Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 12, 1994 TAG: 9408120093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Deborah Goodwin's relatives strongly doubt that Herman White Jr. was insane when the slaying occurred.
Her brother, Allen Johnson, called him "a con man."
"He seemed perfectly sane to me, and we feel [an insanity plea] is the way he's trying to go. I don't want him to get off with insanity. The guy came across as a very sane person," Johnson said Thursday.
White, 44, of Bozoo, W.Va., is charged with first-degree murder in in the July 27 death of Goodwin, 41, with whom he'd lived for three weeks. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment because there is no death penalty in West Virginia.
Goodwin, a divorced mother of two who lived in the Willow Creek community of Northern Roanoke County, was suffocated in a rural cemetery outside Bald Knob, W.Va., about 50 miles south of Charleston.
According to a criminal complaint filed after his arrest Sunday by West Virginia State Police, White told investigators Goodwin willingly went there with him. He killed her because she told him repeatedly that she wanted to die, White told police.
Johnson, however, denies his sister was suicidal.
White is due to enter a plea in a hearing Wednesday in Boone County Circuit Court in Madison, W.Va. He is being held without bond in the South Central Regional Jail outside Charleston.
His court-appointed lawyer, Timothy Mayo, said he'll decide whether to enter an insanity plea after reviewing records from both the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Lewis-Gale Hospital in Salem.
Mayo said White was treated in both facilities this summer. A spokeswoman for the VA hospital confirmed they had treated White, but declined to say when or for what. Citing patient confidentiality policies, a Lewis-Gale spokeswoman declined to confirm that White had been a patient there.
"I guess what would be common knowledge is that [White]'s had some depression," Mayo said. The lawyer said he believed White's emotional troubles arose shortly after he returned from Vietnam and have plagued him intermittently ever since.
White is the youngest of four children in a strongly religious family in Van, W.Va., near Bald Knob. His sister, Carol Smith, described him as "unpredictable," and said he'd battled mental illness for years.
"I know he's had help. He's tried to help himself. He seems to get straightened out, and then he goes off again," Smith said. "He'd just start losing control of taking care of himself."
Still unclear is the nature of Goodwin and White's relationship or how they met. Johnson said the Vietnam veteran was living in a separate bedroom in Goodwin's house.
Johnson said White talked Goodwin into driving him to West Virginia so he could pick up a Ford Bronco and other belongings he owned there. White had also told Goodwin's family that he owned a house on five acres outside Charleston, Johnson said.
After the murder, Goodwin's relatives learned from West Virginia State Police that White owned no property or truck, Johnson said.
Under questioning by West Virginia State Police, White admitted suffocating Goodwin.
by CNB