The day she disappeared, Laura Miles had been talking to her husband on the phone when he heard her scream.
The husband then heard a fight and the call was disconnected. When he tried repeatedly to reach her again, she didn’t answer.
Miles’ husband called the police and sparked a search for the 61-year-old and, ultimately, the discovery of her body in a wooded area in Western Branch.
19-year-old Raheem Lamont Cherry is now charged with murder, robbery, kidnapping and concealing a corpse in her death. He remains detained in Chesapeake City Jail, without any commitment.
Search warrant documents recently filed with the Circuit Court shed new light on Miles’ disappearance and death. As for the detectives’ findings, Cherry had lived in an apartment several hundred feet from Miles and his fingerprints were found on her pickup truck, police wrote on court documents.
Details from the warrants were first reported by WVEC on Tuesday.
On May 17, officers were called to Miles’ apartment on the 3500 block on Clover Road to seek a possible kidnapping. Miles’ husband told police that his wife received unusual text messages from her phone after failing to answer his repeated calls, police wrote in a search warrant affidavit.
He got a text “claimed she was okay,” but Miles “only writes okay when he uses that word,” police said. Miles would always end a conversation saying she loved her husband, but that day she didn’t write that.
The officers found Miles’ vehicle parked on the opposite side of the apartment complex. Drops of blood and smears were seen on the back of the tail bed, the police wrote in an affidavit to the search warrant.
Later that day, Miles was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a wooded area on the 4600 block of Taylor Road, less than half a mile from her home.
Police searched Miles’ Ford F-150 for forensic evidence. Her keys and her cell phone were not inside, but the police found Kirsch’s fingerprints on the vehicle, a detective wrote in a sworn declaration on the search warrant.
The story goes on
The detective checked the surveillance footage, which showed a man in a plaid shirt, camouflage headdress, and black slip-on shoes hijacked by air from an apartment building a few hundred feet from Miles, about 20 minutes before her disappearance. He had a cell phone in hand and was walking around the parking lot, the detective wrote.
Two other detectives got in touch with Cherry and interviewed him on the 3300 block off Pampus Lane – near Miles’s disappearance. Cherry said he had been in this apartment with his girlfriend for a few weeks.
The police received arrest warrants to search Miles and Cherry’s homes and obtain a swab of Kirsch’s DNA.
Cherry moved to the area from Richmond in March and, according to court records, had started a new job at McDonald’s three days before his arrest.
After his arrest, a judge had to determine if Cherry qualified on bail. The judge warned Cherry that anything he said could be used against him in court.
When asked if he had anything to say about bail, Cherry advised “he was involved in the alleged crimes,” according to court documents.
Cherry is due to appear for a preliminary hearing in court on Aug. 11.
Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com