YOUNGSTOWN Cop seeks leads in 2002 killing

The victim would have celebrated her 50th birthday last week.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Detective Sgt. Daryl Martin has a grisly cold case he'd like to solve and thinks that now -- a year after the crime -- there may be someone willing to talk about Anne L. Griffin.
"Some suspects developed, but there was never enough evidence to charge. I exhausted all viable leads," Martin said. "I need someone to come forward who may have been reluctant at the time it happened."
Griffin, of East Philadelphia Avenue, would have celebrated her 50th birthday last Friday.
She was reported missing Sept. 18, 2002, by her live-in boyfriend, whose car she took the night before. He told police that was the last he saw her.
Griffin's naked, dismembered remains were found Oct. 4, 2002, in trash bags at an illegal dump site on the East Side near Carson Street and Cantwell Avenue. The body parts showed signs that two types of cuts had been made, possibly from two different saws, Martin said.
It was a few days before dental records confirmed Griffin's identity, but the cause of death was not discernible. Martin said she had been dead a couple of weeks.
A test of the trash bags for fiber evidence and fingerprints didn't pan out.
Numbers to call
Martin asks that anyone who may any information about the homicide call him at (330) 742-8250. A reward is being offered through CrimeStoppers at (330) 746-CLUE.
"Someone has to be the voice of the victim," said Lt. Robin Lees. "If we had a suspect crime scene, even if it was thoroughly cleaned, it would probably yield evidence today. There was a lot of blood."
Around the time Griffin's body was discovered, a house she frequented on Delason Avenue was deliberately burned, Martin said. The fire destroyed any potential evidence, he said.
Lees thinks the crime scene -- wherever it is -- likely had neighbors with prying eyes. If that's the situation, it was safer to chop up the body and take it out to a car in trash bags, rather than wrapped in a rug or blanket, he said.
Dr. John Kennedy, director of forensic psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, said after the crime that dismemberment, if classified as defensive mutilation, means someone has just killed a person and has to dispose of the evidence. It's easier to cut someone up to transport, bury or hide them, he said.
Martin said that he thinks cutting Griffin up was done out of anger or to make it easier to dispose of the body. He said Griffin, at 5 feet 8 inches and nearly 200 pounds, would not have been easy to carry.
Victim's background
Martin described Griffin as a street person who had been arrested over the years for soliciting and drugs. She hung out with a variety of older men, including some truckers, to drink.
"I talked to everyone I could find," Martin said. "None of them voluntarily came to me."
Lees said Griffin "fell victim to her vices." He called the homicide a heinous, shocking crime.
Last year, Griffin's 69-year-old mother, Willie Mae McGilvary, told The Vindicator that she was rearing her daughter's youngest son, now 15. Griffin was also the mother of twins, a boy and a girl, and another son.
"She was a good girl, friendly, smiled all the time," McGilvary said after the homicide. "I don't see why anyone would want to hurt her."
meade@vindy.com