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I wonder if the police have thought about the possible connection between these two murders and the murder of the lady who had down's syndrome? Sounds like it could have been the same guy.
Every Wednesday, a crowd gathers on the front lawn of Eddie and Patsy Skinner's home, where they're given a meal, Bible tract and change of clothes.
Shalamar Byrd was a regular at the Neighborhood Outreach of Sims Avenue, the name the Skinners use for the ministry they started to serve their neighborhood's poor and homeless. She stopped coming about a month ago, not long before her badly burned body was found in the woods outside Aiken in August.
On Wednesday, the Skinners held a memorial for Byrd. A meal was served in her memory, and a pastor came to pray.
"She was special to a lot of people here," said the Rev. Greg Bentley, of Southside Baptist Church. "We're trying to give them some hope and encouragement."
Byrd, Patsy Skinner said, stayed at the Augusta Lodge on Gordon Highway. Most of the 50 to 100 people who come each week walk from nearby hotels.
Skinner said there's been plenty of speculation surrounding Byrd's Aug. 11 death, but no one seems to know what happened.
Byrd, 38, was discovered by firefighters extinguishing a brush fire off Storm Branch Road. Earlier that night, firefighters found another woman, Yana Schenker, 75, dead in her home on Paddock Bend. Her body also had been burned.
The two women with no known connection were both asphyxiated. The Aiken County Sheriff's Office believes the deaths are related.
At the memorial Wednesday, a friend signed Byrd's guest book with a prayer that they would find out what happened. Skinner says they'll give the book to her mother, who lives in Augusta.
Most Wednesdays, Byrd would come late, even though that meant the clothes and food had been picked over. That way, she'd miss the crowds and prayers, Skinner said.
"She didn't want to be preached at. You get a lot of that out here. There are other ways to reach people," she said. "The way to the heart is the stomach."
The Skinners serve meals from their front porch. They distribute clothes from the garage that sits between their house and business, Eddie's Auto Repair on Old Savannah Road.
They close the shop for a few hours on Wednesday to run the ministry. A couple of guys from other car shops in the area volunteer their time, handing out Styrofoam boxes of mac and cheese, beans and meatloaf.
This week, they hung a banner from the porch. It read: "Shalamar N. Byrd, our friend and neighbor, gone, but not forgotten."
Volunteers at the ministry remember her as shy and pretty. A friend invited her to the ministry once and Byrd came ever since, said Judy Winter, a volunteer from Hephzibah.
"She had friends at the motel. They were people who just kind of became family in hard times," Winter said. "She had been though a lot, but she was a happy person, always smiling."
She stood out that way, Skinner said.
"Some of them here, they come and you don't know how they're putting one foot in front of the other," she said.
The ministry draws a number of people in need, often as a result of drug habits, mental disorders, alcoholism or prostitution, Skinner said.
"Shalamar might have had trouble with the law, but murder wasn't her game," Skinner said. Byrd, who was convicted once of theft, and a year later of robbery, was incarcerated from 2006 to 2008. "No matter her lifestyle, she was someone's daughter. She was someone's sister. She was our neighbor. We knew she didn't always make good decisions. We loved her anyway."
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