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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 2, 1994                   TAG: 9411020073
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: |By DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BODY IS FOUND IN CAR TRUNK

What caused Green's death and how long she had been in the trunk remained in question. Preliminary autopsy results were expected today.

The 44-year-old woman had not been seen since Oct. 25. Her daughter reported her missing to police three days later.

"The last time I saw her she was acting really strange," said her daughter, Trish Green. "... She just told me that she loved me."

About 2 p.m. Tuesday, James Witt, a boyfriend of one of Virgie Green's daughters, was putting tools away in Green's car. When he opened the door, he said, there was a rancid smell. When he popped the trunk, he found Green.

Witnesses said she was wrapped in a blanket.

Two vehicles, a light-blue Nissan and a gray, two-toned Dodge Ram, were gone from the woman's rear yard, neighbors said. Absent from her home were two men who lived there, police said.

Neighbors said it was unlike Green not to be around her home at 421 Woods Ave. S.W. She often was seen with her two dogs or accompanied by the two men who lived with her.

Green's porch was littered with old furniture, rusted pipes and other items. Tuesday, yellow police tape was strapped around the breadth of the dilapidated structure.

Her death likely will be the second that city police investigate as a homicide this year, according to a press release by Major J. L. Viar.

As a result of a technicality, police recorded the city's first homicide last month.

On Sept. 9, the body of a missing Lynchburg woman was found in the trunk of her car, which was parked in a Southwest Roanoke parking lot. A medical examiner's report showed that Pamela Gail Ramey died from asphyxiation.

Ramey's boyfriend was the prime suspect in her death. He killed himself after police questioned him briefly.

Because investigators from Lynchburg and Roanoke were unable to determine where Ramey was killed, Roanoke police counted her death as the city's first homicide this year.

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