Jarniece Latonya Hargrove was a 31-year-old Black woman from the Rocky Mount area of North Carolina whose disappearance became part of a disturbing series of deaths involving women found in rural Edgecombe County. Although June 29, 2009 is sometimes recorded as her death date, contemporary reporting shows that this was actually the date her skeletal remains were discovered. Her family last saw her on April 25, 2009, and she was subsequently reported missing in early May.
She had also been seen walking along U.S. Highway 301 in northern Rocky Mount before she vanished.
Nearly two months after her family last saw her, a farmer discovered skeletal remains in a wooded area near the intersection of Seven Bridges Road and Old Battleboro Road, between the Battleboro and Whitakers areas of Edgecombe County. Dental records were used to identify the remains as Hargrove. By then, decomposition was so advanced that investigators were unable to establish an official cause of death. Hargrove's mother, Patsy Hargrove, said Sheriff James Knight had told her that authorities believed her daughter had probably been strangled, but later reporting emphasized that the medical examiner could not conclusively determine how she died.
The location of Hargrove's remains immediately raised concerns because other women from the Rocky Mount area had already been found dead in the same rural region. Among them were Taraha Shenice Nicholson, Ernestine Battle, Jackie Nikelia Thorpe and Melody LaShae Wiggins. The growing number of cases prompted a multi-agency task force involving the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office, Rocky Mount police, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and eventually the FBI. Investigators pursued hundreds of leads while trying to determine whether the deaths were connected and whether one offender was responsible.
One development made Hargrove's case particularly troubling. On April 25, 2009—the same day her family said they last saw her—a North Carolina Highway Patrol trooper encountered Antwan Maurice Pittman along Seven Bridges Road. Pittman was found asleep in the driver's seat of a vehicle approximately 200 yards from the area where Hargrove's remains would later be discovered. He was arrested that day for driving while impaired and driving with a revoked license. Investigative search-warrant records later stated that authorities believed there was probable cause to suspect Pittman had been involved in Hargrove's death as well as the deaths of Jackie Thorpe, Ernestine Battle and Christine Boone.
Pittman was not arrested or charged with killing Hargrove. His major homicide prosecution instead involved Taraha Nicholson, whose body had been discovered in March 2009. Investigators recovered Pittman's DNA from Nicholson, and he was charged with first-degree murder in September 2009. As investigators developed that case, court documents and search warrants increasingly connected Pittman's movements and former residences with locations associated with several of the other missing or murdered women. At different points authorities described him as a suspect or person of interest in multiple additional deaths, including Hargrove's, but those suspicions did not result in a homicide indictment in her case.
Pittman's trial for Nicholson's murder was moved from Edgecombe County because of publicity surrounding the broader investigation. Prosecutors presented DNA evidence and testimony from women who said Pittman had previously taken them to secluded locations and strangled them. Pittman acknowledged having sex with Nicholson but denied killing her. On September 29, 2011, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder after deliberating for less than an hour. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals later found no error in his trial.
The Nicholson conviction provided an answer for one family but did not solve Hargrove's death. Her mother and sister publicly said after Pittman's conviction that they were still waiting for closure and wanted investigators to continue pursuing what happened to her. The circumstances surrounding Pittman on the day Hargrove disappeared made him a significant investigative focus, but the evidence publicly disclosed was never sufficient to bring a murder charge against him for her death.
As a result, the most accurate chronology does not establish June 29, 2009 as the day Jarniece Hargrove died. Her family last saw her on April 25, she was reported missing shortly afterward, and her remains were recovered on June 29. The advanced condition of those remains prevented authorities from determining a definitive cause and precise date of death. Suspicion centered heavily on Antwan Maurice Pittman because of his presence near the recovery site on the day she disappeared and his later conviction for killing another woman associated with the same investigation, but no one has been convicted of killing Jarniece Hargrove.
