Opinion ID: 1248901
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Offenses Relating to Patricia Ashe

Text: As to Patricia Ashe, defendant was charged with and convicted of first-degree murder based on premeditation and deliberation and first-degree rape. Ashe was a habitual crack cocaine user and possibly a prostitute. On Sunday, 7 January 1996, Officer G.M. Wright of the Raleigh Police Department was dispatched to the 1500 block of South Blount Street. A black male, Rodney Bass, was waving to get the officer's attention. Bass stated that he had seen a person around the back of the building with no clothes on. It had been snowing and sleeting off and on throughout the day. Officer Wright found Ashe's body covered with snow on a bench. The officer observed a set of footprints near the body. These footprints did not get close enough to the body to indicate that the person who left them could have touched the body. Bass told another officer that he had been drinking in a nearby vehicle and decided to go for a walk. As he was walking behind the building, he saw Ashe's body. He got within twenty or thirty feet of the body and then decided to call the police. Ashe's body was on the lower portion of the bench, with her feet and lower body hanging off the edge. Her legs were completely off the end of the bench, slightly spread, and her knees were bent. She had no clothes on except white socks. A thermal long-sleeve T-shirt was folded up under her buttocks, and a pair of jeans was folded under her head. A couple of crack pipes and a lighter were underneath or just to the side of the bench. There was snow and ice on Ashe's body, but no snow and ice was underneath her body. Dr. John Butts performed an autopsy on Ashe's body, and he formed the opinion that Ashe died as a result of strangulation. She had scrapes and scratches on both sides of her neck as well as some on the front part of her neck. She also had some linear scrapes on her back, some scratches on her left arm, and a small tear in the skin on the right groin area. Some of the neck scratches were relatively deep with a bit of the skin torn off. The multiple scratches and scrapes on Ashe's neck indicate that she had struggled against the perpetrator. DNA testing was conducted on the vaginal swabs that Dr. Butts took from Ashe, and a DNA match was found with defendant.