First Conviction in Knoxville Double Homicide

Last week, the trial of Eric Boyd for accessory to murder began in Knoxville, Tennessee, the first in a series of four more cases to be brought to trial for the deaths of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young couple attending University of Tennessee, who were carjacked, abducted, tortured, raped, and murdered.

Today, Boyd was found guilty of that crime, and will be sentenced in August, facing up to 22 years in prison for his role in the deaths of the couple.

"Justice was served today, but it doesn't take the hurt away from losing a great son," [Hugh] Newsom said as he broke down into tears.

For Gary Christian, the bill is far from paid.

"One down, four to go," he said. "But we've got more to do on the one, too. That ain't the last Eric Boyd has heard from us."

These two fathers, first linked by the budding romance between children Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian and now forever bound by the deaths of the young couple in a carjacking turned torture killing,spoke out Wednesday afternoon outside U.S. District Court, where a jury had just deemed Eric Dewayne "E" Boyd guilty of helping hide out one of their children's alleged killers.

Jurors deliberated from 9:35 am until 1:43 pm, with one break in deliberations to ask for clarification of wording in the charges, before returning with the guilty verdict.

While the families, prosecutors, and investigators celebrate the first victory, they know that there are still four more trials to undergo. There was a great deal of information that came out during this trial, details of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Christian and Newsom, but perhaps the most important question remains unanswered, asked by Newsom's mother, Mary; "Why did they just not let them go, if all they wanted was the car, why did they not just let the kids go?"

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Why Are We Not Seeing This Horrific Murder Story in the Main Stream Media?

Two University of Tennessee students were tortured, raped, and murdered last year in a case that by all rights should be drawing international attention for the brutality involved. You probably haven't heard about it because the main stream media refuses to carry it.



It has been almost a year since I first sat down to write about Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom in a piece I called "A Call for Justice." It's been almost 18 months since the story first broke, and I, a Tennessean, living in the same state, albeit at the other end of the state from where the tragedy took place, didn't hear about it for almost six months.

Why?

Because it's not being covered outside of Knoxville. To give credit where it is due, FOXNews and CBS did run pieces on it; brief pieces, but it was reported by them. No other major network media outlet has touched it.



They don't consider this to be newsworthy:

Childress says Channon Christian's Toyota 4-Runner was located after her father, Gary Christian, contacted the family's cell phone provider. The cell phone company then determined where the closest cell tower was located, and thus, were able to find Christian's car.

Officer Childress says he went to Lemaricus Davidson's residence on Chipman to serve outstanding warrants on the recently released convicted felon, after Davidson's fingerprint was found inside Channon Christian's recovered 4-runner.

He found the front door ajar, and after entering the house, he found a body inside a large trash can in the home's kitchen. At this point, he summoned the Medical Examiner's Office. The body was later identified as that of Channon Christian.

And that's barely the tip of the iceberg. Both Christian and Newsom were beaten, raped, and murdered. Newsom reportedly also had suffered the loss of his genitalia before his death. (Email subscribers click here for Michael Savage's commentary.)



Personally, I fail to see how the abductions, brutal and horrific torture, and murders of two young college students can be anything BUT newsworthy.

Now that the trials have finally begun, the main stream (dinosaur drive-by) media still refuses to cover the story. And the testimony that is coming out now during the accessory trial of Eric Boyd is just as shocking as the initial reports that came out when the story first was being broken.

Former Lemaricus Davidson girlfriend Daphne Sutton testified that Letalvis Cobbins forced Channon Christian to shoot and kill Christopher Newsom on Monday, January 8, 2007.

Sutton also testified that she knew about Newsom's murder a day before Channon Christian's body was found.

Sutton admitted that she lied to investigators when she told them the last time she had seen Davidson was Sunday night. She also testified that she knew at the time she began dating Davidson that he supported himself by robbing people.

Where is the outrage? Where are the protests? Where are the outcries of the public that they have had enough of the violence and they demand that this type of thing be eradicated? Of course it's hard to rally anyone together when there is no story being delivered by the media outside the town where the incident happened.

One can only conclude that if the main stream media is ignoring this story, there are others that are equally as graphic and chilling that are being covered up, in favor of more "politically correct" pieces.

At least those are my thoughts, what are yours?

