Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501160029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In a newsletter last month, the division said it had located 53 of the 87 delinquent parents whose names and faces have appeared on the ``10 Most Wanted'' lists in the past six years.
One of them, according to the newsletter, was James Dennis Murphy Jr., who appeared on the top 10 list released last August. The state says Murphy, 49, owes $12,639 to a child who lives in the Roanoke area.
But Murphy's inclusion among those who had been tracked down was a bit premature.
Count him, again, among the missing.
A copy of the list made its way to the Niagara Falls, N.Y., area, where Murphy's former wife told the enforcement division that he was living with friends. And, somehow, word that he was among Virginia's top 10 deadbeat parents for 1994 reached Murphy.
He turned himself in. Sort of.
Murphy telephoned the division, promising that he would resume the court-ordered payments he had stopped making four years ago, said Wayne Chapman, manager of the division's Roanoke district office. He made arrangements to pay.
Two weeks later, he disappeared.
``At the time [the newsletter] went out, he'd been found,'' Chapman said. ``But he managed to leave that location. We had him for a minute.''
Chapman is not sure why Murphy contacted the division. It is ``not the norm'' for a parent wanted for child-support evasion to volunteer his or her location, Chapman said.
Murphy may have had good intentions. Or he simply may have been buying time, Chapman said.
Murphy, a dog trainer by profession, was ordered in 1990 to pay $290 a month in child support. He has not paid since July 1991, Chapman said.
Virginia's worst child-support evaders are not necessarily those who owe the most but are those identified as among the hardest cases to enforce. Placement on the lists does not mean they have been charged with a crime.
Besides Murphy, two others on the state's ``10 Most Wanted'' list for 1994 owe support to children in the Roanoke area. William Robert VanDyke, 40, owes $33,268 in support to one child; and David Thomas Williams, 37, owes $15,043 in support to two children, according to the list.
Some of the state's worst child-support evaders have eluded the enforcement division for years. The division has yet to locate one man who appeared on its first ``10 Most Wanted'' list six years ago.
by CNB