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Police Still Looking Into Slaying Of Tompkins' Victim's Friend

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 18, 2009

Updated: 02/18/2009 04:27 pm

TAMPA - Lisa DeCarr and Jessie LaDon Albach were like sisters.

The 15-year-old friends hung around each other's neighborhoods, chatted about boys and borrowed each other's clothes.

When both girls vanished three months apart in 1983, Lisa's mother hoped they had run away. Then Jessie's strangled body was found under debris in a vacant lot in East Tampa. Lisa's body, also strangled, turned up the following month buried under her family's former home in Southeast Seminole Heights.

Now, after more than two decades, Tampa police are investigating whether Wayne Tompkins, the man executed last week for killing Lisa, killed Jessie too.

Homicide Detective Eric Houston said today he wants to resolve the case to obtain justice for Jessie's family. He is reviewing the evidence and attempting to locate witnesses. He also intends to resubmit items for DNA testing.

"We can do more now with evidence than we could do back then," he said.

Tompkins was convicted of first-degree murder in Lisa's death and executed Feb. 11.

Detectives considered him a suspect in Jessie's death years ago because he knew the girl's mother and frequented some of the same places she did, Houston said. But police said they didn't have enough evidence to charge him.

Houston said he tried to dig into the case again a few years ago but couldn't interview Tompkins because of then-unresolved appeals regarding his death sentence.

"I would've loved to have gone up there and spoken with him before he was executed," he said.

Attempts to reach Jessie's family today were unsuccessful. Denise Yand, a sister who lives in Defuniak Springs, wrote a letter to the editor published Tuesday in The Tampa Tribune.

"Our family felt Wayne Tompkins should have been charged for her death as well as with Lisa's," Yand wrote. "I'm happy for Lisa that justice has been served, but sad my sister was swept under the rug."

Florida Supreme Court filings show Tompkins' attorneys mentioned Jessie often.

In several appeals, they accused prosecutors of withholding possibly favorable evidence regarding Lisa's slaying from police reports about Jessie's disappearance. For instance, they said Lisa's mother, Barbara DeCarr, had reported hearing in June 1983 that Lisa and Jessie might have run away to Hyde Park.

The court concluded that the reports were not favorable to Tompkins because they only made general statements about the girls' friendship.

Barbara DeCarr, who remarried and now uses the name Barbara Williams, was Tompkins' girlfriend in 1983. She was living with him when he told her Lisa had run away.

Williams said today that she wanted to believe that, especially after Jessie disappeared.

"Why wouldn't I believe it instead of thinking she [Lisa] was dead?" she said. "They were best friends, like sisters."

A transient found Jessie's body under debris in a vacant lot in the 5000 block of North 43rd Street on May 3, 1984, police said.

"When I found out she was dead, I had a breakdown, because I thought that Lisa would be with her," Williams said. "I loved Jessie too."

Michelle Hayes of Princeton, N.C., who is Lisa's sister, said she's glad police are still pursuing the matter.

"We always said a prayer for her," she said of Jessie. "We've always felt bad for her family. At least we had a conviction. They never even had that."

Hayes said she wanted to refer to Jessie when making a statement to reporters after Tompkins' execution but was too emotional.

Today, she said, "It was justice for both of them."

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800.

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