Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 23, 1993 TAG: 9303230205
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
POSTMASTER KILLER GUILTY
A postmaster was robbed, killed and left lying on the floor of a Wythe County post office with hardly a trace of evidence, and Jimmy Lawrence Nance almost got away with it."It was almost the perfect crime," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Eckert told a jury.
But it was the small imperfections - tiny blood splatters, fingerprints on a crossword puzzle and other incriminating details in the government's circumstantial case - that led the jury Monday to convict Nance of murder.
Nance, a 42-year-old drifter who brought violence to the peaceful community of Crockett, faces life in prison for the first-degree killing of Donna Stevenson.
Stevenson's throat was slashed Sept. 18, her 21st anniversary of working at a post office so small that it employed only one mail carrier.
During a six-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, prosecutors portrayed Nance as a shiftless drifter who began plotting the robbery from the moment he saw Stevenson flash a wad of cash when she bought some furniture from the back of his truck.
"He stalked her, he robbed her, and he killed her," Eckert said. "It's that simple."
Nance did not testify, leaving defense attorney Jonathan Apgar to challenge a case he said was based on "circumstance, speculation, guesswork and maybes."
Apgar reminded jurors they had received no confessions, seen no murder weapon and heard from no eyewitnesses.
"You are the buffer between the powers of the prosecution and the innocence of a fellow human being," he said.
But prosecutors were not only able to place Nance at the post office shortly before the killing, but to show that he was so broke the day before that he couldn't afford a $1 lottery ticket.
In spending four days building the circumstantial case, Eckert and co-prosecutor Morgan Scott also showed that:
Tiny blood stains found on Nance's clothing could have come from just 11 percent of the Caucasian population, including Stevenson. DNA testing also matched sweat in a headband of a blood-stained baseball cap to that of Nance's.
As Nance hung out at the post office for hours before the killing, the letter carrier became suspicious and took note of his license plate. When police stopped Nance's car five hours later, they found two photographs under the driver's seat that had come from Stevenson's purse.
The alibi Nance gave police - that he was in North Carolina for much of the day of the killing - fell through when someone remembered seeing him at a Wythe County restaurant, working a crossword puzzle. His fingerprints were later found on the puzzle.
Although Nance denied being in the post office on Sept. 18, his fingerprints were found on a letter mailed from the post office that day.
Nance was so broke that he had stolen money from his aunt some days before the killing, and had remarked that Stevenson, 49, carried a lot of money for a "country woman." Although Stevenson's wallet had been taken, authorities never recovered the missing cash.
The government's case moved slowly at times, as more than 40 witnesses testified and 108 pieces of evidence were introduced - each with a small part to play in the overall case.
Some of the less-important evidence, including an oil filter and other discarded trash belonging to Nance, was described by defense attorney Deborah Caldwell-Bono as "garbage."
Caldwell-Bono emphasized her point in closing arguments by tossing several pieces of the evidence into a trash can. "The majority of the evidence against this man is garbage," she said.
Nance will be sentenced later by Judge James Turk, and faces a sentence of life in prison without parole. Although a death sentence had been possible, federal authorities decided not to seek one after consulting with Justice Department officials in Washington. Nance was tried in federal court because Stevenson's beating and slashing occurred during her duties as a government worker.
In his closing argument, Eckert told the jury it had not heard from the person who mattered most - Stevenson herself. The only way she can be heard, he said, is through the jury's verdict of guilty.
"Don't let her remain silent in her grave," Eckert told the jury. "She was too good of a woman for that."