Jimmie E. Gates
jgates@clarionledger.com
Eighteen year-old Darion Givens argued with, choked and threatened to kill 16-year-old Jim Hill High School student Falisha Miller only hours before he allegedly killed her, according to testimony from a Jackson Police Department detective.
Givens, of Jackson, who is charged with murder in the June 13 shooting death of Miller, had his preliminary hearing Monday in Hinds County Court.
Authorities said Miller was shot in the left side of the head at close range in the bathroom of a room at the Metro Inn motel on Ellis Avenue.
Detective Shawn Sims testified that witnesses told authorities Givens and Miller, who he was dating, and others had gone to Club Elite on Ellis Avenue and came back to the Metro Inn.
Witnesses said Givens and Miller had a verbal confrontation at the club about her dancing with another male youth.
At the Metro Inn, hours before Miller was shot, she and Given apparently had a physical altercation, Sims said, citing witness statements.
"He choked her and said he would kill her about going through his phone," Sims said, citing witness statements.
There is no eyewitness to the actual shooting, Sims said.
Miller, Givens, Givens' brother Charles, Jasper Bell and Miller's sister, Shaquida Wingard, had been together that night at the club and at the Metro Inn.
Wingard told police she was sleeping and woke up after hearing the gunshot. Wingard said she saw Darron Givens coming out of the bathroom with the weapon, which apparently belonged to Bell, according to Sims.
The shooting was reported to authorities about 7 a.m. on June 13.
Before police arrived, Charles Givens, 19, took Miller to Central Mississippi Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Charles Givens hasn't been charged.
Motel owner Val Patel told The Clarion-Ledger after the shooting that the room, No. 234, was rented to Charles Givens, who often rented rooms there on the weekend.
Darion Givens' attorney, Hinds County Assistant Public Defender Alison Kelly, peppered Sims with questions about inconsistencies in witness statements.
Kelly said Bell told authorities he slept through the gunshot, but she wondered how that could be possible since a person in another room at the Metro Inn reported hearing a gunshot.
"No one says they saw Darion Givens shoot her?" Kelly asked Sims.
Sims replied, "I don't have an actual report that they saw Givens shoot the victim," Sims said.
Kelly asked Sims if a gunshot residue test was done on everyone in the room, including the victim. Sims said he didn't know if a gunshot residue test was done on the people in the room.
Kelly argued there wasn't evidence to send the case to a grand jury to decide if her client will be indicted.
County Judge William Barnett disagreed. He sent the case to a grand jury and set a $150,000 bond for Givens.
Meanwhile, Bell, 15, is charged with accessory after the fact in the slaying. Bell also is a suspect in the February robbery and shooting of Andrea Scott, a Jackson State University researcher.
Andrea Scott was shot twice in the back of the head in the parking lot of the John A. Peoples Jr. Science Building during an armed robbery. Police earlier arrested Randall Mason, 18, as one of three men who robbed her. Scott survived the shooting.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Orange County, FL: Boyfriend arrested in Orange woman's slaying
Carl Vance is charged in the February strangulation death of his girlfriend, Connie Lynn Asbury.
By Bianca Prieto, Orlando Sentinel
6:33 PM EDT, June 29, 2010
Orange County deputies arrested the boyfriend of a woman found dead earlier this year at an extended stay motel on South Orange Blossom Trail.
Carl Vance, 53, faces a first-degree murder charge in the Feb. 9 death of Connie Lynn Asbury. He is being held without bond at the Orange County Jail.
Detectives think Vance used a telephone cord to strangle Asbury, 50, inside the motel room, court records show. Asbury was strangled, according to the Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner.
Investigators responded to the motel around 7 a.m. that day after a man used Asbury's cell phone to dial 911 and report that "a women [sic] had been killed up in there," records show.
Detectives later determined it was Vance who used Asbury's cell phone to call for help.
Deputies arrested Vance last week, more than four months after Asbury's body was found inside of a room at SunStyle Suites.
Deputies responded and found the door to the bathroom had been forced open. Asbury's body was in the shower stall with clothing and food thrown on top of her. Detectives also found blood soaked clothing and towels in the room, according to court records.
During an interview with deputies, Vance said Asbury locked herself in the bathroom while doing drugs. When he barged in hours later, Vance said he found her with blood on her face.
He first told detectives that Asbury was still alive and moving when he found her, but then changed his story and said she wasn't moving, documents show.
After finding her in the shower, Vance told detectives he sat in the room and drank rum for a few hours before leaving the room to catch a bus to his sister's house, about 15 miles from the crime scene.
But detectives found Asbury's rental car parked in a shopping center about 1.5 miles his sister's house.
Asbury's death is the 15th domestic-violence-related homicide in Orange County this year.
Bianca Prieto can be reached at bprieto@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5620.
By Bianca Prieto, Orlando Sentinel
6:33 PM EDT, June 29, 2010
Orange County deputies arrested the boyfriend of a woman found dead earlier this year at an extended stay motel on South Orange Blossom Trail.
Carl Vance, 53, faces a first-degree murder charge in the Feb. 9 death of Connie Lynn Asbury. He is being held without bond at the Orange County Jail.
Detectives think Vance used a telephone cord to strangle Asbury, 50, inside the motel room, court records show. Asbury was strangled, according to the Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner.
Investigators responded to the motel around 7 a.m. that day after a man used Asbury's cell phone to dial 911 and report that "a women [sic] had been killed up in there," records show.
Detectives later determined it was Vance who used Asbury's cell phone to call for help.
Deputies arrested Vance last week, more than four months after Asbury's body was found inside of a room at SunStyle Suites.
Deputies responded and found the door to the bathroom had been forced open. Asbury's body was in the shower stall with clothing and food thrown on top of her. Detectives also found blood soaked clothing and towels in the room, according to court records.
During an interview with deputies, Vance said Asbury locked herself in the bathroom while doing drugs. When he barged in hours later, Vance said he found her with blood on her face.
He first told detectives that Asbury was still alive and moving when he found her, but then changed his story and said she wasn't moving, documents show.
After finding her in the shower, Vance told detectives he sat in the room and drank rum for a few hours before leaving the room to catch a bus to his sister's house, about 15 miles from the crime scene.
But detectives found Asbury's rental car parked in a shopping center about 1.5 miles his sister's house.
Asbury's death is the 15th domestic-violence-related homicide in Orange County this year.
Bianca Prieto can be reached at bprieto@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5620.
Douglas, AL: Marshall County authorities investigate murder/attempted suicide
Posted: Jun 29, 2010 5:11 PM EDT
Updated: Jun 29, 2010 5:18 PM EDT
Marshall County authorities investigate murder/attempted suicide
1:37
DOUGLAS, AL (WAFF) - An investigation underway into a deadly shooting in Marshall County.
Sheriff's deputies found one person dead and another wounded after responding to a domestic call on Hambrick Road in the Horton community early Tuesday morning.
"The female was deceased at this point and the male was transported to Huntsville Hospital by air ambulance and is currently under treatment there," said Marshall County Sheriff Scott Walls.
Sheriff Walls said 46-year-old Lori Wigley was killed in the incident while her husband, 57-year-old Sherwin Wigley, is in intensive care. The Sheriff said there was no intruder.
"Well, it's a domestic situation, apparently murder-attempted suicide," said Walls.
Without a history of domestic violence, why is a big question.
"I have no idea. Have no previous calls to this residence and no issues that we know of," explained Walls.
Walls said Sherwin Wigley was a retired postal worker. According to a postal service website, Lori Wigley was recently named as the postal service's district manager for Alabama.
"Actually, investigators came out of Birmingham from the U.S. Postal Service. They were on scene," said Walls.
The town's mayor said the family is pretty well known in the area.
"I would just hope that God will give them peace and comfort and help them to cope with this," said Mayor Phillips.
Although no charges have yet been filed, Sheriff walls said they will be if Wigley recovers and is released from the hospital.
Updated: Jun 29, 2010 5:18 PM EDT
Marshall County authorities investigate murder/attempted suicide
1:37
DOUGLAS, AL (WAFF) - An investigation underway into a deadly shooting in Marshall County.
Sheriff's deputies found one person dead and another wounded after responding to a domestic call on Hambrick Road in the Horton community early Tuesday morning.
"The female was deceased at this point and the male was transported to Huntsville Hospital by air ambulance and is currently under treatment there," said Marshall County Sheriff Scott Walls.
Sheriff Walls said 46-year-old Lori Wigley was killed in the incident while her husband, 57-year-old Sherwin Wigley, is in intensive care. The Sheriff said there was no intruder.
"Well, it's a domestic situation, apparently murder-attempted suicide," said Walls.
Without a history of domestic violence, why is a big question.
"I have no idea. Have no previous calls to this residence and no issues that we know of," explained Walls.
Walls said Sherwin Wigley was a retired postal worker. According to a postal service website, Lori Wigley was recently named as the postal service's district manager for Alabama.
"Actually, investigators came out of Birmingham from the U.S. Postal Service. They were on scene," said Walls.
The town's mayor said the family is pretty well known in the area.
"I would just hope that God will give them peace and comfort and help them to cope with this," said Mayor Phillips.
Although no charges have yet been filed, Sheriff walls said they will be if Wigley recovers and is released from the hospital.
Salem, MA: Florida man gets life sentence for slaying
By Associated Press | Tuesday, June 29, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
SALEM — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend’s new lover in her Massachusetts apartment has been sentenced to life in prison.
Jose Collazo of Tampa, Fla., was sentenced Monday in Salem Superior Court to the mandatory term for a first-degree murder conviction. He was convicted June 18.
Authorities say the 23-year-old Collazo shot Jose Fuentes three times in the chest in February 2009 after the defendant found the victim in bed with his former girlfriend in her Haverhill apartment. The woman, who had broken up with Collazo a week earlier, is the mother of Collazo’s two children.
His defense lawyer questioned the reliability of some witnesses during the trial.
SALEM — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend’s new lover in her Massachusetts apartment has been sentenced to life in prison.
Jose Collazo of Tampa, Fla., was sentenced Monday in Salem Superior Court to the mandatory term for a first-degree murder conviction. He was convicted June 18.
Authorities say the 23-year-old Collazo shot Jose Fuentes three times in the chest in February 2009 after the defendant found the victim in bed with his former girlfriend in her Haverhill apartment. The woman, who had broken up with Collazo a week earlier, is the mother of Collazo’s two children.
His defense lawyer questioned the reliability of some witnesses during the trial.
Anderson County, SC: Murder-Suicide Case Closed
Anderson Investigators Name Shooter
POSTED: 9:27 am EDT June 29, 2010
UPDATED: 11:53 am EDT June 29, 2010
ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. -- The case of a woman killed over the weekend while sitting at a kitchen table has been closed, Anderson County sheriff's investigators said Tuesday.
Investigators ruled the incident a murder-suicide based on evidence collected from the residence, autopsies and witness statements, a statement from the sheriff's office said.
An examination of the autopsies confirmed that Larry Michael Stovall fatally shot Kathy Valkenburg before killing himself, the report said.
Witness statements also indicated Valkenburg died as a result of a murder-suicide, the report said.
The shooting happened at 200 Sleepy Hollow Road just after midnight Sunday morning.
POSTED: 9:27 am EDT June 29, 2010
UPDATED: 11:53 am EDT June 29, 2010
ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. -- The case of a woman killed over the weekend while sitting at a kitchen table has been closed, Anderson County sheriff's investigators said Tuesday.
Investigators ruled the incident a murder-suicide based on evidence collected from the residence, autopsies and witness statements, a statement from the sheriff's office said.
An examination of the autopsies confirmed that Larry Michael Stovall fatally shot Kathy Valkenburg before killing himself, the report said.
Witness statements also indicated Valkenburg died as a result of a murder-suicide, the report said.
The shooting happened at 200 Sleepy Hollow Road just after midnight Sunday morning.
Alton, MO: Man, woman die in apparent murder-suicide in Alton
BY TERRY HILLIG > thillig@post-dispatch.com > 618-659-2075 | Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 12:37 pm |
ALTON - A man and his ex-wife were shot to death Monday night in what police believe was a murder-suicide.
Police Chief David Hayes said police were called at 8:41 p.m. to an apartment in the 1100 block of Washington Avenue to investigate a report of an argument and gunshots. Hayes said officers looked through a window and saw a woman who appeared to be dead and immediately heard another shot.
When police entered, they found the bodies of 47-year-old Matthew Eubanks, who lived at the address, and 43-year-old Jennifer Eubanks of the 2100 block of Flight Drive in Florissant. Police Chief David Hayes said the two were married for 25 years, had separated about a year ago and had been divorced for about six months.
Hayes said police believe Matthew Eubanks shot his ex-wife several times, then killed himself with the same handgun when police arrived.
ALTON - A man and his ex-wife were shot to death Monday night in what police believe was a murder-suicide.
Police Chief David Hayes said police were called at 8:41 p.m. to an apartment in the 1100 block of Washington Avenue to investigate a report of an argument and gunshots. Hayes said officers looked through a window and saw a woman who appeared to be dead and immediately heard another shot.
When police entered, they found the bodies of 47-year-old Matthew Eubanks, who lived at the address, and 43-year-old Jennifer Eubanks of the 2100 block of Flight Drive in Florissant. Police Chief David Hayes said the two were married for 25 years, had separated about a year ago and had been divorced for about six months.
Hayes said police believe Matthew Eubanks shot his ex-wife several times, then killed himself with the same handgun when police arrived.
Burlington, KY: FORMER HUSBAND DIES DAY AFTER KILLING EX-WIFE
Posted: Jun 28, 2010 9:42 AM
BURLINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A northern Kentucky man, who police say fatally shot his former wife before critically wounding himself, has died at a hospital.
The Kentucky Enquirer quoted the Boone County Sheriff's office in reporting the death on Sunday of 42-year-old Dean Pauly of Petersburg.
Investigators say Pauly shot and killed his ex-wife, 40-year-old Denise Pauly, of Burlington on Saturday and then shot himself in the head.
Sheriff's spokesman Tom Scheben said the couple was seen walking out of a woods early Saturday afternoon and Denise Pauly called out to a neighbor who was outside. Scheben said Dean Pauly then shot his former wife before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities said the Paulys had three children together
BURLINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A northern Kentucky man, who police say fatally shot his former wife before critically wounding himself, has died at a hospital.
The Kentucky Enquirer quoted the Boone County Sheriff's office in reporting the death on Sunday of 42-year-old Dean Pauly of Petersburg.
Investigators say Pauly shot and killed his ex-wife, 40-year-old Denise Pauly, of Burlington on Saturday and then shot himself in the head.
Sheriff's spokesman Tom Scheben said the couple was seen walking out of a woods early Saturday afternoon and Denise Pauly called out to a neighbor who was outside. Scheben said Dean Pauly then shot his former wife before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities said the Paulys had three children together
Morgan County, KY: MAN ACCUSED IN EX-GIRLFRIEND'S DEATH MAKES COURT APPEARANCE
Posted: Jun 28, 2010 4:52 PM
Updated: Jun 28, 2010 5:21 PM
The man accused of hunting down, kidnapping and killing his ex-girlfriend in Morgan County after escaping from jail appeared in court Monday.
Robin Mapel was flanked by two state troopers and was in handcuffs and shackles when he appeared in Morgan County circuit court for a hearing on his murder and kidnapping charges. Police say Mapel escaped from the Montgomery County jail while working as a trustee and went to Melissa Patrick's Morgan County home, where he allegedly kidnapped and shot her.
An August 23 hearing was set for Mapel. The prosecutor says he may seek the death penalty in the case.
Updated: Jun 28, 2010 5:21 PM
The man accused of hunting down, kidnapping and killing his ex-girlfriend in Morgan County after escaping from jail appeared in court Monday.
Robin Mapel was flanked by two state troopers and was in handcuffs and shackles when he appeared in Morgan County circuit court for a hearing on his murder and kidnapping charges. Police say Mapel escaped from the Montgomery County jail while working as a trustee and went to Melissa Patrick's Morgan County home, where he allegedly kidnapped and shot her.
An August 23 hearing was set for Mapel. The prosecutor says he may seek the death penalty in the case.
Broomfield, CO: Boulder man suspected of killing stepfather, shooting into estranged wife's apartment
By Howard Pankratz
The Denver Post
POSTED: 06/29/2010 03:07:56 PM MDT
UPDATED: 06/29/2010 04:13:10 PM MDT
A 53-year-old Boulder man is in custody, suspected of killing his stepfather in a Broomfield apartment complex and then going to another apartment and firing through the front door of his estranged wife's residence.
The suspect, Thomas Ansley Holloway, was apprehended later in Boulder by Boulder police who were looking for him on an unrelated matter, said Broomfield Police Sgt. Scott Swenson.
Swenson said Broomfield police became aware of the situation when they were called to the Summit Apartment Complex in the 200 block of Summit Boulevard shortly after 8 a.m. today on reports of shots fired.
Swenson said that Holloway apparently had attempted to contact his estranged wife and when he failed to make contact he used a shotgun to fire twice through her apartment front door. Neither of the occupants inside the apartment was seriously injured, said Swenson.
Broomfield police are not releasing the identities of the two people inside the apartment.
After the shots were fired, Holloway fled the area.
After learning that Holloway's stepfather lived in the same apartment complex, officers checking on him and found him dead inside his apartment. He died from what appeared to be a gunshot wound, said Swenson.
According to Boulder Deputy Chief of Police Greg Testa, Holloway drove back to Boulder, went to his adult daughter's residence in the 900 block of 14th Street, broke in and assaulted his daughter's roommate.
The roommate was struck on the head and cut with a bottle. As Holloway fled, his daughter was arriving back at her residence, said Testa.
After speaking with the people at the 14th Street address, the Boulder SWAT team responded to an 11-floor apartment complex in the 800 block of Folsom Street where Holloway lives.
There, said Testa, a perimeter was set up. SWAT members eventually knocked on the door of Holloway's 9th floor apartment. Holloway answered and was taken into custody without incident, said the deputy chief. By that time, Boulder was aware that Broomfield was looking for Holloway in connection with the homicide, he added.
Holloway is currently being held in Boulder County Jail. He is being held for investigation of first-degree burglary and second-degree assault in connection with the Boulder incident. He is also being held for investigation of the incident in Broomfield, including the fatal shooting.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
The Denver Post
POSTED: 06/29/2010 03:07:56 PM MDT
UPDATED: 06/29/2010 04:13:10 PM MDT
A 53-year-old Boulder man is in custody, suspected of killing his stepfather in a Broomfield apartment complex and then going to another apartment and firing through the front door of his estranged wife's residence.
The suspect, Thomas Ansley Holloway, was apprehended later in Boulder by Boulder police who were looking for him on an unrelated matter, said Broomfield Police Sgt. Scott Swenson.
Swenson said Broomfield police became aware of the situation when they were called to the Summit Apartment Complex in the 200 block of Summit Boulevard shortly after 8 a.m. today on reports of shots fired.
Swenson said that Holloway apparently had attempted to contact his estranged wife and when he failed to make contact he used a shotgun to fire twice through her apartment front door. Neither of the occupants inside the apartment was seriously injured, said Swenson.
Broomfield police are not releasing the identities of the two people inside the apartment.
After the shots were fired, Holloway fled the area.
After learning that Holloway's stepfather lived in the same apartment complex, officers checking on him and found him dead inside his apartment. He died from what appeared to be a gunshot wound, said Swenson.
According to Boulder Deputy Chief of Police Greg Testa, Holloway drove back to Boulder, went to his adult daughter's residence in the 900 block of 14th Street, broke in and assaulted his daughter's roommate.
The roommate was struck on the head and cut with a bottle. As Holloway fled, his daughter was arriving back at her residence, said Testa.
After speaking with the people at the 14th Street address, the Boulder SWAT team responded to an 11-floor apartment complex in the 800 block of Folsom Street where Holloway lives.
There, said Testa, a perimeter was set up. SWAT members eventually knocked on the door of Holloway's 9th floor apartment. Holloway answered and was taken into custody without incident, said the deputy chief. By that time, Boulder was aware that Broomfield was looking for Holloway in connection with the homicide, he added.
Holloway is currently being held in Boulder County Jail. He is being held for investigation of first-degree burglary and second-degree assault in connection with the Boulder incident. He is also being held for investigation of the incident in Broomfield, including the fatal shooting.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
Glen Arm, MD: Woman accused of killing husband testifies
Former teacher calmly describes Glen Arm man's murder, says she was 'in a fog'
Nick Madigan, The Baltimore Sun
7:00 PM EDT, June 29, 2010
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Calmly, and in a clear if subdued voice, a 60-year-old murder defendant told a jury Tuesday that she could not fathom how her .38-caliber revolver ended up in her grasp on the morning her husband was killed, and said she "never heard the gun."
"I saw myself like I was in a movie," Mary C. Koontz said to the Baltimore County Circuit Court jury that has been hearing the case against her since last Wednesday. She acknowledged buying and learning to use the gun, and checking it in with her luggage on flights to Baltimore from her condominium in Florida, where she was living after her marriage had dissolved.
On June 19, 2009, having returned to Maryland and made her way into the bedroom in Glen Arm she once shared with her husband of 20 years, Ronald G. Koontz, she recalled the scene as though she had been removed from it — "from the perspective of the ceiling."
