The Lost Girls of Rocky Mount: The Evidence, the DNA Match, and the Nine Cases That Were Never Pursued

Accuracy Disclaimer: Every claim in this article is sourced and cited below. Antwan Maurice Pittman has been convicted of one murder — that of Taraha Shenice Nicholson. He has never been charged in the other nine deaths discussed here. All individuals named are presumed innocent of any uncharged conduct unless and until proven otherwise in a court of law. This piece analyzes the public record and investigative pattern; it does not accuse any named individual of an uncharged crime.

🎧 This is the evidence-focused companion to our full case breakdown. Listen to the episode or read the full case history here.

Why Only One Conviction?

Of the roughly ten women believed to be connected to this pattern of disappearances in and around Rocky Mount, North Carolina between 2005 and 2010, exactly one resulted in a criminal conviction: the 2011 conviction of Antwan Maurice Pittman for the murder of Taraha Shenice Nicholson [1][2]. This piece asks a narrower, more analytical question than our main episode: what evidence existed, what evidence was missing, and why did the investigation stop at one?

The Forensic Evidence That Worked: The Nicholson Case

According to WRAL-TV's contemporaneous reporting and the Associated Press's later coverage of the case, investigators recovered biological evidence — specifically semen — from Taraha Nicholson's body after she was found strangled near Seven Bridges Road in March 2009 [3]. That evidence was submitted for DNA analysis and matched to Antwan Pittman, a Rocky Mount resident with an existing criminal record and a prior blood sample on file with the state as a result of an earlier conviction [1][4].

This is a textbook example of how modern cold-case DNA matching works: physical evidence exists → is properly preserved → is tested → is matched against an existing offender database sample. Every one of those steps happened correctly in the Nicholson case. That is precisely why it is the only case in this pattern that produced a conviction — not because Pittman was somehow more "provably" involved in Nicholson's death than in the others, but because this was the one case where the evidentiary chain was complete.

Circumstantial Evidence Linking Pittman to Other Deaths

Investigators built a substantial circumstantial case connecting Pittman to the broader pattern, even without additional forensic matches:

• ◦Geographic overlap. Pittman had lived at various points in nearly every location where a body was later found. His grandparents' home in Whitakers, North Carolina sat just miles from where several victims' remains were recovered, and he had lived near the Rocky Mount soccer field where Elizabeth Smallwood's body was found [1][5].
• ◦A documented police contact on the day of a disappearance. Traffic police stopped Pittman on Seven Bridges Road — found unconscious in his vehicle — on the same day victim Jarniece Hargrove went missing. Her body was later found roughly 180 yards from that stop, two months afterward [1][6].
• ◦A pattern of violence toward women in the sex trade. Pittman was arrested in 2007 for assaulting a woman engaged in sex work, in the same geographic area where several victims were later found [1].
• ◦Cessation of the pattern after arrest. No additional disappearances matching this pattern have been reported in Rocky Mount since Pittman's August 2009 arrest — a fact investigators have cited publicly as circumstantial support for his broader involvement [2][7].

None of this evidence, however, has been sufficient — or was ever formally tested — to bring charges in the other nine deaths. Circumstantial geographic and behavioral overlap is not the same evidentiary standard as a DNA match, and prosecutors appear to have made a determination (never fully explained in public reporting) that the other nine cases could not be charged on the available evidence.

Investigative Gaps and Delays

Several patterns in the public reporting point to specific investigative shortcomings, independent of whether Pittman is ultimately responsible for the other nine deaths:

1. Delayed recovery of remains. Multiple victims' bodies were not found for months or years after their disappearance — Yolanda Lancaster's remains were not located until January 2011, nearly two years after she was reported missing in February 2009 [8][9]. Christine Boone's remains, similarly, were not identified until March 2010, more than three years after she was reported missing in January 2007 [10]. These delays meant that by the time forensic teams had access to remains, environmental decomposition had often destroyed evidence that might otherwise have yielded additional DNA matches.

2. Disputed missing-persons intake. Roberta Williams' family has stated publicly that they reported her missing well before her body was found in March 2010 — a report that law enforcement has denied ever receiving [1]. If accurate, this represents a breakdown at the intake stage of the missing-persons process, not a forensic failure. It is a pattern that recurs across many missing-Black-women cases nationally and is one of the more consistent, well-documented critiques in reporting on this case specifically [11].

