Update: Kevin Shifflet Murder a Hate Crime...
Maggie
It's amazing that anyone gets caught, isn't it? From the Washington Post:
Racial Note Found in Suspect's Hotel Room
By Josh White and Patricia Davis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 7, 2000; Page A01
A handwritten note saying "Kill them raceess whiate kidd's anyway" was left
behind in the hotel room rented by a suspect in the slaying of Kevin Shifflett
two days before the 8-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in Alexandria, hotel and
law enforcement officials said.
The note, written on the back of a Virginia Department of Corrections memo, is
believed to have been penned by the 29-year-old suspect and may prove to be key
evidence linking him to the killing, a law enforcement source said.
The note may provide evidence of the suspect's state of mind before the
slaying, sources said, and give investigators a possible motive.
A witness to the April 19 attack told police that the killer, who was yelling
as he headed toward Kevin, said something to the third-grader about hating
white people before slashing his throat, a source said. The suspect is African
American, and Kevin was white.
Police have never publicly stated any racial overtones in Kevin's death, and a
source cautioned that the witness's statement requires more investigation.
Still, a law enforcement source characterized the note as a "very promising new
development." The note came to light during a Washington Post interview with
hotel officials. The Post obtained a copy of the note and showed it to
authorities, who then obtained the original from the hotel.
Detectives homed in on the man June 23 when investigators matched evidence
taken from a cab, used by Kevin's killer to flee the crime scene, to DNA on
file in a database of Virginia felons. Although police have linked the man to
the getaway vehicle, they are still looking for evidence linking him to the
crime scene.
The felon had lived with his family five blocks from the scene of the slaying
and was paroled from prison on a malicious wounding charge 12 days before Kevin
was killed, sources said.
The Post is not naming the man because he has not been charged in Kevin's
killing and because authorities have never publicly identified him as a
suspect.
The suspect was convicted of malicious wounding stemming from a 1993 attack in
Alexandria that also had racial overtones. The victim in that case, Leonard
Riddle, said the suspect – a stranger – called him "whitey" before brutally
beating him with a hammer for no reason.
The note was found in the hotel where the suspect stayed in the days before
Kevin's stabbing. Four days before the slaying, on April 15, the suspect
checked into the Homewood Suites Hotel on Leesburg Pike in Fairfax County, just
outside Alexandria, paying $350 in cash for two nights in a luxury first-floor
suite with a Jacuzzi.
Early on April 17, the man left a burning cigarette on his bedsheets as he took
a shower, igniting a fire and setting off the hotel's sprinkler system and
alarm, a hotel official said. The hotel was evacuated, and firefighters burst
through the door of the burning room.
The man refused to get out of the shower when firefighters arrived, spewing
expletives as smoke billowed from Room 117. The man was arrested by Fairfax
police on cocaine possession charges and also for refusing to evacuate, police
said.
His belongings were put under lock and key in the hotel's "lost and found"
room. Police say they seized cocaine and marijuana from the room but left
behind a few pieces of clothing, some small personal items and a few pieces of
paper.
Hotel staff kept the man's records on file, including a copy of his Virginia
state identification card, issued April 13.
After the stabbing, a hotel official became concerned that the man who had
stayed at the Homewood Suites might be the killer, noting at least a slight
resemblance to the police composite sketch. He checked the hotel's records,
found that the man had lived in Del Ray – the neighborhood where Kevin was
killed – and thought the coincidences were important.
"I immediately started thinking about the possible connections," the hotel
official said. "When I looked up his address and saw he lived in Del Ray, I
thought that it was all too much. I struggled with it over the weekend, and
early the next week – the week after the murder – I called the police."
A detective told him that a member of the task force investigating the slaying
would call him back, he said. That call never came. "I figured that they had
ruled this guy out – that he wasn't the right guy," the hotel official said.
On June 25 – after the man became a suspect – police arrived at the hotel
looking for a copy of the man's hotel bill. Hotel staff provided it, and the
police left. Detectives returned early last week to pick up the rest of the
man's belongings, according to hotel staff.
A hotel employee later found a piece of paper in the lost and found room that
apparently had fallen from the man's box of belongings and gave it to the hotel
official on Wednesday. That paper was the handwritten note with the racial
overtones and a reference to killing kids.
"When I saw what was on it, I got very concerned," the official said. "I called
the police right away." Police did not immediately return his calls, he said.
The suspect's note is scrawled on a yellowed, stained and wrinkled sheet of
paper – the back of a Feb. 4 memo to inmates at Virginia's Greensville
Correctional Center, where he was imprisoned, about copying fees. It is written
in broken English, some words are strung together with little obvious meaning,
and words are misspelled.
Yesterday afternoon, after the hotel official showed the note to a Post
reporter, the newspaper provided a copy of the letter to authorities. Police
detectives then rushed to the hotel and seized the evidence. A police
spokeswoman said they were already responding to the hotel's concern at the
same time that The Post provided the letter.
The parolee had been held in the Alexandria jail since June 25 on a parole
violation and was moved this week to the Fairfax County jail to face the drug
charges from the hotel arrest.
He is accused of violating his parole by not telling his probation officer of
the hotel arrest, said James L. Jenkins, chairman of the Virginia parole board.
He faces two hearings today. In one, prosecutors are seeking to revoke his bail
on the drug charge. The other is a preliminary parole revocation hearing. The
man was imprisoned a month before parole was abolished in Virginia.
If his parole is revoked, he would have to serve the rest of his sentence on
the malicious wounding and other charges, including sodomy. That amounts to
almost two years and four months, Jenkins said. That would give police a large
window to gather more evidence.
Some potential evidence was gathered at a Red Roof Inn in the Alexandria
section of Fairfax County. The man stayed at the Route 1 motel the night of the
killing.
Officials for Accor Economy Lodging, which owns the Red Roof chain, said the
suspect checked into the hotel April 19 and stayed through April 21, paying
entirely in cash. Emmett Gossen, a spokesman for the company, said there was
"absolutely nothing exceptional about his stay."
Gossen said Alexandria police showed up at the Red Roof Inn a few weeks ago and
asked to look at records of the suspect's stay. Police then rented the same
room and "basically took it apart," removing carpeting, bedding and pieces of
plumbing from the hotel room, Gossen said.
"The problem was that the room had been rented several times in between his
stay and their search," Gossen said.
"There was nothing that we or they could do about that. The only trace we have
is his name and reservation in our computers."
Staff writer Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
Maggie
"There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory."
Josh Billings