Break in Cold Case Bums Out Roundtree
It was a tough week for Richmond County Sheriff hopeful Richard Roundtree.
The Dem primary candidate had to have been concerned about the declaration by local attorney and self proclaimed “Tax Avenger” Jack Long that he was gonna “cloud up and rain all over” (so to speak) any political candidates known to be in tax trouble.
Roundtree has plenty of tax trouble.
But what really had to send Roundtree around the bend was the story that made every cop in the CSRA proud to wear a badge. Well, every cop except him. That story, of course, was the break in a 26-year-old cold case involving the brutal assault and fatal stabbing of 87-year-old grandmother Pauline McCoy.
The popular Hyde Park retiree had been enjoying a peaceful Christmas season when she went missing in 1986. When friends and family discovered the horrific crime scene in the home where she lived alone, it turned the tight-knit community upside down.
Questioned at the time but not charged was 26-year-old neighborhood gadfly Jimmie Riley. If police believe there was any type of friendly relationship between the two, they are not saying at this time. It is also unclear how hard Riley was pressed for info on the unsolved case the next year when he was charged with a similar assault on yet another elderly woman. She survived the attack, and lived to see Riley sent to prison for the rape in 1989.
According to sources, the cops believe they now have what they need to close the McCoy case forever.
The now 52-year-old Riley was sitting at his rental house, on the edge of the peaceful Alleluia Community neighborhood (he is not affiliated with the group), when officers arrested him on Monday for the McCoy murder.
The break in the case came when evidence collected almost three decades ago, which had been sitting in the property room at 402 Walton Way, was re-examined using modern technology and equipment.
Technology and equipment which, of course, was unavailable at the time of the vicious crime.
Investigators will not confirm specifics, but I do know that several different types of material collected at the murder scene are being examined by methods only recently developed. Fingerprint examination is part of that review, but there are other processes underway on other evidence as well.
Thank goodness the material now being processed was in its rightful place, just waiting for the scientific expertise needed to render it useful to mature.
Investigator Ashley Pletcher and CSI technician Tom Johnson would have never been able to secure Riley’s arrest warrant had it not been for their access to that archived evidence.
Her fellow officers describe Ashley Pletcher’s interest in cold cases as renowned. She admits it is more like an obsession. “One of the main reasons I got into law enforcement… was to work on getting answers in some of these old cases…,” she explained.
The diminutive investigator was just a 6-year-old student in Mrs. McWhorter’s kindergarten class at Evans Elementary at the time of the murder. That the tiny little girl would grow up to help piece together this case is quite remarkable.
But as we alluded to early, Pletcher was not the only officer who spent time pouring over the case.
So did former investigator Richard Roundtree.
As a matter of fact, he contemplated the case so seriously that he took the narrative files home with him. Apparently for a long, long time. The McCoy case file was discovered in 2008 in his abandoned apartment, along with many other case files and police equipment, when new tenants came to move in. The concerned tenants, not knowing what to do with the piles of paper, dangerous police weapons and other stuff, called the sheriff’s office to seek guidance.
One of the men dispatched to supervise the retrieval and clean up of the sensitive material was, according to one witness that night, a visibly angry, then Lt., Scott Peebles.
Roundtree was written up for the hideous lapse in judgment, and damn well should have been fired. But that was not Peebles’ decision to make. That Roundtree now represents the biggest challenge Peebles has in the Democratic primary race for sheriff of Richmond County is beyond ironic.
You have to wonder if those folks moving in to Roundtree’s old apartment had been a little less conscientious, if Investigator Pletcher would have ever seen the file that describes the evidence that was stored away that may now solve a 26-year-old murder mystery.
Reporters researching the McCoy case ran across the Roundtree cross reference quite by accident, because of its mention in the article detailing the candidate’s internal difficulties while employed by the sheriff’s office.
Another kick in the nuts brought to you by Google.
As much time as Roundtree spent with that file, he sure wasn’t able to see what Ashley Pletcher saw in it.
But at least he knows now that policewomen are good for much more than just stake out hook-ups.You Might Also Like:
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