BENTON COUNTY : Search goes on as officials build case of murder without a bodyAlicia Minton vanished in June after heading to Beaver Lake to meet an ex-boyfriend who has since gone to prison on a drug conviction. Randall Todd Greenway, the former boyfriend, has been identified by police as a suspect in Minton’s disappearance. However, no one has been charged with a crime. Searchers continue to scour Beaver Lake for Minton, 29, of Rogers, who was reported missing June 4. Her BMW was found June 7 near Second and Locust streets in Rogers. Her purse was found June 15 on the lakeshore. Last week, national sonar expert Gene Ralston joined the search. In 2003,
Ralston helped find the remains of Laci Peterson and her unborn child on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He also searched for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba in 2005 and hasn’t been found.While the search for Minton continues, Benton County prosecutors are working to build a possible murder case without a body.Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Van Stone won’t discuss motive or whether Greenway will be charged. Stone said his office, the Rogers Police Department and the Benton County sheriff’s office are conducting an investigation that includes testing evidence and interviewing witnesses.
Speaking generally, Stone said that filing murder charges without a body requires proving to the jury that the victim isn’t going to walk through the door.
“The law clearly allows for this kind of circumstantial proof,” Stone said. “It requires you [to ] prove the person’s death was brought about by criminal means. You go about that the same way you would any other case — gather evidence and put it in front of a jury.”In January in Placer County, Calif., Christie Wilson’s killer was sentenced to 59 years to life in prison, even though her body hasn’t been found.
Mario Garcia, 53, was convicted of first-degree murder after prosecutors convinced a jury it was highly unlikely Wilson would vanish, leaving her family, her boyfriend and her personal effects behind.
Wilson, 27, was last seen Oct. 5, 2005, at Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, Calif., where she met Garcia.
“Missed Christmases; missed relatives’ birthdays,” said Garen Horst, the prosecutor who tried the case. “We showed important dates in Christie’s life had passed. This can be powerful evidence to a jury.”
Rafael Guzman, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said murder prosecutions without a body happen nationwide.
There’s a misconception that there must be a corpse to establish that a crime occurred, he said.
The evidence often turns on how lawyers present the victim’s lifestyle at trial.
“If a potential victim is a long-standing member of the community who just all of a sudden disappears, it’s easier to prove the notion they were killed,” Guzman said. “On the other hand, if a person doesn’t have roots or is of a very flighty character, the defense will be raising that at every possible turn.”
DISAPPEARANCE Minton’s parents, Brenda and Roger Mathis of Bentonville, declined interview requests by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. They didn’t respond to a request Friday made through Benton County’s prosecutor’s Victim Witness Coordinator’s Office. Benton County court records show Minton sought a new start after being involved with illegal drugs and losing custody of a daughter in 1999. In 2001, she’d turned her life around and was living with her mother in Rogers, according to a lawyer who represented Minton in the custody battle.
In 2006, Minton was dating Greenway and told Rogers police in June that he’d dragged her by the hair and beat her, according to an arrest report.
Minton said Greenway had “come after her” because he thought she was responsible for his arrest on a drug charge, the report states.
She told police she loved Greenway but that he needed help, according to the report.
Greenway was convicted of disorderly conduct in a plea agreement in Rogers District Court.
Greenway’s attorney, Joel Huggins of Springdale, didn’t return a call from the Democrat-Gazette.
In February, Minton told Rogers police that Greenway kept showing up at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, where she worked, and was threatening her by phone, police reports state.
On June 1, Minton dropped off her two children with friends, saying she was headed to Beaver Lake. She never returned.
Police said Minton is believed to have last been with Greenway and that her life was in danger, a court record states.
In July, Greenway, 35, of Rogers, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug charges in Benton County Circuit Court. He’s in the Arkansas Department of Correction.
Police seized Greenway’s boat in connection with the investigation into Minton’s case but won’t say whether it yielded any evidence.
In Christie Wilson’s case, California prosecutors had physical evidence.
Tests revealed Wilson’s DNA in Garcia’s Toyota Camry, and he had unexplained scratches on his face after Wilson disappeared.
In addition, surveillance video at the casino showed Wilson and Garcia walking into the parking lot the night she vanished.
Garcia said Wilson went back inside to get her cell phone, and that he went home alone, yet Wilson never reappears on the video.
“There are gaps in what happened, but when you start putting the pieces together, it paints a picture that says, ‘ This person is indeed dead by criminal means, ’” Horst said. At trial, prosecutors told jurors that Wilson’s disappearance had generated heavy local and national media attention and that a Web site about Wilson’s disappearance was getting 5, 000-plus hits a day. They said the attention supported the inference that Wilson was dead, not gone.
“What it comes down to is this, and this is what I honed in on during closing arguments,” Horst said by telephone. “I told them, ‘ Why should someone get away with murder just because they were successful in hiding the body ?’” Garcia maintained his innocence at his sentencing.
COLD, DEEP SEARCH The Benton County sheriff’s office continues to oversee the search for Minton at Beaver Lake. Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Doug Gay said some searchers like Ralston are volunteers who travel the country to help locate victims underwater. Ralston works in tandem with a canine handler, whose cadaver dogs ride on the deck of a boat and sniff locations in the water for evidence of human remains. Spots where the dogs show interest are searched carefully by sonar. “As a body decomposes, it tends to slough off skin cells, and they float to the surface where the dogs can pick up the scent,” Gay said. “These cells do travel with water current, but [Ralston ] takes all that into account.”
The search is concentrated on 100 acres of shoreline in Prairie Creek, near Bear and Deer islands and the waters between. If Minton’s body is found, it’s likely to be preserved, Gay said, since the lake is cold and deep.
He said the search for Minton will continue at this degree indefinitely.
“It’s depressing work, yes, but it also affords the opportunity to bring loved ones home and provide closure for the family,” Gay said. “We intend to keep searching until we reach a conclusion.”
Information for this article was
contributed by Tracy M. Neal of the Benton
County Daily Record. REWARD OFFERED
There is a $ 1, 000 reward for information in the case of Alicia Minton, who disappeared in June. More information is available online at www. missingaliciaminton. com.
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