Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304050101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MARTINSBURG, W.VA. LENGTH: Medium
ARRESTED FUGITIVE HAS A VIOLENT PAST
A fugitive captured at a bar after an 11-day spree that police said included sexual assaults and abductions said Sunday he stopped for a drink because he was lonely after days in the woods."I just wanted to be around somebody," Randy Eugene McBee said at one of two arraignments.
McBee was arrested Saturday night at the Jolly Joker Tavern, where he had been drinking for three hours, after an unidentified man accompanying him told a waitress he was being held against his will.
"I just kept going out making sure that they had a drink so that they would stay," the waitress, Beckie Cunningham, said of the two men.
Bartender Dennis Owens called police. Three undercover troopers surprised McBee from behind, slamming his head to the table and throwing him to the floor.
McBee, 38, a convicted burglar from nearby Berkeley Springs, had been the subject of a search in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle after he escaped March 23 from a work-release center at Church Hill, Md.
Police suspect McBee of sexually assaulting three women, taking at least four people hostage and stealing cars, weapons and cash.
McBee was arraigned on charges of kidnapping, armed robbery, grand larceny and daytime burglary, in addition to a Maryland fugitive warrant. Other charges, including sexual assault, will be taken before a grand jury, prosecutors said.
At Berkeley County Magistrate Court, McBee told The Associated Press he spent most of his time on the run in the woods of West Virginia's hilly Eastern Panhandle, sleeping outside.
Asked why he went on a crime spree, he said: "I keep asking myself that, too. I don't know. Something snapped inside of me."
He said he "was ready to put my life down" and would attempt escape again "if the opportunity arises."
"If I did anybody wrong, I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison, but I didn't know which way to go."
He was later arraigned a second time in adjacent Morgan County, where the charges originated, then returned to jail in Martinsburg, where he was held without bail.
State police Sgt. Greg Stevens said McBee acted as if he was expecting to run into police. A .38-caliber revolver and knife were confiscated from him.
The unidentified man with McBee at the bar was questioned by state police and released. Authorities would not say if he was held hostage but said they want to know what part he played.
On Friday, McBee allegedly broke into an elderly couple's home, held them hostage for 14 hours, raped the 79-year-old woman and robbed them before fleeing in their car, state police said.
He allegedly raped another woman Thursday and stole her car.
Police believe McBee also sexually assaulted a woman in Church Hill, Md., took two guns and ammunition from a house and stole a car later recovered near Berkeley Springs.
It was not the first time authorities feared violence from McBee. In 1990, Morgan County Prosecutor Charles S. Trump IV wrote the state Parole Board opposing McBee's parole from a 1983 armed robbery conviction.
"Do not parole him," Trump wrote.