"The next thing I remember is seeing the gun in my hand, and shaking it, like: 'What is this gun doing here?' " she testified. "I was in a fog."
Koontz spent about two hours on the witness stand, the first time she had spoken publicly about the events of that day, when, prosecutors say, she shot her estranged husband four times. Koontz also is accused of firing toward her daughter Kelsey, now 17, but the girl was uninjured.
The defendant's appearance as a witness, rare in a murder trial, was part of a defense strategy to persuade jurors that her actions were due to a disturbed mind and that she is not responsible for the crimes. She answered questions slowly and precisely, recalling intricate details of her life all the way back to her childhood, but her memory grew vague when asked to describe the morning of the shootings.
On cross-examination, she told prosecutor Robin C. Coffin that her real intent was to kill herself, but could not explain how her husband died. She said she barely recalled leaving her Towson hotel some time after 5 a.m. and driving the six miles or so to her former home. But she admitted that she must have packed her gun for the trip, since she always had it loaded by her side as she slept.
"Everything was really unclear," she said. "I just remember ending up at the stream behind our house."
The stream, she went on, held special significance because she and her husband had sometimes prayed there after building the four-bedroom house on Manor Springs Court in 1990. She considered the water to have healing properties.
On the morning of the killing, Koontz said, she "prayed a little bit" at the stream. She did not recall leaving her rental car there or her gun case on the front passenger seat, where police later found it. Nor did she recall carrying the weapon as she walked to the house, but she remembered letting herself in with a key she had kept since leaving 19 months earlier.
Koontz did not attach special significance to the fact that her shoes were found by the front door, a detail that prosecutors took to mean she intended to sneak inside without being heard. "I always took my shoes off before I stepped on the white carpet," she told the jury. Then, she went on, "I think I went upstairs and walked into our bedroom and I saw Ron standing at the bottom of the bed."
At that point, under gentle questioning from defense attorney Richard M. Karceski, she described seeing herself as a movie character, someone whose actions she was merely observing. Koontz said nothing about firing the gun at either her husband or daughter. But under cross-examination she did not dispute Kelsey's testimony last week that her mother had crouched into a two-handed firing stance before pulling the trigger.
Koontz recalled going into her daughter's room, but it looked very distorted, she said.
After leaving the room and closing the door behind her — the girl testified earlier that she immediately locked it and called police — Koontz went into her daughter's bathroom, where, she said, she "lost consciousness" and came around to find herself lying on the floor with her husband on top of her.
"He said, 'I've always loved you,' " the defendant recalled. "I said, 'I've always loved you.' The next thing, he's banging my head on the door frame. I don't understand — he just said he loved me."
Koontz then described struggling for the gun, and her desire to use it to kill herself. She said she and her husband "slid down the steps together, side by side," grappling for the weapon on the grass outside the house.
Police officers ran up to the couple and disarmed her. The officers testified last week that both Mary and Ron Koontz were covered in blood. She was arrested, and he was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mary Koontz was initially taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center, where she was questioned by detectives, and eventually to Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital, a maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility, where she spent six weeks.
Born in Clarksburg, W.Va., in 1949, Mary C. Minehart was one of three siblings, she told the jury. While she described herself in childhood as "daddy's little girl," she had a "strained relationship" with her late mother, a judge.
When she was almost 11, Koontz said, she was molested by a cousin, and on an earlier occasion was dragged behind a bicycle by a group of boys. Both incidents have inspired nightmares throughout her life, she said.
An English teacher at Sparrows Point High School, she met Ron Koontz, a Baltimore County schools supervisor who was to become her second husband, in 1988, when she applied to him for a transfer to another school. They had several things in common, she said, chiefly a dedication to a charismatic Christian faith. They married in December the following year, after her divorce from her first husband, with whom she had two sons.
The first few years of the Koontzes' marriage — Kelsey was born in December 1992 — were "wonderful," the defendant said, with "no big problems." But her growing physical and emotional ailments began to take their toll, and the marriage began to deteriorate.
"It was a lot to put up with," she said, "for myself and for Ron."
Nick Madigan, The Baltimore Sun
7:00 PM EDT, June 29, 2010
advertisement
Calmly, and in a clear if subdued voice, a 60-year-old murder defendant told a jury Tuesday that she could not fathom how her .38-caliber revolver ended up in her grasp on the morning her husband was killed, and said she "never heard the gun."
"I saw myself like I was in a movie," Mary C. Koontz said to the Baltimore County Circuit Court jury that has been hearing the case against her since last Wednesday. She acknowledged buying and learning to use the gun, and checking it in with her luggage on flights to Baltimore from her condominium in Florida, where she was living after her marriage had dissolved.
On June 19, 2009, having returned to Maryland and made her way into the bedroom in Glen Arm she once shared with her husband of 20 years, Ronald G. Koontz, she recalled the scene as though she had been removed from it — "from the perspective of the ceiling."
"The next thing I remember is seeing the gun in my hand, and shaking it, like: 'What is this gun doing here?' " she testified. "I was in a fog."
Koontz spent about two hours on the witness stand, the first time she had spoken publicly about the events of that day, when, prosecutors say, she shot her estranged husband four times. Koontz also is accused of firing toward her daughter Kelsey, now 17, but the girl was uninjured.
The defendant's appearance as a witness, rare in a murder trial, was part of a defense strategy to persuade jurors that her actions were due to a disturbed mind and that she is not responsible for the crimes. She answered questions slowly and precisely, recalling intricate details of her life all the way back to her childhood, but her memory grew vague when asked to describe the morning of the shootings.
On cross-examination, she told prosecutor Robin C. Coffin that her real intent was to kill herself, but could not explain how her husband died. She said she barely recalled leaving her Towson hotel some time after 5 a.m. and driving the six miles or so to her former home. But she admitted that she must have packed her gun for the trip, since she always had it loaded by her side as she slept.
"Everything was really unclear," she said. "I just remember ending up at the stream behind our house."
The stream, she went on, held special significance because she and her husband had sometimes prayed there after building the four-bedroom house on Manor Springs Court in 1990. She considered the water to have healing properties.
On the morning of the killing, Koontz said, she "prayed a little bit" at the stream. She did not recall leaving her rental car there or her gun case on the front passenger seat, where police later found it. Nor did she recall carrying the weapon as she walked to the house, but she remembered letting herself in with a key she had kept since leaving 19 months earlier.
Koontz did not attach special significance to the fact that her shoes were found by the front door, a detail that prosecutors took to mean she intended to sneak inside without being heard. "I always took my shoes off before I stepped on the white carpet," she told the jury. Then, she went on, "I think I went upstairs and walked into our bedroom and I saw Ron standing at the bottom of the bed."
At that point, under gentle questioning from defense attorney Richard M. Karceski, she described seeing herself as a movie character, someone whose actions she was merely observing. Koontz said nothing about firing the gun at either her husband or daughter. But under cross-examination she did not dispute Kelsey's testimony last week that her mother had crouched into a two-handed firing stance before pulling the trigger.
Koontz recalled going into her daughter's room, but it looked very distorted, she said.
After leaving the room and closing the door behind her — the girl testified earlier that she immediately locked it and called police — Koontz went into her daughter's bathroom, where, she said, she "lost consciousness" and came around to find herself lying on the floor with her husband on top of her.
"He said, 'I've always loved you,' " the defendant recalled. "I said, 'I've always loved you.' The next thing, he's banging my head on the door frame. I don't understand — he just said he loved me."
Koontz then described struggling for the gun, and her desire to use it to kill herself. She said she and her husband "slid down the steps together, side by side," grappling for the weapon on the grass outside the house.
Police officers ran up to the couple and disarmed her. The officers testified last week that both Mary and Ron Koontz were covered in blood. She was arrested, and he was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mary Koontz was initially taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center, where she was questioned by detectives, and eventually to Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital, a maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility, where she spent six weeks.
Born in Clarksburg, W.Va., in 1949, Mary C. Minehart was one of three siblings, she told the jury. While she described herself in childhood as "daddy's little girl," she had a "strained relationship" with her late mother, a judge.
When she was almost 11, Koontz said, she was molested by a cousin, and on an earlier occasion was dragged behind a bicycle by a group of boys. Both incidents have inspired nightmares throughout her life, she said.
An English teacher at Sparrows Point High School, she met Ron Koontz, a Baltimore County schools supervisor who was to become her second husband, in 1988, when she applied to him for a transfer to another school. They had several things in common, she said, chiefly a dedication to a charismatic Christian faith. They married in December the following year, after her divorce from her first husband, with whom she had two sons.
The first few years of the Koontzes' marriage — Kelsey was born in December 1992 — were "wonderful," the defendant said, with "no big problems." But her growing physical and emotional ailments began to take their toll, and the marriage began to deteriorate.
"It was a lot to put up with," she said, "for myself and for Ron."
Monday, June 28, 2010
Pawtucket, RI: Man charged in death of girlfriend
By The Associated Press
Police say 30-year-old Brooke Verdoia was found dead in her home Saturday.
A 30-year-old Pawtucket man was charged Monday in the weekend killing of his girlfriend.
Armando Garcia was arraigned in Providence District Court on a murder charge and ordered held without bail.
The medical examiner said 30-year-old Brooke Verdoia died of multiple traumatic injuries. She was found dead in her Rufus Street home Saturday and her car was gone. The car was found about 12 hours later in the city.
Garcia told the court "I got scared" after the judge read a charge of failing to report Verdoia's death.
While the judge was reading the murder charge, Garcia shook his head and said "not guilty."
People in the courtroom were crying, and as Garcia was being led out of the courtroom, someone yelled out to him.
Garcia is also accused of violating probation. He served time for stealing a car and breaking and entering.
Police say 30-year-old Brooke Verdoia was found dead in her home Saturday.
A 30-year-old Pawtucket man was charged Monday in the weekend killing of his girlfriend.
Armando Garcia was arraigned in Providence District Court on a murder charge and ordered held without bail.
The medical examiner said 30-year-old Brooke Verdoia died of multiple traumatic injuries. She was found dead in her Rufus Street home Saturday and her car was gone. The car was found about 12 hours later in the city.
Garcia told the court "I got scared" after the judge read a charge of failing to report Verdoia's death.
While the judge was reading the murder charge, Garcia shook his head and said "not guilty."
People in the courtroom were crying, and as Garcia was being led out of the courtroom, someone yelled out to him.
Garcia is also accused of violating probation. He served time for stealing a car and breaking and entering.
Sioux City, IA: Sioux Cityan who killed wife dies while serving sentence
By Molly Montag and Michele Linck - Journal staff writers | Posted: Saturday, June 26, 2010
DES MOINES -- Timothy Leon Sohler, 51, a Sioux City man convicted of killing his wife nearly two years ago, died Wednesday at University Hospitals in Iowa City, an Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman said Friday.
