Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 10, 1990 TAG: 9007100576
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Neal Thompson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The date was June 28 - the anniversary of the day in 1980 when Radford University student Gina Renee Hall was last seen alive at a bar in the Blacksburg Marriott.
Ten years later, her body still has not been found.
Ten years later, the man convicted of first-degree murder in connection with her death is still claiming he is innocent and is still trying to prove it.
The case is so significant because her accused killer - Stephen Epperly - was the first person in Virginia convicted of murder without a body or a witness.
Epperly was charged with taking Hall, 18, to his Claytor Lake cabin after meeting her at the bar and there beating her to death after she refused to have sex.
Police found Hall's blood in the cabin and in the trunk of her car, but never found her body.
Laws in some states don't allow prosecution of a murder charge unless a body or identifiable body part is found.
At the time of Hall's disappearance, most prosecutors in Virginia would not have sought a murder conviction if the body had not been found.
It was too big a risk.
If a prosecutor took the risk and lost the case, the state's double jeopardy laws would prevent charging the suspect a second time if the body were ever found.
Pulaski County Commonwealth's Attorney Everett Shockley took the risk, even though other lawyers told him it was a mistake.
Looking back, Shockley said not only was it worth the risk, but it was one of his biggest cases ever and had a substantial effect throughout the state. "The effect, if nothing else, gave prosecutors in Virginia confidence to proceed in homicide prosecutions in the absence of the body where before they might not have been so secure," Shockley said last week.
"What I relied on, of course, was just basic principles of law that are as old as the hills - that the circumstances prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.
Since Epperly's December 1980 conviction, prosecutors have won three other convictions in the state in cases where bodies were never found, Epperly said.
Another reason this case is worth looking at 10 years later is because the book on Stephen Epperly isn't closed.
Epperly has denied any part in Hall's death. And he has attacked Shockley's use of questionable evidence from a scent-tracking dog that found Epperly's scent on Hall's abandoned car and traced it back to his front door.
His case is now on appeal, based on that reason, in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
Two previous appeals, in 1982 and 1988, were denied.
Even if his latest appeal is denied, Epperly will become eligible for parole in 1995, after serving 15 years of his life sentence.
by CNB