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

DATE: FRIDAY, December 16, 1994                   TAG: 9412160065
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN VIRGINIA

RICHMOND - The Virginia Retirement System on Thursday recommended that the General Assembly cut benefits for future retirees to help pay for automatic cost-of-living increases for state pensioners.

The VRS trustees offered nine alternatives for financing these long-term cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs. Most of them would mean smaller contributions by the state, or delaying or capping increases for the next wave of retirees.

The options, which would not affect 70,000 current retirees, would allow Virginia to ``prefund'' COLAs - in essence, pay them in advance - and abandon a pay-as-you-go approach that is causing a cash drain.

Trustees said the proposals, driven by an anticipated surge in the number of retirees that will drive up costs, could rankle the 260,000 state employees, judges and teachers enrolled in the $16.1 billion VRS.

``I don't think anybody would agree with it,'' said trustee Donald Cahill of Prince William County. ``When you start reducing something they had, you create a morale problem.''

- Associated Press

Saliva links man to rape-murder

CHESAPEAKE - A man convicted of raping and strangling a Chesapeake woman was linked to the crime through a saliva sample on a cigarette.

There was no physical evidence linking Willie Leon Irving, 30, to the Sept. 3, 1993, crime until Detective Cecil Whitehurst offered him a cigarette in an interrogation room.

Prosecutors used that evidence to convict Irving of killing Robin Williams. He received two life sentences Wednesday from Chesapeake Circuit Judge Benjamin Williams.

Williams, a single mother who worked at Portsmouth General Hospital, was strangled in her apartment in the presence of her 3-year-old son.

Police said they were suspicious of Irving - whose mother lived in Williams' apartment complex - when they questioned him soon after Williams' body was found.

After police got the saliva sample on the cigarette butt, a private lab matched it to samples found at the murder scene. Police used that evidence to order DNA testing of Irving's blood, which again linked him to the murder.

- Associated Press