Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 16, 1994 TAG: 9404180159
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HARRISONBURG LENGTH: Medium
Camellia Fries denied she killed Marilyn Fries, and blamed the killing on her sister's boyfriend.
After the girl's testimony and closing arguments, the jury began deliberating at 5:45 p.m. Camellia Fries and Shawn Roadcap, 15, are charged with first-degree murder.
Marilyn Fries was stabbed 16 times in the neck and back with a kitchen knife as she knelt in her bedroom Sept. 4. Camellia Fries and her 12-year-old sister, Stephanie, are accused of stabbing their mother while Roadcap - the younger girl's boyfriend - pinned the woman down.
``I loved my mother very much,'' Camellia Fries testified near the end of her weeklong murder trial.
Roadcap, Camellia Fries and Stephanie Fries all were convicted of first-degree murder in December by a Rockingham County juvenile cout judge.
All three have appealed their convictions to Circuit Court.
A prosecutor told jurors Friday that Camellia Fries and Roadcap killed Marilyn Fries because she planned to send her daughters to a military-style boarding school the following morning.
Stephanie Fries will be tried separately on April 25.
All three are being tried as juveniles. If convicted, the state may hold them in juvenile homes only until their 21st birthdays.
Stephanie Fries and Roadcap invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions about the killing.
Camellia Fries paused when asked how she felt when she saw her mother's bloody body.
``I was scared,'' she replied.
Asked whether she cried at the sight, Camellia responded matter-of-factly. ``I'm sure I did,'' she said.
She showed no emotion during 21/2 hours of testimony. But when her attorney pulled out of a paper bag the knife that killed her mother, she turned her head and refused to look at it.
Camellia testified that she and Stephanie were sitting on a couch in their living room sometime after midnight when Roadcap walked in carrying a baseball bat.
She said she followed Roadcap into her mother's bedroom and saw him hit Marilyn Fries over the head.
She testified she did not try to stop the attack.
At one point, Roadcap's lawyer, John Holloran, asked Camellia to step down and stand next to Roadcap to show the jury that Camellia is taller by several inches.
During closing arguments, Holloran said Roadcap is ``the only one of the three with a conscience. He's the only who cried on the [taped statement to police], the only one who said, `Yeah I'll tell you what happened.' ''
Camellia testified she wanted to live with her father, but he was unable to get custody of her.
Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney G. Russell Stone Jr. asked her if after ``all this'' she expected to live with her father, who also lives in Rockingham County.
Camellia said she did.
``So you will get what you wanted all along,'' Stone asked.
``This is not how I got what I wanted,'' she answered.
Camellia's lawyer, Walter F. Green, asked her about diary entries in which she described wanting to kill her mother.
Camellia said while she did not get along with her mother, she was not serious about the threat. Many of her friends said the same thing at times, she testified.
On Thursday, a police detective testified that Roadcap confessed to holding Marilyn Fries while Camellia and Stephanie attacked her.
In earlier testimony this week, prosecution witnesses recounted how Roadcap led them to the 8-inch kitchen knife thought to be the murder weapon; the girls' complaints about their mother's rules; the finding of blood-stained clothing belonging to Roadcap and the sisters; and inconsistencies in the children's statements.
by CNB