Sohler was taken to the hospital from Anamosa State Penitentiary, where he was serving a 25-year sentence.
Spokesman Fred Scaletta said that the cause of death remains unknown and will be determined following the results of an autopsy performed on Thursday. He said the autopsy included toxicological testing, so it could take up to six weeks to receive results.
Sohler pleaded guilty to attempted murder and willful injury last year in Woodbury County District Court for the fatal stabbing of his wife, Susan Sohler. The crime took place on Dec. 22, 2008, in the kitchen of their home on Fieldcrest Drive.
Sohler allegedly prevented his 13-year-old twins from calling 911 until their mother had stopped breathing. He began serving his sentence on Dec. 3, 2009, Scaletta said.
Sohler was initially charged with first-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to lesser charges, so the case never went to trial. As part of the plea agreement, Sohler was required to serve at least 17.5 years before he was eligible for parole.
DES MOINES -- Timothy Leon Sohler, 51, a Sioux City man convicted of killing his wife nearly two years ago, died Wednesday at University Hospitals in Iowa City, an Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman said Friday.
Sohler was taken to the hospital from Anamosa State Penitentiary, where he was serving a 25-year sentence.
Spokesman Fred Scaletta said that the cause of death remains unknown and will be determined following the results of an autopsy performed on Thursday. He said the autopsy included toxicological testing, so it could take up to six weeks to receive results.
Sohler pleaded guilty to attempted murder and willful injury last year in Woodbury County District Court for the fatal stabbing of his wife, Susan Sohler. The crime took place on Dec. 22, 2008, in the kitchen of their home on Fieldcrest Drive.
Sohler allegedly prevented his 13-year-old twins from calling 911 until their mother had stopped breathing. He began serving his sentence on Dec. 3, 2009, Scaletta said.
Sohler was initially charged with first-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to lesser charges, so the case never went to trial. As part of the plea agreement, Sohler was required to serve at least 17.5 years before he was eligible for parole.
Article: Choking seen as prelude to murder
By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
More states are trying to reduce fatal domestic assaults by increasing penalties against abusers who choke their victims.
New Hampshire and Delaware in May become the latest states to pass laws making it a felony to choke someone. A similar law that passed both houses of the New York Legislature this month awaits the signature of Democratic Gov. David Paterson.
States are targeting choking incidents because when an abuser tries to strangle someone in a domestic assault, it is a leading indicator that he will escalate his attacks and eventually kill his victim, says Gael Strack, a former prosecutor and founder of the Family Justice Center Alliance, which helps abuse victims.
Strack says states also need to train officers and prosecutors to look for evidence of strangulation, which can be hard to prove without bruises on the victim.
A 2008 study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine found 43% of women who were murdered in domestic assaults and 45% who were victims of attempted murder had been choked in the past year by their male partners.
Twenty-nine states have laws that make strangulation a crime, says the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, a program of the National District Attorneys Association.
New Hampshire passed its law after Melissa Cantin Charbonneau, 29, a mother and nurse, was killed by her husband two days after he tried to strangle her.
Jonathan Charbonneau, 32, shot and killed her in October. He also shot his father-in-law and then killed himself, a report by the state attorney general found. He was out on $30 bail after being charged with a misdemeanor for throwing her down a flight of stairs and trying to strangle her.
Her father, John Cantin, who survived the shooting, says his daughter would still be alive if her killer had been in jail, charged with a felony.
"I'm doing this for my daughter," he says. "I don't believe this bill will stop the person doing the choking, but at least when it does happen and they are arrested, they are put away."
In Delaware, two state troopers who tracked domestic abuse cases found that over a four-month period, more than half of the cases in one county involving strangulation were prosecuted as misdemeanors, says Brian Selander, a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Jack Markell. The troopers pushed for the new law, which carries a penalty of up to five years.
In New York, Democratic State Sen. Eric Schneiderman introduced a strangulation bill after chairing a commitee that investigated a state senator for domestic abuse. During the hearings, he learned there was no penalty for strangulation, even though women who were choked have a higher risk of being killed by their partner.
"I'm just sorry it took us so long in New York state to do this," he says. "I think this will save a lot of lives."
More states are trying to reduce fatal domestic assaults by increasing penalties against abusers who choke their victims.
New Hampshire and Delaware in May become the latest states to pass laws making it a felony to choke someone. A similar law that passed both houses of the New York Legislature this month awaits the signature of Democratic Gov. David Paterson.
States are targeting choking incidents because when an abuser tries to strangle someone in a domestic assault, it is a leading indicator that he will escalate his attacks and eventually kill his victim, says Gael Strack, a former prosecutor and founder of the Family Justice Center Alliance, which helps abuse victims.
Strack says states also need to train officers and prosecutors to look for evidence of strangulation, which can be hard to prove without bruises on the victim.
A 2008 study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine found 43% of women who were murdered in domestic assaults and 45% who were victims of attempted murder had been choked in the past year by their male partners.
Twenty-nine states have laws that make strangulation a crime, says the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, a program of the National District Attorneys Association.
New Hampshire passed its law after Melissa Cantin Charbonneau, 29, a mother and nurse, was killed by her husband two days after he tried to strangle her.
Jonathan Charbonneau, 32, shot and killed her in October. He also shot his father-in-law and then killed himself, a report by the state attorney general found. He was out on $30 bail after being charged with a misdemeanor for throwing her down a flight of stairs and trying to strangle her.
Her father, John Cantin, who survived the shooting, says his daughter would still be alive if her killer had been in jail, charged with a felony.
"I'm doing this for my daughter," he says. "I don't believe this bill will stop the person doing the choking, but at least when it does happen and they are arrested, they are put away."
In Delaware, two state troopers who tracked domestic abuse cases found that over a four-month period, more than half of the cases in one county involving strangulation were prosecuted as misdemeanors, says Brian Selander, a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Jack Markell. The troopers pushed for the new law, which carries a penalty of up to five years.
In New York, Democratic State Sen. Eric Schneiderman introduced a strangulation bill after chairing a commitee that investigated a state senator for domestic abuse. During the hearings, he learned there was no penalty for strangulation, even though women who were choked have a higher risk of being killed by their partner.
"I'm just sorry it took us so long in New York state to do this," he says. "I think this will save a lot of lives."
Honell, NY: Police: Hornell man kills wife, then claims she died in ATV accident
Bradford faces murder charges after 7-month investigation
By Ray Finger and Jason Whong
rafinger@gannett.com
The husband of a Lindley woman who initially reported his wife's death as an ATV accident has been charged with murder and other felonies, state police in Painted Post said Friday.
Daniel Bradford Jr., 32, of Hornell Street in Hornell, also was charged with criminal contempt, aggravated criminal contempt, offering a false instrument for filing and tampering with physical evidence in the death of his wife, Jennifer S. Bradford, 28, of Gibson Road, police said in a news release.
The charges are a result of a grand jury indictment handed up Thursday in Steuben County Court and a seven-month investigation, police said. Police said Daniel Bradford staged the accident in order to cover up her slaying.
"His story is it's an ATV accident. Our story is that he killed her," Investigator Steve Crouch said. "Blunt-force trauma to the head is the cause of death."
State police initially investigated reports that Bradford was operating an ATV at an unknown location on Nov. 22, 2009, when his wife was a passenger and had been ejected from the vehicle.
She was initially treated at St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell and later transferred to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, where she died the following day.
Over the seven-month investigation, Bradford faced other charges.
On Dec. 1, police charged him with second-degree criminal contempt and second-degree criminal trespass. Those charges stemmed from his apparent violation of a restraining order.
In early March, police charged Bradford with fourth-degree witness tampering. Police said he tried to influence a witness that police were about to interview in the accident investigation.
Bradford was released on bail in the previous charges, Crouch said.
On the indictment, the criminal contempt charge alleges Bradford violated an order of protection by repeatedly following his wife, subjecting her to physical contact and intentionally or recklessly causing physical injury to her, police said.
The charge of offering a false instrument for filing alleges Bradford gave a false written statement during the investigation, police said.
The evidence tampering charge alleges he tampered with physical evidence associated with the investigation.
Crouch said the arrest was "pretty simple." Police found him driving in Hornell, pulled him over and arrested him.
Bradford was arraigned without an attorney Friday in Steuben County Court by Judge Marianne Furfure and sent to county jail without bail, Crouch said. He is scheduled to reappear in county court for arraignment with an attorney on Thursday.
Jennifer Bradford had been a nurse's aide at Founders Pavilion in Corning, according to an obituary.
By Ray Finger and Jason Whong
rafinger@gannett.com
The husband of a Lindley woman who initially reported his wife's death as an ATV accident has been charged with murder and other felonies, state police in Painted Post said Friday.
Daniel Bradford Jr., 32, of Hornell Street in Hornell, also was charged with criminal contempt, aggravated criminal contempt, offering a false instrument for filing and tampering with physical evidence in the death of his wife, Jennifer S. Bradford, 28, of Gibson Road, police said in a news release.
The charges are a result of a grand jury indictment handed up Thursday in Steuben County Court and a seven-month investigation, police said. Police said Daniel Bradford staged the accident in order to cover up her slaying.
"His story is it's an ATV accident. Our story is that he killed her," Investigator Steve Crouch said. "Blunt-force trauma to the head is the cause of death."
State police initially investigated reports that Bradford was operating an ATV at an unknown location on Nov. 22, 2009, when his wife was a passenger and had been ejected from the vehicle.
She was initially treated at St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell and later transferred to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, where she died the following day.
Over the seven-month investigation, Bradford faced other charges.
On Dec. 1, police charged him with second-degree criminal contempt and second-degree criminal trespass. Those charges stemmed from his apparent violation of a restraining order.
In early March, police charged Bradford with fourth-degree witness tampering. Police said he tried to influence a witness that police were about to interview in the accident investigation.
Bradford was released on bail in the previous charges, Crouch said.
On the indictment, the criminal contempt charge alleges Bradford violated an order of protection by repeatedly following his wife, subjecting her to physical contact and intentionally or recklessly causing physical injury to her, police said.
The charge of offering a false instrument for filing alleges Bradford gave a false written statement during the investigation, police said.
The evidence tampering charge alleges he tampered with physical evidence associated with the investigation.
Crouch said the arrest was "pretty simple." Police found him driving in Hornell, pulled him over and arrested him.
Bradford was arraigned without an attorney Friday in Steuben County Court by Judge Marianne Furfure and sent to county jail without bail, Crouch said. He is scheduled to reappear in county court for arraignment with an attorney on Thursday.
Jennifer Bradford had been a nurse's aide at Founders Pavilion in Corning, according to an obituary.
Ocala, FL: Husband calmly tells dispatcher “I shot my wife”
By Jackie Alexander
Staff writer
Published: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:04 p.m.
