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

DATE: TUESDAY, July 31, 1990                   TAG: 9007310492
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PLOT SUSPECT IS ORDERED SENT TO FLA.

U.S. Magistrate Glen Conrad has ordered a woman transferred to Florida for arraignment on murder-for-hire charges in a plot aimed at her former boyfriend.

Conrad's order dismisses the need for the preliminary hearing that was scheduled in Roanoke this morning for Alexandria Lebon Shoop.

Shoop was indicted in U.S. District Court in Miami on Friday on charges of conspiring in telephone conversations with Donald Plourde, her boyfriend and a private investigator in Miami, to kill Raymond O'Bran, her former boyfriend.

Shoop, who moved to Centreville in Fairfax County after living in Roanoke for 11 years, is accused of plotting the scheme in order to collect on a $100,000 insurance policy.

Shoop was arrested July 18 by federal agents at Community Hospital's outpatient surgery unit, where she had an operation to relieve carpal tunnel syndrome.

Plourde was arrested in Miami on July 17 and gave a complete statement of his involvement.

In a phone conversation with Plourde, recorded the day of his arrest while he was in FBI custody, Lebon discussed one failed attempt to kill O'Bran, financial arrangements with Plourde in the murder-for-hire scheme and spoke of her intent to kill O'Bran with "ice," a synthetic drug believed to be more potent than crack.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said it may be another week before U.S. marshals are able to transfer Shoop to Florida. Doctors advised against placing restraints on Shoop's arms, which are still bandaged from the surgery, and requested that she be allowed further time to recuperate in the Roanoke City Jail, Wolthuis said.

At a bond hearing July 20, Conrad ordered Shoop held without bond after listening to portions of the recorded phone conversation in which she can be heard outlining the plot with Plourde.

Conrad then asked that a psychiatric evaluation begin as soon as possible on Shoop and suggested that a transfer to Florida, where the case will eventually be tried, would speed up that process.

Shoop, who has no prior criminal record, was a bus driver for Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.

by CNB