Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992 TAG: 9202250165
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
JURY TO PONDER 2 VERSIONS OF SLAYING
Ever since a North Carolina woman called frantically for help on a citizens band radio four years ago, saying her husband had been shot by robbers as they drove through Roanoke, authorities have questioned her story.A jury that began hearing testimony Monday in Roanoke Circuit Court will be asked to consider two accounts:
Did an unknown assailant kill Jerry Daniel Truesdale after pestering him for money and then following his van down Interstate 581, as his wife told police the morning of April 21, 1988?
Or did Frances Ann Truesdale kill her husband to collect more than $250,000 in life insurance, then blame it on fictitious robbers in an attempt to "weave a tale of deceit and deception," as Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell contended in his opening statement to the jury?
Truesdale, 50, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and use of a firearm Monday morning, setting the stage for a weeklong trial that is expected to rest largely on circumstantial evidence.
With no eyewitnesses - except perhaps for "Trouble," the family dog found sitting in the van next to his owner's body - and no confessions, defense attorney Tony Anderson told the jury it will hear no convincing evidence that Truesdale killed her husband.
But another of Frances Truesdale's four husbands has also died under suspicious circumstances, something that concerned investigators as they followed a trail that ultimately led to the charges against her.
In 1967, her then-husband reportedly shot himself in the head with a rifle while confined to a wheelchair and paralyzed from the waist down - a scenario that raised questions still lingering in the small South Carolina town of Winnsboro.
The death was ruled a suicide, Truesdale was never charged, and the incident is not expected to surface during the trial. However, Winnsboro authorities have confirmed that the suicide has received renewed scrutiny as part of a state police investigation into the current charges against Truesdale.
When Truesdale was questioned by police about the death of her most recent husband, she gave the following explanation:
In April 1988, the Truesdales were driving their van home to Winston-Salem, N.C., from Pennsylvania, where Jerry Truesdale, 41, was based as a long-distance truck driver.
After stopping at an interstate rest stop near Roanoke, Jerry Truesdale was approached by two men asking for money. Words were exchanged, and Jerry Truesdale ended up back-handing one of the men.
The Truesdales then headed south toward Roanoke, but had driven less than a mile when a car with flashing headlights began to tailgate the van.
After the car tried to force them off the road, Jerry Truesdale said he'd had enough and stopped the van to confront the assailants. It was there, apparently near the junction of Interstates 81 and 581, that Truesdale was shot in the head by one of the robbers as he stepped from the van, his wife told police.
But from the beginning, the story raised questions in the mind of Lt. Doug Allen of the Roanoke Police Department.
At about 4:45 a.m., Allen had been called to the scene after a motorist heard Frances Ann Truesdale's pleas for help on the CB radio and found the van parked on Hershberger Road, near an exit leading to Valley View Mall.
Allen testified Monday that many aspects of Truesdale's account were confusing. For one thing, she had a hard time explaining just where the shooting happened - leaving authorities unsure if the offense had happened in Roanoke, Roanoke County or perhaps even Botetourt County.
Truesdale told police that she drove south on I-581 for several miles seeking help, before turning around and winding up at Valley View.
Officers from several police agencies that had assembled at the scene were unsure which jurisdiction should take over the investigation. "She had changed it so many times that I just told our dispatcher to get state police and send them out there," Allen testified.
Pressed for details, Truesdale described the robbers as two white men in a dark Ford Granada bearing New York license plates. But when she was unable to give a more detailed description that Allen wanted, she suddenly became angry.
"She yelled at me: `You're not doing anything and those guys are getting away,' " Allen testified.
Police found Jerry Truesdale lying on his back, between two seats, in the rear part of the van. He had been shot once behind the left ear with a .22-caliber pistol, but was still breathing. He died two days later at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
When an investigation yielded no clues about the two robbers, authorities became even more skeptical of Truesdale's story. Not only did Allen and Jane Martin, another police officer at the scene, find her account questionable, but relatives later reported that she gave conflicting explanations of what had happened.
After a long investigation by state police, Truesdale was charged in November 1990. She was released on bond a short time later and returned to await trial in North Carolina, where at the time of her arrest she lived in a 40-foot houseboat and ran a restaurant.
In his opening arguments, Caldwell stopped short of telling the jury outright that Truesdale's alleged motive for killing her husband of nearly 20 years was to collect on insurance money.
But he mentioned that Truesdale first told authorities that there was only a $25,000 policy on her husband's life, when in fact she was the sole beneficiary of a total of $285,000 in various policies.
In uncontested evidence, Caldwell said that Truesdale collected on many of the policies shortly after her husband's death. One $100,000 policy was divided among her five sons, he said.
The trial is scheduled to resume this morning at 9:30.
Note: Photo was in black and white in 3 star.
Keywords:
ROMUR