An Ocala man called the Marion County Sheriff's Office early Sunday to report that he had shot and killed his wife, officials said.
Robert A. Duclos, 68, was waiting for Marion County Sheriff's Office deputies at the Cherrywood Estates home, located at 6310 S.W. 100th Loop, at 7 a.m., officials said.
When deputies and paramedics arrived, they found Mariella Duclos, 67, dead from gunshot wounds.
She was found in the kitchen of the 1,254-square-foot home in the quiet age-restricted retirement community just off Southwest 60th Avenue, about three miles south of State Road 200.
Marion sheriff's spokeswoman Jenifer Lowe said Robert Duclos told detectives the shooting was not a part of an argument or dispute. The reason for the killing, Duclos told detectives, was that t was an “internal conflict and personal issues within Mr. Duclos and he felt that this was a resolution to that conflict,” Lowe said Sunday afternoon.
Robert Duclos felt that “killing his wife was the only resolution to those conflicts,” Lowe added.
Though initially it was thought a shotgun may have been used in the shooting, Lowe said the murder weapon had not been recovered and verified.
Lowe said no more details, including the 911 tape, would be released Sunday. Robert Duclos was booked into the Marion County Jail on a first-degree murder charge and is being held without bond, jail officials said Sunday afternoon.
In October 2006, Duclos had been arrested on aggravated domestic violence without a firearm charge in connection with an altercation with his wife, Lowe confirmed.
Robert Duclos later pleaded no contest to a lesser battery charge nearly a year later.
He completed domestic violence counseling and received one year of probation.
Adjudication of guilt was withheld, according to Marion County Clerk of Court's online records.
Staff writer
Published: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:04 p.m.
An Ocala man called the Marion County Sheriff's Office early Sunday to report that he had shot and killed his wife, officials said.
Robert A. Duclos, 68, was waiting for Marion County Sheriff's Office deputies at the Cherrywood Estates home, located at 6310 S.W. 100th Loop, at 7 a.m., officials said.
When deputies and paramedics arrived, they found Mariella Duclos, 67, dead from gunshot wounds.
She was found in the kitchen of the 1,254-square-foot home in the quiet age-restricted retirement community just off Southwest 60th Avenue, about three miles south of State Road 200.
Marion sheriff's spokeswoman Jenifer Lowe said Robert Duclos told detectives the shooting was not a part of an argument or dispute. The reason for the killing, Duclos told detectives, was that t was an “internal conflict and personal issues within Mr. Duclos and he felt that this was a resolution to that conflict,” Lowe said Sunday afternoon.
Robert Duclos felt that “killing his wife was the only resolution to those conflicts,” Lowe added.
Though initially it was thought a shotgun may have been used in the shooting, Lowe said the murder weapon had not been recovered and verified.
Lowe said no more details, including the 911 tape, would be released Sunday. Robert Duclos was booked into the Marion County Jail on a first-degree murder charge and is being held without bond, jail officials said Sunday afternoon.
In October 2006, Duclos had been arrested on aggravated domestic violence without a firearm charge in connection with an altercation with his wife, Lowe confirmed.
Robert Duclos later pleaded no contest to a lesser battery charge nearly a year later.
He completed domestic violence counseling and received one year of probation.
Adjudication of guilt was withheld, according to Marion County Clerk of Court's online records.
Beavercreek, OH: Police in Ohio suburb kill man they say charged with a knife during domestic violence call
By Associated Press
11:37 AM EDT, June 28, 2010
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (AP) — Police in the Dayton area say an officer shot a man to death who charged at police with a knife in his hand during a domestic violence call.
Police in suburban Beavercreek said in a statement Monday that it was first time an officer from their department has killed a suspect in the city of nearly 40,000 people. Police say they were called Sunday evening to a domestic disturbance at an apartment complex in which a woman was hurt by her husband.
Police offered condolences to the family of the man identified as 45-year-old Scott Brogli. The Montgomery County coroner's office planned an autopsy, and the unnamed officer who fired the shot was placed on administrative leave as a standard procedure.
No other details were available immediately.
11:37 AM EDT, June 28, 2010
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (AP) — Police in the Dayton area say an officer shot a man to death who charged at police with a knife in his hand during a domestic violence call.
Police in suburban Beavercreek said in a statement Monday that it was first time an officer from their department has killed a suspect in the city of nearly 40,000 people. Police say they were called Sunday evening to a domestic disturbance at an apartment complex in which a woman was hurt by her husband.
Police offered condolences to the family of the man identified as 45-year-old Scott Brogli. The Montgomery County coroner's office planned an autopsy, and the unnamed officer who fired the shot was placed on administrative leave as a standard procedure.
No other details were available immediately.
Grant County, WA: Slaying suspect was dating Grant County victim's girlfriend
The suspect in the shooting death of a Grant County man in December was secretly dating the victim's girlfriend, court documents say.
By Meghann M. Cuniff
The Spokesman-Review
GRANT COUNTY — The suspect in the shooting death of a Grant County man in December was secretly dating the victim's girlfriend, court documents allege.
David E. Nickels, 29, is in jail on $5 million bond for first-degree murder in the Dec. 29 slaying of Sage J. Munro at Munro's home in Ephrata.
The six-month investigation took detectives to six states before Nickels was arrested this week in his hometown of Helena, Mont.
That's where investigators say he met Munro's girlfriend, 21-year-old Marita Messick, more than five years ago. Nickels and Messick had a child together when Messick was 15, according to court documents filed this week in Grant County Superior Court.
Munro, 35, and Messick had been dating about seven months. Munro had a 13-year-old son and coached youth football.
When first interviewed, Messick told investigators Nickels was a jealous ex-boyfriend who harassed her and once called Munro and said they were still together.
"Messick said the harassment got to the point where she had to change her phone number because she was afraid of Nickels and thought he was crazy," investigators wrote.
But police say Messick left out a key detail during that first interview — she'd been seeing Nickels without Munro's knowledge. She later said "she was ashamed of the relationship," and didn't want to admit to it.
Court papers show Nickels was a suspect from the beginning. A team of detectives from across the Columbia Basin used cellphone records and witness interviews to track Nickels, who was described as having an extensive criminal history and was known to move frequently and drive different vehicles.
The break came June 16 when DNA found on a pair of handcuffs outside Munro's home was determined to belong to Nickels, documents say.
"Literally thousands of hours and thousand of miles in multiple states and they were able to track that (guy) down," said John Turley, Grant County undersheriff.
A Seattle attorney who spoke with detectives on Nickels' behalf in February did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Messick said she and Nickels met in Montana the week before Christmas but she left without saying goodbye to Nickels. That angered Nickels, Messick told investigators.
Along with Utah and South Dakota, detectives traveled to Colorado and interviewed Nickels' mother, who said she learned of Munro's death when Messick called "saying if her son had anything to do with the murder she would kill him."
Nickels' mother said her son was in Montana at the time of the shooting.
But cellphone records led detectives to a woman who said she met Nickels at a bar in Marbleton, Wyo., on Dec. 29 and he said "he was heading back from Washington state en route to Montana," according to court documents.
Investigators also spoke with an acquaintance of Messick's who said he'd heard Nickels "bragging about shooting a boyfriend of hers" while drinking in a Helena bar.
The man told detectives "he kind of thought Nickels was joking up until he found out Messick's boyfriend really was shot and killed."
Investigators began tracing Nickels' cellphone May 3, then traveled to Helena May 5 to obtain a warrant for Nickels' DNA sample. They obtained the sample May 10 after Nickels was arrested on suspicion of driving on a suspended license.
By Meghann M. Cuniff
The Spokesman-Review
GRANT COUNTY — The suspect in the shooting death of a Grant County man in December was secretly dating the victim's girlfriend, court documents allege.
David E. Nickels, 29, is in jail on $5 million bond for first-degree murder in the Dec. 29 slaying of Sage J. Munro at Munro's home in Ephrata.
The six-month investigation took detectives to six states before Nickels was arrested this week in his hometown of Helena, Mont.
That's where investigators say he met Munro's girlfriend, 21-year-old Marita Messick, more than five years ago. Nickels and Messick had a child together when Messick was 15, according to court documents filed this week in Grant County Superior Court.
Munro, 35, and Messick had been dating about seven months. Munro had a 13-year-old son and coached youth football.
When first interviewed, Messick told investigators Nickels was a jealous ex-boyfriend who harassed her and once called Munro and said they were still together.
"Messick said the harassment got to the point where she had to change her phone number because she was afraid of Nickels and thought he was crazy," investigators wrote.
But police say Messick left out a key detail during that first interview — she'd been seeing Nickels without Munro's knowledge. She later said "she was ashamed of the relationship," and didn't want to admit to it.
Court papers show Nickels was a suspect from the beginning. A team of detectives from across the Columbia Basin used cellphone records and witness interviews to track Nickels, who was described as having an extensive criminal history and was known to move frequently and drive different vehicles.
The break came June 16 when DNA found on a pair of handcuffs outside Munro's home was determined to belong to Nickels, documents say.
"Literally thousands of hours and thousand of miles in multiple states and they were able to track that (guy) down," said John Turley, Grant County undersheriff.
A Seattle attorney who spoke with detectives on Nickels' behalf in February did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Messick said she and Nickels met in Montana the week before Christmas but she left without saying goodbye to Nickels. That angered Nickels, Messick told investigators.
Along with Utah and South Dakota, detectives traveled to Colorado and interviewed Nickels' mother, who said she learned of Munro's death when Messick called "saying if her son had anything to do with the murder she would kill him."
Nickels' mother said her son was in Montana at the time of the shooting.
But cellphone records led detectives to a woman who said she met Nickels at a bar in Marbleton, Wyo., on Dec. 29 and he said "he was heading back from Washington state en route to Montana," according to court documents.
Investigators also spoke with an acquaintance of Messick's who said he'd heard Nickels "bragging about shooting a boyfriend of hers" while drinking in a Helena bar.
The man told detectives "he kind of thought Nickels was joking up until he found out Messick's boyfriend really was shot and killed."
Investigators began tracing Nickels' cellphone May 3, then traveled to Helena May 5 to obtain a warrant for Nickels' DNA sample. They obtained the sample May 10 after Nickels was arrested on suspicion of driving on a suspended license.
Brooks, ME: Brooks man charged with wife's murder
BY ABIGAIL CURTIS
BROOKS -- A local man was charged with murder over the weekend after his wife was found shot to death in their home Friday evening.
Deborah Littlefield, 49, was already dead when emergency crews arrived at the family's Veteran's Highway residence at 7 p.m. in response to a 911 call made by a relative, according to Sgt. Anna Love of the Maine State Police said.
Love said Saturday that following a search, police located Michael Littlefield, 48, who was reportedly speaking with a friend inside his truck at a nearby residence on the Back Brooks Road. Police also recovered a rifle they believe was used in the shooting, according to a press release sent by the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Littlefield, who Love said has been cooperative with investigators, was being held in Waldo County Jail on Sunday. He will be arraigned today or Tuesday in Belfast District Court.
