Michael Smerconish | WHEN A MURDER DOESN'T MAKE THE CUT

August 2, 2007

YOUNG. Attractive. American. Murdered on a tropical island. Sound familiar?

You're thinking Natalee Holloway. I'm talking Jamie Cockayne. My hunch is that this may be the first you've ever heard of him.

He's a 21-year-old from New Hope who was murdered on St. John in the Virgin Islands on June 19. His parents are desperate for answers as to what claimed the life of this graduate of New Hope-Solebury High.

In June, Jamie's family rented a house in St. John while his mother, Jean, looked for a retirement home. Jamie was awaiting the documentation needed to work as a sailing instructor at an exclusive yacht club.

Jean Cockayne told me she spent a sleepless night on June 19 waiting for her son to return home. He never did. She told me she received a call in the morning from St. John police, who reported a problem with her rental car. Another sign of trouble.

Her worst fears were realized when one of the officers described himself as a homicide detective. Jean asked if her son was dead, and the officer told her yes. He'd been found stabbed to death around 12:30 a.m.

The Cockaynes' nightmare had just begun.

A lawyer representing the family told me the local police hosed off the crime scene within 90 minutes of the murder, before some investigators even arrived.

The police also threw out a hat Jamie had been wearing because they ran out of evidence bags, the lawyer said.

Meanwhile, key witnesses fear retaliation if they help convict the locals responsible. An autopsy was performed, but police have been reluctant to release the findings. The Cockaynes say they don't even know their son's cause of death.

Realizing they couldn't depend on local police to find Jamie's murderer, the Cockaynes hired a private investigator, who concluded that Jamie had been killed after an altercation with two locals at a bar near the police station. A witness description of the perpetrator matched a description of one of the locals with whom Jamie had feuded.

It was also concluded that the local police had collected the same information a month earlier, yet hadn't acted. Whoever killed Jamie got a month-long head start on the Cockaynes.

Two months later, there are still no arrests in Jamie's death.

It's an incredible story. But it's not generating headlines. A recent Google search yielded fewer than 10 hits. Clearly it lacks the appeal of the Holloway case.

I asked Jean Cockayne why. She pointed out that the Holloway matter was initially billed as a missing-person case, while Jamie was a homicide victim. But I think there's more to it.

Being young, white, blonde and female gets the attention - fast. If you have those elements, you get the call, sometimes within days, from Nancy Grace or Greta Van Susteren. (On Tuesday, Van Susteren finally did a segment and the story also appeared on CBS3 the same night.)

The 230-plus murder victims in Philadelphia this year have received similar scant attention. Katie Couric did a piece on the CBS evening news recently, but the sad reality is that Philadelphia's individual murder victims are largely one-day stories, even right here.

THINK ABOUT IT.

More than 230 people have been murdered in Philadelphia this year. How many can you name? I'll bet none. Last year, 406 were killed. Can you identify any of them? Unless you had a direct connection, you probably can't, which is sad.

I'm not rapping the media. If there was a thirst for knowledge about those who die in the city, the newspapers and TV stations would satisfy that desire.

But even though crime leads the news, the personal dimension is missing. That's because we've become desensitized. There's too much violence, too much mayhem, and we think we've heard it all before. Only the aberrant cases get the in-depth coverage. If it's a story of one black youth killing another, it's gone by the next cycle. The only consistent item is the escalating body count.

And now it's extending beyond the city limits, reaching communities such as scenic New Hope, where a young man's life is given short shrift.

I was struck by one sentence in particular from a eulogy offered at Jamie Cockayne's memorial service: "Jamie wasn't going to go through life without being noticed."

And he shouldn't die unnoticed, either. The same goes for the city's murder victims. Because when homicide detectives are involved, there's no such thing as eye candy. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.