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Vivian Lawson's phone rang a few days before Christmas.
It was her daughter Justine, distraught and in tears. She found a shirt that belonged to her murdered son, and it smelled just like him.
“I told her nothing but time is going to take that pain away. She has bad days.”
The mother and daughter, who live hundreds of miles apart, talk three times a day since 22-year-old Taji Mason was shot dead outside an east Charlotte nightclub in the early morning after Thanksgiving.
It wasn't a random killing, but police are still searching for enough evidence to make an arrest and close the case. His killing is one of Charlotte's 32 unsolved homicides out of 83 as of late Wednesday, the last day of the year.
The 2008 total is nine more than in 2007. But that didn't approach the CMPD record set in 1993, according to reports, when a crack cocaine epidemic fueled the killings of 122 people.
The open homicide cases represent unfinished business for Charlotte detectives. They are also open wounds for family members longing for answers and justice of some kind.
“I want him caught so he won't be able to do it to another person,” said Justine Mason, who has three other sons. “I try to get through this. It's hurt me so bad; it's just so new.”
Among the unsolved 2008 homicides is a quadruple killing, the shooting of a 12-year-old boy at a birthday party and unidentified human bones found by construction workers the afternoon of Christmas Eve.
Most homicides are solved, statistics show. But some are more difficult to crack because the public doesn't help as much as it could with providing witness testimony or other evidence, said Ricky Robbins, a sergeant with CMPD's homicide unit.
Sometimes investigators feel confident in the guilt of a suspect, he said, but they don't have enough evidence for an arrest. “Everybody wants closure. The families are out there lingering,” he said. “But I don't think the family is happy if we just go out and arrest someone and they're let go later (from lack of evidence).”
The unsolved killings include:
The shooting death of 12-year-old Joshua Jackson at a Feb. 17 birthday party attended by hundreds at the Rameses Temple on Beatties Ford Road. As the party broke up, gunfire erupted in the parking lot and sent the youths scrambling for cover. Despite a police plea for help from witnesses – the case remains unsolved.
A quadruple murder in an apartment at the troubled Tree Top complex in southwest Charlotte. The three men and a woman had criminal records, but little has become public about the motive in those March 24 killings. It was the worst multiple homicide since July 4, 1979, when five members or associates of the Outlaws motorcycle gang were slain.
The killing of two people inside a house where somebody twice called 911. Police responded to the first call but left when nobody answered the door. Kevin Ashley Young and Kinshasa Wagstaff were later found Feb. 4, after the house was set on fire. Wagstaff's niece, Jasmine Hines, a Central Piedmont student, had also been inside the house but was found dead on a street outside Charlotte's jurisdiction.
Of all crimes, homicide has the highest “clearance” rate, which in most cases means an arrest is made or the killer is identified, according to FBI definitions. Some cases are cleared without an arrest because the suspects die or police lose the help of key witnesses.
CMPD data show police cleared 51 of last year's 83 murders. That's more than 61 percent, although CMPD counts three cases as cleared that might not meet strict FBI clearance criteria. Investigators have suspects in at least two more open cases but have not made arrests.
The national clearance rate for homicides has ranged from 61 percent to 64 percent since 2000.
The clearance rate for all violent crime is lower, at about 45 percent on average nationwide. And just 17 percent of property crime is cleared, according to FBI data.
Homicides are easier to solve because the killer and victim typically know each other, said UNC Charlotte criminologist Paul Friday. They usually involve disputes over “money or sex,” he said, making them crimes of passion and not careful premeditation.
But a motive for Mason's murder hasn't been uncovered, yet.
Witnesses that November night said a group of men approached Mason in the parking lot outside of the All Stars Nightclub on Albemarle Road. A short time later, they saw a white Chevrolet Caprice speed away. Someone in the car shot at the private security force working the front door of the club.
Mason's body was found later.
Investigating killings
Police say that kind of drive-by, urban-style shooting is among the most difficult to crack because it requires witnesses and cooperation from people who know the suspects, said Robbins, the homicide police sergeant.
In some neighborhoods, witnesses avoid helping for fear of retaliation or being branded a “snitch,” he said.
Investigators haven't identified a suspect or made any arrests in Mason's shooting outside a nightclub at closing time.
CMPD investigates homicides the same way most big-city police departments do. The unit has 22 detectives, including two who concentrate on aging and unsolved or “cold” cases. Each detective has a caseload, but new department procedures have brought them more help.
Charlotte's new police Chief Rodney Monroe, who took over in June, requires more officers and detectives to get involved with each homicide, from the first call.
Homicides are personal to Monroe, whose sister was killed in Washington D.C. He tries to go to every homicide scene, and often makes connections with grieving families.
Monroe didn't respond to requests to be interviewed about Charlotte's 2008 homicides. But he has previously told the Observer he aims to boost the clearance rate to more than 80 percent.
He expects high-ranking brass and officers from the gang and firearms units to join detectives at the scenes, said Paul Zinkann, captain of the homicide unit.
“When we're on the scene of a homicide investigation, you have every resource available to start running down information,” said Zinkann.
“I have a gang detective able to answer any questions about a gang (connection) … Not only are we conducting an investigation of the shooting itself, but we're doing a simultaneous investigation on a gun.”
Monroe's focus on neighborhood policing – which meant reassigning more than 80 officers back to the streets – helps solve murders, said Maj. Cam Selvey, who heads investigative services.
“Anytime we're pushing ourselves down to the neighborhood level,” he said, “there's better information that we can gather.”
As the final hours of 2008 ticked away Wednesday evening, Justine Mason felt a sense of dread.
Her son Taji's 23rd birthday would have been Saturday. His two children, now under her care, are too young to understand what happened. They still ask where he is, and it breaks her heart.
But the New Year could bring some hope for closure.
A detective, she says, has pledged to call her today with an update on her son's case.
“I'm very hopeful.”