"It's early stages," Love said Saturday outside the couple's home, the white evidence response team truck parked in the driveway. "We've got to get to the bottom of things."
There is no indication that drugs are involved, she said, adding that police are treating the case as a domestic violence homicide.
"They had no history that we're aware of," Love said.
Deborah Littlefield worked at the Residence in Tall Pines, a retirement home in Belfast, where she helped care for elderly residents. News of her death has been "devastating" to the community there, said Cindy McIntire, the resident services director and Littlefield's supervisor.
"She is the most wonderful person I have ever known in my entire life," McIntire said Sunday of Littlefield. "For all the residents that she cared for, and for everyone's life that she touched, she made their life better. She made it special. She was a jewel, a gem, a diamond."
Littlefield's family meant everything to her, McIntire said.
"She loved her children, she loved her grandchildren, she loved her husband very much," she said. "It's a horrible tragedy for everyone involved."
Crews from the Maine State Police criminal investigation division spent much of Friday night and Saturday working at the blue-and-white home where the slaying happened. Troopers kept the press and others away from the home, a well-kept property screened from the road with a line of trees.
A for sale sign on the road said the single-family house was listed for-sale for $199,000. Photographs on the website of real estate agency Jaret & Cohn show a spacious, immaculate home that the agency describes as "exceptionally nice."
After the couple's children moved out, they wanted to make a change, and that's why the home was for sale, McIntire said.
Outside, laundry hung on a clothesline Saturday morning and a newer-looking Wilderness RV trailer was parked in the driveway, close to a sporty-looking black car. A child's toy truck could be spotted on a stone wall. According to Love, the couple's grandchildren visited them occasionally, but police believe no one else was home when Deborah Littlefield was shot.
Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland said Sunday afternoon that there is no new information about Littlefield's death.
"Anything new will come out in the form of court documents," he said.
Outside J.P. Wentworth's General Store in Brooks, the news of yet another murder in rural Maine -- just two days after two men and a 10-year-old boy were stabbed to death in Amity -- provoked shock and worry from several people who were chatting in the parking lot.
"I don't know what the hell is happening in this state," Rob Roberts of Swanville said Saturday morning. "I've never seen so many murders. It's ridiculous."
BROOKS -- A local man was charged with murder over the weekend after his wife was found shot to death in their home Friday evening.
Deborah Littlefield, 49, was already dead when emergency crews arrived at the family's Veteran's Highway residence at 7 p.m. in response to a 911 call made by a relative, according to Sgt. Anna Love of the Maine State Police said.
Love said Saturday that following a search, police located Michael Littlefield, 48, who was reportedly speaking with a friend inside his truck at a nearby residence on the Back Brooks Road. Police also recovered a rifle they believe was used in the shooting, according to a press release sent by the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Littlefield, who Love said has been cooperative with investigators, was being held in Waldo County Jail on Sunday. He will be arraigned today or Tuesday in Belfast District Court.
"It's early stages," Love said Saturday outside the couple's home, the white evidence response team truck parked in the driveway. "We've got to get to the bottom of things."
There is no indication that drugs are involved, she said, adding that police are treating the case as a domestic violence homicide.
"They had no history that we're aware of," Love said.
Deborah Littlefield worked at the Residence in Tall Pines, a retirement home in Belfast, where she helped care for elderly residents. News of her death has been "devastating" to the community there, said Cindy McIntire, the resident services director and Littlefield's supervisor.
"She is the most wonderful person I have ever known in my entire life," McIntire said Sunday of Littlefield. "For all the residents that she cared for, and for everyone's life that she touched, she made their life better. She made it special. She was a jewel, a gem, a diamond."
Littlefield's family meant everything to her, McIntire said.
"She loved her children, she loved her grandchildren, she loved her husband very much," she said. "It's a horrible tragedy for everyone involved."
Crews from the Maine State Police criminal investigation division spent much of Friday night and Saturday working at the blue-and-white home where the slaying happened. Troopers kept the press and others away from the home, a well-kept property screened from the road with a line of trees.
A for sale sign on the road said the single-family house was listed for-sale for $199,000. Photographs on the website of real estate agency Jaret & Cohn show a spacious, immaculate home that the agency describes as "exceptionally nice."
After the couple's children moved out, they wanted to make a change, and that's why the home was for sale, McIntire said.
Outside, laundry hung on a clothesline Saturday morning and a newer-looking Wilderness RV trailer was parked in the driveway, close to a sporty-looking black car. A child's toy truck could be spotted on a stone wall. According to Love, the couple's grandchildren visited them occasionally, but police believe no one else was home when Deborah Littlefield was shot.
Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland said Sunday afternoon that there is no new information about Littlefield's death.
"Anything new will come out in the form of court documents," he said.
Outside J.P. Wentworth's General Store in Brooks, the news of yet another murder in rural Maine -- just two days after two men and a 10-year-old boy were stabbed to death in Amity -- provoked shock and worry from several people who were chatting in the parking lot.
"I don't know what the hell is happening in this state," Rob Roberts of Swanville said Saturday morning. "I've never seen so many murders. It's ridiculous."
Bristol, VA: Both victims known to him, Oadis White denies any involvement in their deaths
By CLAIRE GALOFARO | Police Beat Reporter - Bristol Herald Courier
Published: June 27, 2010
BRISTOL, Va. – First it was his co-worker’s wife, found dead in his family’s abandoned, crumbling house. Eighteen months later, this past March, his embattled ex-girlfriend turned up dead in another patch of woods, 10 miles away.
Oadis William White III – 52, tall, thin and blind in one eye – has been named a suspect in both cases. No charges have been filed against him.
In recent interviews with the Bristol Herald Courier, the registered sex offender admitted knowing both victims, but denies any involvement in their deaths.
White believes Bristol has a serial killer, but, he says, he is not it.
“Somebody’s out here doing it,” he said. “But I didn’t. If I had, then why aren’t my ex-wife dead and my other girlfriends dead?”
White’s late stepfather is the listed property owner of the forsaken house in Washington County, Va., where Meranda Faith Hayden’s body was found in October 2008. Police say White was the last person known to have seen her. White says she was just an acquaintance, his co-worker’s wife.
But White and Angela Statzer, who turned up dead from asphyxiation on a wooded hillside in Bristol, Va., dated and lived together for two years. They were in court, over a crossfire of violated protective orders, exactly one week before her body was discovered, according to court records.
The two deaths are the most recent in a string of unsolved murders in the Bristol area, the victims all young local women found dead in woods and fields spanning three jurisdictions.
In February 2007, the bones of 20-year-old Leah Feltner were discovered in the brush off Blackley Road in Bristol, Tenn. Ten months later and just 100 yards away, a man playing with his grandkids came upon the remains of 21-year-old Jill Cunningham Pope. Feltner and Pope were good friends, police said, and Hayden was linked to them through habits and associates.
Bristol Tennessee Police Lt. Debbie McCauley recently declined comment on whether White is considered a suspect in the deaths of Pope and Feltner.
He says he never knew them.
Months and years passed from the days the first three women disappeared to when their bodies were discovered, leaving them so decomposed that authorities couldn’t determine how they died.
But in March, a dog got away from its owner in a patch of woods across from Aerus Electrolux on East Valley Drive in Bristol, Va. The dog sniffed out Angela Statzer’s body just a day after she died, police estimate.
They called it lucky that she was found so quickly.
Matching DNA
Angela Statzer, 22, listened to a little red MP3 player, her prized possession, as she wandered around town for hours each day. Police searched White’s apartment June 2, specifically looking for the red music player, according to a search warrant. They did not find it, but they swabbed White’s cheeks for DNA and hauled off his journal, handwritten on loose-leaf paper, police said.
White, born and raised in Bristol, keeps a detailed chronicle of his daily comings and goings. “Left for hospital at 9:16,” he read from a recent entry. “Back at 3:20. Undercover police – looking, looking, looking.”
Police refused to comment on the journal’s contents.
White says he has evidence that would exonerate him, but that information must be kept secret until the right time.
“It’ll come out – exactly why I’ve been accused, why they’re putting the finger on me,” he says. “I have proof everything is a lie, and they’ll get it when it’s needed.”
He did not specify when that time would be. A Virginia State Police trooper and Tennessee Highway patrolman are willing to back him up in court, he says, though he declined to name them or describe their testimony.
Police say White has not presented them with any evidence. Still, no arrest has been made, no charges filed. Police refuse to provide specifics about their investigation, now nearing four months old.
Bristol Virginia Police Capt. Darrell Duty said the state forensic lab in Roanoke found DNA in Statzer’s body that matched White’s, based on information in the sex offender registry. They are still, more than three weeks later, waiting for the results of this month’s test.
“There ain’t no way they found my DNA in her,” White said, concluding that he is being set up, his DNA planted in Statzer’s body.
On June 8, White told two Herald Courier reporters that he had sex with Statzer for the last time two days after their final round of emergency protective orders – he took one against Statzer on Oct. 29 and she responded in kind the following day. But in a follow-up interview several days later, he recanted. They hadn’t “slept together” in his bed since then, he explained. But they did have sex in the alley behind his house just three or four days before Statzer’s body turned up. A security camera at the apartment complex adjacent to White’s house caught their coitus, he said. He learned this, he said, when he told Sgt. Steve Crawford about their romp in the alley, and Crawford replied that he saw them on video. White said Crawford “smiled, said ‘I know, I saw you. I saw y’all having sex.’ “
But Crawford said he never saw a video, that it doesn’t exist.
Long rap sheet
White, disabled in a car accident years ago, now spends most of his days on the front porch of his run-down apartment house – brick on its sides and painted blue gray on its front – at an intersection splitting Bristol, Va., public housing.
He sits in a plaid chair, hoisted a foot from the ground by four cinder blocks, greeting familiar passers-by. He wears flashy rings and several studs in his ears, one a golden zipper pull dangling from his left lobe. White admits a fondness for Wild Turkey and once, according to court records, told a probation officer he began his daily alcohol habit at the age of 11.
White has no teeth, a 10th-grade education and a rap sheet that dates back almost 40 years.
At age 15, in 1972, he was convicted of assault and put on probation. Two years later: larceny, making threats and being unruly. In 1976, he was fined $25 for carrying a dangerous weapon. A month later, he was fined another $249.53 for grand larceny.
The next year, White was convicted of forgery and sent to Tennessee’s Turney Center Industrial Prison for a year. Upon release, he absconded probation only to be arrested in Elmore County, Ala., for carrying a concealed weapon, court records show.
