Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 3, 1995 TAG: 9501030116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Residents of Old Southwest Roanoke struggled Monday to make sense out of a New Year's Day rampage that claimed five lives. Curious onlookers streamed past the crime scene and grieving relatives packed up the victims' belongings.
Meanwhile, investigators continued to search for kin of the victims, and one murdered man's relatives said police told him there was a second gun in the tiny apartment off Highland Avenue when the shooting broke out.
Robert Michael May, 27, who police say has confessed to the killings, is to be arraigned today in Roanoke General District Court.
Sunday, police identified two of the victims, Dale J. Arnold, 36, and Susan Lynne Hutchinson, 44, who lived together in the second-floor apartment that fronts 41/2 Street Southwest.
Monday, police identified a third victim, 43-year-old Cynthia Ann LaPrad of 406 Mountain Ave. Her name is spelled "LaPrade" on her apartment mailbox, but police said it didn't have an "e." They withheld the names of her two male roommates, who also died in the shooting spree.
According to the mailbox, the men were Daniel B. Mason - who neighbors said was LaPrad's boyfriend - and Carl Leonard Stroop.
Police confirmed that Mason and Stroop were the last names of the other two victims. Both men were in their 40s, police said. Neighbors said they worked for a lawn maintenance or landscaping business.
May, who lived next door to the crime scene, was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with one of the murders. Formal charges in connection with the other four killings were expected to be brought against him after his arraignment.
The five killings capped a night on which a number of people in the neighborhood-in-transition partied outside on the street and drifted between apartments, where they drank and toasted the New Year, police and neighbors of the victims said.
"It's kind of spooky - crazy, even," said Donna Tabor, who lived above the Mountain Avenue apartment LaPrad shared with the two men. "It kind of makes you want to go out and get a rifle or something, to make sure you're safe."
"It's unbelievable that somebody would do that to them," said Larry Hairston, who lived in another apartment in the Mountain Avenue house that LaPrad, Mason and Stroop moved into last summer. He said he drank a toast with all five victims in LaPrad's apartment shortly after midnight.
"They weren't violent people," Hairston said. "They just liked to drink their beer, get a buzz and chill out. When I heard they were the ones who got killed, it really did something to me."
Tabor said LaPrad, the mother of three grown children, was collecting unemployment. Her two sons visited the apartment late Sunday, and one of them broke down the door, crying that he knew his mother was inside, that she couldn't be one of the victims, Tabor said.
Around the corner along 41/2 Street on Monday, Arnold's mother and stepfather appeared at the crime scene with Hutchinson's son to retrieve the victims' belongings.
Arnold and Hutchinson had lived in the small apartment together for two years. Both were receiving Social Security income for disabilities. Arnold, an avid fisherman, had a bad leg he'd injured in a car wreck 20 years ago. Hutchinson had a bad back, said Greg Carter, Arnold's stepfather.
Carter said police told him one of the dead men had drawn a gun on May immediately before the murders. May drew a handgun in response and started shooting, Carter said police told him.
"I know it wasn't Dale [who drew the gun on May]. He definitely did not have a gun," Carter said.
The account jibes with one May gave his stepbrother, Tony Kirk, in the hours before his arrest about 3 p.m. Sunday. May told his family that the shooting began after he had argued with one of the men inside the apartment, Kirk said.
"There was a guy with [fatigue] pants on - that dude threatened his life," Kirk said. "I guess he just snapped and lost it ... He said it was something he didn't mean to do. He said it was like a bad dream and when he woke up, it was still there."
Day Avenue resident Kim Lyons, a friend of May's, said he'd told a mutual friend that one of the victims had tried to rob him. City police Major J.L. Viar said May had an altercation with another man on New Year's Eve while attending First Night activities downtown. But police doubt that incident was related to the murders a few hours later, Viar said.
At some point after midnight, May returned from the First Night festivities with a girlfriend to his Highland Avenue apartment house.
After saying goodnight to his girlfriend, May went back outside, where he helped a neighbor who'd been partying into bed at an apartment across 41/2 Street. That man, whom police declined to identify, is the owner of the .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol used in the murders, police said.
Police think May was invited into Arnold's and Hutchinson's apartment.
After the 3 a.m. shooting spree, May eluded police, eventually showing up at his stepfather's Windsor Avenue Southwest home shortly before noon Sunday, Kirk said. May gave up without incident about 3 p.m. after police, who had been tipped off to his whereabouts, surrounded the house.
May's friends, acquaintances and neighbors gave starkly contrasting descriptions of the suspect.
They portrayed him as a man with huge amounts of pent-up anger, as an artistic person who could be trusted with small children, and as a once-heavy-drinking prankster who dabbled in Satanism and liked to listen to heavy-metal music.
Court records show May has had several brushes with the law in recent years, with arrests on charges of burglary, theft, drug possession, malicious wounding and concealed weapons. All eventually were dropped, except for misdemeanor marijuana possession and theft charges, for which he was convicted.
Adair Branner, a nurse with psychiatric training who lives across 41/2 Street from May's apartment, said she'd frequently tangled with May over his use of fireworks. She described him as a dirty-looking and tattooed "violent character" who was surly, unpredictable and had "a seething anger."
May often shot bottle rockets at her as she arrived home from her graveyard shift job, Branner said. Her last contact with him took place just minutes before the murder, when she saw him outside the apartment building.
"He said, 'Yo, bitch, Happy New Year,''' she said.
But Lyons, who said she has known May for 15 years and dated him for a time, described an entirely different person. She said she had no problem letting her young children spend hours at a time in May's apartment, which is across the hall from her mother's.
Lyons said May had recently inherited a house and land in West Virginia from an uncle. He was making plans to move there.
The "Robbie" May she knew liked to collect comic books, trading cards and tropical fish. He made "beautiful" walking sticks from dead tree limbs, which he sometimes sold to friends. He also collected animal skulls and decorated those.
May has attended Alcoholics Anonymous "on and off for, like, two years," Lyons said. He didn't have a hostile personality, but he wouldn't back down from a confrontation, she said, adding: "He must have been provoked, for him to act like that."
Landlord and restaurant owner Spanky Macher, who until last week owned the Highland Avenue property May lived in, often employed May as a laborer. Among other places, May had worked on the old Wright Furniture building on the City Market, which Macher renovated.
Macher said May would sometimes get behind on his rent, and he would allow May to work it off doing painting, tile work and other jobs. But he hadn't employed May for the past six or seven months.
He said he had known May to storm off a job if "you pushed his buttons," but called him "a good kid who needed good direction."
"I've known a lot of loose cannons, and he was not a loose cannon," Macher said. "He was wrapped tight enough not to do this. To tell you the truth, I always liked the kid."
Macher said May often talked about his interest in Satanism when the topic arose during conversation.
Jerry Russo, a foreman who worked for Macher, said he was uncomfortable around May, because his personality would change when he'd been drinking. Russo said he'd also heard that May had quit drinking and begun attending AA, but Macher said he'd seen May drinking a beer in a downtown restaurant just a few weeks ago.
"He was pretty artful," Russo said. May often showed off morbid and "weird-looking" drawings of snakes and wolf heads.
Kirk said May appeared happy over Christmas. "He was a good guy. I don't know why any of this happened," Kirk said.
Staff writers Diane Struzzi and Matt Chittum contributed information to this story.
Keywords:
ROMUR
by CNB