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.