In 1981, according to news reports, White and a juvenile picked up a man on State Street, offered him a ride, then showed him a badge and pistol and claimed to be undercover officers. They stole his $80 and beat him unconscious with the butt of the gun. He was convicted of armed robbery in that case, sentenced to 14 years in prison and paroled in 1986. The next year brought a dismissed assault charge and a fine for injuring property.
In 1987, White dated a woman and lived with her son. The son had a 22-year-old girlfriend, who, White claims, he was seeing on the side. She told police a different story, outlined in court records: One night in late December, White stopped by her Pennsylvania Avenue house and asked her to get in the car; he had something to tell her about her boyfriend. He drove to a remote area near South Holston Lake, choked her and yanked her hair, threatening to kill her and her children. He pulled off her blue jeans, sneakers and her yellow underwear, then raped and sodomized her. He also “forced her to perform oral sex on him.”
She promised she wouldn’t tell and White took her home, according to newspaper accounts. She called police immediately.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated rape – for the three ways he violated her. But he composed a disclaimer, according to court records, claiming she bartered sex for drugs during their secret affair and he pleaded guilty only because, as a black man, he would never have been tried by a jury of his peers: “I would not of had a Fair Trial and I would have been hung Because she is White and I Am Black!”
He later appealed to the judge to reverse his conviction, citing a prejudicial system, newspaper coverage of the crime and an incompetent attorney who he said failed to preclude the state from using his criminal record against him. Had his lawyer told him the victim wavered in testifying against him, he wrote, he would not have pleaded guilty. But the judge dismissed him. So from 1988 to 1999, White lived at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., said Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction.
To date, White maintains he is innocent of that rape.
“There’s too many females for anybody to have to rape anybody,” he told the Herald Courier. “Prostitutes, homeless women willing to give it up just to have a place to stay.”
White said he does not know why, several times now, he’s been suspected of crimes he denies committing.
“Women scare me, and I let them know,” he says. “Every single one of them.”
Coincidence?
Several hundred feet deep in a field of poison ivy and waist-high weeds off Wyndale Road in Abingdon rots an old white farmhouse. It is invisible from the road, which police say made it a popular party spot before a body turned up inside. Frank M. Broady owns the parcel of land, according to county records. He is the second husband of White’s mother, Hattye B. Broady, who declined to comment.
Meranda Hayden was found in an upstairs bedroom in October 2008, so badly decomposed it took 10 days to identify her.
“That’s what really burns me up,” says her father, Jimmy Wampler. “Somebody leaving a human being like that to rot; ain’t nothing to them.”
Hayden disappeared on the evening of April 5, 2006, when she left her parents’ Abingdon home. Washington County Sheriff’s Capt. Jack Davidson said she and White met somewhere in Bristol, Tenn., although he declined to provide specifics. White was the last person known to be in her company.
White says that Hayden’s ex-husband accused them of having an affair. Mark Hayden, though, reached by phone at the home he shares with his new wife and children, said he never made that accusation.
“I introduced them, and that’s the last I ever heard of it,” said Hayden, who worked with White at HBA Cast Products Co., in Bristol, Va. “I didn’t know if anything else was going on. Outside of work, we never did hang out or anything.”
Meranda Hayden’s parents, Jimmy and Debbie Wampler, are raising the couple’s two boys, who are 9 and 7 years old.
“I’d rather not say much right now,” Jimmy Wampler said the day after police confirmed White’s connection to both their daughter and Statzer. “There’s just some stuff I can’t tell; it might interfere with the investigation, and I don’t want to flub up nothing.”
Wampler believes the person who killed his daughter killed the other young women, too.
“In my heart, that’s just too much coincidence,” he said. “It’s just like an alcoholic. He does it one time and, it might take him a while, but sooner or later he’ll go back and do it again.”
Protective orders
On her MySpace page, a 25-year-old woman named Mary McCready displays White’s mugshot from the Virginia Sex Offender Registry, framed in pink with roses and hearts. The mugshot is captioned, “my daughter’s dad.” Several years ago, McCready had nowhere to go and White offered his bed. He slept on the couch exactly 47 days, he recalls, before proposing that the two become lovers. White fathered his first child, at the age of 49, with then 23-year-old McCready. Their 3-year-old daughter lives with White’s mother.
At some point, McCready moved out. Then, in February 2008, McCready moved out, accused White of stalking her and filed a criminal complaint. In the complaint, she wrote that White drove by shouting profanities and calling her names.
“He said if I ever come around him he would hurt me really bad or he would hit me with a truck or hit me with his fist,” she wrote. “And I’m really scared and I don’t even go around him!”
White says, again, he was innocent. The case was dismissed in court and now McCready, sitting earlier this month on White’s porch, says she lied, that somebody put her up to it.
White admits a penchant for young, indigent, volatile women.
“They don’t have a place to go, except under my roof,” he says. “They just pop up. Sometimes, you have to take what’s presented.”
Angela Statzer happened past White’s porch about two years ago, around the time her foster father said she abruptly left their Abingdon home. At first, the foster father said, she kept in touch. Statzer grew up in foster care after a “rough, tragic” childhood, said her brother, Chad Camper. She was unemployed, quiet, mousy, he said. Everyone called her Angie.
She and White spent a few nights together, then she moved in two weeks later. She was a sweet girl who, according to White, had a violent temper when she didn’t get her way. She threw his stereo over the porch rail, punched holes in his door, beat him and gave him a black eye, he claims.
Their tour through Bristol Virginia Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court began in July 2009, when Statzer filed for an emergency protective order against White.
“I went to the bathroom and came out, as I was going through the hallway, he said ‘hurry, I got to go,’ ” she wrote. “After I didn’t hurry as fast as he wanted, he made me fall on the floor and drug me out the door by my feet and I started bleeding.”
Two weeks later, White filed for an emergency protective order against Statzer. He told police she “punched him very hard with her fist in the back and while he was going out the door, she kicked him.”
The commonwealth’s attorney declined to prosecute both cases, without objection from either victim.
Statzer’s foster father said she cut off contact with them last summer. She skipped the family’s Fourth of July party. “My wife kept telling me, there’s something wrong here,” he said.
Then on Oct. 29, White reported that Statzer punched him in the gut.
The next day, Statzer reciprocated with her own protective order against White. Three days later, police arrested Statzer and accused her of violating the order.
She skipped Thanksgiving and Christmas with her foster family.
On Jan. 17, White contacted police again. He wrote that Statzer arrived in his alley, followed him inside and he “ate a bunch of pills.” He said she watched him down four bottles of them. “I took the pills wanting to avoid her and the love I do have for her and wanted to die,” he wrote, then listed the names of three men who he’d “told why I did try to take my life and it’s because of Angela Statzer.”
Statzer was charged with curse and abuse. She was found not guilty Feb. 24. Exactly one week later, she was found dead in the woods.
White says he learned of Statzer’s death on the noon news. A day or two later, he was on a city bus going to the doctor’s office and two young girls sat in the row behind him. As the bus drove down East Valley Drive, one of the two, “a big-boned girl, maybe 13 or 14 years old,” pointed to the woods and said “that’s where Angie was killed.” That, he said, is how he learned where it happened.
But, according to Transit Manager Danny Hunt, no city bus travels along East Valley Drive. The closest goes straight up Lee Highway.
White isn’t fazed; he says he’s not worried. “The Lord will see to it that the truth comes out,” he said. “I do wrong, we all do wrong. But I’ve paid for my so-called wrongs and they’ll have to pay for putting my name in shame. They’ll get theirs from the man up above.”
cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531
Published: June 27, 2010
BRISTOL, Va. – First it was his co-worker’s wife, found dead in his family’s abandoned, crumbling house. Eighteen months later, this past March, his embattled ex-girlfriend turned up dead in another patch of woods, 10 miles away.
Oadis William White III – 52, tall, thin and blind in one eye – has been named a suspect in both cases. No charges have been filed against him.
In recent interviews with the Bristol Herald Courier, the registered sex offender admitted knowing both victims, but denies any involvement in their deaths.
White believes Bristol has a serial killer, but, he says, he is not it.
“Somebody’s out here doing it,” he said. “But I didn’t. If I had, then why aren’t my ex-wife dead and my other girlfriends dead?”
White’s late stepfather is the listed property owner of the forsaken house in Washington County, Va., where Meranda Faith Hayden’s body was found in October 2008. Police say White was the last person known to have seen her. White says she was just an acquaintance, his co-worker’s wife.
But White and Angela Statzer, who turned up dead from asphyxiation on a wooded hillside in Bristol, Va., dated and lived together for two years. They were in court, over a crossfire of violated protective orders, exactly one week before her body was discovered, according to court records.
The two deaths are the most recent in a string of unsolved murders in the Bristol area, the victims all young local women found dead in woods and fields spanning three jurisdictions.
In February 2007, the bones of 20-year-old Leah Feltner were discovered in the brush off Blackley Road in Bristol, Tenn. Ten months later and just 100 yards away, a man playing with his grandkids came upon the remains of 21-year-old Jill Cunningham Pope. Feltner and Pope were good friends, police said, and Hayden was linked to them through habits and associates.
Bristol Tennessee Police Lt. Debbie McCauley recently declined comment on whether White is considered a suspect in the deaths of Pope and Feltner.
He says he never knew them.
Months and years passed from the days the first three women disappeared to when their bodies were discovered, leaving them so decomposed that authorities couldn’t determine how they died.
But in March, a dog got away from its owner in a patch of woods across from Aerus Electrolux on East Valley Drive in Bristol, Va. The dog sniffed out Angela Statzer’s body just a day after she died, police estimate.
They called it lucky that she was found so quickly.
Matching DNA
Angela Statzer, 22, listened to a little red MP3 player, her prized possession, as she wandered around town for hours each day. Police searched White’s apartment June 2, specifically looking for the red music player, according to a search warrant. They did not find it, but they swabbed White’s cheeks for DNA and hauled off his journal, handwritten on loose-leaf paper, police said.
White, born and raised in Bristol, keeps a detailed chronicle of his daily comings and goings. “Left for hospital at 9:16,” he read from a recent entry. “Back at 3:20. Undercover police – looking, looking, looking.”
Police refused to comment on the journal’s contents.
White says he has evidence that would exonerate him, but that information must be kept secret until the right time.
“It’ll come out – exactly why I’ve been accused, why they’re putting the finger on me,” he says. “I have proof everything is a lie, and they’ll get it when it’s needed.”
He did not specify when that time would be. A Virginia State Police trooper and Tennessee Highway patrolman are willing to back him up in court, he says, though he declined to name them or describe their testimony.
Police say White has not presented them with any evidence. Still, no arrest has been made, no charges filed. Police refuse to provide specifics about their investigation, now nearing four months old.
Bristol Virginia Police Capt. Darrell Duty said the state forensic lab in Roanoke found DNA in Statzer’s body that matched White’s, based on information in the sex offender registry. They are still, more than three weeks later, waiting for the results of this month’s test.
