Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270148
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
WYTHE BURGLARY RING CHARGES CERTIFIED
A General District Court judge found insufficient evidence Friday that a former state trooper participated in a burglary ring but ordered the trooper's ex-wife held for a grand jury on two charges.Another man arrested after a series of break-ins was the prosecution's main witness, and he said the woman masterminded the crimes.
The witness, Willie Lon Rice II, 26, and two others arrested on break-in charges last month - George Phillip Painter Jr., 29, and Tyrone Lee Coates, 24 - all lived in rented rooms at the home of Elizabeth H. Lambert, 35, of Route 4, Wytheville, off Old Stage Road.
She is the ex-wife of Leslie Eugene Lambert, 43, who was a trooper until his dismissal in 1989 for having an outside job without permission. He and his wife, still married at that time, were indicted on charges of double-billing counties for junked-car disposals. The indictments later were dropped.
Rice testified that Elizabeth Lambert recruited him to break into a Wytheville dental office in December, telling him that cans of drugs were kept in the basement "and if I could get them, she could sell them and we could make a lot of money."
He said he and Painter carried out that theft, two blocks from the Wytheville Police Department building on Spring Street. Rice said he left two boxes of the cans taken from the office at Lambert's home but was never paid for them.
Rice said she also directed him to break into the home of William Phillippi at Route 4, Rural Retreat, on Jan. 16, to take firearms and money. "Me and Libby rode by the house once and she showed me exactly where it was," he testified.
He said she dropped him off the next night, having told him the locations of various guns, a wallet that was supposed to contain $4,500, a security light needed to be unscrewed and the key to the back door. "She told me where everything was in the house," he said.
He took six or seven firearms, he said, but never found the wallet before he left and she picked him up in a car.
Phillippi - who said he had known the Lamberts for about 15 years - said Les Lambert was a regular visitor in his home and may have known that he had $4,500, although it never was left in the wallet mentioned by Rice.
"Les has always known where the key was," Phillippi said. "He was as welcome at my home as my own brother." He said he was shocked when Les Lambert was charged with conspiracy in the break-in.
The only connection Rice made with Les Lambert was testimony that he thought he recognized Lambert's voice on the telephone to Elizabeth Lambert when he eavesdropped on an extension.
General District Judge George Cooley sent charges of conspiracy and participation in breaking and entering against Elizabeth Lambert to the grand jury. He said the witness' saying "I think it was him" on a telephone was insufficient to charge Les Lambert.