(Friday, October 9, 2009) After a day and a half of deliberations a jury returned finding ex-Pentecostal Bishop Robert Reaves guilty of first-degree murder, in the fatal stabbing of Latrese Curtis. Reaves faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
| ||||||
| Bishop Robert Reaves | ||||||
Curtis, a North Carolina Central University student, was found dead on the edge of I-540 on the northeast side of Raleigh in January last year. Prosecutors argued that Reaves was jealous of the affair that his roommate, Steven Randolph , was having with Curtis and saw her as an obstacle to having a gay relationship with Randolph. Reaves followed Curtis from school in Durham to Raleigh and force her to pull over along I-540. He then stabbed and slashed her with a knife more than 30 times, according to prosecutors. The prosecution painted Reaves as a obsessed stalker who followed Randolph and his friends, placed threatening phone calls to them and went as far as slashing their car tires. The Defense unsuccessfully argued that Reaves was the wrong man and tried to turn the attention to the man Curtis was having an affair with, Randolph. Randolph had the motive to kill Curtis, according to the defense. |
Please continue to Full Story
(Friday, October 9, 2009) After a day and a half of deliberations a jury returned finding ex-Pentecostal Bishop Robert Reaves guilty of first-degree murder, in the fatal stabbing of Latrese Curtis. Reaves faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
| ||||||
| Bishop Robert Reaves | ||||||
Curtis, a North Carolina Central University student, was found dead on the edge of I-540 on the northeast side of Raleigh in January last year. Prosecutors argued that Reaves was jealous of the affair that his roommate, Steven Randolph , was having with Curtis and saw her as an obstacle to having a gay relationship with Randolph. Reaves followed Curtis from school in Durham to Raleigh and force her to pull over along I-540. He then stabbed and slashed her with a knife more than 30 times, according to prosecutors. The prosecution painted Reaves as a obsessed stalker who followed Randolph and his friends, placed threatening phone calls to them and went as far as slashing their car tires. The Defense unsuccessfully argued that Reaves was the wrong man and tried to turn the attention to the man Curtis was having an affair with, Randolph. Randolph had the motive to kill Curtis, according to the defense. The defense suggested that Randolph, an aspiring professional basketball player, was worried about Curtis getting pregnant from an incident when a condom had come off during sex. Based on texts and calls placed between Curtis and Randolph, the night of Curtis’ murder, Randolph was worried about an unwanted pregnancy. "The motive in this case was not a rebuffed sexual advance. There's not an emotional bind whatsoever," Reaves’ attorney said in his closing arguments. "You have a player, a condom and an adulterous affair. He didn't want to lose his future." Assistant District Attorney Howard Cumming countered the defenses claim that Randolph was the actual murderer, saying Randolph’s story of his whereabouts and actions prior to and before the murder checked out in the investigation. The only claims that investigators could not corroborate were the ones made by Reaves. Reaves had told investigators that he had been at church Jan. 29, 2008, the day before Curtis’ murder. Yet, neither his sister nor any other congregation member had seen him there. Reaves was a minister at Cedar International Fellowship in Durham.
| ||||||