Prosecutors to seek death penalty against Griffin
ASHEVILLE - Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against an Asheville man charged with murder in the deaths of three people, including two women whose disappearance sparked a week-long search of the French Broad River.
The office of Buncombe County District Attorney Todd Williams on Wednesday filed a request for a Rule 24 hearing in the case of Pierre Lamont Griffin II, 23. The hearing is typically a formality, required when state prosecutors want to notify the court that they intend to seek capital punishment.
It is the second time Williams has requested such a hearing since he assumed the office 13 months ago.
The hearing request comes days after a Buncombe County grand jury indicted Griffin on three counts of first-degree murder stemming from a series of Oct. 27 shootings.
Officers allege that Griffin killed Tatianna Diz, 20, and Alexandra King, 22, before dumping their bodies in the French Broad. Their remains were found near a train trestle on Emma Road in the River Arts District more than a week later.
Shortly after those shootings, according to officials, Griffin went to the Pisgah View Apartments home of Uhon Trumanne Johnson, 31, fatally shooting him before leading police on a high-speed chase across three counties.
In addition to other charges related to the deaths and the chase, Griffin was also indicted in connection with the theft of three motorcycles in July 2015 from a Candler man.
That man, Kenneth Cryderman, on Monday said Griffin was a sophomore at Reynolds High School when he became friends with Cryderman’s oldest son, also in high school at the time. Griffin, well-liked and bright, soon became a fixture in the family, including accompanying them on a trip to Myrtle Beach.
“Pierre was a very, very smart kid, a beautiful kid,” Cryderman said. The charges were a shock, he said.
Griffin, he said, had asked to borrow a truck to move furniture while the family was on vacation. When Cryderman returned and realized the small, two-stroke engine dirt bikes were missing, he confronted Griffin.
One had been taken to a pawn shop, where Buncombe County sheriff’s deputies recovered it; two others had been ridden “full out, until the tops blew out of them,” according to Cryderman, a general contractor.
“At that point, I cut him out of our lives,” he said. In the previous several months, Griffin had sporadically worked for Cryderman’s company doing odd jobs, but seemed like he was deteriorating.
“He would do anything from digging holes to building houses and he would do anything you asked him to do,” Cryderman said. “But he was very erratic."
Cyderman said he feared Griffin was suffering from drug abuse. "He was struggling to just to get through the day.”
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The murder case, with its peculiar twists and turns and unlikely victims, has drawn wide regional interest and is the second most high-profile crime to occur in Buncombe County since Williams became district attorney.
Only murder charges brought against Robert Jason Owens, 37, have garnered more attention. Owens is accused in the March deaths of Joseph "J.T." Codd, 45, his wife Cristie Schoen Codd, 38, and their unborn child.
Owens had worked as handyman and was an acquaintance of the well-known Leicester couple. Officers have alleged they were murdered and dismembered, with remains believed to be human found in a wood stove on the Owens' property.
He is also the last known person to see 18-year-old Zebb Quinn alive. Quinn vanished 16 years ago in what arguably ranks the region’s most enduring and perplexing disappearances.
In an August Rule 24 hearing, a Superior Court judge allowed Owens matter to move forward as a death penalty case.
The Buncombe County District Attorney’s Office has no other pending capital cases.