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when zelfia was born i was just so
excited because she was born a day after
my birthday i was 10 years old
everybody's kids
loved her so much
she was my favorite aunt i myself had an
amazing bond with her
but it was nothing like jeremiah's
jeremiah
was zelfia's nephew
he was a very quiet
person he hardly ever would talk much to
anybody
they were sort of like brother and
sister because they were so close to
each other
jeremiah was raised in some
pretty rough circumstances
his father eddie was gone quite a bit
and i think it was a neglectful
relationship
there was one time zelfia and jeremiah
witnessed something
really bad
they were parked at 80's girlfriend's
house
eddie comes
and tells them to leave
then right after they leave
he burns the house down
zelfia and jeremiah they didn't go to no
authorities or nothing like that
they just kept it quiet
told a few family members
and
that was it
my brother had been
coming back to marion and he seen
jeremiah's truck
on the side of the interstate
jeremiah was living with his friends at
the time
the boys that he was staying with
said that he left
and went to his daddies
and that was the last time he was ever
seen
jeremiah was missing
but there was no
real evidence of a crime zelfia knows
he did not leave town
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zelfia had come to my house
and she was just really upset
she said jeremiah would not have left
without telling her
and she goes i want to tell you about a
dream that i had last night
she dreamed that
jeremiah's on daddy
eddie pittman
had killed jeremiah
and had buried him
and put lime on him
it made my heart beat so fast
sofia was a waitress
she worked at the truck stop
one day zelfia didn't come home
after work
i filed a missing persons report
the sheriff's department didn't believe
us
we had two family members missing
they was making every excuse in the
world they could to keep from looking
for jeremiah and zelfia
there were some hunters out in a remote
area of our county around lake james who
ran across the remains
there wasn't any type of burial or real
concealment
it appeared like that the body was just
left on top of the ground
there was also a sheet and a towel and
some clothing that was
identified as zealphus
she had suffered
severe
trauma to the head
her skull was almost crushed completely
her remains had been dumped there
there was another crime scene somewhere
they just did not know where that was
we had two people in the same family
in the same year
go missing
one of them turns up dead one of them's
still missing to me
all signs pointed to one person
jeremiah's daddy eddie pittman
we felt like we had enough information
to talk to eddie
ed was in denial of having anything to
do with jeremiah's disappearance
and he was in total denial about zelfia
doesn't know anything about her murder
one day the chief deputy came back to my
office and he looked at me and he said
rosemary gearings in the lobby wants to
talk to you
she was led back to my office and came
in and she had a concerned look on her
face
and i'm like rosemary how can i help you
today
and she said well i wanted to come see i
think eddie's going to kill me
we ride down to this real remote area
all of a sudden
she stops
she walks over to a ditch points in the
ditch
and she says it's right there
start digging
we started to locate the first bone
exactly where she pinpointed is where
jeremiah's remains were found and so she
began to tell the story of witnessing a
confrontation between ed and jeremiah
where jeremiah ended up dead
eddie picked up the hammer
so he could finish jeremiah off
they had taken jeremiah's truck and
abandoned it out on the interstate
rosemary
had gone with him to dispose of the body
part of what they did in
in disposing of him
was to
[Applause]
pour the lime in the in the hole
unselfies nightmare came true
her dream was given to her for a reason
zelfia knew where jeremiah was she knew
exactly where he was
whoa here this is not just some abstract
dream
this is real
blunt force injury to the head
was just like zelfia's murder
ed pittman for heaven's sakes killed his
own son killed him the same way zelfia
was killed in the same county during the
same year
there's too much there to be coincidence
was it actually a dream
we don't know but she knew what happened
to jeremiah
we went to ed's house
a number of us went out there not
knowing what eddie might be capable of
advised eddie that we had a warrant for
his arrest and he was under arrest for
murder
and i'll never forget the reaction eddie
gave me he said whose murder
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now we're really convinced that he could
have killed zelfia
i said let me ask you a question
what happened to zelfia
he hadn't seen her and he didn't know
anything about her
eddie don't confess to nothing
we haven't found any evidence to
connect ed to zelfia nothing solid
we've got her body that's all we have
he was charged with jeremiah's murder
he pled guilty and
there was a plea agreement to
manslaughter
i really thought that eddie did it
but he got rid of zelfia
because of her suspicions of him
we were approached by a prisoner in jail
his name was ricky
he gives us a name ronald
ricky thinks that ronald may have been
involved i remember sitting down with
ronald
and pretty much one of the first things
that ronald comes with was
i can tell you what happened to zelfia
ronald said that at the time that sylvia
disappeared
there were two guys
who lived in a mobile home near a friend
of ronald's
ronald said that his friends had gone
over there one night to ask them to turn
some music down
and they was real suspicious the way
they'd answered the door and wouldn't
let anybody in
and then later that night
ronald's friends actually saw two guys
moving something that looked like a
rolled up carpet or something to that
nature
ronald said that maybe he's hauling her
body away you know it's been 11 or 12
years dudley went out to the area that
ronald had described
i found the landlady
and she confirmed that
yeah back around 1993
there was a guy that had lived at that
mobile home
and she gave us the last name of whited
robin whited
i was able to locate where robin was
working at a car dealership
he was very polite and acknowledged
almost right away that yeah they had
partied with some girl
and she had a strange name
i mentioned the name zelfia and he said
yeah that sounds right
showed him a picture of zelfia
and he acknowledged that yeah that's the
girl that he had partied with
he remembers this blond-haired girl
coming over to party one night that he
had had sex with her
but the next morning she was gone he did
not know when she left exactly
and he had no knowledge or clue that she
had met with any kind of foul play
if he'd said i don't know what you're
talking about
don't know this girl never saw her
before
we basically would have shut us down
again and we would have come back
empty-handed
but now we have direct information that
places zelfia at that trailer and now
we're walking away with a suspect
i knew that flies are naturally
attracted to
blood and flies constantly excrete and
regurgitate
whatever they get into they're leaving
traces of that somewhere
i was looking up at at the uh the
bathroom ceiling and saw these dozen or
so little brown specks
i'm thinking it might be fly speck
so i climbed up on the edge of the tub
and just swab the specks and handed
those down for analysis all of a sudden
one of those swabs it lights up
brilliantly
yes
this is what we've been looking for it
was a pretty good day when that lab
report came back i was crying i was
saying oh my god the dna matched in that
trailer
detective shook
and detective green came into the
district attorney's office
and what they told me was that they had
a suspect
robin whitey
robin was having sex with zilpha
bobby wanted his turn
but zilpha doesn't want any part of
bobby taylor
bobby taylor becomes angry with zilpha
then slams zilpha's head into the floor
several times
robin said that he had personally
witnessed bobby
beat her to death
we find out where bobby is
bobby's in
federal prison bobby remembered this
blond-haired girl had come over to his
trailer and partied one night
but his story was that when he had last
seen her she was alive and well
so we started confronting him with some
of the things that robin said
and bobby pretty well shut down
and i said bobby i've been doing this
for 25 years
and he looked at me and he said what you
don't understand is
i've been doing this for 25 years
so
you