jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM -- The start of the trial has been pushed back until Monday for the man accused in last year's killing of an N.C. Central University student.
Robert Lee Adams Reaves, of Durham, was arrested in February 2008 and charged in the slaying of Latrese Matral Curtis, who lived in Raleigh. She was 21.
Reaves had dismissed his lawyers and was going to represent himself during the trial that was scheduled to get under way this week, Wake County Assistant District Attorney Howard Cummings said. But Reaves requested that his legal counselors be reappointed, and those lawyers said they needed more time to prepare for the defendant's trial that now is expected to begin next week in the Wake County Courthouse, Cummings said.
The Chapel Hill-based Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that Curtis was killed by "multiple sharp force injuries" -- having found a total of 36 stab wounds, including eight to the head, and perforations of her right carotid artery and left jugular vein. She also suffered blunt force trauma to her back and chest and had broken fingernails on her left hand.
A forensics report showed no presence of alcohol in the victim's body that was discovered off the shoulder of Interstate 540 in Wake County near U.S. 401 around 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2008. The body was found less than a half-mile from an abandoned Nissan Sentra she had reportedly been driving home from class at NCCU the previous night.
Reaves and Curtis knew each other, according to Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.
Curtis transferred to NCCU from Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh. She had attended Bennett College in Greensboro in 2004-05 before enrolling at Wake Tech, an NCCU spokeswoman said.
Reaves has worked in churches from the Bennettsville, S.C., area in the mid-1980s to New York City and Brooklyn, N.Y., through the early 2000s.
Reaves was convicted on third-degree sex charges reportedly involving a 17-year-old boy on Jan. 1, 1988. He was charged in New York with first-degree criminal sexual conduct on July 13, 2002, but was not convicted.
Reaves pleaded guilty in Durham to obtaining property by false pretenses in September 2005. He was ordered to pay $500 in restitution, given 12 months of probation and ordered to perform community service.
