The scene: a suburban freeway near Atlanta, Georgia, in January 2000. An argument between two motorists results in one of them being shot dead, the perpetrator fleeing in his car, never to be caught. Now, 17 years later, a pair of bifocal spectacles could hold the clue to the killer’s identity, in an eerie echo of a 1924 murder case known as ‘the trial of the century’, as previously featured in Optician (How a pair of glasses caught two killers, May 8, 2015).
The early morning of Friday, January 28, 2000, was going to be the start of a big weekend for Chris Duron. He had set out at 6am to meet with a customer in Tennessee to tie up a $3 million contract for his tile business. But it was also shaping up to be a busy weekend for the city of Atlanta: American football fans and the media were converging on the town as Super Bowl XXXIV was due to take place at the city’s Georgia Dome on the Sunday; and local TV and radio stations had one eye on an ice storm approaching from Alabama. What was to happen to Duron as he drove north on Interstate-75 in his new Chevrolet Tahoe would be largely submerged in the flurry of news coverage of those other events.
Duron would have been in high spirits as he joined I-75. The Tennessee deal was the first big break for his company; and, hopefully, he would round off the weekend back at home in time to celebrate his 39th birthday by watching the Super Bowl with his family. At around 6.15am, near Hartfield-Jackson International Airport, close to the Ford plant in Hapeville, Duron got into an altercation with another motorist when they almost collided. They pulled over to the high occupancy vehicle lane, where the drivers got out of their cars. The argument turned physical, with punches thrown. His widow, Pat, points out that Duron ‘was built like a big bear. He was a boxer when he was younger. And he did have a temper.’ After a short scuffle, the other driver pulled a gun on Duron, believed to be either a .38 or .357 revolver, and shot him three times with fatal results.
Pat admits that her husband should not have got involved in a fist-fight with the other man. ‘He shouldn’t have done that, but he did,’ she reflects. ‘That was the way he was. But, you know, you can’t fight against a gun.’
As far as she is concerned, her husband’s assailant is ‘a cold-blooded murderer and he deserves to go to prison.’ But, after the shooting, the driver fled the scene and has never been caught. The Clayton County police detective assigned the case that morning was Victor Hill. He found witnesses who, despite the early morning darkness, were able to provide snippets of information including a partial description of Duron’s killer. They recalled two silhouettes struggling, and a sudden muzzle flash. A man, taller than Duron’s five feet seven inches, was seen standing over the victim; he was wearing a brown or tan trench coat; and was driving a minivan, possibly a blue or dark-coloured Ford Aerostar or similar, that was parked behind Duron’s grey Tahoe. There were traffic cameras around the area but, as they had only just been installed, they had not yet been switched on, so there was no available video footage of the incident.
That was not much to go on. Yet, for the next few days, Detective Hill and his colleagues in the robbery/homicide division scoured I-75 for a likely vehicle fitting the witnesses’ description, but to no avail. Three days later the funeral home handed Pat Duron a pair of spectacles they assumed belonged to her husband because they were found by his body at the scene of the shooting and were handed in to them with the rest of his effects. The funeral director had wanted to know if she wished the spectacles to be placed on her husband’s body for the viewing. In explaining that her husband did not wear spectacles, Pat had the sudden shock realisation that she must be holding the killer’s spectacles; they must have got knocked off his face during the fight. Suddenly here was a piece of evidence definitively linked to the murderer.
Pat took the spectacles to Detective Hill, who had them dusted for fingerprints, but without any positive results. Next, he took them to an optometrist for analysis. The frame was identified as a silver L’Amy Rockport, size 53x15, with a saddle bridge; and the lenses D-Seg bifocals. Based on these details the optometrist suggested to the police that they should be looking for a man with a smallish head probably in his 50s or older. According to news reports the prescription was measured as R 75-25-81, L 75-25-116. Assuming the shooter would not think of leaving the scene and driving off without his spectacles if his prescription was plus or minus 7.50D sphere and, judging from the images available of the spectacles, it can reasonably be concluded that the prescription is plus or minus 0.75DS with probably a 0.25D cylinder. No mention is made in any of the reports of the strength of the reading addition.
Detective Hill and his colleagues contacted optometrists across the metropolitan Atlanta area over several weeks in the hope of finding a match. Their efforts were unsuccessful; Chris Duron’s murder joined the unsolved case files. But now, 17 years later, the Duron murder file is open again. As Pat Duron says, ‘There is not much you can do about it, except wait and wait and I am tired of waiting. I want somebody to come forward that knows something, somebody knows who did it.’
So, recently, she paid a visit to Victor Hill, now Sheriff of Clayton County. ‘Do you remember me?’ she asked the Sheriff. ‘You worked my husband’s murder 17 years ago.’ She persuaded him to re-open the case in the hope that advances in forensics might yield some new information. Sheriff Hill put the request to Chief Investigator Dennis Baker, the head of the cold case squad at the local District Attorney’s office. Baker not only agreed with Hill, he brought in Clayton County Police Homicide Captain Winfred Norwood to assist with the investigation.
The murderer’s glasses
The call has gone out again to optometrists to check their records; maybe a search of computerised practice databases could throw up a likely match to the frame or prescription that was overlooked originally. The investigators have also asked for people to think whether they can recall meeting a friend, relative or work colleague on that fateful Friday morning who fits the suspect’s description and had arrived without their spectacles and with facial injuries from a fight. In the day or so after Chris’ murder, few people apart from Mrs Duron and the police were aware of what had happened, so acquaintances of the killer would have no reason to relate such injuries to the crime at that time. Now, perhaps, a memory might be jogged and the connection made.
In April 2017, in a further effort to publicise the case, Pat Duron opened a GoFundMe account, ‘Chris Duron Murder Reward’. The aim of the account is to raise reward money that might persuade someone who has information which could lead to the murderer being identified to step forward. The goal is to raise a sum of $10,000; as of the middle of May 2017 the fund stands at $600. The reward will be available for one year. In recognition of her late husband’s love of animals, Pat has pledged that, if the reward is not collected within that time, the money will be donated to his favourite charity, the ASPCA (the American equivalent of the RSPCA). The Duron cold case has also been gathering publicity in the media. The Fox 5 Atlanta TV channel has featured it on one of its news programmes and the 11Alive station recently carried an interview with Pat Duron on its website.
Chris Duron was shot three times
Not a day goes by without Pat thinking of her late husband, Chris. ‘He was hard-working, he was a really good person, he’d do anything for you,’ she recalls. The unknown identity of his killer still tortures her. ‘He’s been walking around for 17 years thinking he got away with it,’ Pat says. ‘I’ve never quit looking for him.’
Thanks to Don Grocott for the subject idea.