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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990                   TAG: 9005090632
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

CONVICTION OF WIFE OF SLAYER IS UPHELD

The Virginia Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions and life sentences imposed on Christianne Marie Buchanan for her role in the 1987 Amherst County slayings of four members of her husband's family.

"We hold that the evidence was sufficient to show that she contrived with, instigated or advised her husband before the murders were committed," Judge Norman K. Moon wrote Tuesday for the court's three-judge panel.

Christianne Buchanan was sentenced to four life terms by Amherst County Circuit Judge Robert C. Goad after he convicted her of four counts of being an accessory to first degree murder.

Her husband, Douglas McArthur Buchanan Jr., was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the September 1987 slayings of his father, Douglas Buchanan; the elder Buchanan's wife, Geraldine; and their two children, Joel Jerry, 13, and Christopher, 10.

The slayings occurred in the tiny mountain community of Naola about 70 miles southwest of Charlottesville.

- Associated Press

by CNB