Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408090073
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Mickell Turpin's girlfriend testified Thursday in Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court that Gordon Turpin stabbed his brother April 8 after they arrived late for a cookout and apparently stumbled into a domestic dispute between the defendant and his wife.
Substitute Judge John Molumphy ruled at the end of the 90-minute hearing that there was enough evidence to send a second-degree murder charge against Gordon Turpin onto a grand jury to decide whether he should stand trial in Circuit Court.
Beth Patsel testified she and Mickell Turpin planned to leave the gathering after only a few minutes because they could tell his brother had been drinking. The situation deteriorated when Gordon Turpin began arguing with his wife and choking her because she wasn't wearing a shirt he had bought her, Patsel said.
"Mickell said, 'Man, it's just the vodka talking,'" Patsel testified.
Gordon Turpin soon began waving a hunting knife, Patsel said. Just after she left the room to run for help, the knife was plunged deep into her boyfriend's chest.
Patsel ran back into the room and saw her boyfriend was standing but bleeding profusely.
"He said, 'He cut me, Beth,'" before leaning on her then falling to the floor, she testified.
When Deputy Jeff Spooner arrived at Turpin's Lick Run home, Patsel and another woman were doing CPR on Mickell Turpin. Patsel, who was trained as a nurse, testified that Gordon Turpin never tried to flee as they waited for the police and rescue squad.
"He was saying if I let his brother die, he was going to kill me," she testified.
Spooner testified Gordon Turpin told him he had stabbed his brother, but said he was merely flashing the knife when Mickell Turpin "turned around quickly and his brother walked into the knife."
When Turpin later was told at the sheriff's office that his brother had died, he fell to the floor crying, screaming and kicking, Spooner said. He later was admitted to a psychiatric hospital but is now being held in the Montgomery County Jail.
Turpin's lawyers, Jimmy Turk and Robbie Jenkins of Radford, had argued there was no evidence of malice or intent to kill and that the charge should be no greater than manslaughter. The two brothers were very close, according to testimony. Turk said his client may have been reckless but his action did not justify a murder charge.
But Peggy Frank, assistant commonwealth's attorney, said the state had presented evidence that justified the charge. Patsel had testified that the defendant was waving the knife around and had threatened to cut them all.
Molumphy said the slaying "suggests more than an accidental bumping."
by CNB