For two Warrenville families, Thanksgiving Day of 2010 became what many would consider a nightmare when they learned early in the morning that two of family members would not be joining them for the holiday meal. Two sets of parents were informed their daughters had been found dead in Augusta.
The execution style killing of Nancy Cushman, 17, and Angela Brooks, 19, remains a mystery.
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In the early morning hours of Nov. 25, a woman, identified as Betty Chisholm, was walking along a path near the intersection of Laney Walker Boulevard and Twiggs Street where she saw what she thought might be a body.
The area is semi-wooded and with overgrown shrubbery and littered with trash. Chisholm told police that she could not tell in the darkness whether what she saw were human remains, so she went to the M and M Scott apartment complex where her cousin lived and took him back to the scene.
Upon returning to the scene, Chisholm and her cousin, discovered not one body but two. Both bodies lying face down. Chisholm immediately called 911. Authorities arrived on the scene at 3:20 a.m. and pronounced the two women dead, according to the coroner’s report.
When officers arrived, they were able to identify the bodies as those of Cushman and Brooks. Both women were lying face down with their hands over their heads, according to the coroner’s report. Both had been shot multiple times in the hands and head at near point-blank range.
The coroner noted in his report that Brooks was shoeless, wearing only ankle socks.
Police scoured the area, and about a mile away, an observant officer spotted a brown Cadillac Escalade with an expired tag parked near the intersection of Telfair Street and Second Street. According to the police report, the officer ran the tag number and discovered that the vehicle belonged to Cushman.
Inside the vehicle, police recovered Brooks’ shoes. Because the bodies were located over a mile away from the vehicle, it is highly unlikely that the two women walked to the site where they were slain, but rather were taken there in another vehicle. Had the pair parked and then went on foot, they would have had to meander all over downtown or crossed Gordon Highway on foot.
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When police contacted Cushman’s mother, Maxine Miller, she told them that she had seen her daughter the night before when Cushman came “to her residence and asked to borrow $20,” according to the report.
Miller told police that Brooks was with Cushman when she came over and asked to borrow the money.
Shortly after the murder, police found a lead that prompted them to release the name of Travis Lorenzo Barrian as a person of interest, according to media reports at the time.
Barrian had a long rap sheet going back to 2003 with multiple arrests that included assaults and weapons charges. However, it appears that after he was upgraded from a person of interest to a actual suspect, sources say, Barrian fled Augusta and went underground, where he got involved in a 2013 murder-for-hire in Statesboro.
That murder-for- hire victim was well-known Statesboro pastor Michael Riley who had been arrested for domestic violence along with his wife. His wife, Antoinette Riley, apparently had had enough of their tormented marriage and sought to hire a hitman.
According to the Statesboro Herald, that hitman was Barrian.
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After the Riley’s murder, his wife’s plan to “have him taken care of” unraveled. She pleaded guilty to her role in the crime and was prepared testify against Barrian; however, she never got the chance to do so. Barrian committed suicide by cop shortly after he killed Riley’s husband.
Barrian went to the local probation office in Statesboro armed with a gun. When he was told a warrant was out for his arrest, he pulled the weapon and shot a probation officer in the stomach. Another officer shot Barrian, killing him.
The officer who was shot, Sherill Warren, survived.
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Over a decade later, no further information has emerged in the case of Cushman and Brooks, and police are still puzzled at what happened to place the two teens in such grave danger how they ended up dead in a field some 45 miles away from their homes.
If you have any information on this case, please contact the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office at (706) 821-1020 or contact The Augusta Press at (706) 834-8677.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Reporter of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com. Anna Porzio is a researcher and editorial assistant. Reach her at anna@theaugustapress.com.
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