Timothy Roberts had been back in Savannah less than a year when he was shot to death in October about a block from his childhood home in the city’s Cuyler-Brownville neighborhood.
Roberts, 37, had spent about a decade working in Orlando, Fla., but he’d returned home in late 2012 to help his mother care for his ailing father.
It was just the type of person he was, Martha Roberts said.
“He was a beautiful person,” she said of her late son, a single father and 1995 graduate of A.E. Beach High School. “He was loving and everybody loved him. He was just a great person, and I couldn’t tell you nothing about why somebody wanted to hurt him.
“I’ll never get that.”
Like Martha Roberts, Dorothy Stevens struggles every day to understand why her child’s life was suddenly and violently taken last year in Chatham County.
Stevens’ 24-year-old daughter Alice was killed along with her boyfriend Forrest Ison late Nov. 3 outside the Thunderbolt house they shared.
“Her whole family misses her and is bewildered by why it happened and really having a tough time getting through the day,” Dorothy Stevens said Thursday from her home in Clearwater, Fla.
Roberts, Ison and Stevens were among the 32 people in Chatham County to lose their lives to homicide in 2013. While most of those homicides have been cleared by police this year, their cases are among 12 that remain unsolved.
Homicides up in 2013
Chatham County saw an increase last year in homicides of about 23 percent.
There were 26 homicides reported in 2012 and 31 in 2011.
In 2013, all but three homicides occurred in Savannah or unincorporated Chatham County. Ison and Stevens were killed in Thunderbolt and 20-year-old Donald Bernard Lewis was shot to death on Savannah State University’s campus. All three are unsolved.
Savannah-Chatham police Maj. Larry Branson, the department’s Criminal Investigations Division commander, said his agency was investigating 31 homicides in 2013. However, that total included a pair of domestic-related deaths that were later “no-billed” by the Chatham County Grand Jury, meaning sufficient evidence was not found to continue cases against the defendants.
Regardless of the exact figure, two things are clear: There was an increase in homicides in Chatham County in 2013 and among those investigated by Savannah-Chatham police a much higher percentage were cleared.
Nine homicides in Savannah or unincorporated Chatham County last year are considered unsolved.
That makes the homicide unit’s clearance rate — a measure of police effectiveness calculated by dividing the number of crimes in which an arrest was made, a warrant was filed, or the case has been sent to a grand jury by the total number of crimes in that year — 87 percent, which includes all solved 2013 cases and as well as five 2012 cases cleared within the last year.
That rate is a jump from the 63.6 percent clearance rate in 2012, and is considerably higher than the national homicide clearance average that is also about 63 percent, according to the most recent FBI data.
“We’ve got an awesome team (in homicide), very dedicated,” Branson said. “... These guys will work — I have to send them home sometimes. They are very dedicated, and that is true of all of CID — we don’t hold ourselves as better than anyone else, but these guys hold themselves to a higher standard, and it’s a self-imposed standard. They just don’t want to quit.”
Losing a son
It had only been 10 or 15 minutes since her son had left the house to take a cellphone call from an old friend when Martha Roberts’ phone rang late Oct. 12.
“My neighbor called me and asked me, ‘Martha, what happened down there?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, my son just went down that way,’” she said.
She wandered down to where the flashing lights and sirens were coming from at the corner of West Victory Drive and Hopkins Street. There she found the unthinkable — Timothy had been shot and was being loaded into an ambulance.
He died before she got to see him again.
Every day Martha Roberts wears a bottle cap necklace bearing a photo of Timothy Roberts. When she puts it on she can’t help but wonder why her son was taken from her.
“It hurts so bad,” she said Thursday. “I just want to know why so we can just try to move on. It’s so hard. It’s taking so long for — to find out really what happened to him or why.”
Like his department’s other nine unsolved homicide cases from 2013, Branson said investigators believe Roberts’ attacker may have been a stranger.
That seems likely, Martha Roberts said.
“He wasn’t someone who would want to hurt someone, you know,” she said. “He never carried any knife or a weapon or a gun or anything. He was just a loving man, a smart man. This shouldn’t have happened to him.”
An arrest in his case, Martha Roberts said, would help soothe her and her family.
“It can’t bring him back or anything like that, but we’ll feel much better,” she said. “It would give me a peace of mind, oh Lord, it will. It will give all of us some peace of mind, everybody.”
Little known about double homicide
The shots that killed Alice Stevens and Ison outside their Robertson Avenue home were fired just five days before Stevens was going to participate in her older brother’s wedding. Somehow, the family held it together and went through with the wedding.
“We had the wedding one day and the funeral the next,” Dorothy Stevens said. “She was lying in that coffin in her bridesmaid dress.”
