May 3, 2024
The family gathering at the Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office headquarters had the hugs, tears and the whispered, comforting words of a funeral.
But instead of a recent loss, about 10 members of the Croft family came together Thursday, Feb. 22, to seek justice for Kim Croft, who was raped, beaten and strangled in Ringgold nearly four decades ago at the age of 19. They delivered paperwork asking the Sheriff’s Office to reopen her case, a request now permitted under a year-old Georgia cold case homicide law.
“May 12, 1987,” LaVonda Deloney said, speaking in front of the Sheriff’s Office headquarters. “It’s been almost 37 years since our sister, Kim Croft, was brutally murdered and taken from her family and friends.”
Over the years, the Atlanta resident said, the family has carried the belief there would be a resolution in the case of her sister’s homicide. Deloney and her sister, Cheryl Croft, were teenagers when the homicide occurred, she said, and now they are spearheading the family’s search for a resolution.
“We say it’s time, but it’s actually past time,” Cheryl Croft said at the gathering, but a change in leadership over time in county law enforcement gives them hope. “We have a new administration, new generations. It seems like everything is off to a great start so far; we just pray that it continues.”
Since some evidence may have not been considered in the previous investigation and forensic science has advanced so far over the years, the case deserves another examination by law enforcement, Deloney said.
“We only ask for justice to finally be done,” Cheryl Croft said.
The body of Kim Croft, a former Ringgold High School cheerleader, was found beaten and strangled near the parking lot of the Country Bumpkin restaurant, according to previous reporting by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
In 1994, Croft’s uncle, Jarvis Suggs, was tried for the crime and found not guilty.
Members of Croft’s family believed authorities accused the wrong person, and Deloney said the trial was a distraction from who the family thinks is the real killer. According to previous Times Free Press reporting, that person had dated the victim, and his name was brought out in the trial.
The Croft family claimed the suspect was not fully investigated because the man is the son of a wealthy white businessman in the county. But former Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers, who retired at the end of 2012 after 22 years on the job, said all potential suspects named by the victim’s family were investigated, according to previous Times Free Press reporting.
Summers’ predecessor, former Sheriff Ronnie Bowman, previously told the paper that hair and blood samples were taken from all suspects. And Ralph Van Pelt, former district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, which includes Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties, previously told the paper all the evidence — hair, fiber and DNA — pointed to Suggs as the killer.
“Jarvis Suggs was indicted by the grand jury of Catoosa County after multiple people had had an opportunity to come before the grand jury,” Van Pelt said in a phone call this week. “We tried the case, and the jury found Jarvis Suggs not guilty, but in my opinion, all the evidence pointed toward Jarvis Suggs being the person who did it. I would not have indicted him otherwise.”
The real killer was set free, Van Pelt said he believed, so the case was closed.
Deloney said the Croft family has seen evidence that was ignored during the original investigation but wanted to trust the process and wait to reveal what they’ve found.
Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk commented by email about the family’s request to open the case.
“I understand and respect the family’s request, and we are going to do our best to give this family closure,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office didn’t have any new information about the case to share, he said, and the Croft case was the first and only request the office had received under the new cold case homicide law.
In an email, Clayton Fuller, district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial District, said his office had no comment about the petition to reopen the case.
The family’s request was made possible by the Coleman-Baker Act, a new law named after two Georgia women whose killers were never found.
Signed into law last spring, the law allows families to request cold homicide cases be reopened by Georgia law enforcement agencies.
The legislation requires law enforcement officials to review investigative procedures and forensic testing of cold homicide cases to determine if further witness interviews or analysis of physical evidence would help solve the crime.
“We’ve always wanted to do it,” Deloney said of trying to reopen the case. “Early on, we were definitely concerned about our parents — the toll it took on everyone when it happened years ago.”
Deloney said the process is new to the family as well as the Sheriff’s Office. She said the Sheriff’s Office had to create a new form to accept the family’s submission.
The community’s reaction to Kim Croft’s death was a wake-up call to her, Deloney said. Growing up, she said she never experienced much racism, crediting that to the struggles of her parents’ generation to integrate their community.
Floyd Croft, Deloney’s father, was a member of the last graduating class of Wilson School, Ringgold’s Black segregation-era school that served that community from 1949-66. He was part of the ceremony earlier this month dedicating a historical monument at its former location on the campus of Ringgold High School.
“Coming out of the Civil Rights era, our parents were the last generation who fought the heavy fight, as we say, so that we could have a better tomorrow,” Deloney said.
Though in the minority as a Black person in Catoosa County, Deloney said she never felt any different growing up in Ringgold. But when her sister was killed, Deloney said she began to feel racial division in the community.
White friends of hers began to pull away, Deloney said, and high school classmates could no longer look her in the eye as they passed in the hallway. She attributed that reaction to her classmates’ guilt over what they knew about her sister’s death.
“It changed everything,” Deloney said of her sister’s homicide.
After the homicide, the sisters decided they had to leave Catoosa County and eventually settled in Atlanta, although Deloney said they both return to Catoosa County often to see their parents.
“My position was the powers that be really didn’t value our family,” Deloney said. “It showed me that in actions, and I was not going to use our tax dollars there. Why would I pay into a system that didn’t believe in us?”
Rumors of threats reached the family as they petitioned local authorities for justice soon after Kim Croft’s death, Deloney said, and stories of segregation-era bombings aimed at Black people in the county added fuel to those fears.
When Deloney returned to high school soon after her sister’s death, anonymous notes would be passed to her in class containing leads in the case people were too afraid to say in public or to the police. Other relevant information was given to the family and passed along to local law enforcement.
“That evidence was sat on,” Deloney said she believes.
Last fall, Deloney said the Sheriff’s Office allowed members of the family to examine evidence from the investigation of Kim Croft’s death.
Deloney said she examined boxes of documentation relating to the investigation and court case, as well as Kim Croft’s clothing and jewelry related to the investigation. Some of what the sisters saw wasn’t included in the trial, Deloney said, and supported their efforts to reopen the case.
“There was evidence in the boxes, we felt, (that) could lead to other things down the road,” she said.
Jeremy Keener, Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office captain, accepted the form on behalf of the Sheriff’s Office. He said the family would receive a letter saying the office is reexamining the case, and though authorities had six months to make a decision, it would come much quicker.
Keener declined to make a comment and referred all questions to Sisk.
Deloney said the captain told her authorities would go back to the beginning of the investigation and examine the evidence and would send the family a letter describing the findings and how they, hopefully, would move forward.
“What it feels like at this moment is opportunity,” Deloney said. “We really feel hopeful and prayerful we will get a resolution this time.”
The family thanked Keener, exited the office and gathered out front where the sisters read their prepared statement.
That evening, after delivering the paperwork, Deloney said she was trying to regain her balance after the stress of that moment at the Sheriff’s Office. She said she was appreciative of how smooth the experience went and that nobody tried to do anything to stop them.
Deloney said delivering the paperwork was the first step in what she expects to be an extended process to hold Kim Croft’s killer or killers accountable.
“If we don’t get results, we’re not stopping here,” she said. “We’re not stopping this time.”
