Free-Times 'A Familiy's Lost' by Eric Ward & Preach Jacobs

A Family's Loss
Grieving in Aftermath of Unsolved Murder
BY ERIC K. WARD
On Nov. 13, 2006, the Richardson family of Columbia was mournful and broken, a devastated kin dealt a crushing blow with the murder of one of their own, an unsolved slaying that magnifies their pain, and makes closure elusive for them.

Twenty-four hours — that’s all it took for the lives of this model middle-class American family to be turned upside down, forced to shoulder a tragic burden like no other.

Theirs is a story of a family’s loss. It is not a story for the faint or calloused of heart. But in its telling, the human face of a man taken in his prime — then-37-year-old father of four Joe Richardson — comes to life. Likewise do the stories, at least in some ways, of other victims of unanswered killings whose perpetrators punctured holes in the soul of justice.

And maybe, just maybe, the sharing of the Richardsons’ suffering will jog memories or otherwise prompt a surfacing of information that unravels the mystery of who caused it.

The detective who is handling the case, Sgt. Kevin Isenhoward of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, says he is following a new lead that offers a glimmer of hope. “We’re trying to verify some details of the story that was provided to us,” he says in an interview Feb. 18 at the department headquarters on Two Notch Road.

Isenhoward encourages anyone who might know something about Joe’s murder to contact him.

The crime that sparked the family’s sorrow and upheaval, a cowardly shooting of Joe in the head while he was asleep, occurred in less than a calendar day. Rather, it unfolded in a span of time closer to that of a door sliding closed, or being kicked open.

Indeed, the latter marked the beginning of the darkness in which Joe was slain, according to the prevailing theory of the family members. There are seven of them in their immediate circle: mother Petrona; brothers David, Mark, Jahn and Albert; and sisters Jennifer and April.

On a drizzly and overcast early evening in late January, most of the Richardsons gather at the mother’s home in Forest Acres to share their story.

Inside, the family members sit semicircle in a sizable living room. Resting on a wall shelf in the room: a black, wooden, lettered carving that reads “F A M I L Y”. Playing with arts and crafts under a table in a dining area off of the room: three children.

“Twelve years strong — we’ve been making incense 12 years,” says David, 38.

The second oldest of the five brothers, he was principally responsible for starting Twelve Tribes out of his home on Pendleton Street in the late 1990s. About two years later David moved to Veterans Road and relocated the business to a shed behind his new residence.
The next move was a full-on retail outlet on Shakespeare Road in 2002.

With help mainly from Jahn in the early days, Twelve Tribes grew with each step and other members of the family got more involved in the operation of the hand-dipped incense company along the way. Jahn oversaw distribution; mom handled packaging. Everyone played their part, David says. “We were selling 100,000 packs in six months.”

The enterprise was grounded in the teachings of Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and other black leaders in how to build community and attain self-sufficiency, he says.

Sealed in signature black pouches, the Twelve Tribes aromas include African Musk, Kush, Cool Water, Wild Jasmin Flowers (an excellent choice) and Honey Rain.

The scents of Twelve Tribes continue to burn via sales at longstanding locations of its products, notably the U.S. 1 Metro Flea Market in Lexington County.

“Oldest sibling Joe was the face and charm of Twelve Tribes at the flea market after David opened a storefront on Shakespeare Road in Columbia,” 25-year-old Preach Jacobs, a Free Times contributor and longtime friend of the family, writes in a sidebar to this story.

But the fortunes of the family business turned on that dark November 2006 night when Joe was murdered. “After that everything just kind of disintegrated,” David says.

Jahn, 33, agrees. “Things were never the same after that,” he says. “A piece of all of us died that day.”

Says 29-year-old April, “It’s definitely a void.”



The Murder

Mark, 35, was there when it happened. His eyes water and his hands tremble as he recalls the events, which unfolded in his one-bedroom apartment at the Austin Woods complex on Garners Ferry Road where Joe spent the night.

“I woke up around 3 o’clock [in the morning],” Mark says. “I went to the bathroom and he was laying there.”

Thinking that Joe was fast asleep, Mark says he returned to bed and got up six or seven hours later at about 9:30 a.m. His older brother was still lying there in the living room, motionless. “You could see his face, kind of swollen and deformed,” Mark says. “You could tell something happened.”

What happened, he theorizes, is that someone kicked in the apartment door and shot Joe in his sleep. A closet and cabinet doors were open and the apartment had been ransacked, Mark says.

Apparently a heavy sleeper, he got dressed, called the Sheriff’s Department and David and went outside and waited in his car for them to arrive.

His brother showed up shortly thereafter as did Sgt. Isenhoward and another investigator from the department, John Ewing, who helped the sergeant work the case until taking a job as police chief in Bishopville, a small town about 50 miles east of Columbia.