“There ain’t no way they found my DNA in her,” White said, concluding that he is being set up, his DNA planted in Statzer’s body.
On June 8, White told two Herald Courier reporters that he had sex with Statzer for the last time two days after their final round of emergency protective orders – he took one against Statzer on Oct. 29 and she responded in kind the following day. But in a follow-up interview several days later, he recanted. They hadn’t “slept together” in his bed since then, he explained. But they did have sex in the alley behind his house just three or four days before Statzer’s body turned up. A security camera at the apartment complex adjacent to White’s house caught their coitus, he said. He learned this, he said, when he told Sgt. Steve Crawford about their romp in the alley, and Crawford replied that he saw them on video. White said Crawford “smiled, said ‘I know, I saw you. I saw y’all having sex.’ “
But Crawford said he never saw a video, that it doesn’t exist.
Long rap sheet
White, disabled in a car accident years ago, now spends most of his days on the front porch of his run-down apartment house – brick on its sides and painted blue gray on its front – at an intersection splitting Bristol, Va., public housing.
He sits in a plaid chair, hoisted a foot from the ground by four cinder blocks, greeting familiar passers-by. He wears flashy rings and several studs in his ears, one a golden zipper pull dangling from his left lobe. White admits a fondness for Wild Turkey and once, according to court records, told a probation officer he began his daily alcohol habit at the age of 11.
White has no teeth, a 10th-grade education and a rap sheet that dates back almost 40 years.
At age 15, in 1972, he was convicted of assault and put on probation. Two years later: larceny, making threats and being unruly. In 1976, he was fined $25 for carrying a dangerous weapon. A month later, he was fined another $249.53 for grand larceny.
The next year, White was convicted of forgery and sent to Tennessee’s Turney Center Industrial Prison for a year. Upon release, he absconded probation only to be arrested in Elmore County, Ala., for carrying a concealed weapon, court records show.
In 1981, according to news reports, White and a juvenile picked up a man on State Street, offered him a ride, then showed him a badge and pistol and claimed to be undercover officers. They stole his $80 and beat him unconscious with the butt of the gun. He was convicted of armed robbery in that case, sentenced to 14 years in prison and paroled in 1986. The next year brought a dismissed assault charge and a fine for injuring property.
In 1987, White dated a woman and lived with her son. The son had a 22-year-old girlfriend, who, White claims, he was seeing on the side. She told police a different story, outlined in court records: One night in late December, White stopped by her Pennsylvania Avenue house and asked her to get in the car; he had something to tell her about her boyfriend. He drove to a remote area near South Holston Lake, choked her and yanked her hair, threatening to kill her and her children. He pulled off her blue jeans, sneakers and her yellow underwear, then raped and sodomized her. He also “forced her to perform oral sex on him.”
She promised she wouldn’t tell and White took her home, according to newspaper accounts. She called police immediately.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated rape – for the three ways he violated her. But he composed a disclaimer, according to court records, claiming she bartered sex for drugs during their secret affair and he pleaded guilty only because, as a black man, he would never have been tried by a jury of his peers: “I would not of had a Fair Trial and I would have been hung Because she is White and I Am Black!”
He later appealed to the judge to reverse his conviction, citing a prejudicial system, newspaper coverage of the crime and an incompetent attorney who he said failed to preclude the state from using his criminal record against him. Had his lawyer told him the victim wavered in testifying against him, he wrote, he would not have pleaded guilty. But the judge dismissed him. So from 1988 to 1999, White lived at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., said Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction.
To date, White maintains he is innocent of that rape.
“There’s too many females for anybody to have to rape anybody,” he told the Herald Courier. “Prostitutes, homeless women willing to give it up just to have a place to stay.”
White said he does not know why, several times now, he’s been suspected of crimes he denies committing.
“Women scare me, and I let them know,” he says. “Every single one of them.”
Coincidence?
Several hundred feet deep in a field of poison ivy and waist-high weeds off Wyndale Road in Abingdon rots an old white farmhouse. It is invisible from the road, which police say made it a popular party spot before a body turned up inside. Frank M. Broady owns the parcel of land, according to county records. He is the second husband of White’s mother, Hattye B. Broady, who declined to comment.
Meranda Hayden was found in an upstairs bedroom in October 2008, so badly decomposed it took 10 days to identify her.
“That’s what really burns me up,” says her father, Jimmy Wampler. “Somebody leaving a human being like that to rot; ain’t nothing to them.”
Hayden disappeared on the evening of April 5, 2006, when she left her parents’ Abingdon home. Washington County Sheriff’s Capt. Jack Davidson said she and White met somewhere in Bristol, Tenn., although he declined to provide specifics. White was the last person known to be in her company.
White says that Hayden’s ex-husband accused them of having an affair. Mark Hayden, though, reached by phone at the home he shares with his new wife and children, said he never made that accusation.
“I introduced them, and that’s the last I ever heard of it,” said Hayden, who worked with White at HBA Cast Products Co., in Bristol, Va. “I didn’t know if anything else was going on. Outside of work, we never did hang out or anything.”
Meranda Hayden’s parents, Jimmy and Debbie Wampler, are raising the couple’s two boys, who are 9 and 7 years old.
“I’d rather not say much right now,” Jimmy Wampler said the day after police confirmed White’s connection to both their daughter and Statzer. “There’s just some stuff I can’t tell; it might interfere with the investigation, and I don’t want to flub up nothing.”
Wampler believes the person who killed his daughter killed the other young women, too.
“In my heart, that’s just too much coincidence,” he said. “It’s just like an alcoholic. He does it one time and, it might take him a while, but sooner or later he’ll go back and do it again.”
Protective orders
On her MySpace page, a 25-year-old woman named Mary McCready displays White’s mugshot from the Virginia Sex Offender Registry, framed in pink with roses and hearts. The mugshot is captioned, “my daughter’s dad.” Several years ago, McCready had nowhere to go and White offered his bed. He slept on the couch exactly 47 days, he recalls, before proposing that the two become lovers. White fathered his first child, at the age of 49, with then 23-year-old McCready. Their 3-year-old daughter lives with White’s mother.
At some point, McCready moved out. Then, in February 2008, McCready moved out, accused White of stalking her and filed a criminal complaint. In the complaint, she wrote that White drove by shouting profanities and calling her names.
“He said if I ever come around him he would hurt me really bad or he would hit me with a truck or hit me with his fist,” she wrote. “And I’m really scared and I don’t even go around him!”
White says, again, he was innocent. The case was dismissed in court and now McCready, sitting earlier this month on White’s porch, says she lied, that somebody put her up to it.
White admits a penchant for young, indigent, volatile women.
“They don’t have a place to go, except under my roof,” he says. “They just pop up. Sometimes, you have to take what’s presented.”
Angela Statzer happened past White’s porch about two years ago, around the time her foster father said she abruptly left their Abingdon home. At first, the foster father said, she kept in touch. Statzer grew up in foster care after a “rough, tragic” childhood, said her brother, Chad Camper. She was unemployed, quiet, mousy, he said. Everyone called her Angie.
She and White spent a few nights together, then she moved in two weeks later. She was a sweet girl who, according to White, had a violent temper when she didn’t get her way. She threw his stereo over the porch rail, punched holes in his door, beat him and gave him a black eye, he claims.
Their tour through Bristol Virginia Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court began in July 2009, when Statzer filed for an emergency protective order against White.
“I went to the bathroom and came out, as I was going through the hallway, he said ‘hurry, I got to go,’ ” she wrote. “After I didn’t hurry as fast as he wanted, he made me fall on the floor and drug me out the door by my feet and I started bleeding.”
Two weeks later, White filed for an emergency protective order against Statzer. He told police she “punched him very hard with her fist in the back and while he was going out the door, she kicked him.”
The commonwealth’s attorney declined to prosecute both cases, without objection from either victim.
Statzer’s foster father said she cut off contact with them last summer. She skipped the family’s Fourth of July party. “My wife kept telling me, there’s something wrong here,” he said.
Then on Oct. 29, White reported that Statzer punched him in the gut.
The next day, Statzer reciprocated with her own protective order against White. Three days later, police arrested Statzer and accused her of violating the order.
She skipped Thanksgiving and Christmas with her foster family.
On Jan. 17, White contacted police again. He wrote that Statzer arrived in his alley, followed him inside and he “ate a bunch of pills.” He said she watched him down four bottles of them. “I took the pills wanting to avoid her and the love I do have for her and wanted to die,” he wrote, then listed the names of three men who he’d “told why I did try to take my life and it’s because of Angela Statzer.”
Statzer was charged with curse and abuse. She was found not guilty Feb. 24. Exactly one week later, she was found dead in the woods.
White says he learned of Statzer’s death on the noon news. A day or two later, he was on a city bus going to the doctor’s office and two young girls sat in the row behind him. As the bus drove down East Valley Drive, one of the two, “a big-boned girl, maybe 13 or 14 years old,” pointed to the woods and said “that’s where Angie was killed.” That, he said, is how he learned where it happened.
But, according to Transit Manager Danny Hunt, no city bus travels along East Valley Drive. The closest goes straight up Lee Highway.
White isn’t fazed; he says he’s not worried. “The Lord will see to it that the truth comes out,” he said. “I do wrong, we all do wrong. But I’ve paid for my so-called wrongs and they’ll have to pay for putting my name in shame. They’ll get theirs from the man up above.”
cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531
Stafford, NJ: Stafford man gets 18 years for shooting girlfriend at home
Published: Saturday, June 26, 2010, 9:52 AM Updated: Saturday, June 26, 2010, 2:19 PM
The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
STAFFORD — A Stafford man was sentenced to 18 years in prison for shooting his girlfriend inside their then-home in 2009, a report on APP.com said.
John Carnesi, 61, said in court Friday he never wished harm on the victim, 50-year-old Frances Marsh, according to the report. Carnesi was found guilty in April of the Jan. 24, 2009 shooting, the report said.
In the April trial, Carnesi said he drank so much on the day of the shooting that he could not remember what happened, saying Marsh might have hit him with the gun before a struggle. APP.com reports that Carnesi on Friday also blamed Marsh's alleged mental health problems for what happened.
The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
STAFFORD — A Stafford man was sentenced to 18 years in prison for shooting his girlfriend inside their then-home in 2009, a report on APP.com said.
John Carnesi, 61, said in court Friday he never wished harm on the victim, 50-year-old Frances Marsh, according to the report. Carnesi was found guilty in April of the Jan. 24, 2009 shooting, the report said.
In the April trial, Carnesi said he drank so much on the day of the shooting that he could not remember what happened, saying Marsh might have hit him with the gun before a struggle. APP.com reports that Carnesi on Friday also blamed Marsh's alleged mental health problems for what happened.
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