Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
His younger sister, Deborah Goodwin, hadn't been seen or heard from for two days. It wasn't like the divorced mother of two to take off without telling anyone, especially with a man she barely knew.
Sunday night, Johnson's worst fears were confirmed when Roanoke County police came to his home. Goodwin, 41, had been found suffocated at an out-of-the-way cemetery in a West Virginia coal mining hollow near the small town of Bald Knob.
Earlier, at another graveyard less than 10 miles away, West Virginia State Police had arrested her housemate of three weeks, Herman White Jr., 44.
Police say he told them the blonde, blue-eyed Goodwin begged him to kill her. Then he led them to the body. Monday, White was charged with first-degree murder.
Goodwin's family is struggling to come to grips with the killing. They want to know why she died, where, how. Who is White? And why didn't police begin looking for her sooner?
"[White's story] is bull---. She was fine. She's been depressed before - everybody gets depressed. But she was dealing with it," Johnson said. "The whole thing is so bizarre, I can't piece it together. There's a lot of unanswered questions that the family's got."
The comments are echoed by White's family.
"We're all tore to pieces over this thing," said his sister, Linda Mitchell, of Van, W.Va. She called Goodwin's family this week to commiserate.
"It's got us all a wreck. I don't know nothing about it," Mitchell said.
According to Johnson, the paths of Goodwin and White crossed about a month ago. Johnson said he doesn't know how they became friends or the nature of their relationship, but shortly after they met, White moved into a separate bedroom in Goodwin's house in the Willow Creek subdivision of northern Roanoke County. She had lived there two years, after moving from Kansas City, Mo.
White helped around the house, making minor repairs and mowing the lawn, Johnson said.
The couple often attended family cookouts with Goodwin's 14-year-old daughter, Samantha; Johnson's family; and Goodwin's older sister, Patricia Cooper.
"[White] came across as a very nice person. He made friends with all the family. He seemed an upfront, very nice guy," Johnson said.
"They both felt that they were good for each other, helping the other through the problems they had." He declined to be more specific.
White, a slender 6 feet 1 inch tall with a mane of white hair, told the family he was divorced and that he lived outside Charleston, W.Va., where he owned a house on 5 acres. He said he drove a Ford Bronco and lived on a disability retirement.
Two weeks ago, White and Goodwin planned to drive to West Virginia to retrieve his Bronco and other belongings. Johnson was trying to arrange a job interview for his sister where he works, and he asked her to postpone the trip.
But the interview fell through. On July 26, when he called to let her know, Johnson got Goodwin's answering machine instead.
He and Goodwin had made plans for dinner July 27, but he couldn't reach her again.
"Her 14-year-old called Thursday afternoon and said her mother was out," Johnson recalled. Later that afternoon, White called Johnson from West Virginia. He said he and Goodwin couldn't make dinner that night because his Bronco's axle had broken and they had to wait for it to be fixed. White told Johnson they'd join him Friday night instead.
Friday came and went with no call from Goodwin or White. On Saturday, July 30, Samantha called Johnson and asked if he knew where her mother was.
That's when Johnson began to fear the worst.
He called police: the sheriff in Boone County, W.Va; West Virginia State Police, and Roanoke County police. Each agency told him his sister didn't "fit the circumstances for a missing person," because she hadn't been gone long enough, Johnson said.
But Goodwin's family knew something was wrong. Goodwin's ex-husband and their older daughter, along with Cooper, drove to West Virginia to look for her. They returned to Roanoke on July 31, having seen no signs of White or Goodwin.
Meanwhile, Johnson insisted that Roanoke County police take a missing person's report, which they did. A bulletin was issued Aug. 2 to West Virginia State Police.
Sunday, police there found White after a 911 tip from a family member. White was alone, sitting in Goodwin's black Ford Tempo at the Hatfield Cemetery about 10 miles north of Bald Knob.
According to a statement of charges filed against him, White first told troopers he didn't know where Goodwin was. Then, police found a suicide note from him in her car, along with a letter to her family telling them where her body was. Then he led them to her.
White told police he had suffocated her in the cemetery July 27 by pinching her nose between two fingers while holding his other hand over her mouth.
Since the killing, Johnson said, he has found that White's story of owning property "was all lies." Through police in West Virginia, "we found out he has no property, he has no truck. And he doesn't get along with his family," Johnson said.
That's why Johnson doesn't believe Goodwin wanted to die.
"The things that [White] says are just not true. Why would I think this is any more true than all the other lies?" he asked. "It doesn't make sense to me at all."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB