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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1991                   TAG: 9103270436
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Medium

SLAIN SOLDIER'S WIFE, HER BROTHER CHARGED

The killing of Army Spc. Anthony Riggs provoked a national outcry over urban violence.

A friend said Riggs' wife asked him for a divorce as soon as he walked off the plane that brought him back from the Middle East.

Police Chief Stanley Knox said first-degree murder warrants were issued against Toni Riggs, 21, and her brother, Michael Cato, 19.

Cato had been in custody since Sunday and was arraigned Tuesday on the murder charge and one count of possession of a firearm. Magistrate Robert Costello ordered him jailed without bond until an April 5 court appearance.

Toni Riggs was questioned and released Monday. She surrendered Tuesday afternoon and was to be jailed overnight pending arraignment today, said police spokesman Sgt. Christopher Buck.

"This crime had absolutely nothing to do with random streetviolence," homicide Inspector Gerald Stewart said.

"There is an established motive," Stewart said. He declined to elaborate, but an Army friend and Anthony Riggs' mother said the couple fought frequently over money.

Cato's attorney, James O'Connell, accused police of trying to coerce a statement from his client. He said detectives questioned Cato for 13 straight hours Sunday and grilled him again Monday.

"My guess is after 13 hours, he would have implicated Abraham Lincoln," O'Connell said.

Anthony Riggs, 22, was shot five times March 18 outside the home of his wife's aunt while helping his wife move. Police initially thought the slaying occurred as his car was being stolen. He had returned the week before from eightmonths' duty in the Persian Gulf region, where he was assigned to a Patriot missile battery.

Riggs and his wife were having serious marital difficulties while he was in the gulf region, said a close friend, Army Sgt. Garry Welliver.

The couple met in Texas. Toni Riggs moved back to her family home in Detroit after her husband was sent overseas, Welliver said.

"She was taking all the savings, all the money and everything he owned to Detroit," Welliver said Monday night by telephone from Fort Bliss, Texas. "About the only possession of value that he had was his car, and she destroyed it.

"She just took him for a ride. She didn't do anything supportive in any way, shape or form."

He said Toni Riggs greeted her husband on the airfield at Fort Bliss on March 8 with the news she wanted a divorce and $500 a month in alimony.

Anthony Riggs was heartbroken, Welliver said.

"He sort of put his hand on my shoulder and said, `I need to talk bad. She just asked me for a divorce,' " Welliver said.

"He decided that he would just start a new life. He wanted to make a fresh start."

Shortly after her husband's death, Toni Riggs said she would use the proceeds of his $50,000 military life insurance policy, plus a private policy, to attend nursing school.

Before the charges were announced against Toni Riggs, her mother-in-law, Lessie Riggs, said she was pleased an arrest had been made. That the slaying might have been over a domestic matter "is the most monstrous thing," she told WDIV-TV in Detroit.