Murder suspect indicted

A grand jury handed down indictments that allege Thomas Anthony Pitt, the suspected murderer of Duke employee Curt Blackman, pawned electronic equipment from Blackman's apartment and that robbery may have been a motive in the brutal slaying.

Indictments handed down recently by a grand jury in the murder of Duke employee Curt Blackman allege that suspect Thomas Anthony Pitt pawned electronic equipment from Blackman’s apartment and that robbery may have been a motive in the brutal slaying.

Blackman, coordinator for graduate recruitment and minority programs at Duke, was found by police May 20 in his Hilton Street apartment after failing to show up for work for two days. When officers arrived at the scene they found the 38-year-old face down on his bedroom floor, gagged, blindfolded and bound at his ankles and wrists. According to Blackman’s autopsy report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill, he had been stabbed 30 times, including nine stab wounds to his neck.

New indictments allege that the electronics Pitt bartered at Cash Converter, a pawn shop in Durham’s Oxford Commons Shopping Center, belonged to Blackman. Pitt had worked at a nearby Burger King restaurant and was arrested without incident inside the Wal-Mart located at Oxford Commons by the Durham Police Department June 4. Pitt confessed to killing Blackman, a Durham County prosecutor said at a June bail hearing.

The murder indictment, signed by a grand jury Jan. 18, alleges Pitt killed Blackman May 18 “unlawfully, willfully and feloniously and of malice aforethought.” The indictments mean that Pitt, who was 22 at the time of the crime, can be tried for first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole or the death penalty. First-degree murder charges require that the crime contain an aggravating factor, which would include financial gain from robbery. At a June hearing, Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn characterized Blackman’s death as a “particularly brutal murder.”

Prosecutors may still choose to try Pitt on lesser charges, including second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years.

Friends remembered Blackman as an honest and caring man. The Trinidad native had recently earned American citizenship and was scheduled to enter a graduate program at Northwestern University last fall.

Officials have previously alluded to a connection between Blackman and Pitt but have refused to elaborate on how the men knew each other or the nature of their relationship.