
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 2, 1990                   TAG: 9003023008
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN CONVICTED OF MURDER/ JURY SUGGESTS 20-YEAR SENTENCE FOR STABBING DRINKING

Robert "Murdock" Edwards, an ex-con who hung out with a crowd of alcoholics on Melrose Avenue in Northwest Roanoke, was convicted Thursday night of stabbing one of his drinking buddies to death.

A jury in Roanoke Circuit Court set a 20-year punishment for Edwards in the second-degree murder of William Mays Gibson.

Gibson, 34, was stabbed 25 times in the chest and back and left lying in front of a vacant house on Melrose Avenue last Sept. 5, after a night of heavy drinking with Edwards and another man, Windsor "Salt n Pepper" Ladson.

In deciding how Gibson died, jurors also learned how he lived. Testimony during the two-day trial showed how a group of vagrants and alcoholics - including Gibson, Edwards and Ladson - often congregated to drink and pass the time in the 1900 block of Melrose Avenue, an area known to them as "The Strip."

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch called it a lifestyle "alien to everybody here today" in the courtroom.

"But just because the victim led this kind of lifestyle, that does not make the value of his life any less than anyone else," Ekirch told the jury.

The trial centered on the testimony of Ladson, a frail, 54-year-old man with a thick shock of gray hair, who said he saw Edwards stab Gibson.

Ladson testified Wednesday that the three men had been drinking for hours before the attack, which he said was unprovoked.

But defense attorney Burton Albert attacked Ladson's credibility, characterizing him as an unreliable drunk whose story raised more questions than it answered.

Although Ladson said he was afraid of Edwards, he admitted that they drank together frequently after the killing.

"His testimony makes no sense at all," Albert said.

Edwards, 42, denied the killing, saying he was nowhere near the vacant house where it allegedly happened about 3 a.m.

He testified that after Ladson became inebriated, he took him home to an abandoned bread truck in an alley before going home himself.

"Whoever killed him needs to be in jail," Edwards testified. "But they got the wrong person here."

Edwards, who served 15 years for a murder conviction in North Carolina in the 1970s, will be formally sentenced later by a judge.

by CNB