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Cops look at dual motives in unsolved 2006 double murder
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Sometimes too much information can be a bad thing. Even if you’re a homicide detective.
Police Detective Sgt. Ronald Rodway has such a dilemma in the unsolved 2006 double homicide of Edgar J. Davis, 22, and his girlfriend, Simone Haskins, 20, at Davis’ 1004 Valley St. home on the East Side.
Rodway said two theories have only one thing in common: An almost total lack of physical evidence.
Under one of the scenarios, Davis was killed because of his connections to the drug trade, and Haskins was killed because whoever killed Davis did not want to leave a witness behind.
The other scenario is based on the fact that Haskins was a witness in a 2005 homicide case in which all three eyewitnesses were killed within about two years.
Rodway said sometimes too much information in a homicide case can muddle the picture and slow the investigation.
“It makes it harder to sift through,” Rodway said.
Davis and Haskins were found about 6:55 a.m. Oct. 30, 2006, inside their home by police after a sister of Haskins was worried because she did not return home the night before. Reports at the time said the two had a child together.
Rodway cited evidence of drug activity at the home and that Davis was known to deal drugs. There were cameras and monitors outside the home although the house was in bad shape and deemed uninhabitable by housing inspectors while police were processing the crime scene.
Rodway said that there were some suspects at the time but police could never tie the killings to anyone. Ballistic evidence — shell casings and bullets — was at the scene but almost nothing else, and there were no witnesses to the crime or its aftermath, he said.
“There was never anyone willing to come in and talk,” Rodway said. “There was some ballistic information, but nothing’s ever panned out.”
Today, the block on which the home stood is deserted. Davis’ home and others were torn down, and no houses remain between Albert Street and the Madison Avenue Expressway.
Rodway said Haskins was a witness to the March 5, 2005, drive-by shooting death of 32-year-old Martin Walker III, who died at St. Elizabeth hospital in the city after he was shot in the stomach as he stood in front of a market on Shehy Street.
Rodway said Haskins was a passenger in the car that was used in the shooting. She was in the back seat at the time, Rodway said, and she was killed before the suspect in the killing, Charles Lynch of Chicago Avenue, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2007 and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
As for the other two witnesses to Walker’s killing, Ollie Shuler was killed March 17, 2005, and George Arroyo, 40, was killed June 13, 2006.
The last activity in the case file was in 2007.
Anyone with information can call Rodway at 330-742-8251.