Child killer sentenced to death for being a pedophile
http://www.chapelhillnews.com/2010/0...-in-girls.html
HILLSBOROUGH - Norma Shivers says that for 25 years she has been "99 percent positive" who killed her stepdaughter. Now she has DNA on her side, prosecutors say. George R. Fisher, already convicted of another child's slaying, was indicted Monday on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Shivers' stepdaughter, Carrie Ann Wilkerson, on Feb. 22, 1984. The 7-year-old's body was found in the closet of a partly burned mobile home where she and Shivers lived in the Rocky Brook Trailer Park in Carrboro. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Shivers sat in Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday as Fisher was led into the room in handcuffs and a chain around his waist. "It was strange," Shivers said after the brief hearing. "Just to know he's that close, to know he's in the room with me." Investigators had considered Fisher a suspect early on, but a quarter century passed without prosecutors bringing charges. It might have remained that way but for a call about possible new information a few weeks ago. District Attorney Jim Woodall would say only that the call did not lead to a new suspect. It did prompt the State Bureau of Investigation and Carrboro investigators to take another look at the case. "They knew there was a rape kit," Woodall said. Investigators had looked at it in the 1990s, but the technology was not yet sophisticated enough to extract DNA from it, Woodall said. He said he could not talk in detail about the new evidence that led to the new charges. In addition to murder, Fisher is charged with first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree arson. Other evidence Other evidence had pointed to Fisher soon after Carrie's death. In August 1985, Fisher, a Hillsborough construction worker, was convicted of killing 8-year-old Jean Fewell of Chapel Hill and attempting to rape her. The girl was kidnapped as she walked to school on Jan. 30 of that year. Jean's body was found with a clothesline-like cord around her neck, on the ground but pulled up against a tree behind UNC-Chapel Hill's Finley Golf Course, Woodall said. Like Carrie, she had been strangled. The two girls had known each other, and a photo of Fisher with Carrie was found in Fisher's home when investigators searched it after Jean's murder. Investigators also thought the trailer fire had been deliberately set. Fisher had served time in an Ohio psychiatric hospital and North Carolina prison for arson convictions in Lima, Ohio, and Onslow County. According to news accounts in 1985, a neighbor said one of Carrie's classmates knocked at Carrie's door the day she died to ask why Carrie was not at the bus stop. Carrie replied that she couldn't come out because she had a friend with her, the child said. That fall, investigators won a court order to take blood and hair samples from Fisher, who was serving life in prison plus 50 years for killing Jean. The samples did not link Fisher to Carrie's death, and he denied killing her, but then-District Attorney Carl Fox said he remained a suspect. There were other suspects, but no one was charged. No sense of justice Shivers said after Jean Fewell's murder she was convinced that Fisher, the husband of a friend and coworker at what is now UNC Hospitals, had killed Carrie as well. "I've known it in my heart ever since," she said. Carrie was the birth daughter of Shivers' first husband and stayed with her after the couple separated. Rebecca Lowry, Carrie's birth mother, was also in court Tuesday as Fisher heard the charges against him. "I felt as though I was attending her funeral all over again," she said. 'I felt physically nauseated when that man walked into court, but I'm glad to see police do have enough evidence to charge him." Lowry, who was born and raised in Chapel Hill, had returned to her job at a California dry cleaners after Fisher was charged in Jean's death. Her family sent her clips from the trial, and she too assumed whoever had killed Jean had also killed her daughter. Lowry later returned to North Carolina and lives in Graham. "I get a great sense of relief for all these years of not knowing who actually killed her and going through my mind, 'What about this? What about that?'" she said. But, Lowry added, she still needs to hear "the final say from the judge." Possible death penalty On Tuesday, Judge Abraham Jones ordered Fisher, 61, who has been imprisoned in Maury Correctional Institute in Greene County, held without bond on the new charges. He also ordered that Fisher be appointed a lawyer through the Office of the Capital Defender because he could face the death penalty, though Woodall said he had not yet decided whether to pursue that option. Fisher, wearing thick, black-framed glasses like those in his photos from 25 years ago, shifted on his feet and shook his head as Jones asked whether he had questions. Shivers said too many years of pain have gone by for her to feel any sense of justice over the charges against Fisher. "He looks fine," she said after he was led away. "He's adjusted to it. That's what hurts us. You want something other than the easy way in prison. You want something different than him sitting back in his cell." News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this story. |
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