Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 27, 1992 TAG: 9202270116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE JURY HEARS ROAD KILLING DETAILS
Her voice breaking, Frances Ann Truesdale answered the question Wednesday that has followed her since 1988: "I did not kill my husband," she told a Roanoke jury.For two days, jurors had been told how the 50-year-old grandmother allegedly shot Jerry Daniel Truesdale to collect $285,000 in life insurance, then blamed it on two robbers who prosecutors contend existed only in her calculating mind.
But the jury heard a different story Wednesday.
It heard how the Truesdales enjoyed a loving marriage for more than 20 years - until an unknown assailant ended it the morning of April 21, 1988, by fatally shooting Jerry Truesdale in the head.
Wearing a peach-colored suit and clutching a tissue, Truesdale took the witness stand Wednesday and spent 2 1/2 hours giving her version of what happened that day.
She testified that she and her husband were driving the family van from Pennsylvania, where he was based as a long-distance truck driver, to their home in Winston-Salem, N.C.
After stopping at an interstate rest stop about 5 a.m., Jerry Truesdale was confronted by what he called two "deadbeat Yankees" pestering him for money, his wife said.
The men trailed them into Roanoke, flashing their car's headlights and swerving in front of the van, until Jerry Truesdale pulled over just north of Tanglewood Mall. "I've had enough," he told his wife.
Just as he was stepping out of the van, Truesdale was confronted by one of the men. By this time, Frances Truesdale testified, she was practically in the driver's seat, trying to keep her husband inside.
"A hand with a gun in it came inside with us," she testified tearfully. "I could see a flash. I could hear it. I could smell it.
"Jerry's head went forward" as the shot was fired, Truesdale testified, "and that boy just stood there."
Pushing her husband into the back of the van, Truesdale drove in a panic up and down the interstate, calling frantically for help on a citizens band radio.
A motorist who responded to her pleas found the van on Hershberger Road, near Valley View Mall. Jerry Truesdale was in the back, a bullet wound from a .22-caliber weapon behind his left ear.
"We went to the hospital and Jerry didn't come home with us," Truesdale testified.
Truesdale faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. And when the trial resumes today in Roanoke Circuit Court, she will face cross-examination by prosecutors.
She is certain to be asked about the seven insurance policies on her husband's life that totaled $285,000. Asked about it by her attorney, Tony Anderson, Truesdale testified that she was never certain just how much insurance her husband had.
"I don't remember," she said when asked if she was aware of the total amount when she began to file claims in the months after her husband died. Truesdale testified she used the money to pay off her house and car and to buy gifts for her children, including Corvettes, furniture and a nursery set for an expecting daughter-in-law.
Even as she was trying to cope with her husband's shooting just minutes after it happened, Truesdale testified, she also had to cope with seemingly endless questions from police officers.
She seemed the most peeved with Barry Keesee, a state police investigator whose 2 1/2-year probe ultimately led to the murder indictment against her. When Truesdale wanted only to be close to her dying husband, she said, Keesee wanted answers.
"We went over these details for hours," Truesdale testified. "Over and over and over."
She even suggested that the investigator, whose efforts spanned several states, was responsible for the failure of a Carolina Beach, N.C., restaurant she opened after her husband's death.
"When Agent Keesee came around asking questions, word spread like wildfire that I was being investigated for the murder of my husband," she said.
A parade of defense witnesses - including friends, neighbors, Truesdale's daughter and four of her five sons - testified Wednesday that such a scenario was unthinkable.
Truesdale was so devoted to her husband that when he began working up North, she would stay in Winston-Salem only long enough to do the paperwork for a service station they owned. The rest of her time was spent on the road to see her husband, or with him in Pennsylvania, Truesdale's son, William, testified.
"They were as close as close can be," he said.