Police officers arrested Durham resident Thomas Pitt Friday and charged him with the murder of Duke employee Curt Blackman, whose body was found May 20 in his Hilton Avenue apartment. Pitt confessed to Blackman's murder, a Durham County prosecutor said at a bail hearing Monday.
Duke police officers found Blackman's body after his co-workers noticed his absence from work. He was director of graduate programs and minority recruitment at Duke.
Pitt, 22, was denied bail at Monday's hearing, at which his court-appointed attorney, Chris Roberts, had sought a $100,000 bond. Opposing the attempt to release Pitt from pre-trial confinement, the prosecutor offered grisly details of Blackman's murder and noted that Pitt confessed to the crime.
"The victim was gagged, bound, blindfolded and stabbed numerous times," Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said. She characterized Blackman's death as a "particularly brutal murder."
Chief District Court Judge Elaine O'Neal denied Pitt's bail request and set another court date for the end of the month. At the next hearing, court-appointed attorney Mark Edwards will represent Pitt, according to The Herald-Sun of Durham.
The charges against Pitt are murder, two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, receiving stolen goods, possession of stolen goods and a pre-existing breaking and entering charge dating back to 2002.
Pitt was arrested inside Wal-Mart in the Oxford Commons Friday morning by the Durham Police Department's Selective Enforcement team. Police detained Pitt without incident at the store after Pitt bartered stolen goods at Cash Converters, a pawn shop in the same shopping center, according to a DPD statement.
"From evidence in the investigation, we were able to identify Mr. Pitt as responsible for the demise of Mr. Blackman," DPD Lt. Norman Blake said.
The Oxford Commons shopping center is close to Pitt's place of work, a nearby Burger King. Managers at both the Burger King and the Wal-Mart where he was arrested declined to comment on the matter, and Cash Converters' owner did not respond to several phone messages.
After his arrest, Pitt was held without bail in the Durham County Jail to await his bail hearing. In addition to seeking a bond for the murder charge, Roberts also applied Monday for a reduction in Pitt's bond for the non-violent charges from $10,000 to $3,000. O'Neal allowed a reduction to $5,000, but Pitt remains in jail after she denied the bond application for the charge of Blackman's murder.
While Durham police and Montgomery-Blinn asserted there was a link between Pitt and Blackman, both refused to elaborate on the nature of the relationship. Blake and Montgomery-Blinn both declined to comment on motive, but Montgomery-Blinn noted that the details of the case will be made public "someday soon." Blake declined to comment on the details of the ongoing investigation.
DPD, which has made arrests in almost every homicide in Durham this year, discovered a suspect for Blackman's murder quickly. "The police did a really good job," Montgomery-Blinn said. Sgt. B. P. Hallan of the DPD attributed Pitt's capture to "countless hours of work."
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