3. Under-resourced follow-up. Rocky Mount Police Department's broader cold-case capacity has been reported elsewhere (in coverage unrelated to this specific case) as severely limited relative to caseload — as of recent reporting, the department has had only one full-time investigator and one part-time retiree covering approximately 55 open cold cases citywide [12]. While that reporting is not specific to the Rocky Mount serial-death pattern, it provides useful context for why a case involving ten victims across five years might not have received the sustained, dedicated task-force attention that comparable multi-victim cases in higher-resourced jurisdictions typically receive.

4. No public accounting of why charges were not pursued. Despite investigators' public statements that they believe Pittman is connected to the broader pattern, no public document, court filing, or press briefing identified in our research explains why prosecutors have not pursued charges in any of the other nine deaths in the fifteen-plus years since Pittman's arrest. This absence of a public evidentiary rationale is itself notable and is consistent with critiques raised by victims' families and by Associated Press reporter Lindell John Kay, who has covered the case's lack of resolution over multiple years [2][7].

The Racial and Socioeconomic Dimension of the Investigation

This is where evidence analysis intersects most directly with the broader pattern reporters and advocates have identified. GQ's 2010 feature by Robert Draper — one of the most detailed pieces of investigative journalism on this case — documented explicit disparities in how Rocky Mount's police department and local media treated this pattern of disappearances compared to a contemporaneous case involving a white victim in the same town [1]. Playwright Marilynn Barner Anselmi's 2018 production Seven Bridges Road was built specifically around this documented disparity, drawing on interviews with victims' families [13].

The victims' shared demographic profile — Black women, several with histories of addiction and survival sex work — is directly relevant to an evidence-and-investigation analysis for a specific reason: reporting indicates that some victims' initial missing-persons reports received a lower investigative priority because of this profile, delaying both search efforts and evidence-collection timelines in ways that measurably affected the eventual quality of forensic evidence available (see the decomposition/delay issue above) [1][11].

What Would It Take to Reopen the Other Nine Cases?

Based on the pattern in comparable cold cases nationally, a few concrete developments could realistically move any of the other nine deaths toward charges:

• ◦Retesting with modern forensic technology. DNA analysis techniques have advanced substantially since 2009–2011; evidence once deemed insufficient for a match may be retestable with current forensic genealogy or touch-DNA techniques.
• ◦A new witness statement, of the kind that has produced breakthroughs in other cases in our back catalog (see our coverage of the Asha Degree case, where a 2025 witness statement significantly advanced a previously stalled investigation).
• ◦Renewed prosecutorial review, potentially prompted by public or family advocacy, of the existing circumstantial case against Pittman for the other nine deaths.

As of this writing, none of these appear to be publicly in progress.

Sources

1. GQ — "The Lost Girls of Rocky Mount," Robert Draper

2. Associated Press — "Families of serial killer's victims still await justice," Lindell John Kay, October 30, 2016

3. WRAL-TV — "Taraha Nicholson's body found," March 7, 2009

4. WRAL-TV — "Pittman moved to Raleigh for safety," September 3, 2009

5. Mike Hixenbaugh — "Portrait of a suspected serial killer," October 7, 2009

6. WRAL-TV — "Warrant links murder suspect to deaths of Rocky Mount women," March 15, 2010

7. WRAL-TV — "Rocky Mount police chief suspects serial killer in deaths," March 31, 2010

8. WITN — "New Info: Human Remains Found In Edgecombe County Woods," January 11, 2011

9. The News & Observer — "Remains found where others discovered," January 12, 2011

10. WRAL-TV — "Funeral held for once-missing Rocky Mount woman," March 27, 2010

11. WUNC / BPR — "The Missing Girls of Rocky Mount Inspire a New Play"

12. CBS 17 — "Rocky Mount cold cases climb as relatives of victims grow impatient"

13. WUNC / BPR — coverage of "Seven Bridges Road" (2018), Marilynn Barner Anselmi

If You Have Information

If you have any information about the unsolved deaths connected to this case, or about Joyce Renee Durham's whereabouts, please contact the Rocky Mount Police Department or the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office.

All stories covered on NaturalQueen77 TV are retold based on publicly available information, court documents, and media coverage. While we strive for accuracy, some details may be subject to interpretation or ongoing developments. All individuals discussed are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.