Prosecutors: Few trends in murder cases
FAYETTEVILLE — The number of murders in Northwest Arkansas has increased as the region’s population continues to grow, but for most people, the risk of being a homicide victim is still extremely low, according to prosecutors.
Washington County Prosecuting Attorney Matt Durrett said murders have increased in terms of raw numbers, but those increases are not significant in terms of the region’s per capita murder rate.
“We’ve got more people here, and so those people that come here, some of them are going to kill people,” Durrett said. “I think it’s just an increase in just the raw numbers as opposed to the murder rate.”
In Benton County, Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Sexton said there’s been no common denominator in the murders there in recent years. Cases have ranged from a found body case to a drive-by shooting to Shawna Cash running over and killing a police officer to a drug deal gone bad. Victims have ranged from a white, female juvenile to a law enforcement officer to a Black male.
Most of those cases came during a spike in murders in the county in 2021 when there were eight homicides. Things have settled back down to lower numbers again, Sexton said.
Glenn Thatcher, 45, of Bentonville pleaded guilty to first degree murder in May 2022 in Robert Blau’s death. Thatcher admitted to shooting and killing Blau, whose body was found Feb. 1, 2021, in a building in Gateway.
Sexton said it was odd the spike came as the covid-19 pandemic was winding down.
“A lot of people’s expectation was we’d gotten out of covid and things are kind of going back to normal,” Sexton said. “Well, this was one part that didn’t go back to normal immediately.”
Washington County Deputy Prosecutor Denis Dean noted Northwest Arkansas is an economic hub.
“We’re not only drawing the good, hardworking people into our community, but we’re also bringing in the people that are going to prey off of that, and there’s only so much money and turf to go around here, so you are going to have people that are competing for power,” Dean said. “But really, it’s who you know, who you hang out with and if you decide to engage in criminal behavior.”
Durrett said personal connections typically make murder cases easier to solve.
“Most of these murder cases aren’t whodunits, and it’s because the stranger homicides are so rare,” Durrett said. “It took eight months for them to make an arrest in the [Mario] Miller case, but it turns out there was a connection there, wasn’t total strangers. Just about all of these, there was some connection between them before the murders.”
Miller, 47, of Fayetteville was shot and killed by Steven Maurice Rice on Aug. 11, 2020, after Keishayla Hill lured Miller to a location in Fayetteville. Rice and Hill then dumped Miller’s body in a secluded location and fled the area. Police tracked the pair down about 10 months later in Pine Bluff.
Rice, 24, was convicted earlier this month of firstdegree murder and sentenced to 30 years at the Arkansas Department of Corrections on the murder charge and six years for tampering with physical evidence, to run consecutively. Hill 24, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in exchange for her testimony against Rice. Hill was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Durrett said by his count there were nine murders in Washington County in 2023, and two remain unsolved. One murder from 2022 remains unsolved.
Fayetteville averaged four murders per year from 2018 to 2023, according to data provided. The high was seven in 2020, and the low was one in 2018. There were five in 2023. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office worked six homicides from 2019 through 2023.