Three 6-inch binders sit in the office of District Attorney Jim O'Neill. An angelic photo of a 6-year-old boy peers out from the covers and spines of two of those books.
It's the working title of the document — "Nicholas Benjamin Loris. HOMICIDE. Forsyth County Sheriff's Office" — that's the real attention grabber, though.
It tells you exactly what investigators thought of the boy's death in 1987. For years, detectives believed it to have been a murder, and they suspected his mother, Elizabeth Watkins, of committing it.
So much so that the sheriff's office pushed O'Neill in 2007 to sign off on a murder charge against Watkins.
And if they had prevailed, if not for a system of checks and balances in the legal system, Watkins may well have been sitting in prison instead of making the rounds on national television describing the bizarre accident that claimed her son's life nearly 25 years ago.
Different recollection
As revealed last week, the truth about Nicholas Loris' death is equal parts tragedy and freak accident.
Instead of being strangled by human hands, the boy was choked to death on Feb. 21, 1987, by his own clothing when he was attacked by a group of dogs.
The lack of obvious tearing wounds and bite marks led investigators to an understandable, logical conclusion: that he had been murdered. And when a child is injured or killed, the first place detectives look for suspects is in the home.
The binders in O'Neill's office represent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours put in trying to solve the case. The file may have eventually fallen into the dreaded "cold case" pile, but neither the detectives assigned to it nor the prosecutors consulted on it ever forgot it.
"The sheriff's department, to their credit, were determined to seek justice for little Nicholas and fairly passionate in their presentation and request for a murder warrant," said O'Neill, who was a top assistant to then-District Attorney Tom Keith at the time.
In a news conference called last week to announce the rather incredible FBI findings that cleared Watkins of suspicion, Sheriff Bill Schatzman said his office had nothing to apologize for in suspecting Watkins.
His recollection about how far discussions about arrest warrants went differed from O'Neill's, though. Friday and again Monday, Schatzman said his office was never close to asking for an authorization on a murder charge.
"We did consult with the district attorney's office and we did serve one or more search warrants in this case," Schatzman said. "But no, we did not do that."
Making a hard call
If Watkins had been charged, "there would have been no further involvement by the FBI," said David Freedman, Watkins' attorney, referring to the technology and expertise the feds used to help clear his client. "And if she was convicted, she possibly could have spent the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't commit.
"It's great to see when the district attorney appropriately uses the power he has vested in him."
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