Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 22, 1993 TAG: 9310220227
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Giving no chance of parole, U.S. District Judge James Turk told Nance, 42, on Thursday he was sending him to a federal penitentiary "for so long as you shall live."
Federal prosecutors said Nance, who lived from one odd job to the next as he roamed the country, slashed Donna Stevenson's throat and emptied her purse as she lay bleeding on the floor of the Crockett Post Office.
Stevenson, 49, was killed in September 1992 on her 21st anniversary of working at the post office.
A jury in March convicted Nance of first-degree murder, which, in federal court, carries a mandatory life sentence.
Nance, who did not testify at his trial, said Thursday that he was wrongly convicted on the basis of "supposition, theories, maybes and could-haves."
He claimed the investigation of Stevenson's death was bungled by a "small-town sheriff" and the U.S. Postal Service, which he called better suited to handle mail fraud than murder.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Eckert said Wythe County Sheriff Wayne Pike and postal inspectors did a "first-class investigation."
Lacking eyewitnesses, a confession or a murder weapon, authorities painstakingly built a strong circumstantial case against Nance.
They used the smallest of details - fingerprints on a crossword puzzle, sweat in the headband of a bloodstained cap - in linking Nance to the crime scene.
Five hours after Stevenson's body was discovered, police caught up with Nance at the Marion bus station. Under the driver's seat of his car, they found photographs of Stevenson's two young nieces - pictures she always kept in her purse.
Using DNA testing, authorities matched Nance's perspiration to that found on a blood-stained baseball car left in the car.
Nance had claimed he was in North Carolina for most of the day. But police found a witness who remembered seeing him working a crossword puzzle at a local restaurant. Pulling the discarded newspaper from the trash, authorities found Nance's fingerprints on the puzzle and used them to destroy his alibi.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Morgan Scott said life in prison was appropriate for such "a horrible crime," but Stevenson's husband would have prefered the death penalty.
"How could I be satisfied with any punishment that isn't comparable with the crime he committed?" Clyde Stevenson said.
Nance was tried in U.S. District Court in Roanoke because Stevenson's murder occurred during her duties as a government worker.
Nance's sentence was such a foregone conclusion that defense attorneys Tom Blaylock and Mark Kidd made no arguments for a lesser punishment - pinning their hopes on an appeal. But after sentencing Nance to life, Turk told him he would be put on probation if, by chance, he was ever released.
That was just a formality, Eckert assured Stevenson after the hearing: "He ain't coming out, Clyde."
by CNB