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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 9, 1991                   TAG: 9102090112
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

STARK SAILOR GUILTY/ PENALTY PHASE TO BEGIN TODAY

The jurors will return today to hear testimony and make a recommendation on whether 24-year-old Walter Thomas Taylor of Salem should be executed in Florida's electric chair or receive life in prison.

Taylor was a lookout on the Stark when an Iraqi warplane fired two Exocet missiles into the ship as it patrolled the Persian Gulf.

The defense claimed Taylor was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome when he took a hammer and beat a young mother and her daughter to death. But prosecutors said Taylor acted deliberately to cover his rape of the mother.

The six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for about 6 1/2 hours Thursday and Friday before returning two first-degree murder verdicts in the Aug. 8, 1987, killings of 21-year-old Paula Smits and her 3-year-old daughter Amanda.

"We can go on now. Justice has been done," one of Smits' three sisters said after the verdicts were read.

Taylor maintained the same stoic expression throughout the trial and showed no emotion when the verdict was announced. His mother and sister from Roanoke, however, cried.

Smits' family, most of whom are from Omaha, Neb., sighed and then began sobbing as the verdicts were read. After the judge recessed the trial, they hugged one another and Assistant State Attorney Angela Corey, who prosecuted the case with Assistant State Attorney Jon Phillips.

Steve Smits, whose wife and daughter were killed, raised his arms in victory upon hearing the verdict. Smits, also a sailor, was out to sea on the USS Saratoga when the killings occurred.

A gag order prevents the families and attorneys from commenting to the media until the jury begins deliberating the penalty phase.

The defense has tried to spare Taylor from the death penalty by linking the murders to the missile attack. The Mayport-based Stark limped home just days before the Aug. 8, 1987, killings.

In final arguments Thursday, Corey said the motive for the killings was not insanity, but the desire to cover up the rape of Smits.

"He raped her, and he killed her, and he killed the only other living witness that could testify against him," Corey said. A second child, an infant named Rennea, was unharmed in the attack, but suffered dehydration before the bodies were found two days later.

Corey said the prosecution doesn't argue with the fact that Taylor suffered as a result of the Stark attack.

"It still does not excuse Walter Taylor from first-degree murder. It does not give him a license to kill," she said.

In final arguments, Phillips used clay models of the victims' heads and had a woman employee dress in Smits' nightgown to illustrate his points.

Taylor had claimed he had consentual sex with Smits and claimed he later thought that she was an Iraqi terrorist who meant to harm him.

Defense attorneys said Taylor kept remembering the horrifying attack on the Stark and the burned, disfigured and blown-apart bodies of his shipmates.