Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 20, 1991 TAG: 9102200168
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
The brothers had been socializing on Taylors Mountain when Tunney Dooley accused his brother, Earl, of being "a con and a freeloader," Janice Orange explained.
The two went at each other - one holding a claw hammer, the other waving an iron pipe - when Earl Dooley made his threat, Orange said.
"He said, `I won't kill you now, but, brother, I will get you later,' " Orange recalled on Tuesday, the first day of Earl Dooley's trial in the killing of his 61-year-old brother last June.
Only a few days after that fight, on June 3, Tunney Dooley was found dead of a gunshot wound in the doorway of Earl Dooley's Bedford apartment.
In his opening argument Tuesday, Bedford County prosecutor James Updike said the argument was the genesis of Earl Dooley's scheme to kill his brother.
Advising jurors to find Earl Dooley guilty of first-degree murder and a related firearms charge, Updike said Dooley again had pledged to murder his brother just a day before the killing.
In the early morning of June 3, Tunney Dooley came to his brother's apartment, where Earl Dooley pressed a rifle against his chest and fired, Updike said.
Dooley's defense attorneys agree that their client fired the fatal shot. But they say it was in self-defense.
"It's a tragic story," Public Defender Webster Hogeland told the jury during his opening argument. "The violent death of a violent man."
In years past, Tunney Dooley had hacked at his brother's arm with an ax, shot him with a pistol, swung at him with a baseball bat and gone after him with a pocketknife, Hogeland said.
Tunney, drunk on beer and whiskey, came at his brother with that same pocketknife the night he died, Hogeland said.
Earl Dooley asked his brother to leave the apartment, but Tunney Dooley pulled out the knife and threatened to cut Earl's head off, Hogeland said.
Earl Dooley grabbed his gun and shot his brother. Then he called the rescue squad and police.
"If there was any way he could have avoided [the shooting], he would have," Hogeland said.
But Updike questioned the self-defense claim as another element of Earl Dooley's murderous plan.
The pocketknife, after all, was just 3 inches long, Updike said. And when it was found near Tunney Dooley's body, its blade was shut.
Updike finished presenting his evidence Tuesday and Hogeland is scheduled to present his case today. Earl Dooley, 54, could face life in prison if convicted.
by CNB