Her daughter met Ison, 27, in High Point, N.C., when she was attending college there and later moved to the Savannah area. Here, she was working and trying to determine whether and where to continue her education.
“She was young and artistic and had bright ideas for the future,” Dorothy Stevens said. “It’s so heartbreaking for us that her goodness and her talents and her dreams will never be realized.”
She’s hopeful now that investigators will find the person or persons responsible for cutting her daughter’s life short. Not knowing why Alice was killed makes things even harder.
“I don’t know how people can go on after something like this happens,” she said. “I don’t want to be around people because they’re just too happy, and we are just grief-stricken — paralyzed.”
Both Stevens and Ison were working at Savannah restaurant Brasserie 529 at the time of their deaths. Their co-workers still struggle to understand what happened.
“They were good people,” said chef and owner John Roelle.
Ison worked at the upscale eatery on East Liberty Street for about two years, first as baker then executive chef, and Stevens had worked there about six months as a hostess and server.
Roelle described Ison as a hard worker who had a great sense of humor and a real knack for baking bread. He would often leave the kitchen to interact with guests.
“He put his pride into everything he did,” Roelle said. “Anytime something went out, he would go out to the tables and chit-chat with them to see how things were. He was an outgoing guy. He had quite a few fans. Some people would come in just to see him.”
Employees of the Brasserie 529 learned of Ison's and Stevens’ deaths Nov. 5 when Thunderbolt’s police chief appeared at the restaurant 15 minutes before Ison was due at work. The restaurant closed for a couple days so employees could grasp what happened.
“They were good people,” Roelle said. “Nobody deserves that. Nobody.”
Roelle said he thinks about Ison every time he has to bake bread or when figuring out exactly how the slain executive chef tweaked a certain recipe on the menu. The staff still misses both of them, he said.
“I think all the grieving is over,” Roelle said. “Now it’s just we want answers. We need closure somehow.”
Thunderbolt Public Safety Director Robert Merriman, who oversees the town’s police and fire departments, said at the time he didn’t believe the killings to be random. Investigators, he said, were actively pursuing leads.
Thunderbolt police Lt. Sean Clayton on Thursday said there was no new information that could be provided about the investigation.
Community help needed
In each of the homicide cases solved in 2013, Branson said, the victim knew his or her attacker.
The circumstances varied considerably, he said. They included personal disputes, robberies, and drug-related issues.
He said while his officers are extremely vigilant and spend as much time in crime “hot spots” as possible, the vast majority of these deaths occur behind closed doors or out of sight and are extremely difficult to prevent.
“There’s really no way to predict or to prepare for homicides,” Branson said. “... What people need to understand is that there are other options besides killing each other.”
Branson said his 11 detectives, two sergeants and the lieutenant in the homicide unit work hand-in-hand with other Savannah-Chatham police units and local agencies. Information, he said, is shared with precinct detectives, patrol officers, and the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team.
However, the community has to be involved for his officers to solve crimes.
“We depend greatly on the community to help be our eyes and ears, to help provide information for us when we don’t witness these crimes,” the major said. “If you see something, if you know something let someone know. If it’s a crime that’s occurred please, please give us information through CrimeStoppers or by calling our tip line.
“Let us bring these folks to justice.”
UNSOLVED 2013 HOMICIDES
Victim Date Location
Rebecca Foley Jan. 21 11400 block of White Bluff Road
Williams Bass Jr. March 13 1300 block of West Bay Street
Amistica Grells March 24 600 block of West 40th Street
Darin Manigo May 5 600 block of Montgomery Street
Antwan Rivers Jr. July 9 1100 block of East 38th Street
Ardearrin Jefferson July 17 725 Yamacraw Village
Donald Lewis Sept. 21 Savannah State University’s University Village
Timothy Roberts Oct. 12 West Victory Drive and Hopkins Street
Nathaniel Frazier Oct. 17 West 38th Street and Barnard Street
Forrest Ison and Alice Stevens Nov. 3 3100 block of Robertson Avenue, Thunderbolt
Hector Brown Dec. 7 1200 block of East 29th Street
MAKE THE CALL
Anyone with any information about homicides or other crimes in Chatham County is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 912-234-2020 or text CRIMES (274637). Tipsters remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward.
A confidential tip line open directly to Savannah-Chatham police investigators is also available by calling 912-525-3124.
Anyone with information about the deaths of Alice Stevens and Forrest Ison is asked to call Thunderbolt police at 912-354-3838.
Anyone with information about the death of Donald Bernard Lewis is asked to contact the Savannah State University Department of Public Safety at 912-358-3004.