Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990 TAG: 9006220836
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: STAUNTON LENGTH: Long
It took the nine-man, three-woman jury a little more than an hour to reach the verdict and only about a half-hour to decide Strickler's sentence.
"We're relieved," said Esther Whitlock, mother of the slain James Madison University student. "We're satisfied that the jury did their job and we're satisfied with the verdict. But we don't feel happiness."
"I guess you could say justice has been done," added John Dean, who was Whitlock's boyfriend. "One of the persons has been given his just reward, but in the back of your mind, there is still something missing. Even after this, nothing can change the fact that you'll never see someone you love ever again."
Strickler, 24, of New Market and members of his family openly wept when the verdict was read in court and again when the sentence was read.
He was convicted of kidnapping Whitlock from a Harrisonburg shopping mall Jan. 5, taking the car she was driving, robbing her and killing her in a wooded area north of Waynesboro.
Also charged in the abduction and slaying of the William Fleming High School graduate is Ronald Lee Henderson, but he remains at large.
The death sentence - plus two life sentences that were tacked on - came after Strickler stood before the jury, apologized and then begged for their mercy.
"I'm sorry for what has happened," he said to members of the jury without turning to the members of the Whitlock family seated behind him in the courtroom.
Commonwealth's Attorney A. Lee Ervin replied briefly to Strickler's statements. Ervin said they were appropriate, but shouldn't have any bearing on the jury's decision to impose the death penalty.
"Did Leann Whitlock beg and ask for mercy? Probably," he said. "Did she get mercy? No, she did not."
Instead, Ervin told the jury, Strickler and Henderson "bashed her head in" with a 69-pound rock that he described as "too big to be called a rock and too small to be called a boulder."
"And was she just laying there peacefully for the end to come?" Ervin asked the jury in his closing argument where he introduced his version of the events that took place Jan. 5.
The motive was robbery and rape, he said. Strickler, Henderson and possibly another person, a woman, wanted a car. Whitlock had her boyfriend's car.
Strickler forced his way into the car, punched Whitlock and held a knife to her while Henderson and the woman joined him in the car. A witness testified to this, Ervin said.
"Leann can't be here today to testify, but her actions testify as to what was going on," he said.
Whitlock drove into the mall smiling and singing out loud, according to a witness. But after Strickler got into the car, her expression changed to terror.
From the mall where she was kidnapped, Whitlock was taken to a wooded area off a dirt road and near a cornfield five miles north of Waynesboro.
There, she was stripped of her clothes, robbed of her jewelry and probably raped by at least one man and possibly two, Ervin said.
Her body was naked when found a week later, he said. Her arms were extended over her head and crossed at the wrists, and there was physical evidence that she had been raped.
Ervin admitted that the evidence didn't indicate positively that Strickler had raped Whitlock, although semen stains were found on the T-shirt he had been seen wearing that night.
"There is no question why they wanted to abduct her," he argued. "They wanted to rob her and sexually assault her."
They wanted a car so badly that they were willing to kidnap for it, rob for it and kill for it, he said.
Then they killed her by hitting her on the head "not once, not twice, but three times or more" with the rock.
Why did they do this? To prevent "it" from giving them any more trouble, Ervin said, citing the testimony of Donna Kay Maddox Tudor.
Tudor was with Strickler and Henderson after Whitlock was murdered and she testified that she overheard them talking about "it" and using a "rock crusher" on it.
"Were they making a sick joke about a rock crusher or did they say the rock crushed her?" Ervin asked the jury.
He also said, "That's a terrible way to refer to somebody, as `it,' but that's what they were doing."
Ervin showed the jury before and after photographs of Whitlock. In one, she was smiling. The other graphically pictured the fatal head injuries she sustained - blows, he said, that came from the rock dropped on her head by one person while the other person held Whitlock down to the ground.
"Take it to the jury room and lift it yourselves," he said. "I submit to you that there's no way one man could have done this crime. This is the case of two men acting jointly to kill her."
He called the killing brutal and senseless.
"For an hour and a half, this woman lived through hell," Ervin told the jurors. "Before that, she was singing. She was a happy young woman."
He said Strickler's actions warranted the death penalty on the capital murder charge and the maximum sentence, life in prison, on both the robbery and abduction charges.
"You are this man's jury, but you are the jury for the Whitlock family, too - her mother and father, her sisters and her friends. This is a case where justice will not be done unless the death penalty is imposed," he said.
Strickler's attorney, public defender William Bobbitt, argued in his closing statement that Strickler didn't deserve death.
He reminded the members of the jury that to impose capital punishment, they must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Strickler was the person who killed Leann Whitlock.
If there was any doubt, then they could convict him only of first-degree murder as an accessory to the slaying. Bobbitt argued that there was no evidence indicating Strickler actually committed the murder.
Bobbitt's final defense witness, Jay Tudor, the estranged husband of Donna Tudor, claimed Strickler never got out of the stolen car the night Whitlock was murdered.
Jay Tudor, who was brought Thursday morning from the Caroline County Jail to testify, said Donna Tudor told him in March that she had been with Strickler and Henderson that night.
But she and Strickler had stayed in the car while Henderson had committed the murder, Jay Tudor testified.
Under cross-examination from Ervin, Jay Tudor went on to testify that Donna Tudor told him Whitlock had picked her up in her car in Staunton.
Then they had driven back to Harrisonburg and had picked up Strickler and Henderson, he said Donna Tudor told him. They drove around for a few days and then Whitlock was taken to the woods and killed, he said.
During his closing argument, Bobbitt admitted that Strickler probably was there. And Strickler probably was involved in the murder in some way, but Bobbitt argued that Ervin failed to place the murder weapon in Strickler's hands.
No fingerprints were found on the rock. No witnesses testified about the murder itself. Only Strickler and Henderson know for sure, and Bobbitt contended it was actually Henderson who dropped the rock on Whitlock's head.
"All of the evidence shows pretty clearly that there was a robbery. There was a kidnapping and there was a murder. But there's no evidence that Tommy Strickler did the killing," Bobbitt said.
Circuit Judge Thomas H. Wood ordered a presentencing report on Strickler before making a decision on whether to follow the jury's sentence.
The report is expected to take a month to prepare. If Wood imposes the death sentence, the ruling automatically will be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.
by CNB