CAROL SPINKS. Darlenia Johnson. Brenda Faye Crockett. Nenomoshia Yates. Brenda Woodard. Diane Williams.
“If those girls had been white, they would have put more manpower on it, there’s no doubt about it,” said Tommy Musgrove, who joined D.C. police in 1972 and later headed homicide. He contrasted the case with that of the Lyon sisters, Montgomery County girls who went missing from the Wheaton Plaza mall in 1975 amid massive publicity, and whose murders were eventually solved in 2017 with the guilty plea of an imprisoned sex offender.
It is clear from Ms. Thompson’s reporting that the case continues to haunt D.C. residents who still remember the fear they felt, families of the victims who agonize over the what - ifs , and the detectives who retired from the police force with a sense of failure over their inability to close the case. No doubt police have their hands full in dealing with a spike of recent homicides — including the eerie discovery of three sets of bones in a Southeast neighborhood — but it’s important not to forget the cases of these girls. We hope police take another look and that the renewed attention prompts anyone who might know something about what happened to these girls to come forward.
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