Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993 TAG: 9301030087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`RAINBOW' GRAND JURY RECALLED
A West Virginia grand jury has been recalled to determine if there is enough evidence to indict seven men on charges of murder in the 12-year-old mystery of the "Rainbow girls" killings.Walt Weiford, the former Pocahontas County prosecutor who has been appointed special prosecutor in the case, said Saturday that the grand jury hearing is scheduled to begin Jan. 12. He said it may take two days to present the complicated case. And, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if indictments are returned."
Weiford said he plans to introduce evidence against the same seven present and former Pocahontas County men who were arrested in April. The seven were charged with first-degree murder in the 1980 shooting deaths of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, N.Y., and Vickie Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa.
The charges later were thrown out amid allegations that state police pressured one of the seven into confessing and beat a confession out of another of the suspects.
Weiford called for a state police internal investigation of the beating allegations. He also sent investigators out to reinterview suspects and possible witnesses in the Rainbow case, and said he planned to take the murder charges directly to a grand jury.
Jerry Dale, who left office as Pocahontas County sheriff on Friday, said he and other investigators have obtained new evidence that supports allegations against the seven men. He declined to elaborate.
Police say they also have discounted the allegation that one of the men who confessed was beaten into confessing. And, authorities said, that suspect still sticks by his confession. The suspect who said he was intimidated by police into confessing has recanted his confession.
According to testimony at a preliminary hearing last year, the two who confessed told police that they and the other five men picked up the two women hitchhiking. The women told them they wanted to be taken to the Monongahela National Forest, where the back-to-nature Rainbow Family had gathered for a summer camp-in.
Instead of taking the women to the camp, the men drove them to a secluded mountain area where they pressured the women to have sex. When the women refused and threatened to go to police, one of the seven men, Jacob Beard, now of Crescent City, Fla., shot them, according to the confessions.
Beard has denied any involvement.
The case was further complicated last year when some West Virginia state police investigators said they believe Beard and the six others are innocent. They believe the killer is Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist neo-Nazi who is in federal prison in Illinois for several racially related murders.
Weiford said he wants a grand jury to hear the evidence so that the people of Pocahontas County will have the opportunity to decide if there is enough evidence to place charges.
"At least we'll have done what we're supposed to do," Weiford said.