Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991 TAG: 9102160406
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF and DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Moments after more than a dozen federal, state and local police surrounded a Botetourt County house Friday morning and arrested the convicted killer, he tried to pull away and was attacked by a police Rottweiler.
The dog broke a tooth when it bit the 220-pound weightlifter's shoulder.
Later in the morning, after U.S. marshals locked him into a holding cell at the federal building in Roanoke, he started screaming, popped his handcuffs apart and ripped his clothes off, disrupting a case in a nearby courtroom. He also tore out a privacy partition in the toilet in the holding cells and beat so loudly on the walls that people in the courtroom thought it was a construction crew tearing out plumbing.
U.S. Judge Jackson Kiser decided to hold the hearing early, but Montgomery refused to cooperate. He stood naked - except for green-and-yellow-trimmed crew socks, a double set of handcuffs, and leg shackles - in front of Kiser in the holding cell and refused to answer questions.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant said it was one of the strangest hearings he had ever participated in.
Montgomery was appointed an attorney - Jack Gregory of Salem - and then was rushed to an isolation cell in the Roanoke jail, pending a Feb. 20 bond hearing.
He faces criminal and civil-rights charges in the arson of a house in Franklin County, as well as armed robbery and parole violation charges. Montgomery is also a suspect in two killings, although he has not been charged.
Montgomery's arrest Friday ended a search that began after a potential witness in the arson case was killed in his Roanoke home Sunday night.
Police captured Montgomery, 49, about 7:45 a.m. after spending the night in the woods watching the house on Virginia 43 just outside of Buchanan. Botetourt authorities had received a tip Thursday afternoon that he was there.
Police said they were extremely cautious and waited for Montgomery to come outside because of his reputation for violence. He has been convicted of murder and armed robbery and is reported to carry weapons and wear body armor at all times.
He also has escaped from police custody and from prison, despite being held in maximum-security cells. In 1977, while serving a life sentence for murder, Montgomery masterminded an escape from the maximum-security section at the state mental prison in Marion.
Using a smuggled gun and a knife, he and two other inmates overpowered guards and scaled a supposedly "unclimbable" 16-foot fence. A psychiatrist who tested Montgomery at Marion described him at the time as "apparently not psychotic, but just plain mean."
More recently, while being held on armed robbery charges in Bristol, Tenn., Montgomery reportedly broke his leg irons while in a holding cell and flushed them down a toilet.
Montgomery was released on bond in Bristol because a judge was unaware of his criminal history. Montgomery apparently came to the Roanoke area, where authorities suspect him of shooting Paul Daniel Bostic Jr., 45, Sunday night in his Northeast Roanoke home.
Federal authorities say Bostic was a potential witness against Montgomery in an investigation of an arson of a home in the Penhook section of Franklin County last Oct. 31.
Federal authorities joined the arson investigation after witnesses told them someone had hired Montgomery to burn the house to keep a black family from buying it. A U.S. civil rights attorney from Washington, D.C., has been sent to Roanoke to assist in the prosecution.
According to an affidavit filed Friday in federal court in Roanoke, Montgomery's former girlfriend told agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that she was with Montgomery when he received a telephone call from Johnny Simms, a Penhook paving contractor. After the telephone call, she said, Montgomery said, "I've got to burn a black family out."
She said she later drove Montgomery to the house when he set the fire. The house is near Simms' Penhook home. A black man had a contract on the house at the time but did not buy it.
In a telephone interview Friday, Simms, owner of J&J Paving in Ridgeway, said the allegations are untrue. He said he has nothing against blacks moving into a house near him, and "if I was worried about it, I'd buy it."
Simms said he knew Montgomery from 1973, when they spent time together in prison - both for first-degree murder.
Simms was sentenced to 25 years for the 1968 shooting death of Louis Paul Radford, 48, in Franklin County. Simms contended he shot in self-defense.
Simms said he had not heard from Montgomery until recently, when Montgomery began coming by his company and asked for a job. He said he did not have enough business to provide a job. But, he said, he took Montgomery to his house on one occasion to feed bread to a flock of geese.
Federal authorities had been investigating Montgomery on possible firearms charges since at least early January, according to the affidavit. Authorities pushed the investigation after Bostic - the potential witness in the arson case - was killed Sunday night.
Bostic's wife told police that someone knocked on the door of their home and then shot him through the door when he asked who was there. Roanoke police, who are investigating Bostic's killing, would not comment on whether Montgomery was a suspect.
Bostic's son, Doug, said in an interview Friday that his father and Montgomery had been longtime friends but recently had a falling out. Doug Bostic said Montgomery had been harassing and threatening his family for a couple of months and the family had complained to police.
Until the falling out, Bostic said, Montgomery had been "sort of a hero" to him because of his physical strength and his tendency toward violence. Bostic said Montgomery bragged continuously about his criminal exploits, including murder and robbery.
Since his father's killing, Bostic said, he now realizes that Montgomery is no hero and that violence is not to be admired.
The massive search for Montgomery began Thursday after federal authorities asked state police to issue a general alert listing Montgomery as a suspect in the Bostic killing in Roanoke and a killing last month in Henry County.
In that case, Leonard Green "Pee Wee" Martin, 68, was shot twice with a gun believed to be a .357 Magnum. His body was found on the front porch of his trailer home in the Blackberry section of the county.
Investigators say they know of no connection between Montgomery and Martin, except for the possible connection that they both knew Simms. Authorities are waiting for the results of ballistic tests on bullets used in both killings to determine whether there is a connection.
Montgomery also is wanted on charges of armed robbery of a jewelry store in Bristol, Tenn., and for federal parole violations, authorities said. Montgomery was on federal parole for an armed bank robbery, authorities said.
Montgomery, who is originally from the Giles County community of Narrows, was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man in Giles County in 1972. At the time, Montgomery was on bond awaiting trial in a bank robbery case.
The killing was described at the time by prosecutors as "nothing but a gangland killing." The man who was killed, James "Buck" Fields, was found near his home with three bullets in his head on July 20, 1972.
Although Montgomery was sentenced to life for that murder, he was paroled in 1982. But he was detained in prison for another five years on charges out of Columbus, Ohio.
FBI agents arrested Montgomery in Roanoke about two weeks ago on a fugitive warrant from Tennessee in the jewelry-store robbery, authorities said. He was placed in the Roanoke jail and then transferred to Tennessee, where he was released on $25,000 bond Saturday, authorities said.
by CNB