Isenhoward says he stays in contact with Ewing about Joe’s unsolved murder.
The detectives inspected the apartment, witnessing damage to the door, and took Mark in for questioning. “More like interrogation,” he recalls, “because they thought I did it, you know. I had to take a lie detector test just to prove my innocence.”

Isenhoward says they drilled Mark pretty hard, questioned dozens of people, including other members of the family, and canvassed the flea market, laboring to get a sense of what Joe was about, what he was into and who he was involved with and had befriended.
But no real suspects emerged, he says, and mystery soon enveloped the investigation. “We don’t have that many cases that go cold that quickly,” Isenhoward says.

This one showed signs of a robbery, but Isenhoward says he was told that nothing was stolen from the apartment. “And I have some concerns about that,” the detective says. “It just seems that something else is going on.”

David says “stuff was shuffled around in the closet” that was open.

Mark says the investigators speculated that the scene had been staged and that Joe’s killing was gang and/or drug related.

Jahn says all leads turned up void and the case produced nothing in terms of a motive. A toxicology test of Joe’s body found no trace of narcotics, he adds.

Similarly, no DNA or fingerprint evidence surfaced, Petrona says. She says she can’t make sense of it. “There was nothing. We don’t know any more today than we did two years and going on three months ago.”

April says she thinks it was somebody in the apartment complex.

As for Austin Woods tenants, they proffered a universal “I don’t know nothing,” Jahn says, adding that there is a lot of gang activity around the place.
Isenhoward describes Austin Woods as problematic.

And, after all of their searching the investigators found themselves with no clue as to the identity of the killer(s). “They said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Petrona says.

The mother offers mixed accounts of the detectives’ work. At one point in the conversation she sizes up their approach as, “It was like, OK, that’s just one more murder in Columbia.” At another point she says they had nothing to go on and, “I think they did the best they could.”

Mark says he thinks the detectives could have found some evidence in the apartment.

Says Isenhoward, “There’s nothing I could have done or anybody could have done or any [law enforcement] department could have done differently.”



Know Something?

Do you have information about the unsolved murder of Columbia resident Joe Richardson?

Richardson was fatally shot at the Austin Woods apartment complex on Garners Ferry Road on the night of Nov. 12, 2006. He was 37 and a father of four.

If you know something about the case, Richardson’s family encourages you to contact Sgt. Kevin Isenhoward of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department at 576-3073 or kisenhoward@rcsd.net.



The Mystery

Typically, he says, people who commit homicide know their victims and the crime stems from a feud that developed in a friendship or romance. “Which may be the case here, but we’re just not getting the right information to connect the dots.”

Part of the difficulty in solving Joe’s murder is that the investigation generated little insight into his character and lifestyle, even from the family, Isenhoward says. “It really seemed to us that he was kind of a loner type,” he says.

One possibility lurks in a man with whom Joe had a physical altercation prior to his death, the sergeant and family members say.

The man lived in Austin Woods and Joe apparently got the better of him in their fight, but to this day who he was remains unknown, Isenhoward says. “We only know the man by the name Roughneck,” he says. “Nobody even heard of that name down there [at the apartments].”

Sometimes, people who might be involved in a case like Joe’s will withhold information because it would incriminate them for minor violations, the investigator says. “Which can devastate a case.”

In that regard, the mother instructed her children to tell the authorities what they need to know “and the stories haven’t changed at all,” Isenhoward says.

A robbery and homicide detective for 11 years, he says that investigations of such crimes usually assemble a mass of information in the first couple of days. And if a case is cracked, it is most often within a relatively short period of time that follows.

However, the window on that clock never closes.

“In fact, we solve a lot of cases years later,” Isenhoward says.

For now at least, this one leaves many questions unanswered: Who was the man Joe had fought with and did he have anything to do with his murder? Why was nothing taken from the apartment? How come Austin Woods tenants were so tight lipped? Why did the case go cold so fast?

For Mark, finding his brother lifeless was a haunting experience that lingers. “I see it every day,” he says. In the aftermath, Mark says, “I had to start all over — spiritually, physically, especially emotionally.”

Jahn was the last person to see Joe alive. They were hanging out at Jahn’s place, in the East Lake subdivision near Austin Woods, watching TV the night of the murder. Joe was unusually quiet, not talking over the TV as he normally would, Jahn says. He wonders if the killer followed Joe from there to the apartment complex.

Jahn says Joe wasn’t perfect and things were going on in his life that he was unable to manage. Joe, he says, had experienced “a couple of failed relationships” and was a heavy drinker.

The siblings say Joe also was immensely protective of his family, had a fondness for cars — body work and detailing — and was skilled in plumbing. “He wanted his own body shop,” April says.

Jahn: “He looked up to his children, because he knew there was potential in them.”

Joe also liked coffee and movies. “Karate flicks,” April says.

