“Have you had a chance to call detectives?”
The message came through Monday afternoon from Mrs. Susan, mother of my friend Jessica Lewis. This week marks the 15th anniversary of Jessica’s murder, and I know without responding that Susan is in agony, stays in agony, over the loss of her only daughter. As we creep closer to February 20th, the pain hits as if the wound were fresh. I don’t have the heart to text her back and tell her that calling detectives hasn’t done much good.
You may recall that last year in this space, I invited the Memphis Police Department to a conversation about Jessica’s unsolved case. Some time passed, but I did get an email offer to meet the cold case team and public information officers in person at their Downtown office. My colleague Toby Sells and I sat down at a long table in a room with a dozen uniformed, suited officers, and I was nervous. My voice cracked and my throat closed, all eyes were on me, and to be honest, I still think back on how I fumbled that meeting.
What I should have done was talk about Jessica. Who she was before she got addicted to hard drugs. Before, I believe, she was pushed into sex work. The person she was before someone shot her in the back of the head and left her nearly naked body in the deteriorated Mt. Carmel Cemetery in South Memphis. She was more than what they saw in crime scene photos, more than a folder of paperwork. In hindsight, I should have brought Mrs. Susan with me, so they could see the despair better than I could ever put into writing. And I have written about this many times. Instead, I stumbled over words, scrawled meaningless notes while I talked, and the only update I got from them was that they were working on ballistic testing. I didn’t ask many questions. It felt more like a plea from me to them to do their jobs. Because it was.
Just after we received news of Jessica’s death in 2011, Rhonda Wells, a sex worker by news and police accounts, was shot to death in the same cemetery, on February 24th. On the 26th, the day we laid Jessica to rest, the killer struck again in the same area, shooting another sex worker in the face and leaving her for dead. That victim survived. We later learned another death from January 27th was linked to these cases. There may be more.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching these murders. I’ve sent dozens of emails to various members of the police department with leads and questions. In 2019, I found the survivor was in Jail East and went to meet her. I visited her weekly, we exchanged letters, and she called me when she could, just to talk. I got as far as finding help for her to enter a rehab and safe house in lieu of her jail sentence for arson. That unfortunately failed when she fled the rehabilitation center. I met many times with the late MPD Detective W.D. Merritt, who gave me hope that this case was in good hands and would be solved. Unfortunately, Merritt, who was on the force when the crimes took place and was deeply involved in investigating these cold cases, passed away in 2020. Deflated after losing all the progress we’d made, I only ever reached out to the MPD here and there in the years since. Mrs. Susan never stopped reaching out to me.
I want to make this clear. These were acts of a serial killer. He needs to be found. And here we are, seemingly starting over. In recent months, the email exchanges I had with Merritt were again forwarded to another person in the MPD, and were supposed to be sent to the appropriate lieutenant (new info suggests they have not been reviewed). Upon request, I shared with them a contact from a genetic genealogy investigative group interested in helping with this case at no cost. That contact confirms they never heard from the MPD at all. In an email follow-up from our September meeting, on December 1st, an MPD official said, “Homicide is working with our federal partners on this case. We are still awaiting test results from the TBI and additional testing has been requested.”
Had testing not already been done? There is DNA evidence. There are several confirmed victims and a surviving eyewitness. It has been 15 years.
We learn more every day how easily our leaders lie, divert, deflect. How we trust in systems that don’t work, at least not for us. The people who run the world, from the streets to international waters, do so for their own benefits. We are all casualties. Some of us just happen to still be alive to fight.
I’m aware of the caseload MPD must be under. I also know that if this were teachers, attorneys, or someone “important,” we wouldn’t still be waiting. It’s time for accountability, and for justice. Evil can not prevail, abroad or here at home. It’s time for Mrs. Susan’s phone to ring with the call she’s been desperately waiting for: “We caught the man who did this. He can’t hurt anyone else.” May all our phones ring with peaceful news.
A community cleanup hosted by nonprofit Mt. Carmel Ally will be held at the historic Mt. Carmel Cemetery (2093 Elvis Presley Blvd.) on Saturday, February 21st, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The site is the final resting place of hero Tom Lee.