Sad answers to Tamika's disappearance

Josh Mankiewicz Correspondent • Profile

She was here for just a moment... and then, at only 24, Tamika Huston was gone. She simply vanished.

Left behind are both her family’s anguish and the words of the man who admits killing her.

This collision of two lives came to a terrible end in late May of 2004. Tamika had quit her waitressing job and was looking for something better.

She loved to sing, and even tried out for the TV show “American Idol,” and though that didn’t work out, Tamika had decided to set her sights beyond the life she was living in Spartanburg, South Carolina. But she lived alone and it was several days before anyone realized they hadn’t heard from Tamika in awhile.

Rebkah Howard, Tamika's aunt: She wouldn’t just disappear.  She knows without question that our entire family would be just, you know, devastated at not being able to find her.  And I don’t think that she would ever put us through that.

Rebkah Howard sounded the alarm that sent police to Tamika’s home, where they found her dog, her cell phone, some uncashed paychecks, but no Tamika.

Howard: It was basically a year-long search for her. Very little clues— it was just heartbreaking.

But while other missing women were featured prominently on national newscasts, Tamika’s story was not. That was despite the best efforts of her aunt Rebkah Howard, a Miami-based public relations executive. And so Tamika’s case came to be a kind of emblem of what was missing from the national news media, and it sparked a discussion of the role race plays in deciding which news stories to cover, and which to ignore.

When we first brought you the story of Tamika Huston, we told you police had a suspect in her disappearance. But at the time, investigators had no body and no proof that a crime had been committed, and so police asked us not to reveal the identity of the suspect, and we agreed. Now, that investigation is nearing an end, and tonight, we can name the person charged in the murder of Tamika Huston.

His name is Christopher Hampton, a young man who’d been in and out of jail, he apparently began seeing Tamika just a short time before she disappeared. That is why her family members didn’t know his name, and couldn’t point investigators in his direction.

Spartanburg police lieutenant Steve Lamb had heard from Tamika’s friend that she had recently started seeing a guy named Chris. But detectives had no last name.

Spartan Police Lieutenant Steve Lamb: They had only been dating a short period of time, less than a month. In this case, we were fortunate, in the next case, we may not be.  But if there is a lead, or a possibility, we try to follow it, and try to find the truth.

An answer to the question of what happened to Tamika would take investigators down a twisting path. A few days after their investigation began, they found her car and in it, a key that didn’t fit either the car or Tamika’s home. Through a local locksmith, Spartanburg police traced it to an apartment complex, and eventually to the lock on the door of an apartment that, at the time Tamika vanished, had been rented by Christopher Hampton.

Now, add to good police work a piece of good luck: Lt. Lamb went looking for Hampton and found him in the federal lock-up on a parole violation.

Lamb: Christopher Hampton was already in jail, and was going to be in jail until around August.  Instead of rushing in this case and going in, signing warrants on him for murder, we had time to prepare, time to build, and time to make a strong case against him.

Inside Hampton’s former apartment, on the carpet, was a bloodstain. Tests matched it to Tamika’s DNA.

County prosecutor Trey Gowdy: [A case] Being solved and being prosecutable are two different things. 

What became significant after the blood evidence was found was the laughably inconsistent stories that the defendant told as to how that stain got there.

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