He was a reader, too. His interests in that pastime focused on geography and history, especially the African experience, David says.

With a picture of the five brothers perched on a mantle behind Petrona, tears flow from her eyes as she describes the content of the character of her lost son: outgoing and friendly, among other traits. “He had his ways just like all of us do,” she says, “but through it all he was a good person.”

Time softens the sorrow, but it never dissipates completely, the 59-year-old mother says, comparing Joe’s death to losing a limb.

Some days, particularly holidays, are worse than others, Petrona says. “And honestly, I didn’t think I could sit here and go through this interview. But God is good.”

Joe Richardson would have turned 40 on Jan. 31. Since his murder, one of his children has given birth to a grandchild he will never know.

But as he rests in peace, it is safe to say the Richardsons will take care to help that newborn member of their family come to know Joe.

Remembering Joe

Writer Recounts Friendship with Family of Murder Victim

By Preach Jacobs

When I first met the five Richardson brothers in 1999 at age 16, I envied their remarkable love and close affection for each other.

I met David Richardson at the U.S. 1 Metro Flea Market in Lexington County where he was selling his well-known hand-dipped incense named Twelve Tribes. He also sold jewelry, knitted caps and black empowerment books, all of which reflected my personality at the time. David was a 20-something, gentle, soft-spoken man, and I had immediately found a mentor and a friend. In the coming months, other members of his family migrated to Columbia from Connecticut.

The Richardson clan consisted of seven siblings — five brothers and two sisters. I was soon introduced to all of them and quickly became a fixture at their family gatherings. One brother in particular, Albert, became my best friend and musical collaborator with our hip-hop band 7 Moonz (Albert eventually branched off to become lead singer of local hip-hop powerhouse Déjà Voodoo). The relationship among the five brothers inspired awe in me for their strong sense of family and commitment to each other’s well being. I sought to be like them, and often smiled to myself when people thought I was one of them. The family directly influenced my mannerisms, ways of thinking and even my fashion sense.

Family is a big deal to the Richardsons. David launched their business venture, which helped many of his family members get on their feet before venturing on to other things. Oldest sibling Joe was the face and charm of Twelve Tribes at the flea market after David opened a storefront on Shakespeare Road in Columbia.

I remember Joe having a distinctive and hearty laugh that filled a room when you told a dirty joke or confessed a failed attempt at hitting on a young woman. The family described him as loyal and caring and he had a reputation at the market for having a strong work ethic.

When I got a call in November 2006 that Joe had been fatally shot, shock hit me hard, and I saw firsthand just how hard it hit the family.

Joe’s passing also affected me in other ways, including him appearing in my dreams. In one dream, he was where I had last seen him — the market, and he was there without a care in the world. I spoke to him and gave him a hug, and he asked how I was doing. I can’t recall what I told him, but it caused Joe to laugh hysterically. I joined in with the laughing until I realized that Joe is not with us anymore. Then I woke up.

By the time I had this dream, I hadn’t seen the other siblings for a while, and one day decided to visit David’s store and say hello. It was around May 2007 and I came across an empty building where the business once resided.

Twelve Tribes’ storefront on Shakespeare Road had closed. Brothers Mark and Albert moved to different states. Marriages were broken. Morale was broken. In addition to the grief caused by losing their loved one, the family was frustrated by questions left unanswered by the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, which had jurisdiction over the case. And I was left feeling hopeless after mother Petrona Richardson said she didn’t know who was on the case and that the detectives handling it weren’t calling with updates.

The majority of the siblings believed and still believe that Joe’s case was a low priority with the investigators. David said he felt that more could have been done, and that in the eyes of the investigators, Joe had become a statistic and not a person.

Mark, who discovered his brother’s body in the Austin Woods apartment they shared on Garners Ferry Road, spoke about how it affected him.

“I lost everything,” he said. “I had to start over emotionally. I feel everything happens for a reason, and feel that is why I work at a hospital now. I speak to everyone in the waiting room who may have lost somebody. And I believe that they are grateful for me because I know what they’re going through. I hug them and cry with them because I can relate to them. I thank God for being able to do that.”

Because of shows like CSI and The Wire the public might think that murder investigations are solved within an hour including commercial breaks. The Richardsons aren’t so naive. Even though they want the murderer(s) brought to justice, they’d settle with knowing the investigators cared.

Joe, who would have turned 40 in January, will never see his newborn grandchild. He will never share another moment with his mother and siblings; never share another moment with a loyal customer.

But surprisingly, the Richardsons aren’t bitter. Rather, they celebrate the life Joe lived.

Jahn was the last of the siblings to see him alive. “He was at my house that night, watching a movie and playing with my kids. We dozed off, then he woke up to leave and we said we loved each other and he left. He left, and after that, I lost my best friend.”

Let us know what you think: Email news@free-times.com or editor@free-times.com.