THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507280426
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
A second inmate confined on a tier with Willie Lloyd Turner at the Greensville Correctional Center says Turner showed him a gun and allowed him to touch it months before Turner's execution May 25.
The inmate, whose name is being withheld because he fears retribution, was housed for almost a year in a cell near Turner's on a protective custody tier. He was moved to another prison before Turner was put to death.
Fourteen other inmates were also housed on the tier. One of them, Michael Stokes, has been telling authorities for two months that a Corrections Department employee delivered the gun to Turner in March and that Turner showed him the gun. Stokes, a long-time prison snitch, says he has been given two state-administered lie detector tests and was told he failed both.
But the second inmate has confirmed key elements of Stokes' story. And because he and Stokes have been in separate prisons since before Turner's death, it is unlikely they would have had an opportunity to fabricate a story about the gun together.
Unlike Stokes, who went to authorities the day after Turner's death, the second inmate did not come forward. Instead, he told the story of his relationship with Turner only after The Virginian-Pilot approached him early this month after learning he had been on the tier with Turner.
State police, who have been investigating the posthumous discovery of a gun in Turner's typewriter since May, have never questioned him, the inmate said. Neither has the Department of Corrections, which conducted a brief probe before concluding that the incident may have been a hoax perpetrated by Turner's lawyer.
``Of course, they don't want to talk to me,'' the inmate said of the department's investigators. ``They would have to want the truth to talk to me.''
In the summer of 1994, said the inmate, as soon as he arrived on Turner's tier, Turner began involving him in an escape plan.
``My theory about the whole thing was that he was trying to set me up,'' said the inmate. ``You know, involve me in an escape plan and then tell on me so he could be the hero and get clemency. Because as soon as I got there, the first thing was, `Let's escape. We'll get a plan together.' But I'm not the escape type.''
Turner's plan was carefully calculated, said the inmate.
``He had the security codes for all the phones, all the towers, and a really easy way to get two uniforms. And he could get us out of our cells. He had figured out the mechanism on the doors. There's a switch that he manipulated so that the button for his cell in the control room was always red, meaning it was insecure. They (correctional officers) just figured it was a short. They tried to fix it, but they never could.''
Turner arranged for the delivery of two guns - one for each of them, the inmate said. The first gun was bought at a gun show in Richmond about a week before it was delivered to Turner, he said. Soon afterward, Turner's source was cut off. He never got the second gun.
``I didn't really believe it until I saw it,'' the inmate said of the gun.
``I really didn't believe anything he said. But I had to live with him, so I just yessed him to death. I just figured hatching escape plans was how he dealt with his reality.''
Like Stokes, the inmate says he first saw the gun when he was let out of his cell to take a shower in a room next door to Turner's cell. As he passed Turner's cell, the inmate said, Turner took the .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver from beneath a towel in his sink and flashed it at him.
``After I came out of the shower and the officer left, I said, `It looks real. And he said, `Goddamnit, it is real.' I said, `Prove it.'
``So the next time I went for a shower, he opened his food slot and I actually got to touch it and feel that it was metal. That's when he showed me the bullets. And that's when he started talking real seriously about the escape plan and he started pushing me more and pushing me more. And then it got to the point where I stopped talking to him. I used a completely ridiculous incident as an excuse to be mad at him. And he would call over to me, but I wouldn't answer. I think he got kind of paranoid about that. I think he thought I was going to snitch on him.''
Turner kept the gun in his typewriter, the inmate said. And he kept correctional officers away from the typewriter by insisting that it could not be disturbed because all his legal work was contained in its memory.
``We got shook down once a week,'' said the inmate. ``And every time they came, he would jump on the typewriter and say, `Please be careful with my typewriter. There's something in the memory. If you unplug it, I'll lose everything. My whole case is on there. I got legal documents in the memory. I got stuff I need to print out.' ''
When officials moved him to another prison, the inmate was relieved. ``It was almost a blessing,'' he said.
Half an hour before Turner's execution May 25, his attorney said, Turner instructed him to ``Look in the back of the typewriter when you get home. I didn't use it because of you.'' Later that night, the attorney, Walter Walvick, searched Turner's typewriter and found a loaded .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Emporia police removed the gun and found a plastic bag containing 12 bullets.
According to the inmate with whom Turner planned to escape, Walvick wasn't the only reason Turner died without using his gun.
``We were treated really well at Greensville,'' he said. ``. . . I mean, I'm not the type of person who gets close to officers, but there are a few there who I could say that I loved. When they got sick, I really prayed for them. And when they came to work, it was just a joy to be around them. My theory is, he couldn't hurt them. He just couldn't hurt them. They were too good to us.''
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW MURDER HANDGUNS WITNESSES by CNB