Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 28, 1994 TAG: 9406300052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rose, 49, was an inmate at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The cause of his death was not released Monday.
Rose was serving a life sentence for the April 1982 murder of Cecil Calloway, a 16-year-old Roanoker who reportedly had given city vice squad officers information that led to Rose's arrest on drug charges.
Rose, who had a history of drug-related convictions, was out on bond facing those charges at the time of the murder.
Calloway's body was dumped over an embankment near the Quarry Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Bedford County. An autopsy revealed he had been shot in the chest and back and also had been beaten over the head.
Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Updike, who later prosecuted the case, was with state police and Roanoke vice squad officers when Rose was arrested and charged with the killing at his home, located above what was then "Mr. E's Place" - a nightclub Rose operated on 13th Street Northwest.
It was the first murder case Updike prosecuted that resulted in a life sentence, and the only one that has involved a police informant.
"I remember that everybody called him "Mr. E," Updike said Monday. "It was a brutal murder ... it really was."
Evelyn Calloway, the victim's mother, filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the Roanoke Police Department, the city of Roanoke and narcotics officer P.W. Sullivan in October 1983, alleging that police failed to protect her son after he became an informant. The suit was dismissed.
Sullivan, who is now a sergeant with the police department's COPE unit, said there was no policy dealing with the age of informants at the time of Calloway's murder.
In a 1982 news article, Roanoke Police Chief M. David Hooper said common sense was the main thing his officers used to decide with whom to work.
Hooper also distinguished between different types of informants, saying, "There's another category of people who, though they may be juveniles, are streetwise, worldly wise ... they are for all practical purposes grown-ups. You bet your bottom dollar we'll talk to them."
Hooper could not be reached for comment Monday.
The Police Department now has a guideline requiring that officers notify and receive permission from parents of prospective juvenile informants, Maj. J.L. Viar said.
He said he did not know if the policy was adopted as the result of Calloway's murder.
by CNB