Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407030130
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
"I know I'm going to die for it," Michael Claggett, 33, said in the interview with WTKR-TV. "I want to."
Claggett and Denise R. Holsinger, 29, both of Virginia Beach, were taken into custody late Friday night. They were each charged with four counts of capital murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and one count each of robbery.
Claggett, who lived in a condominium near the Witchduck Inn, where Thursday night's shootings occurred, also was charged with being a felon in possession of a handgun, authorities said.
Claggett, in an emotional interview from the Virginia Beach jail, where he is being held without bond, said he shot all four victims but was urged to do so by Holsinger, a former waitress and bartender at the Witchduck Inn.
But Holsinger, in a separate interview, denied any involvement in the slayings, although she acknowledged being in the bar earlier Thursday evening. "I didn't do anything," she said.
Virginia Beach police spokesman Mike Carey said police anticipate no further arrests in the case, which is apparently the largest multiple slaying in the city's history.
The four victims included the bar's owner, whose 4-year-old son slept through the attack and was unharmed. The victims were found by a customer who tried to go in about midnight Thursday and entered a back door after finding the front door locked.
The owner, Lamvan Son, known as L.V. to acquaintances, "was one of the nicest guys in the world," said a bar regular who declined to give his name.
In addition to Son, 41, police spokesman Lewis Thurston identified the victims as bar employees Karen S. Rounds, 31, and Wendel G. Parrish Jr., 32; and a customer, Abdel Aziz Gren, 34. Son and Gren died at the bar, and the other two died within about an hour of being taken to local hospitals. All lived in Virginia Beach.
As police prepared tactical teams Friday night to arrest Claggett and Holsinger, a patrol officer responded to a call of a man sleeping outdoors. The officer discovered the man - sleeping in the bushes outside his condominium - was Claggett and arrested him. Carey said Holsinger turned herself in at police headquarters.
Carey said Claggett and Holsinger were scheduled for a bond hearing Tuesday.
Police said both suspects were regular customers at the bar and that Claggett knew Son.
Son was a Vietnamese refugee who had opened the inn in March. He and his wife, Lanna, 38, also owned another Virginia Beach bar-and-restaurant called Lanna's Village Inn.
Gren was a Moroccan native who worked at The Pizza Chef Inn in Virginia Beach, which is owned by his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law, Jim Garcia, said Gren was a regular at the tavern.
Parrish was working as a handyman at the bar and staying with another of the bar's waitresses and her husband.
Rounds was a Pennsylvania native and a registered nurse. Her husband, Kevin Rounds, said she quit her full-time nursing job at MedCare Center in Chesapeake to go back to school, and was working at the bar to make some money for school.
by CNB