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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 19, 1991                   TAG: 9104190800
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

WHITLOCK KILLER LOSES HIS APPEAL

The court unanimously rejected Thomas David Strickler's claim that he could not be sentenced to death because the prosecution failed to prove he delivered the fatal blow that killed Leann Whitlock.

Strickler and Ronald Henderson were convicted of the crime. Henderson was found guilty of first-degree murder, and a Winchester jury recommended March 27 that he receive the maximum penalty of life in prison.

Virginia law states that someone cannot be sentenced to death unless that person was the "trigger man" in the crime. The only exception is in murder-for-hire cases.

The Supreme Court said the prosecution showed that Henderson and Strickler jointly killed Whitlock by dropping a 69-pound rock on her head.

"Where two or more persons take a direct part in inflicting fatal injuries, each joint participant is an `immediate perpetrator' for the purposes of the capital murder statutes," said the opinion written by Justice Charles Russell.

The court also rejected Strickler's objections to the jury selection process and his questioning of whether the crime was vile and he presented a future danger to society.

Whitlock was abducted after she drove into the Valley Mall parking lot in Harrisonburg on Jan. 5, 1990. Her nude, frozen body was found about a week later in a wooded area of Augusta County. She had been kicked and beaten and was killed by four blows to the head.