Tamika Huston
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Tamika Antonette Huston (December 11, 1979 - May 2004) was a 24-year-old African American woman who disappeared from Spartanburg, South Carolina, and was subsequently found murdered.
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[edit] Disappearance and investigation
Tamika was last seen by family and friends on or around May 27, 2004 in Spartanburg. She was first reported to authorities as missing on June 14. Subsequently, police began an intensive investigation into her disappearance. On June 20, her 1991 black Honda CRX was found abandoned at the Barksdale Apartments located at 350 Pierpont Avenue in Spartanburg. It had apparently been abandoned in that location for approximately the same amount of time Tamika had last been seen.
The investigation’s biggest break came when the Spartanburg Public Safety Department discovered that a key found in the Honda had been matched to an apartment unit located at the Fremont School Apartment complex and blood evidence found in that Spartanburg apartment matched Tamika Huston’s DNA.
In August 2005, more than a year after Ms. Huston was first reported missing, a positive identification was made on human remains found off Highway 290 in Duncan, South Carolina. The Spartanburg coroner announced that the remains were in fact those of Tamika Huston. The coroner also analyzed those remains and with DNA tests and dental records, confirmed that they were Tamika's.
On August 12, Spartanburg Public Safety Officers arrested Huston’s ex-boyfriend, Christopher Hampton, for her murder. Hampton resided in the Fremont School apartment unit at the time of Huston's disappearance. Hampton was incarcerated at the time of his arrest, for unrelated charges. Hampton took police to the spot where he admitted he buried Tamika, after he killed her. Huston and Hampton had dated for two or three months, he said, while another woman was bearing his child. Huston, he said, asked him for money but he refused, saying he was saving money so he could take care of his baby. He told a reporter during an interview at the Spartanburg County Jail that he was ironing clothes before work and threw the hot iron at Tamika and hit her in the head as they argued about money. Hampton said that he panicked after killing Tamika, and drove around with her body in a borrowed car for hours.
Christopher Hampton received a life sentence, eight months after he confessed to Tamika Huston's murder, from a South Carolina judge on April 4, 2006.
[edit] Media attention
Local media attention, word of mouth and emails circulating around the Internet helped to spread the word regarding Tamika’s disappearance – particularly in light of the fact that national media for the most part had declined to air the story. Tamika's case received national attention, in part, because of claims that missing minorities do not get as much media attention as missing, young white women; while Huston was missing before her body was found, the disappearances and murders of Lori Hacking and Natalee Holloway, both white while Huston was black, all received national attention while Huston's case received almost none outside of the Carolinas except for America's Most Wanted and BET. To date, the aforementioned BET Nightly News, and America's Most Wanted, and the syndicated radio program The Russ Parr Morning Show, all profiled the case.
The disappearance of Tamika Huston spawned controversy about the media coverage of missing people and how cases get national attention. Journalist Gwen Ifill describes this phenomenon as "Missing white woman syndrome", which ended up being the term that largely stuck.
[edit] See also
- LaToiya Figueroa - another woman who disappeared and was killed under similar circumstances
