Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993 TAG: 9303010111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
2 ARE CHARGED WITH SLAYING ELDERLY COUPLE
Police charged two Memphis men Saturday night with the killing of an elderly Martinsville couple discovered two weeks ago bound together with duct tape and apparently left to die in their ransacked home.Authorities arrested one suspect in Memphis and were still looking for the second.
Martinsville police said they had charged Lawrence Tolbert Joshlin, 28, and Johnny Mosier, 25, each with two counts of first-degree murder.
Joshlin was held in the Shelby County, Tenn., jail, awaiting a preliminary hearing today. A nationwide alert has been put out for Mosier, police said.
Jerry Humphreys, a Virginia State Police special agent working in Memphis, said Sunday night he was still pursuing tips about Mosier's whereabouts.
"We believe he was here last night; we're not sure right now," Humphreys said. "We think he's here."
Joshlin will meet with an attorney today to decide whether he should fight extradition to Virginia to be tried for the Merritts' deaths.
Joshlin and Merritt, Humphreys said, are suspects in other states for "flim-flams."
Martinsville police said they think Joshlin and Mosier may have been the two unidentified con artists who last September persuaded James and Evelyn Merritt that their chimney was about to tumble, charged them hundreds of dollars for the shoddy repair work - and then stole more than $1,000 from their house.
At the time, the Merritts reported the incident to police, but no one was arrested. But Saturday night, Martinsville police Lt. D.J. Edwards said: "There's some information that [the suspects] are flim-flam artists."
In the days after the Merritts were found dead, neighbors said they rarely had visitors. If the Merritts kept money or had a lot of valuable items in their home, few would know about it - except the men who had conned them last fall, neighbors said.
Otherwise, police gave few details in the case.
The Merritts, retired factory workers in their 70s, were found dead in their ransacked home on Feb. 20 after neighbors became concerned after they hadn't seen the couple for several days.
An autopsy showed the Merritts had died of dehydration, asphyxiation or exposure after they had been bound with duct tape.
Edwards said only that police had "collected information in the neighborhood that led us to Tennessee" and sent a Martinsville investigator and a Virginia state trooper to Memphis to check out leads.
Joshlin was arrested about 8:30 p.m., Martinsville police said.