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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 11, 1993                   TAG: 9302110116
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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ROANOKER GUILTY OF MURDER

A Roanoke man was convicted Wednesday of killing a kindhearted neighbor while robbing him of $11 in pocket change.

Gary Wayne Draper, 23, pleaded no contest to charges of first-degree felony murder and robbery. He faces a maximum punishment of two life terms when he is sentenced in Roanoke Circuit Court.

Draper's pleas came two weeks after his cousin, Lewis Winston Draper, was convicted by a jury of his role in the suffocation death of 71-year-old Douglas E. Webb. The jury set a sentence of life in prison for Winston Draper.

Testimony has shown that the two cousins decided to rob Webb, a family friend, Sept. 3, assuming he had some money left over after just buying one of them a color television set.

That night, the Draper cousins lured Webb out on the ruse of looking for a coin-operated laundry for some late-night washing.

Webb was suffocated in the back seat of his car, then left behind after the car was rammed into a parked tractor-trailer in Southeast Roanoke and set on fire. At first, police believed Webb had died of smoke inhalation in a traffic accident.

After the robbery, the Drapers spent the change they took from Webb's pockets on cigarettes and junk food, according to testimony.

Both cousins admitted to police Detective Neil Tolrud that they set out to rob Webb, but essentially implicated each other in his death.

Webb, a retired letter carrier, was known among his neighbors in Southeast Roanoke as a generous man who often spent him money on friends.

Keywords:
ROMUR

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