The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • B1

CYANMAGYELBLK TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1B LOCALNEWS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 Gail column runs on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. She can be reached at 259-8085 or www.tennessean.com Homicides in poorest areas should concern all Remember back in January, when people on the west side of Nashville were raising holy you- know-what because of a series of purse snatchings? Police never caught the guy, but the crimes evaporated. probably because police saturated those neighborhoods every night and the media went nuts covering it. As well they should: Women were terrified. Their doors were being smashed, and somebody was wandering in their homes while they were sleeping.

What would have been the reaction if those had been 69 murders? What if our safest, most affluent neighborhoods were suddenly riddled with homicides? Flip it around: If a serial purse snatcher was targeting women in north Nashville, would anyone be screaming? Nashville is in the midst of a killing spree. The homicide tally in Nashville this year is the highest it has been in seven years. Through Friday, Nashville has had 69 killings. That puts us on pace to break a record we want to break. Where are they happening? In poorest communities.

The North Precinct has had 23 homicides this year, compared with six at this same point last year. The South Precinct, in the Antioch area, has had 20, compared with nine at this point last year. The West, Central, East and Hermitage precincts report homicides at the same pace as last year. Who is dying? Twenty-eight of this homicide victims were between the ages of 14 and 25. What are they killed with? Guns.

Forty-eight of the 69 victims were shot. But no outrage in power circles. No battle cry. No front-page storiesafter each homicide. No TV I-team teasers.

Why? Because most of us are immune to the poorest among us. you hear a homicide reported and a street name given and you know where in the city it is, to many people it is the equivalent of another state or another Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said. Police Chief Ronal Serpas said Nashville be when people see those numbers. The man who promised to make Nashville the safest big city in America is shifting officers around and pushing the prosecution of gun crimes. The Rev.

Enoch Fuzz, pastor of Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church, was brutal in his assessment. Nashville, he said, is no better than New Orleans was in saving the poor. just in New Orleans, all over this Fuzz said. know why folk acted like they were shocked. because they were hiding in their crystal pulpits and pews.

They got to come out with us and talk about the uncomfortable Serpas will meet next month with members of Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship to talk about the homicide problem. do have to stop Fuzz said. know where these kids are getting this from. Why do these young people decide to resolve disputes with violence and death? Why is it kill, kill, kill? Why do they have such a small value on life? We do need the white churches to get out of their pulpits and pews and onto the pavement with us, hand in Aaron said the Police Department win the battle, but we win it by community has got to partner with us. By community, I mean persons throughout the county.

Not just the clergy in north Nashville, not just the clergy in south time for people who live on the oblivious side of the tracks to raise some holy hell. Gail Kerr Opinion INSIDE Obituaries Weather EACH WEEK Monday: Classroom Wednesday: Friday: Road construction update Saturday: Faith TO REACH OUR NEWSROOM Phone: 259-8095 Fax: 259-8093 E-mail: Laurie E. Holloway, Deputy Managing Editor Phone: 726-5944 E-mail: tennessean.com Ricky Young, City Editor Phone: 259-8068 E-mail: Jury hears doomed futile pleas By LEON ALLIGOOD StaffWriter COLUMBIA The audiotape began with a frantic Freda Elliott telling a 911 operator that her ex-husband, Parker Ray Elliott, had broken into her house with violence on his mind. The call ended eight, excruciatingly long minutes later with the shout for mercy: please hurt my Followed by deafening silence. The 911 tape was the final piece of the proof in the first-degree murder trial of Parker Ray Elliott, 43, who is charged with killing his ex- wife, Freda, 42, and the daughter, Rachel, 18.

Previously in testimony, the jury heard from Seth Elliott, 16, the only survivor of the June 24, 2004, attack at the home near Culleoka. They also had seen a police-made video of the crime scene, including an image of lifeless body lying on her bed and close-up images of cartridges littering the carpet. Rachel and her mother were shot multiple times in the head. But it was the 911 tape that had a decided effect on the jury of seven men and five women. One member of the panel wiped away tears once, twice, three times.

