Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 4, 1991 TAG: 9104040419
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER/ SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
But it wasn't until she went inside the house and noticed that a back door had been broken open that she knew there had been an intruder, she told a Carroll County Circuit Court jury Wednesday.
Before she could warn her husband, who was arriving behind her, a short, stocky man stepped out from behind a door and shot Tommy Slusher several times.
She ran into her living room and leaned against the door. The gunman shot through it and pushed it open far enough for his gloved hand to fire several more shots at her.
James Burton McGee, 30, of Glade Spring, pleaded innocent Wednesday to 15 charges rising out of the incident - including attempted capital murder, attempted first-degree murder, breaking and entering with a deadly weapon and with the intent to commit a felony, robbery, grand larceny, sexual assault, use of a firearm and abduction.
Joyce Slusher said she was handcuffed, tied up and terrorized for nearly six hours before she decided that the intruder "had hurt me all he was going to that night."
The man had told her stories about being paid $50,000 to kill her and her husband and about having the ability and material to bomb their home.
He said things about their personal lives that showed he had been watching them for some time. He said he had been unable to hide in time when she came home because she had not blown her horn as she always did, to move her cats out of the way of her car.
She felt an electrical cord among the material binding her hands and feet in the darkness of her room and thought it might be connected to an explosive device like the man had mentioned. But she forced herself to struggle free of her bonds once left alone because she knew her husband had been badly hurt, she said.
The 10 men and two women on the jury listened intently as she told, pausing frequently for deep breaths, about making her way several miles through briars and over fences to U.S. 58 with her hands cuffed behind her back. She said she was ready to dive into a ditch or run into the woods if she saw a vehicle that might be driven by her tormentor.
She finally found someone at a Texaco station outside the county's industrial park to summon police and rescue squad members. They found Tommy Slusher wrapped in a rug in the basement of the home, seriously wounded. He has since recovered.
Some of those attending the trial uttered audible sighs of relief when she finished her testimony.
She was unable to identify the heavily clothed intruder. But a relative of McGee identified the handcuffs as taken from him by McGee a month before the Carroll break-in.
McGee was arrested Jan. 27 in Wythe County on an unrelated charge. Steve Williams, an investigator with the Carroll County Sheriff's Office, spotted a camera, radio and other items in the back of McGee's car that had been taken from the Slusher home.
A Smyth County man identified McGee as the man who sold him a pair of .22-caliber pistols. Tommy Slusher identified one as having been taken from his home, and firearms expert William Conrad identified the other as the weapon that fired several shells recovered from the home.
The prosecution completed its case Wednesday. The defense will begin calling witnesses this morning.
by CNB