Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 2, 1994 TAG: 9403020215
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINCHESTER LENGTH: Medium
Phadra, who turned 11 on Aug. 1, was an energetic fifth-grader. She smiled a lot. She made lots of friends. If she got grounded, her friends would go stand on the trailer hitch and talk to her through her bedroom window.
``She had the energy of three kids,'' Layne remembered Tuesday. ``She didn't sleep a lot - I mean maybe six hours and she was wide open.''
Phadra loved playing outside ``whether it was cold or hot.'' But at dusk, she'd always scurry home to her mother's trailer in Arnolds Valley, a rural settlement in Rockbridge County.
``She absorbed everything in life. And she loved everything and liked everybody she met. Somebody new moved into the trailer park, she was like their Welcome Wagon, I guess you could say. She'd go meet 'em and ask if they had any kids.''
Phadra Dannielle Carter died Sept. 18. Cindy Layne's brother-in-law, Billy Layne, is being tried on charges that he kidnapped and killed Phadra early that morning.
Cindy Layne, 33, testified Tuesday for about an hour - often taking long breaks to cry.
She remembered that Billy Layne - who had gotten out of prison several months before, after serving nine years for burglary - had shown a great interest in Phadra when he had visited over Labor Day weekend. He wrestled with her, tickled her and took her to the store for candy bars.
She said Billy Layne told her he was attracted to girls Phadra's age. ``He said he didn't mean it in a perverted way. It's just that he missed out on his daughters because he had been in jail for so many years when they were growing up.''
The night of Sept. 17, Phadra went to a wedding dinner for her father. He was getting remarried the next day, and she was going to be the flower girl.
She got home about 8:30. Cindy Layne and Phadra played records and danced. ``I'd dance one, and she'd dance all of 'em. She put on her cowboy boots, and her feet were moving like Michael Jackson's.''
By 10:45, Phadra was worn out. Cindy Layne dressed Phadra in a long T-shirt and tucked her in on the love seat in the living room.
Just after 2 a.m.,Cindy Layne testified, she was awakened by Phadra's screams. Layne says she was groggy from the pain pills she was taking, and by the time she got up, Phadra was gone.
Layne said the front door was propped open, and Phadra's blanket was on the front steps. A neighbor testified that she saw Phadra being pulled down the road by a tall, skinny man who hissed at her to be quiet.
Layne said she saw the lanky figure through the dim light, but she never saw Phadra. After she ran out in the road, she said, she heard a car start up and then saw it come barrelling toward her. She jumped out of the way, and the car screeched out of the trailer park.
At first, Cindy Layne thought - hoped - that Phadra had run off with some teen-age boys. But two days later, Billy Layne was arrested and charged with kidnapping Phadra. Another two days passed, and Phadra's body was found in a hastily dug grave in Botetourt County. Billy Layne was charged with capital murder. Prosecutors say he sexually molested her.
In court Tuesday, a prosecutor put on rubber evidence gloves and held up a long T-shirt. It had a picture of a cartoon bunny, and it said, ``Boy Watchers Club.'' Phadra was wearing the shirt when her body was found.
The shirt was stained brown with mud. When the prosecutor apologetically asked Cindy Layne to identify it, she dropped her head and said: ``That's it.''
by CNB