Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 17, 1995 TAG: 9501170112
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
His friends knew him only as Lee, a hulk of a man with a bushy beard that made him look a bit like Grizzly Adams.
Carl Leonard Stroop was 42 when he was gunned down with four of his friends as they celebrated the new year in an Old Southwest Roanoke apartment.
Eleven days after he was killed, Stroop's body was removed from the morgue. Naked, he was zipped into a heavy plastic bag, placed in a wood-frame casket and laid in a pauper's grave at the city cemetery Thursday.
His family in Ohio didn't claim his body. They didn't want to discuss his life.
Now, Stroop is known as number 1224. A small metal plaque marks his burial site.
A few feet away lies one of his slain friends, Susan Hutchinson, buried earlier in the week. The flowers from her funeral were the only flash of color against the mud. Her family couldn't afford to pay for the funeral, but they did attend. They plan to mark her grave with a headstone.
Stroop, Hutchinson, Cynthia LaPrade, Daniel Mason and Dale Arnold: Their lives were sparse and simple, hardened by alcohol and mended through their friendship with one another.
"They weren't just a bunch of drunks," said a friend, Jim Barren. "Even when they drank, they didn't go downtown and bother anyone."
When they were shot down early Jan.1, the friends were partying at the carriage house apartment of Hutchinson, 44, and Arnold, 36. It is believed they invited neighbor Robert May to join them. He is the man suspected of killing them, supposedly during an argument. Police have not disclosed what sparked the fight.
The five victims did not regularly socialize with May, say friends and family, most of whom heard of the 27-year-old man for the first time on the day of the slayings.
But it wasn't unlike the friends to ask others to party with them. That's just the type of people they were, Barren said.
"They'd do anything in the world for you," he said. "I know six people that Dale took in, including myself when I lost my job."
Hutchinson and Arnold had been dating for two years. They were introduced to each other by Hutchinson's 21-year-old son, Kelly Robson. Friends called them Susie and Duck.
Arnold worked part time as a painter. Hutchinson liked to spend time watching her favorite soap operas and cooking her specialties, like fried chicken.
"Her life in general was hard until she met Duck," Robson says of his mother. "Until she met Duck, she couldn't find happiness."
Hutchinson struggled to overcome her alcoholism, which she had done, Robson said. She had survived several abusive relationships.
Hardship and alcohol appeared to draw these five to one another. But they were about more than that, say family and friends.
Mason, 47, had left behind his family in Waynesboro, a brief career in the Navy and a steady job at a manufacturing company. He came to Roanoke nine years ago after his divorce.
He never returned to Waynesboro until his family brought his body back to be buried in his ex-wife's cemetery plot.
"He didn't want us to see him the way he was," said his mother, Ethel Mason.
But his family never forgot him. His 22-year-old son, Eric, remembers his father's talent for woodwork, his love of old hot rods and his rebellious nature.
"He used to get after me to get a haircut, then he goes and grows his hair long," Eric Mason said. "But he was my father, and I respected him for what he told me not to do."
Thanksgiving 1993 was the last time father and son saw each other.
"He wanted to keep his secrecy for some reason," Eric Mason said. "We understand he had a problem. We tried to cope with it. When he wasn't around alcohol, he was the most loving father anyone could ever want."
Mason met LaPrade, who also battled alcoholism, when he arrived in Roanoke. They dated, then broke up. Mason took to Roanoke's streets, where he met Stroop. The two became inseparable, like brothers, friends say.
Recently, when Mason and LaPrade reunited, the three decided to rent an apartment on Mountain Avenue. It had only one bedroom, but was spacious compared with their friends' carriage house.
It was at their apartment that friends gathered to root for their favorite football teams on Sundays. It was there that family and friends gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Last Christmas, Mason chopped down a cedar tree for the festivities. It was placed in Stroop's corner of the room, where a Rebel flag hung prominently above his belongings.
"Lee" Stroop was the last of the five victims to be laid to rest. His funeral at the city graveyard at Coyner Springs cost $255.
Jim Barren was the only person who attended the ceremony.
Keywords:
FATALITY
Memo: ***CORRECTION***