ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 2, 1994                   TAG: 9408020091
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WAYNESBORO                                LENGTH: Medium


SEARCH FOR KILLER, RAPIST SCALED BACK

Police scaled back their search in Virginia on Monday for a murderer and a rapist who fled a North Carolina prison and apparently ditched a stolen car and a stolen license tag in Waynesboro.

Fifteen officers searched until about 3 a.m. in the Shenandoah Valley woods, fields and other areas around the South River in Augusta County, where a fisherman had found the car Sunday.

In the river, they found the license plate taken from a car in Virginia Beach. The fugitive murderer, Thomas L. Bonney, has relatives in Virginia Beach, said Waynesboro Police Lt. William Maki.

``That's the other thing that makes us inclined to believe one or both of these people might be here,'' Maki said.

Barney and convicted rapist James Stromer, 48, escaped in a trash container Friday morning from Raleigh's Central Prison.

But no one reported seeing the escapees; no cars had been reported stolen from the area, so the trail was 24 hours old by the time police began searching, Maki said.

``We feel like if we went back and searched the same area again, it wouldn't be fruitful,'' he said.

Instead, authorities are following up leads such as one from a resident of the area where the getaway car was abandoned who said his motorcycle was stolen. The motorcycle was stripped of parts when it was found Monday, indicating the felons had not used it for transportation, Maki said.

Maki planned to go up in a Virginia State Police helicopter late Monday afternoon and search the rugged woodlands for the escapees.

Waynesboro is about 20 miles west of Charlottesville and near both the Shenandoah National Park and George Washington National Forest.

Central Prison officials believe the two left in the back of a garbage truck, the only vehicle that left the grounds from the time when inmates were counted until prison hospital workers discovered them missing.

Raleigh police said the gray 1987 Oldsmobile was reported stolen Friday morning from the parking lot of an automobile tune-up shop about four miles from Central Prison, said Correction Department spokeswoman Patty McQuillan.

Authorities were checking fingerprints on the car and blood found on the passenger side of the vehicle to determine whether they matched the escapees' fingerprints and blood.

Waynesboro Police Sgt. C.R. Miller said Central Prison officials believed Bonney was wounded in the escape, but McQuillan would not confirm whether Bonney was injured.

DNA testing could provide another link between the car and escaped inmates, McQuillan said. Blood samples from both inmates were collected last month as part of a new identification program.

Stromer, who was serving a life sentence, was convicted of rape in 1990 in Pitt County, McQuillan said.

Bonney suffers from a multiple-personality disorder, a psychiatrist said in testimony in the 1988 trial in Camden County, where Bonney was sentenced to death.



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