A bailiff offered facial tissues to one alternate juror, who also cried. The remainder of the jury, brought in from Wayne County to hear the trial, listened with pained expressions. Before the introduction of the audiotape, Circuit Judge Stella Hargrove, outside of the hearing, warned the audience she would not tolerate emotional outbursts while the tape was played. With about 16 of Freda family in the courtroom, Hargrove asked spectators to seriously consider whether they wanted Residents recommend controls on lobbying Most spirited group yet addresses ethics panel By MICHAEL CASS StaffWriter LEBANON Gov. Phil ethics panel heard yesterday from a passionate group of residents who recommended everything from requiring all legislative votes to be posted on the Internet to banning lobbying altogether at the state Capitol.

The panel, which plan initially to have a public hearing in Middle Tennessee, wound up listening to the largest and most enthusiastic group in four such meetings around the state, members said. More than 50 people attended. came here with some fire about this co-chairman Michael Cody, a Memphis attorney and former Tennessee attorney general, said afterward. Bredesen appointed the panel after an event that has angered and inspired people across Tennessee: the indictments and arrests of five current and former legislators on federal bribery charges last spring. The arrests came at the end of a legislative session that had been dominated by talk about ethics in state government.

And they cranked up the intensity of continuing debates about the role of lobbyists, campaign finance disclosures, enforcement of ethics laws and openness in government. Several of the speakers at meeting at Cumberland University said the principle that government is of the people, by the people and for the people needs to be re-emphasized for public officials who seem to have lost their way. need to remind all members of the General Assembly that their seats are not their said Ron Turner, a Cumberland criminal justice professor and former Metro Council member. seats belong to the Donzell Johnson, a retired teacher in Metro schools, went so far as to say that should LARRY MCCORMACK STAFF Judge Stella Hargrove, right, watches TBI Agent Don Carman display a pistol that he testified matched with bullets used to kill Rachel and Freda Elliott. 911 tape captures struggle with father, gunshots By KEVIN WALTERS StaffWriter SPRING HILL A 120-year-old house in Spring Hill is on its way to a new home.

Like a reluctant bride facing an aisle of asphalt, the roughly 78-ton historic Pointer House yesterday began its two-day trek from where it stood for so long on Columbia Pike to where its new owner hopes it can be preserved on a new lot an estimated 3.5 miles away. There, owner Susan Brooks hopes the historic home can be protected from the commercial development that has gripped much of the rest of Spring Hill in recent years. But it preservation, as much as it was the spectacle of the whole thing, that was foremost to those who lined Spring main street yesterday as the house began its slow, inch-by-inch trek in off-road conditions, including crossing a creek and a near-miss with a streetlight. Hundreds of well-wishers ranging from Spring Hill officials and utility linemen perched in bucket trucks, to fathers and mothers clutching children and digital cameras turned out to squint under the pale morning sun as the slow clapboard parade crept by. know if my kids are more excited or if I said Gina Tate, 35, who joined other mothers from her neighborhood at Spring Hill shows up for moving day Pointer House crawls to new home SUE MCCLURE STAFF Austin Clay Richardson, 8, of Station skateboards down the center of U.S.

31 as the historic Pointer House is moved to a new location. STEVEN S. HARMAN STAFF With crews ready in cherry pickers to take down power and phone lines, the Pointer House rolls slowly southbound on U.S. 31 in Spring Hill. STEVEN S.

HARMAN STAFF As the Pointer House slowly creeps by on the road behind her, Ireland Tate, 6, draws a picture of the scene around her. Ireland and her friend Brianna Stedman, right, are home schooled, and the process of moving a house was the lesson, said mother, Gina Tate. The Pointer House Pointer House, constructed in 1885 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988, is one of the few existing examples of Italianate-style architecture in the area. Once moved from its original location, however, it will be removed from the National Register of Historic Places. Please see HOUSE, 6B Please see ETHICS, 6B Please see ELLIOTT, 5B Starter.