By Peter St. Onge
pstonge@charlotteobserver.com

Each year, for the past nine years, the family of Johnnie Mae Shine has gathered in Charlotte on Memorial Day weekend. The kids have run in the yard and the women have prepared the barbecue and, at some point, everyone has stood to talk about the memories they have and the justice they want.

Coochie Shine, which is how everyone knew her, was murdered 10 years ago, stabbed in her Plaza Midwood home. Although Charlotte-Mecklenburg police had a suspect, the case became dormant.

"All the information we had was the same information," said Shirley Mundy, Shine's sister. "There was nothing new."

But in May, detectives arrested that initial suspect, Tyrone Johnson, who was extradited from South Carolina, where he was serving a sentence for armed robbery. The arrest was the work of CMPD's Cold Case Unit, formed in 2003 to pursue the department's approximately 500 open homicide cases dating to 1970.

The Shine case is the 29th the unit has cleared.

"It's gratifying," said Steve Furr, one of two cold case detectives working in a quiet second floor office at CMPD headquarters. They are joined in their efforts by an FBI agent and a civilian review board that helps determine which cases might now have fruitful leads. Like Charlotte, thousands of cities and states have formed Cold Case Units in the past two decades as technology has offered new opportunities to explore old evidence.

Furr joined the cold case squad in 2007 after serving in CMPD's homicide division for more than a decade. He speaks with a cop's crispness, softened by his Concord accent and a belief that every family member who calls his office deserves a thoughtful response. "Every one," he said. "It takes a lot of time, but we feel like we owe them an answer."

Over his shoulder, a whiteboard has the latest on several of those cases, the victims, the evidence available. To the left is the latest tally, in black marker.

"Cases Reviewed - 128," it reads.

"Cases Cleared - 29.

"Cases pending at D.A.'s office - 1. Johnnie Mae Shine."

Under that, in red marker: "A long, long time."

From tragedy, a new bond

On Saturday afternoon, Coochie Shine's family arrived at a sister's northern Charlotte home with pots of food and cameras ready. "That's one of the things that's come out of this tragedy," said sister Mundy. "We never had a family reunion before my sister's death. She's united us in a way we couldn't imagine."

Shine was 40 when she was slain - a mother of two, oldest sister of seven - and, says her mother, Edna: "89 pounds of fun."

She was the smallest of those seven sisters, but she filled a room like no one could. She was dynamic, unpredictable - "She would have a hen and a bag of vegetables and some rice," said sister Patricia Hallman, "and she'd invite 50 people over for dinner." And somehow, Hallman said, she made that work.

In the early morning of May 29, 2000, police found Shine's body at her home on Mimosa Avenue in Plaza Midwood. Detectives immediately had a suspect, Johnson, a man Shine's family didn't know. But there was not enough evidence to make an arrest, and the case lost momentum until 2006, when the file was picked up by a member of the Cold Case Unit's civilian review team.

That team is composed of four retired FBI agents, a UNC Charlotte professor and one former New York City police captain, Harvey Katowitz, who moved to Charlotte after he retired in 1995. Katowitz kept his hand in law enforcement, working as a volunteer. In 2003, CMPD officials asked if he would be interested in the new cold case homicide unit.

"With most crimes, like property crimes, there's some closure - you heal from it," Katowitz said. "When someone is murdered, there's no one to speak for them. They can't speak for themselves. We're doing that."

In 2006, Katowitz looked over the Johnnie Mae Shine file and saw opportunity. Johnson, the suspect, had been jailed in South Carolina for another crime. His DNA was now available, and evidence at the crime scene could be reanalyzed. "It was enough to go talk to him," said Furr. "And we did."

Furr and Phillips pursue a handful of cases at a time, and those investigations are slower, more incremental than regular homicide investigations. Instead of building a new case, detectives dissect an old one, re-examining evidence, finding long-ago witnesses.

It is, he chuckles, unlike the popular TV show, "Cold Case," which moves at a more Hollywood-friendly pace. "They never have any problem finding witnesses - or anything," he said. "The witnesses never move. They're always where they used to be."

By last year, Furr had linked Johnson to the crime scene through DNA evidence. (Because of the pending case, Furr declined to describe the evidence. Mundy said she was told the link was made through DNA.) Earlier this month, Johnson was extradited. He arrived on May 18, the birthday of his victim's mother.

Furr wasn't on hand for the arrest. No matter, he said. "It's just as gratifying for me to tell the mama that we got this guy."

'We're going to have closure'

Before the food was served on Saturday, Coochie Shine's family and friends gathered again on the front lawn. They wore T-shirts with Coochie's picture, and they distributed purple and yellow balloons brought by the organization Mothers of Murdered Offspring.

As in years before, the balloons carried tags with a smiling Coochie. This year, the tags explained how the balloons were being released with thankfulness. "The man responsible," the tags say, "has been caught."

A microphone was passed around, and people remembered Coochie's spark , her laughter, how she sang at church and everywhere else.

"Her voice was so big coming out of that little body," her sister, Clarissa Hallman, said earlier. "It was like it could reach to heaven."

The balloons were released then, two by two, and her family looked up and smiled and cried, same as they always have, except for this: "We're going to have closure," said Shirley Mundy. "It's right here."
 

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