Sniper leads dwindle; police ‘plugging away’
September 19, 2003
New leads in the sniper-style convenience store murders have slowed to a trickle 36 days after the last two victims were killed.
Two people were killed outside convenience stores Aug. 14, following the Aug. 10 slaying of a man outside a Charleston convenience store. Authorities have said all three were killed with the same .22-caliber weapon, presumably a rifle.
About 40 FBI agents have joined with Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents, federal Secret Service officers, State Police and local officers to investigate the murders. The task force has investigated more than 2,000 leads that have come in and are “still plugging away at it,” said Joe Ciccarelli, supervisory senior resident agent of the FBI in Charleston.
All three victims were killed at nighttime outside the stores from a single shot to the head area.
Investigators have focused on a dark-colored Ford F-150 pickup truck with an extended cab that was spotted at two of the murder scenes. They have also released a composite drawing of the man driving that truck. Both have drawn leads from the public.
Gary Carrier, 44, of South Charleston was the first of the three to be killed. He was using a pay phone outside a West Side store in Charleston Aug. 10 when he was slain.
Four days later, Jeanie Patton, 31, of Campbells Creek was shot while pumping gas outside a Campbells Creek Drive store.
That was followed by the shooting death of Okey Meadows, 26, of Campbells Creek while walking to his vehicle outside a Cedar Grove store.
There was slightly more than an hour between Patton’s shooting and the death of Meadows, about 10 miles away.
Phil Morris, Kanawha County chief deputy, said investigators have not been able to establish that the three victims knew one another. “There’s no link between the victims that we’ve been able to determine,” he said Thursday.
They have not stopped looking at that possibility, he said. “You’ve got so many people involved that it should have already been discovered,” he said.
Investigators have also not ruled out the possibility that the sniper-style slaying of Randy Burgess, 29, of Mink Shoals while leaving the Kanawha City Kroger store in March could be related.
Burgess was shot once by a .30-caliber rifle.
Ciccarelli said investigators are following a “mixture” of theories in their probe of the incidents. Some have theorized the victims were all targeted by the killer, possibly in a drug dispute.
Others believe the killer is choosing people at random to kill.
“We’ll probably never know the motive until we arrest someone,” Ciccarelli said.
Still, investigators believe the killer resides in the Kanawha County area. Ciccarelli said that comes from believing the killer knows the area.
“You look at Campbells Creek, for instance,” Ciccarelli said. “If I’m somebody who’s not from the area here, am I going to drive up there and not know where the road will go?”
http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/Other+News/2003091820
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