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


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A Call for Justice

[UPDATE] Disturbing updates on a followup post found here.

I'm going to tell you about something horrible. Something horrendous. Something so terrible that you may not want to do much more than glance over the details and go to the bare facts. Why am I going to tell you about this? Because it needs to be told, and Justice needs to be done.

This is the story the Tennessean isn't covering. This is the story the National Media is paying no attention to. This is the story that has not gotten the coverage that is warranted considering the heinous nature of the crimes committed, the lives lost in such a brutal way. It's heartbreaking, it's tragic, and in my mind, there is a very, very large travesty of justice being committed as the story unfolds.

Going outside the blog world, my hat tip for this one goes to the Steve Gill Show, for that is where I first heard about this story today, nearly six months later, during his commentary on how that this story isn't getting any media coverage.

I'll begin with what media coverage there has been, then make commentary.

UT student's body found

January 9, 2007

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Police say the body of a UT student was found Tuesday in a Knoxville home is just down the street from where her boyfriend was found dead on Sunday.

The body of Channon Christian, 21, was found in a rental house on the 2300 block of Chipman Street in East Knoxville. It was taken to the UT Forensic Center where the positive identification was made.

The body of Christian's boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, was found Sunday afternoon along the railroad tracks near 9th Ave.

The couple disappeared Saturday night while they were on a date.

Police have not released the cause of their deaths, but they say Newsom was murdered...

Search warrants reveal disturbing new details in Knoxville double murder investigation

January 16, 2007

By CATHARYN CAMPBELL
6 News Reporter

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Search warrants in the double murder investigation of a young Knoxville couple reveal disturbing new details about what happened.

According to the affidavits for those search warrants, investigators found the body of Channon Christian, 21, stuffed in a trash can in the kitchen of Lemaricus Davidson's home at 2316 Chipman Street.

Investigators obtained the warrants after they found the body of her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, near the railroad tracks behind 1701 Whittle Springs on January 7.

Newsom had been shot at least three times. He was bound with rope or bootlaces and wrapped in a sheet. His shoes and socks were missing, along with his ID and iPOD. His body had been burned and physically assaulted.

(...)


When officers went to Davidson's house on Chipman Street, they say the front door was ajar. As they looked for Davidson, they found Christian's body in the trash can.

In that house, investigators also seized evidence that includes: a .9mm magazine, two .22 rounds, a rifle, three black trash bags with more possible evidence, cell phones, iPODs, loose .38 ammunition, a .22 shell casing, a plastic bag with hair and socks and a gun cleaning kit.

Another affidavit says that two more of the suspects who are charged, Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas, voluntarily told investigators they were at Davidson's house when he and a fourth suspect, Eric Boyd, came in with the couple bound and blindfolded.

Cobbins and Thomas also told investigators that Eric Boyd took Newsom from the house at gunpoint and later returned without him.

And Cobbins and Thomas said they were at the house when Boyd sexually assaulted Christian while she was still alive.

Officers have obtained DNA samples and fingernail scrapings from Boyd as part of their investigation.

All four suspects are facing a variety of felony charges. But so far, none of the men has been charged with murder.

Four suspects charged with murder in Knoxville double slaying

February 1, 2007

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Four suspects, including a woman arrested in Kentucky Wednesday night, are now facing murder, rape and kidnapping charges in the double slaying of a young Knoxville couple.

But the location of the carjacking that began the series of charges in the investigation and why it happened is still being kept quiet.

The suspects were indicted Thursday in Knox County, separate from the federal charges some of the men already face relating to the carjacking. The rape charges involve both murder victims, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

Lemaricus Davidson faces 46 counts including felony murder, premeditated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape and theft.

Letalvis Cobbins faces 46 counts including 16 counts of felony murder, two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft.

George Thomas faces 46 counts including 16 counts of felony murder, two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft.

Vanessa Lynn Coleman, 18, faces 40 counts including 12 counts of felony murder, one count of premeditated murder, one count of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft...

What they don't tell on the news reports listed above, from what I've found so far, are the horrible details of what happened to this young couple. Both of them were raped, sodomized, he was castrated, and her breasts where cut off, before they were killed. Words can not express my feelings about this. There are no words. The full count indictments against these animals, and I say animals because anyone who can do what was done here can't be classified as human, can be found here. And yes, I know that we prescribe to innocent until found guilty. That being said, WHOEVER DID THIS to this young couple should be put down like rabid animals, in my opinion.

