After a Pine Bluff City Council meeting in which the mayor cited the cold case unit as evidence of the police chief’s good leadership and the chief touted the fact that she had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with the family of Cleashindra Hall, the missing woman’s mother took the podium to say that she was not satisfied with progress in the case.
“We are willing to go the next step to expose possible corruption in this city,” said Laurell Hall, Cleashindra Hall’s mother. “We want justice for Clea and we are at the point where we will do that by any means necessary. We will no longer go quietly home and sit down and feel helpless. I am not asking you to do anything more for my daughter than any of you would expect or demand for your child if you were in this situation. This is only what is right. Please help us end this nightmare for our family.”
Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr. said he had no comment on Hall’s reference to corruption.
“I have no idea what she’s talking about,” Redus said. “We as a city as a municipality and a police department will do all that we can do to bring closure to this issue and this family.”
Alderman Thelma Walker told Redus that his listing of the new cold case unit as something the public is proud of that has been accomplished under Police Chief Brenda Davis-Jones was an “insult.”
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Walker also criticized Davis-Jones’ removal of Lt. Bob Rawlinson as lead day shift detective in the middle of the most action the Hall case has seen in years since the woman’s 1994 disappearance. Police searched a house belonging to Larry Amos on March 29. The house was the last place where Hall was seen alive before she disappeared at age 18, shortly before she was due to graduate from Watson Chapel High School.
Rawlinson was lead supervisor in the search at the house that day and served as the department spokesman. According to the documents submitted by the police department allowing them to obtain a the search warrant for Amos’ house, the key interviews that gave them enough probable cause to obtain the warrant were conducted in January 2012 and December 2011 — both time periods when Rawlinson was the supervisor of the day shift detectives, although Davis-Jones has disagreed each time Walker has suggested publicly that Rawlinson’s involvement in the case helped bring it back to the forefront.
Redus and Davis-Jones both passionately rebutted Walker’s questions and at times the discussion devolved into the three all talking over each other at once. Redus eventually cut Walker off from asking additional questions, despite the protest of another alderman.
“We met with Mrs. Hall for 2.5 hours and discussed intimate details that we had located,” Davis-Jones said.
Walker asked if someone new was working on the case, to which Davis-Jones responded: “There is always someone working on every case.” Redus prevented her from going into further detail about the case publicly.
But in the public comment time directly after the council meeting adjourned, Laurell Hall asked many of the questions Walker had asked and more. She disagreed with statements Redus had made at previous council meetings that Walker’s questions were motivated by self-serving political reasons because she is running for mayor.
“That is not true,” Hall said. “I have been in communication with she and Alderman Mays over the years and I believe there is a genuine concern. Even if it were true, my only concern is that someone help us find Clea.”
Hall said she did not want political rhetoric to cause her family’s case to become inactive again.
“Eighteen years ago we let the ball drop when we sat back and waited for law enforcement to do their job,” Hall said. “I also stated that I had done a disservice to my daughter because I had not been aggressive enough, but that was ending. My husband and I met with Chief Jones, Assistant Chief [Ivan] Whitfield, Capt. [Kelvin] Sergeant, Lt. [Bob] Rawlinson and Detective [Jerry] Lambert. We were assured by the chief that they would continue to move forward with this investigation and we would be kept abreast of what was going on. It has been a month and we have not received one phone call.”
Hall then presented the group with a list of questions. She asked why the search of Amos’ house was not thorough enough to include backhoes and bulldozers to dig up parts of the property and the house. Some of the witness reports used to obtain the warrant described seeing evidence that could have only been retrieved by more invasive searches of the property, she said.
“I have known personally some people whose house were searched and the only thing left standing was the studs,” Hall said
Hall asked why Rawlinson was reassigned. She said she has not heard from Lambert and did not know if he is still working on the case.
“Whatever internal issue is going on in the department is second to finding out what happened to Clea. With Lt. Rawlinson reassigned, who is aggressively pursuing our case?” Hall said, asking for the identity of Rawlinson’s replacement.
After the meeting, Redus and Davis-Jones spoke with Hall surrounded by a crowd of television reporters and assured her they will continue to pursue the case. Davis-Jones said the forensic reports on items taken from the Amos have not come back from the State Crime Laboratory, and that Hall will be informed when they do.