LURED TO DEATH, DESPERATE FOR CRACK

Strangling Victim Was Blinded By Need To Feed Drug Addiction

Before she was strangled and left in the garbage, Shameika Carter was known
as a skinny, pony-tailed, drug-addled prostitute and a petty thief who
walked the streets with her hands stuck inside a too-large team jacket.

Police have pieced together a seamy, sad tale of Carter's last days from
dozens of interviews with people who knew her.

The Journal Sentinel this week reviewed unreleased police reports on the
investigation into the death of Carter, 24, whose body was found Nov. 19.
She was the last in a series of 10 unsolved murders of women strangled to
death on the city's north side since 1986.

George L. Jones, 52, a crack user known as "Mule" and "Crazy George," has
been charged in Carter's death. Jones reportedly knew at least two of the
nine other north side women whose deaths are being investigated by a police
task force and elite FBI unit.

The police reports underscored the degree to which crack cocaine is a
scourge in the swath of Milwaukee's north side where Carter spent her short
life.

Craving the drug on a daily basis, the young woman known as "Meika"
prostituted herself, resorted to petty thievery, and pandered for food,
clothing and lodging from friends and strangers, people who knew her told
police. She spent the last days of her life begging friends and even a
pastor for money and smoking crack with people she barely knew.

The risky lifestyle made her vulnerable to a man who prowled the city's
underbelly. Investigators say he sought crack addicts such as Carter for
easy sex, and then abused them.

Carter's early death didn't surprise people who knew her.

A female acquaintance told police she last saw Carter on Nov. 15, a Friday,
four days before her body was discovered. A week earlier, the woman had
given Carter a pink shirt and blue jeans. When they met over a beer in the
woman's kitchen, Carter had been wearing the clothes for a week.

Carter's mother told police she last saw her daughter the same day.
Carter's mother gave her money to get some ice. Carter never returned, the
police reports say.

Carter's mother had warned her daughter "about doing crazy things to
people, that she could not rob or steal from people, that something like
this might occur."

The mother said Carter's life brought her into contact with unsavory
people. One example from the reports: Carter had told her mother that "she
knew who the individual was who murdered the individual from J & J Lounge
on Fond du Lac, the person who had his head and arms cut off . . . she
wouldn't tell her because she feared for her life and safety."

The reference was to Loydell Jackson, 37, whose dismembered and burning
body was found in a garbage cart behind a home in the 2400 block of N. 45th
St. last February. His killer or killers have never been found.

Carter did not have a permanent home. She had moved out of her mother's
home two years before, and essentially spent the night wherever she landed.

She lost her three young children to her crack addiction, as well. The
first two were fathered by a man currently in prison and are now being
cared for by her mother. The last is in the custody of social services and
the fatherhood is in dispute. Two of the children were born with cocaine in
their systems, police reports say. The day Carter's body was found, a court
hearing was scheduled about her relinquishing custody of the last child.

A man who admitted to police he might be the father said their sexual
relationship began while he was dating Carter's mother. Carter tried to
borrow money from him the day after she was with her mother.

"He said she was constantly robbing and stealing and ripping people off,"
the reports said. "He is aware that Shameika dope dates and believes her
drug problem began three to four years ago."

A 47-year-old man from Carter's neighborhood described her as a "drug user
and prostitute to obtain either drugs or money to buy drugs. She steals
whatever she can get her hands on."

She once stole $100 from the man while having sex. He last saw her when she
tried to sell him food stamps.

"She was not the type of person to be violent," the man told police. "Her
main problems were her drug use and she would steal to support it."

A 48-year-old man described Carter to police as "very harmless because she
was just harming herself in regards to drugs." Another man said she was
just a "little girl" he often saw walking down the street wearing an
oversized black and orange parka.

One of the many places where Carter kept some spare clothes was the home of
a reputed drug dealer and pimp named "Red," Carter's mother told police.

When they tracked Red down, he described seeing Carter for the last time at
a Packers party at his home two days before her body was found -- and said
she left with Jones.

Jones, a stranger to Carter, didn't even remember her name correctly; at
the party, Red said, he asked "what Tamika was all about." The pair wound
up in a room that Red rents out for a $10 fee. They used cocaine there, the
reports said. When Red peeked into the room, Jones' pants were down and
Carter was naked.

When they left, ostensibly for cigarettes and beer, Red told Jones, "bring
her back in one piece." He never saw Carter alive again.

Police later learned Carter and Jones parted ways. Carter returned to
Jones' home along the 2800 block of N. 24th Place that Monday trying to
hawk a television for $40 to other people living in Jones' house. It didn't
have a clear picture, so no one bought it and she left.

Pieces of the last hours of Carter's life, as described in the reports,
come from Jones himself, after he was taken in for questioning. Plied with
submarine sandwiches, coffee, orange soda or cigarettes, Jones -- still
referring to Carter as "Tamika" -- gave numerous interviews to police that
were progressively incriminating, the reports say.

At one point, Jones said Carter returned later Monday and they smoked
marijuana laced with cocaine. Jones, who has epilepsy, said the drugs
triggered a terrible headache and he blacked out. When he came to, he had
urinated in his pants and Carter was lying dead next to him, he told police.

When he was interviewed later, he said that he "snapped" when Carter
laughed at him for being unable to perform sexually. He told police that he
"grabbed her around the neck choking her." Jones said that was when he
blacked out. Jones described waking up, and finding his hands wrapped
around her neck, the reports say.

"Scared and upset," he piled her body into a shopping cart that usually
contained aluminum cans that he collected, the reports say.

A day or so later, a neighbor called city sanitation workers to make a
special garbage pickup in the 2800 block of N. 24th Place. A pile of old
discarded clothes and other refuse lay behind a string of mostly vacant
homes, the neighbor said.

Sanitation workers lifted a piece of clothing and saw something they
thought was a dog or a Halloween decoration, perhaps a mannequin.

Moving more clothing, they saw an ear. It was a body.

Though she had been buried under clothing, Carter was wearing only a black
bra. Her neck bore deep scratches. She had been strangled.