Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993 TAG: 9302040149
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
WOMAN ACCUSED IN '92 MURDER TO GET MENTAL EVALUATION
Katina Lynn Zelenak, one of three people charged in the June 1992 killing of a Christiansburg shoe store manager, will be evaluated to determine whether she was insane at the time.Randy Jones, one of two lawyers representing Zelenak, made a motion for the evaluation Wednesday during a hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
Jones said Zelenak, 20, has been seeing mental-health professionals, and more information about her past has come out indicating a history of being sexually abused. Jones said she may be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.
Zelenak; William Ray Smith Jr., 19; and Paul William Morehead, 21, are charged in the death of Lorna Raines Crockett, 32, of Pulaski County. Crockett was married and the mother of three sons.
She had been manager of Shoe Show in Christiansburg for less than two weeks when she was abducted as she was making a night deposit and shot twice.
While Judge Kenneth I. Devore granted the request for the evaluation, he denied a motion to delay Zelenak's trial, which is set to begin Feb. 17. He ordered the evaluation to be completed as soon as possible.
Devore will hear arguments Monday from Zelenak's other lawyer, Joseph Painter, against allowing cameras in the courtroom during her jury trial.
Devore told Jones that Painter had not provided sufficient reason yet to bar the camera coverage.
"I wish I could. I'd give anything if I could" grant the motion, Devore said. "But I've got to have sufficient reason."
Newspaper and television camera coverage was allowed at the Sept. 1 preliminary hearings for Zelenak, Smith and Morehead.
The two men face capital murder charges. Zelenak has testified against Morehead and Smith, saying that each man fired one shot at Crockett.
All three also have been indicted on two counts of using a firearm, robbery and abduction.
They also have been indicted on charges of conspiring and attempting to rob Stuart Arbuckle, then a Domino's Pizza manager making a night deposit in Blacksburg several hours after Crockett was shot.
Arbuckle used a cellular phone to alert police to the three after he was approached. His call led to their arrests.
Morehead and Zelenak also have charges against them in Pulaski County in two robberies in May 1992.