LITTLE ROCK — Twelve years after a 19-year-old waitress was raped, tortured and killed, Forrest City police said Wednesday that authorities have solved the crime.
Anthony Lejuan “Tony” Johnson, 44, an inmate in the Indiana Department of Correction, faces charges of capital murder, rape and kidnapping in the Sept. 15, 2000, slaying of Tawana Blunt, Forrest City Police Chief E.P. Reynolds said.
Johnson of Lafayette, La., was recently imprisoned in Indiana for domestic abuse, said Lt. Dwight Duch, a Forrest City police detective.
New prisoners in Indiana, as well as Arkansas and other states, are routinely fingerprinted and have DNA samples taken. Johnson’s DNA matched samples taken at Blunt’s apartment in 2000, Duch said.
“We’re ecstatic,” Duch said. “This is something all of our investigators have wanted.
“This is something you pray for at night,” he added.
He said the key to solving the case was the fact that the state Crime Laboratory kept the samples taken from Blunt’s apartment for the past 12 years.
Police said Blunt was killed sometime during the night of Sept. 15, 2000. She had just moved into the apartment on Grobmeyer Circle about two weeks earlier, police said.
Duch said Blunt finished her job as a waitress at Coconut Lounge in Forrest City about 1:30 a.m., then went with friends to the southern end of town until 3 a.m. She was last seen walking toward her apartment.
Her grandmother, who was keeping Blunt’s toddler daughter while she worked, found Blunt’s body that evening when she went to check on her.
Reynolds said at a news conference Wednesday morning that Blunt had been raped, tortured and strangled.
Duch said Johnson was living in Forrest City at the time Blunt was killed but that he couldn’t comment further on specifics of the case.
The slaying came a day after a 24-year-old man was fatally shot in the St. Francis County town. Two other men were injured in a shooting a few days later. At the time, police speculated the two homicides could have been gang-related.
Six Forrest City police detectives — Sgt. Brian Davis, Sgt. John Riggins, Lt. Harold Munn, Sgt. Travis Hill, Sgt. Mary Payne and Duch — worked the case. Only Duch and Payne are still with the department; the others have since retired.
Police questioned someone in Blunt’s slaying, but he was not arrested.
“That case stayed with us,” Duch said. “For 12 years, we were saying, ‘Who did it?’”
Duch credited the crime laboratories in Indiana and Arkansas in solving the case, as well as the help of other authorities.
Blunt’s family members attended Wednesday’s news conference, including her mother, Effie Turner, and brother, Calvin Blunt.
“It’s been a long time coming,” The Associated Press quoted Calvin Blunt as saying. “[But] she’s still gone.”
Turner did not answer telephone calls to her home Wednesday.
Someone who answered the telephone at a Forrest City restaurant where Turner works said the restaurant was closed Wednesday so Turner could attend the news conference. He said he didn’t feel comfortable talking about her and wouldn’t comment about the case.
Duch said the detectives had kept in touch with the family.
“We all became attached to this case,” Duch said. “We knew what had happened to the victim, and we had been in contact with the family often.
“This provides some idea for the family,” Duch said. “One [family member] said he didn’t know who did it. He didn’t know if he was looking at someone across a table while he was eating who killed her. He spent the past 12 years not knowing who did it.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/12/2012