Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 25, 1994 TAG: 9402250190
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Authorities say Billy Joe Hampton, 35, of Christiansburg is suspected of raping a woman in West Virginia on Wednesday, robbing an elderly garage owner in McCoy on Thursday morning and then forcing two women at an Ironto rest stop to give up their car.
Hampton also is suspected in the November beating of a Pulaski County man who remains hospitalized.
Hampton has reddish hair, blue eyes, is 5-foot-7 and 155 pounds. Authorities say he is armed with a knife.
Authorities sent out an advisory throughout the East because of the possibility he had left the area.
Hampton, who walks with a limp, was convicted in 1976 of murdering Della Clark Britt, a 95-year-old Montgomery County woman who died of blows to the head. The assaults in November and this week follow the same pattern.
Hampton was sentenced to 45 years in prison for the murder, but 15 years were suspended. It is not clear when he was paroled on the murder conviction, but Hampton was back in prison in 1985 after pleading guilty to 22 counts of forgery. A Montgomery County judge sentenced him to 10 years on those charges, and reimposed the 15 years that had been suspended. Hampton was released on discretionary parole in April 1992.
Pulaski County Sheriff Ralph Dobbins said his investigators had been searching for Hampton this week after a grand jury returned a malicious-wounding indictment in the Nov. 9 beating of Robert H. "Bobby" McDaniel. The 43-year-old Pulaski County man was found lying on the carport floor of his Hazel Hollow Road home with a head injury.
Dobbins said Hampton had helped McDaniel build his house.
Thursday morning, two investigators went to an Elliston garage that Hampton frequents and were getting ready to leave when he approached in a car.
The investigators pursued Hampton but lost sight of him on a back road.
Later, Montgomery County Sheriff Ken Phipps said, a man approached two women at the Interstate 81 rest stop in Ironto and demanded their car.
Evelyn H. Rappapord, 77, of Bethesda, Md., had just gotten out of her car about 11:30 a.m. when the man slid into the driver's seat, Phipps said.
Irene Kimball, a passenger, told the man he was in the wrong car but he replied that he needed to borrow it. A struggle ensued. Kimball got out of the car but Rappapord got back in in an attempt to regain control, Phipps said.
The women told authorities the man drove about 100 yards, then pushed Rappapord out of the car.
Rappapord was injured, police said. She was treated at Lewis-Gale Hospital in Salem and released.
Her assailant was last seen driving north on I-81 at mile marker 129 in a white 1990 Oldsmobile with Maryland handicapped plates. The license number is 74924HC.
About the same time as the Ironto incident, authorities learned about an earlier attack on an 81-year-old man at his garage in the McCoy community of Montgomery County. The victim, Buford McCoy, was struck with a steel pipe by a man who pretended to be interested in buying tires. McCoy was robbed of nearly $500.
Hampton also is suspected in an attack Wednesday at a Beckley, W.Va., shopping center, Beckley Police Sgt. Dave Cook said.
Witnesses said a man drew a knife and attacked a 41-year-old woman as she was putting packages in her car. She fought him, but he drove off with her in her car.
An hour later, the woman, who had been dropped off at the Sandstone exit in Summers County, W.Va., walked to a Phillips 66 station.
"They took her in, took her in the back office, just nursed her, did a good job. She was very upset, crying, shaking. Her eye was practically swollen shut, [and she was] bleeding from the mouth where he beat on her," said T.S. Pack, a West Virginia state trooper.
The woman was treated at a hospital and released. Her car was recovered Thursday at the Ironto rest stop.
Warrants have been obtained in West Virginia for auto theft and abduction. Pack said he would draw up a warrant for Hampton's arrest on rape charges today.
Montgomery County authorities had obtained warrants Thursday evening charging Hampton with carjacking, abduction and malicious wounding.
"My biggest fear right now . . . is he's going to hurt somebody else or be hurt before this is over," said Dobbins, the Pulaski County sheriff.
Staff writer Mara Lee contributed to this story.
by CNB