't dance, but she loved to try," said DeNeika Parker, 17.

Tiffany planned to name her baby Aaliyah and was excited about becoming a mother, said Tyanna Barnette, 16, who said she had known Tiffany since the two were in middle school.

Tiffany was a junior at Hawthorne. Principal Tracey Pickard said Tiffany came to the school in August as a student in the TAPS program for pregnant students. She said the girl had impressed teachers.

"It was clear that Tiffany was academically strong and off to a good start," Pickard said. She said the girl's teachers told her that Tiffany "was extremely focused."

Students at Hawthorne remembered Wright as a smart, friendly girl who did well in school and was always sweet.

"She always had a smile on her face," said Cameron Blakeney, a sophomore who met her at the movies last summer. "She loved to joke. I'm like, devastated, like a lot of people," Blakeney said. "We're all pretty torn up on the inside."

Charlotte-Mecklenburg school officials dispatched crisis teams Monday to counsel students who knew Wright. They also said they will work with CMPD to increase police visibility at the bus stop and Hawthorne for the next few days.

Tiffany's grandmother Shirley Boston in Buffalo was shocked and tearful when she learned of her granddaughter's death late Monday.

She spoke with her two weeks ago and was looking forward to helping care for her great-granddaughter. "I had my other granddaughter text her today (Monday) to say she didn't need to buy anything for the baby" because the family would take care of it, Boston said.

Boston said Tiffany spent several childhood years in Buffalo, where her father also lives.

She moved to the Charlotte area and was sent into foster care after her mother lost custody, Boston said. Mecklenburg County DSS officials would not confirm that Monday. The Charlotte Observer was unable to reach Tiffany's foster mother.

Tiffany had managed to keep a positive outlook, despite the challenges in her life, said Ashelee Barber, who said she was the niece of Tiffany's foster mother.

"She was just a very sweet girl," said Barber. "When people go through tough times, they sometimes develop hateful feelings, but she wasn't that way." ..Source.. by ELY PORTILLO, CHRISTOPHER KIRKPATRICK, TONYA JAMESON - McClatchy