Insult to injury: the DA in this case is NOT, I repeat, NOT, seeking the death penalty, according to the Gill Show. I'm sure that he'd love to explain to anyone who wishes to call him as to why?

Knox County District Attorney
Address:
Randy Nichols
400 W Main St Rm 168
Knoxville, TN
37902
Phone: (865) 215-2515

Why is this not being shown nationally? Why does the Duke Lacrosse team make the headlines over false allegations and this horrible, horrible situation that really did happen go unnoticed?

A few thoughts on this can be found here:

The Truth About Who Suffers
And about who inflicts the suffering.

By Jack Dunphy

It may seem like ancient history now, but it was only a year ago that we were first subjected to the media circus that was the so-called and now-dropped Duke Rape Case. For months thereafter, you couldn't pick up a newspaper or turn on the television or radio without learning some new tidbit about the accused lacrosse players, even as their accuser remained shrouded in mystery. Today we know there was no rape and now not even a case at all, but even in those early days it was apparent enough that there were glaring problems with the accuser’s story (or, as it happened, stories). But not even those problems prevented the case from consuming the attention of the sages in our national media, whose foot soldiers decamped from New York and Los Angeles and such places to descend on Durham, North Carolina, as quickly as they could find it on the map.

The case was simply irresistible to our sophisticated betters in Manhattan and the tonier zip codes of southern California. The “victim” was black and a single mother, each in itself a shield against criticism, but taken together an impregnable defense against any judgment of her own behavior and motives. Furthermore, she claimed to have been attacked by a group of southern white elites, thus justifying the low opinion of such elites held by those who live within sight of the Pacific Ocean or the Hudson River. (Never mind that none of the accused were actually from the south.) Only when the evidence of the defendants’ innocence and of the prosecutor’s misconduct accumulated to an undeniable critical mass did the media slink off to await the next Big Story.

Compare the attention given the Duke case with that accorded a far more heinous crime, one whose victims have thus far failed to arouse the sympathies or even the notice of those who found so much enjoyment in their condemnation of the lacrosse players. Chances are, unless you live in Tennessee, you will not recognize the names Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Christian, 21, and Newsome, 23, both of Knoxville, were driving through that city together on the night of January 6 when they were kidnapped and murdered. Newsome’s burned body was found along some railroad tracks on January 7. Christian remained missing for two more days until her body, stuffed in a trash can, was found in a home not far from where Newsome’s was found. Police and prosecutors allege both victims were raped before being killed. Yes, both. Three men and a woman have been charged with the crimes in a 46-count grand jury indictment handed down in Knoxville on January 31...

Steve Gill has this to say on his Daily Notes page:

I guarantee that if the victims were a black college couple, and the murderers were a bunch of white guys you would have seen this story on television so much your eyes would be bleeding. As it is, the media has ignored it. Where is Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? Don't they think racially motivated crimes deserve attention? Or is only white on black crime worthy of our contempt and outrage?

This is why I'm against hate crimes legislation. We don't need the thought police telling us "this crime was a HATE crime and they deserve more punishment for it." Bull. It's a crime. How much more dead would Phillip Workman be today if he had been charged with a hate crime when he was found guilty of killing a Memphis police officer instead of just being charged for the crime itself? He'd still be dead after his execution this week.

I don't know the Christian or Newsom families; they live at the other end of the state from me. My heart goes out to them, though, as a parent, as a human, as a man. I can't imagine the grief and the pain they must be suffering.

Again I want to pose the questions. Why is this not being tried as a capital crime? It makes no sense to me that it would be treated as anything but. Why the lack of media attention for this case? Does this story have less merit, less importance, than finding out who the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby is? Is it more important that we know that Paris Hilton is going to have to pay the price for driving on a suspended license?

I'm going to ask my fellow Tennesseans especially to feel free to cross post this one, in it's entirety, in part, trackback to it, link to it, whatever. Get the word out. Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom deserve it, and so do their families. They deserve justice. And they deserve, and need, our prayers and support. Any of you with more information on this story, feel free to pass it along to us.

This needs to be told, and it needs to be told now.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

[UPDATE] Disturbing updates on a followup post found here.

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