Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 11, 1993 TAG: 9309110129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAROLYN CLICK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LINVILLE LENGTH: Long
At her funeral, there was only passing reference to the violence that claimed 35-year-old Marilyn Stearn Fries, but it could not have been far from the minds of the mourners.
Among the survivors listed on the back of the small white funeral program were two of the people accused of killing her: her only children, 12-year-old Stephanie Dawn Fries and 13-year-old Camellia Lou Fries.
"We celebrate with Marilyn her newly gained freedom from life's problems and troubles, all the heartaches and pains and sorrows," the Rev. Tresa Quarles, pastor of the Linville United Church of Christ, said in her brief eulogy.
By all accounts, Marilyn Fries had suffered her share of troubles, turmoil that ended violently on Labor Day weekend - when, authorities claim, her two daughters and a 14-year-old friend stabbed her to death with a knife.
The killing has riveted the residents of this tiny Rockingham County community and nearby Harrisonburg and created ripples of fear and speculation far beyond the Shenandoah Valley. Journalists from as far away as Washington have written about the killing. Talk show host Maury Povich has called.
"I think people are shocked by the ages, that someone would kill their mother," said Sheriff Glenn Weatherholtz. "You have to know the standing of the mother in the community and where she worked."
"It's probably one of the most devastating things to hit this area in a long time," he said. The slaying comes on the heels of the killing of a supermarket manager earlier this year.
Weatherholtz, who is in his 22nd year as sheriff, is an expansive, friendly man, skilled at handling the media barrage. He is adept at deflecting speculation and returning reporters to the facts.
These are the facts: Sometime after midnight last Saturday, hours before the two girls were to be enrolled in a military school in Front Royal, Marilyn Fries was attacked with a knife and stabbed many times.
At 2:19 a.m. an hysterical Camellia Fries dialed 911 saying an intruder had killed her mother, a well-respected nurse in the ambulatory surgery unit at Rockingham Memorial Hospital.
Sunday afternoon, after police had combed the crime scene and interviewed the daughters, Camellia and Stephanie were charged with premeditated murder. Stephanie's 14-year-old boyfriend, Shawn Roadcap, was charged around midnight.
Because of their youth, the maximum penalty they could receive is incarceration in a juvenile facility until age 21. A Sept. 24 trial is scheduled in juvenile court.
It is apparent the girls were considered suspects from the beginning. Weatherholtz, who is acquainted with Marilyn Fries' parents and extended family, will not say as much, although he acknowledges that weeks before the crime he had engaged in a conversation with the children's grandfather.
"When the call [about the murder] came in I immediately told the deputy on the scene to separate the girls," he said.
Since the slaying, rumors have multiplied. There has been talk of a satanic cult, rumors that have "gone nowhere," said lawyer John Holloran, the court-appointed attorney for Shawn Roadcap.
Edith Long, owner of the only country store in Linville, has heard those rumors and more. The girls came into her store often to play in the store's game arcade and she generally found them to be quiet and nice.
"Normal kids," she said, although the day before the killings she said the oldest girl called the store five or six times looking for her sister.
But the animosity and turmoil within the family was more than rumor. Marilyn Fries had apparently endured a bitter divorce and the family's problems were well known in the church and community. Interpreting the nature of those problems has become a kind of cottage industry.
"There was a custody problem," said Walter Green IV, who has been hired by Camellia's father to represent the older girl. "These girls wanted to be with their dad. They didn't want to be subjected to the boyfriends of their mother."
"I think if you start to pick it apart you'll find a long history of family problems," said Holloran. "This may have been the culmination."
They do not look like killers.
They smile sweetly out of yearbook photos, ordinary middle-school kid faces, the kind who would join the drama club or try out for cheerleading or track.
They do not look like the sort of kids who could engage in what Weatherholtz describes as a detailed and methodical killing. They had no criminal records.
But if the three did carry out the murder together, engage in some grim adolescent fantasy of a world without parents and rules, their alliance is slowly unraveling under the weight of a criminal investigation and trial.
Green, the lawyer for Camellia Fries, said his client will plead not guilty. She claims she and her sister were in another room at the time of the slaying, and that the intruder she described on the 911 tape was her sister's boyfriend, Shawn Roadcap.
"There is a boy that is involved and to be honest with you . . . she is certainly insinuating that he was responsible," said Green. "Her sister supports her story that she had nothing to do with it."
Green said Camellia maintains that she and her sister were in the living room - Stephanie was watching "Star Trek," he said - when Shawn went into the mother's bedroom and began arguing about the decision to send Stephanie to military school.
"She has maintained the same story," said Green. "There were discrepancies because she was trying to protect this 14-year-old boy. When Camellia said there was an intruder, she just didn't get specific."
Holloran is not sure how Shawn will plead, but he said he wants both girls in the courtroom when the case against his client goes before the juvenile judge.
"There is no question that in his statement to police that the girls are intricately intertwined and involved in their mother's death," said Halloran.
Green said he would like to separate the trials. He said he is prepared to appeal a guilty verdict and seek to have his client tried in circuit court before a jury. He is working with the girls' father to obtain a separate lawyer for Stephanie, who he said did nothing during the police interrogation "except cry."
"They are taking `I wish you were dead' and making a monster out of these girls," he said. "I just cannot imagine them killing their biological mom. It is just against human nature so much that I just don't buy it."
In the meantime, the youngsters remain in custody at the Shenandoah Valley Detention Center. Their lawyers describe them as confused, mixed-up, despondent.
Shawn "is at a point that the shock has stopped and he can think," Holloran said. "I don't think he necessarily understands what's going on."
Marilyn Fries was laid to rest on a green hillside that rolls gently up and away from the white clapboard church she attended all her life.
A half-hour before, the funeral procession had wound slowly from the funeral home through downtown Harrisonburg, past the stately 19th century courthouse that is at the city's heart, and north four miles into the countryside.
Industries sit on the outskirts of this city of 30,000, but the plants eventually give way to silos and barns and fields of corn before the road turns toward the tiny Linville community that was home to Fries all her life.
The cars filed past Marilyn Fries' long white ranch house, set back from the road on the left and reached by a long lane, the police tape still fluttering, the kids' bikes on the porch. Past her parents' home, a right turn took them into the church cemetery.
Quarles, the minister, stood in the church sanctuary earlier in the day and talked about the themes of love and forgiveness she planned to convey to the mourners.
How she wanted to speak about Fries' devotion to her children, her character and compassion, her faith in God.
"More than anything, she wanted their lives to turn around and I hope out of death will come life," Quarles said.
Quarles taught physical education in the public schools for 32 years before becoming a minister and in those three decades listened to the hopes and fears of three generations of teen-agers. She said she saw how the problems of modern life - divorce, separation, drugs - slowly tear the fabric of the family.
In a way, she believes, the murder of Marilyn Fries is not an isolated event, but reflects some deeper ill in society, a cancer that has reached into every American community, no matter how small or isolated.
"Something happens in young kids' lives," she said.
Now, she said, the church is willing to reach out to the girls.
"This congregation has hopes that something good will come out of something extremely negative."
by CNB