THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507270379
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
I still can see her smile.
More than four years have gone by since I last passed Janice Lee in the corridor of this newspaper building.
Effervescently she came, vibrant energy buzzing from her as if she were on her way to some place far more exciting than the advertising back office where she worked. I didn't know her at all - just ``Hi'' and the smile.
Then, on the night of June 2, 1991, after leaving a friend's home where she had gotten her hair done, Lee disappeared.
That wasn't like the woman who was always on time to work. That wasn't like the mother who, when she was between jobs, daily visited two young sons living with their paternal grandmother.
Her car was found, bloodied, a window shattered. After several days, her co-workers tried searching for her. They were worried. Lee had mentioned problems with an ex-boyfriend.
Ten days later, a body, headless and severed at the waist, was found in a heap of refuse at a regional trash plant in Portsmouth. One hand and fingers from the other were missing. X-rays were the only way that the medical examiner could identify the remains.
In the weeks and months following Lee's death I wondered: What kind of rage wrought this? Whose?
To this day, there has been no arrest, no witnesses, no trial, no conviction. And no rest for Lee's family, friends and acquaintances like me.
In my mind and in the minds of other African Americans, suspicions lurk. Fair or not, we wonder whether mainstream Hampton Roads would have made more of a big deal of Lee's death had she been white, a medical student, a Virginia Beach housewife.
I'm nagged by the knowledge that she was a newspaper employee. Shouldn't we have been driven to probe even more on behalf of one of our own? Shouldn't we have reported a step-by-step, hour-by-hour account of the investigation?
And there is that feeling that the police didn't do enough.
It could be that her smile haunts me because she was like me: African American. Single. Thirty.
Just as likely, it's because her killer left two children motherless, yet there was no collective expression of sorrow and outrage from the African-American community.
No official reward was offered for her killer, no church-organized search parties hunted for him or them, no billboards were posted, no flowers were placed at the trash plant on the anniversary of Lee's death, no scholarship fund was established in her name. There was no regional outpouring of concern for Lee's boys, now ages 14 and 15, nor sit-ins, nor marches, nor mandates from the NAACP.
Perhaps our silence suggests that this kind of brutality is to be expected or is somehow accepted among us. Did the black community, via a void of silence, help Janice Lee's killer remain free?
Portsmouth detectives say they did all that they could do. And they are still doing, following any new leads that surface in the case. They believe it will be solved.
``We have a very good suspect,'' said Lt. Christopher Connally, head of criminal investigations. ``We have for years. We just haven't had enough evidence to charge him.''
Over the telephone, I could hear frustration edge in Connally's voice over a killer so close, yet uncaught.
``It's one of those things where it could be solved any day,'' said A.R. Harvey. He was the detective in charge of the case before he retired from the police department. ``I've always felt that we were just a few steps away from solving it.''
And at his home in Norfolk, Russell Lee is counting on conscience to reveal his daughter's killer.
``My hope is that someone would come forward who has seen something. Or that the person who did it, their conscience would just overwhelm them, and they would come forward,'' said Lee, a calm, steady, reasoned man.
Meanwhile, he said, ``I think about her so often, every day.''
That smile. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Janice Lee
KEYWORDS: MURDER UNSOLVED by CNB