Suspect's death in Marker case heightens needs for answers

By: Journal Editorial Staff | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: May 15, 2011

In Hollywood crime dramas, there's often little doubt that sharp detectives nail the right perpetrator for a crime. Real life can mean bungled police work that leaves more questions than answers. That's true with the death of Kenneth Earl Lamoureux, an early suspect in the 1995 beating of Jill Marker at the Silk Plant Forest store in Winston-Salem where she worked.

It's all the more crucial now that a former FBI official, Chris Swecker, conducting an independent investigation of the case resolve its questions.

Lamoureux died in March in Texas at the age of 61, the Journal's Laura Graff reported last week. Kalvin Michael Smith, convicted in 1997 of beating Marker, lives on in a North Carolina prison, maintaining his innocence. A citizens' committee, local activists, a Journal investigative series and the Duke Law School Innocence Project have all raised serious questions about the case. Some of Smith's local supporters contend that Lamoureux remains a suspect in the crime.

But Police Chief Scott Cunningham, who inherited the Marker case from his predecessors, said in an e-mail to the Journal, "Although Lamoureux was a strong suspect in the case originally, the facts (Ms. Marker's identification of black male as attacker, Ms. Marker's identification of Kalvin Michael Smith as her attacker, and Kalvin Michael Smith's admission of being at the scene during the attack) indicate that Lamoureux stopped being a suspect as the investigation progressed, and with the conviction, Lamoureux has not been a suspect and certainly is not at this time."

Marker identified Smith, who is black, as her attacker at her trial. Lamoureux was white.

Jet Hollander, a Smith supporter, wrote in an e-mail to the Journal that "even today the WSPD [Winston-Salem Police Department] conveniently always fails to mention that in that same 1996 interview with Jill, in which they assert she gave them valuable information exonerating Lamoureux and implicating a black male, Jill was shown a photo of Kalvin Michael Smith and she failed to identify him."

At first, police concentrated on Lamoureux because he knew Marker and had a history of domestic violence. He visited her at the store the day she was beaten. A friend of hers swore in an affidavit last year that Marker called her on the phone "upset and anxious" after Lamoureux came in.

He denied any involvement in the beating. He's gone, but the questions about the case live on. Police and prosecutors should give Swecker any help he needs in answering them.