Cold-case victim’s family waited years for 1 suspect’s arrest. Now, they await another
Columbus police believe at least one more suspect was with Shanita Evette Wyatt when the alleged sex worker set out in 2008 to rob Paul Hill, and left the 67-year-old dead on the floor of his Marathon Drive home.
He had been stabbed, bludgeoned and shot with a small-caliber handgun, a detective testified Friday in Columbus Recorder’s Court. Last seen alive on March 25, his body was not found until his son called patrol officers about 2 p.m. April 2, 2008, to force their way through the locked door of Apt. C, 3300 Marathon Drive.
So began a homicide investigation that continues today, as cold-case Detective Stuart Carter collects evidence on the man witnesses said was with Wyatt, also known as Shanita Cannon, who goes by the street name “Cookie.”
She was known to frequent the Marathon Drive neighborhood. She told Carter that Hill had been among her customers, the detective said.
Canvassing the area in 2008, police found three witnesses who said Wyatt and a man had been at a nearby residence the night Hill likely was killed, and had said they were going out to “score some dope,” Carter testified.
When they returned, the man paced nervously outside as Wyatt walked in obviously upset, and told witnesses the pair were “doing a lick,” slang for a robbery, but it “went bad,” and her cohort should not have killed their target, Carter said.
Other witnesses added to the evidence, including a neighbor who recounted hearing a gunshot sometime around Easter 2008, and looking outside to see a man and woman arguing in the street, Carter said, adding the witness recognized the woman from previous visits to the area.
Wyatt has been charged with prostitution at least twice before, in November 2015 and again in February 2017, according to Ledger-Enquirer archives. She last was jailed May 21, 2020, on charges of trafficking in cocaine and violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, and was still being held when Carter got a warrant charging her with murder in Hill’s case.
The detective said police have collected other evidence, including a piece of jewelry from Hill’s home that Wyatt had, a pair of brown athletic shoes with gold crowns she wore the night of the homicide, and hair fibers with “root balls” collected from Hill’s clothing. Police are awaiting DNA tests on some of those items, he said.
Other witnesses who knew Wyatt have told police she admitted she was involved in Hill’s slaying. One recounted sharing a room with Wyatt at a Columbus motel, telling investigators Wyatt and the man implicated in the case were known to use a small-caliber handgun to rob her customers.
Carter declined to name the other suspect.
Recorder’s Court Judge Julius Hunter sent Wyatt’s case to Muscogee Superior Court. She is being held without bond.
Hunter ordered her to have no contact with Hill’s family.
The family
Paul Hill was a longtime mechanic who “owned shops all over Columbus,” said his daughter Nichole Alred, who followed the same career path.
“He was a mechanic. I was a mechanic in the military. My two sons are mechanics. My brother’s a mechanic,” said Alred, 49, the youngest of four siblings and a veteran of the 2003 Iraq War.
“He owned Southside Garage. He owned the Shell station on South Lumpkin Road. He owned quite a few shops,” she said in an interview after Friday’s court hearing.
He was known in the neighborhood for helping people out, she said: “I saw a comment online the other day from a young man named Johnny. He sponsored him in karate. He bought groceries for people. He fed people; he cooked for people.”
Though his home was listed as an apartment, it actually was a small house that sat apart from three or four others similarly numbered, she said.
“He lived in that neighborhood for many, many years, in that same house. He called it his ‘little shack by the railroad track,’” she remembered. When he moved in, it had only a living room, kitchen and bathroom, and he added a bedroom, she said.
He also secured it against intruders, she said. But he’d previously had no problem with crime, though the neighborhood did. When he was found dead, “everybody that knew him was shocked,” she said.
That day Alred’s husband had just returned from Iraq, and the couple living at Fort Stewart, Georgia, was playing golf. She’d left her phone at home, and no one could reach her. She didn’t play golf again for 10 years.
She since has been reminded of her father every day, she said, particularly when she hears the Bob Seger song “Against the Wind.” She never gave up believing his homicide would be solved.
Her service overseas led to her becoming one of five women featured in a documentary titled “Served Like a Girl,” and she started pursuing the case herself, renting a billboard, distributing fliers, and going to neighborhoods to question residents.
“I stayed persistent on this case, because I was not going to give up,” she said. She found renewed hope when Carter took on the investigation, she said, adding, “He’s worked on this case as if it were his own family member.”
He called her a week ago to tell her Wyatt would be charged, a moment for which she’d waited almost 13 years. “I thought that I would be jumping for joy, and clapping and excited,” she said. “I hung up the phone and I cried.”
She has a Facebook page called “Justice for Paul” devoted to her father’s case, and with the “Served Like a Girl” producer is working on a documentary titled “Murder on Marathon.” A teaser and other video clips are on the Facebook page, she said.
She has since met others who’ve lost loved ones in violent crimes, and like her, wonder if they’ll ever find justice.
“I just want them to know to never give up hope, to stay persistent,” she said. “My dad’s murder is almost a 13-year-old cold case, and we have received justice today. I just want them to know to never, ever, give up hope.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 1:27 PM.