MEMPHIS, Tenn. — It’s been eight days and still no arrests in a murder mystery in which a woman’s body was found, not buried in a South Memphis cemetery. The woman’s death was eerily similar to a string of murders that happened several years ago and no arrests were made.
Around 11:30 in the morning, September 16, police began investigating a homicide. 25-year-old Juanita Gilmore’s body was found in the Hollywood Cemetery. Police said she had been stabbed multiple times.
Court records showed Gilmore had a history of prostitution arrests. While police have released little details about their investigation, it bared resemblance to a string of murders not far from where Gilmore’s body was found.
Jessica Lewis and Rhonda Wells were found dead at Mt. Carmel Cemetery just a few days apart in February of 2011. Both were known prostitutes.
Mt. Carmel Cemetery is just a mile from Hollywood Cemetery. Two weeks before that, another woman was killed on Hemlock Street–about a mile from the cemetery as well. And following those killings, there was another woman who was left for dead in the area on Ledger Street.
“It concerns me that somebody’s out there because it’s not only the women. It could be me,” said one man WREG talked to back in 2011 who worked at a church across the street from Mt. Carmel Cemetery.
Fast forward nearly five years later and on Thursday WREG found Leroy Pierce, who lives across the street from Mt. Carmel.
He remembered when the killings were being reported in 2011 but then the news stopped.
“I never heard anything else about it,” he said.
On Thursday, the Memphis Police Department said the deaths in 2011 are still under investigation.
Pierce said while the women involved might appear to have a rocky past, their families deserved answers.
“Whatever they were, they were still a human being. Some justice should come,” he said.
Police said at this time the homicides do not appear to be related to the deaths in 2011.