JAMEIKA PORCH - 4 yo (1992) - Chattanooga TN

If Jameika Porch were alive today, she’d be old enough to vote.

Chattanooga’s most famous unsolved child murder case began 17 years ago today.

The diminutive four-year-old wasn’t in the bed she had been sharing with
her eight-year-old cousin at 1708 Tunnel Blvd. when her grandma went to
wake her up in the morning.

Annie Tatum wasn’t worried; she thought her daughter, Joyce Porch, had
come to the house to pick up her child. It wasn’t until she talked to
Ms. Porch and learned that the little girl wasn’t with her that alarm
bells went off.

Ms. Porch came to the Eastdale neighborhood where Ms. Tatum lived and
began searching – unsuccessfully – for her missing child. It wasn’t
until that afternoon, after the family’s efforts had turned up nothing,
that police were finally summoned.

Hours turned into days, and days into weeks – and finally years. But the
case continued to go unsolved, and Jameika Porch’s whereabouts remained
unknown.

Attempts to reach Assistant Chief Tim Carroll, one of the original
officers looking into the child’s disappearance, were unsuccessful. Over
the years, however, the former detective has commented repeatedly about
the difficulties the case presented to investigators.

Seven hours elapsed between the time the family first realized the
little girl was not there and the time they called police, he has
explained. Consequently, by the time police got to the crime scene,
evidence had been compromised.

When the family woke that morning, for example, they discovered that a
plexiglass panel had been removed from an outside door. But since
members of the family often took out the pane in order to get into the
house, they thought nothing of it – they went ahead and replaced the
panel.

Nevertheless, an intensive investigation was launched. Police talked to
the little girl’s family and their associates. They combed the
neighborhood from which she disappeared. The department’s public
information officers regularly answered questions from the media, hoping
that somebody who heard about the missing little girl would be able to
provide the clue needed to help police locate her.

Eventually, the case went nationwide. Jameika Porch’s name became a
fixture on missing children websites, and her case was publicized on
shows such as "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries." A $6,000
reward was offered.

Nothing worked. There was no trace of the little girl for more than five
years – until October 1999 when workers from a tree trimming service
discovered skeletal remains of a small child at Riverside Industrial
Park off Amnicola Highway.

The area was searched by officers with cadaver dogs and members of a
Chattanooga Police Academy class. The collected remains were taken to
the medical examiner’s office, where it was determined that the body was
that of Jameika Porch and that the cause of her death was ligature
strangulation.

On April 25, 2000, police went public with the DNA results and other
findings and once again asked that anybody with information about the
case contact investigators.

Today, another 11 years later, the case remains unsolved.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_206982.asp

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Jameika Porch a Life cut too Short

Date of Birth: 1-6-90
Age: (at disappearance) 4 years
Height: 3'6"
Weight: 38 lbs
Build: Medium
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Sandy
Race: Black
Missing from: Chattanooga, TN
Date Missing: 8-14-94

Jameika Porch was abducted from her grandmother’s home in Chattanooga, Tennessee at 1708 Tunnel Boulevard. in the middle of the night on August 14, 1994. She had been sleeping in the same bed as her eight-year-old cousin when someone came in and carried her out through the window, without waking her cousin. Tim Carroll of the Chattanooga Police Department says they initially looked at it as a missing person case, and a possible abduction. "The grandmother woke up, and the child was missing, she thought, she just assumed that her daughter had come to pick the child up."

Chattanooga police immediately launched an all out search for the girl, using dogs, and search and rescue teams. Investigators later learned that Jameika had actually disappeared from her bedroom sometime in the early morning hours of August 14th. The girl's aunt, who also lived there, heard noises in the house around 5 or 6 in the morning. Whoever took Jameika may have come in through the back door, where a window payne could be removed near the door knob. Police say it was a well known way to get into the house if you didn't have a key. In the days and months that followed, national exposure of the case brought in tips from across the country. Despite the information, the searching, and help from others like the F.B.I., none of the leads panned out.

Then on October 21st, 1999 A worker from a tree trimming service had found it at 1548 Riverside Drive, at the Riverside Industrial Park. Police brought in Cadaver dogs to start searching the area. The next day, a class from the Chattanooga Police Academy helped find the rest of the remains. Authorities have recovered about 60 percent of the skeleton with the help of cadaver dogs, he said. "Given that the bones may have been there for five years, that's about what you'd expect," he said. "Bones can be displaced over time by dogs and other animals or flooding," he added D-N-A proves it was the body of Jameika Porch, according to Police Lt. Tim Carroll. "It was ruled a homicide. It was a ligature strangulation, and you know, that's terrible a 4 year old, a 4 year old child being murdered that way." All these years, the big question remains: who killed Jameika Porch. Police have potential suspects, but not enough to make an arrest. That's why Lt. Carroll says investigators need your help. Genetic experts are testing a skeleton discovered two miles from where a pajama-clad girl disappeared from her grandmother's house five years ago to determine if it is the missing child, police said. A Hamilton County forensic anthropologist has determined that the bones belonged to a 4- or 5-year-old child of African descent, and the bones have been sent to a private lab for verification, said Chattanooga police spokesman Ed Buice.

http://darkghosthn.blogspot.com/2013/07/jameika-porch-life-cut-to-short.html