Eight days into last year, Gambrills teen-ager Joseph Aaron Demarest, missing since Sept. 3, 1996, became the year's first homicide victim in Anne Arundel County.
Three weeks ago, Mary Ella Ginger became the year's final homicide victim.
Between the discovery of Demarest's remains and Ginger's fatal stabbing at a local Subway restaurant, Anne Arundel County and Annapolis police worked 22 other homicides - the largest caseload in at least a decade - and solved 14 of them. Five of the cases were investigated by Annapolis police; 19 were handled by county police.
FOR THE RECORD - A box in Sunday's Anne Arundel edition inadvertently omitted the name of one of the county's 24 homicide victims last year. It was Crofton resident Aaron Kirk Howard, 33, who was fatally shot April 20 outside Annapolis. Ervin Demontray Montague, 17, was arrested in Arkansas and charged with first-degree murder in Howard's death. He is scheduled for trial March 22.
Also, the box failed to include the date on which Zewan Montez Henriques, 25, was killed in Annapolis. It was Oct. 31.
The Sun regrets the errors.
Last year's numbers are strikingly different from those of 2002, when police closed all but one of the county's 15 homicides by the end of that year.
But Lt. Joseph Jordan, a spokesman for the county Police Department, said Anne Arundel remains one of the safest places to live in the Baltimore-Washington region.
Despite the increase in homicides, violent crime in the county dropped more than 3 percent in the first nine months of last year compared with the same period of 2002.
In Annapolis, violent crime was down more than 8 percent in the first nine months of last year compared with the same period of 2002.
Annual statistics won't be available for several months, police said.
Capt. Gregory W. Imhof, adjutant for Chief Joseph S. Johnson, said Annapolis stacks up well when compared with other major cities in the area, such as Baltimore.
"This really is a safe place to live," he said.
Still, Jordan said, the county's seven homicide investigators were loathe to start the New Year with seven unsolved cases. Annapolis begins the year with three open cases.
"It's not good to take cases into the following year, because we'll of course be getting new cases as well," he said. "It just increases the workload."
Seven of the county's homicides, including the only case with multiple victims, have been attributed to domestic disputes.
On April 23, Diana Kunes Durrett, 40, and her parents, Mary Louise Kunes, 58, and Nathan Wilson Kunes, 61, were shot to death in Durrett's Pasadena townhouse. Durrett's husband, Jack Lee Durrett, 43, fled the scene and killed himself later that day in West Virginia.
The Durretts had been involved in a contentious divorce, according to court records. The day after the killings, the couple was to appear in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court for a custody hearing regarding their then-6-year-old son.
