Family finds justice after son's killing

Closing book on murder opens book for healing

By Robert Behre

The Post and Courier

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

Solicitor Scarlett Wilson (right) listens to Maxine Hamilton, the mother of murder victim Jamie Reed, as she talks about what her family had to go through as the solicitor struggled to locate witnesses.

Scarlett Wilson had never prayed like this before. Not in her office, holding hands.

But Jamie Reid's mother, uncle and a family friend had come by to urge the new Ninth Circuit Solicitor not to give up on the murder stemming from his fatal shooting in April 2006.

The family was frustrated. Why was it so difficult to pursue a murder charge against a man who so many people saw shoot and kill Reid in a North Charleston parking lot?

Wilson, who had just been picked to succeed her late boss Ralph Hoisington, feared she might have to plea the case down to a lesser charge. Better to stick the defendant with some record and jail time than none at all.

She and Assistant Solicitor Greg Voigt told the family about the witness problems. Of the several people in Club Fantasy's parking lot that night, Voigt had been able to track down only two of them, both exotic dancers at the club, and they would be unreliable on the witness stand. The murder weapon had not been found.

But family members felt they knew what happened, and they didn't want anyone to get away with murder. Not after a 21-year-old man who had no weapon, who had only caffeine in his system that night and who had plans to join the military and get married was senselessly gunned down.

Their conversation in Wilson's office more than a year after the crime was respectful, but intense.

As Voigt said, "So much of being a lawyer often is telling people bad news — things they don't want to hear." He also knew that murder cases, unlike wine, seldom improve with time.

Still, the family wanted more time to track down another witness, and Wilson agreed, if only because their attitude was a refreshing change from what prosecutors often face.

"Too many times, people in the community, even victims' families, won't help us," she said, "and we're stuck."

'They scattered like crows'

Shortly after that meeting, Voigt got a call from Frederick McCoy, who drove to the Club Fantasy parking lot with Reid that night and saw the whole thing.

One of McCoy's uncles is the Rev. Kato Reese of the New Directions Missionary Baptist Church. Reese also was Reid's uncle, and it fell to him that April night to tell his neighbor, Maxine Hamilton, that her son had been shot to death.

Reese kept busy after the tragedy, consoling Hamilton, as well as counseling and praying with her other sons not to pursue revenge.

And he helped persuade McCoy to talk with North Charleston Police, and Nathaniel "Nate" McGee turned himself in shortly afterward.

But when the Solicitor's Office sent an investigator around to talk with McCoy, he was nowhere to be found. "When we go out there, they scattered like crows," Voigt said.

It's not uncommon, particularly in black communities where fear of reprisal and a lack of trust with law enforcement often combine to pose an insurmountable obstacle to prosecuting crime.

"We all know what's happening in the community, whether we speak of it or not," Reese said. But this case hit home too deep to remain quiet. "The good thing about a tight knit community is we know," he added. "We know where you're at."

For months, the family continued to apply pressure to McCoy, who was having brushes with the law himself.

McCoy tried to bargain before taking the witness stand.

"He wanted promises," Voigt said. "He wanted us to say things that I wasn't willing to say. I wasn't going to help him with any legal difficulty he had. ... I made it very clear we weren't trading. It was: 'You're going to do the right thing on this because you watched a young man get shot.' How the rest of your life plays out is really independent of what you saw that day."

Last October, the law finally caught up with McCoy, and Voigt said the family had something to do with it.

"It took October 2008 before Fred finally came in from the cold, and not necessarily willingly," Voigt said. "I got a chance to talk with him, and all of a sudden I saw how were going to end this. I saw the path to the end."

McCoy told Voigt that he would testify and tell him everything that happened because it was his family and it was what he should do.

A prayer answered

Earlier this month in a Charleston County courtroom, Voigt finally tried the murder case against McGee, who had been waiting trial for three years in the county jail.

McGee's lawyer attempted to paint the shooting as an act of self-defense, but Voigt's two witnesses, McCoy and one of the dancers, refuted that.

Still, the dancer's story wasn't clear, and Hamilton said she realized why Voigt was reluctant to move forward with her story alone.

"I saw what he had to deal with," she said, "and I understand much better now than I did before."

Even with the additional witness, it wasn't clear cut.

The jury stayed out four hours. Hamilton waited inside the courtroom the entire time.

Then, its foreman read the verdict: guilty.

"Thank God. Thank God," Hamilton remembers thinking. "I have peace."

McGee has been sentenced to 30 years, and Reese said his experience as a prison guard makes it clear how hard that will be.

Meanwhile, he hopes other families will learn to trust the solicitor's office and cooperate with them.

"We thank God he has blessed us with justice, but ... I feel sad because two young men have lost their lives," he said. "This is a closed book and a closed chapter for a family in Goose Creek, but there are other families waiting."

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@postandcourier.com.