Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
One week later, he was a free man - released from the Bland County Jail cell he had occupied since his arrest more than a year ago.
A Giles County jury found Buchanan, 49, not guilty Wednesday of capital murder, robbery and arson in the death of Claudine Waddle. Jurors believed his testimony that it was his brother who killed the woman and intimidated him into not taking steps to help her.
"When the clerk was reading the verdict, Fred looked over at me and said, `They say I didn't do it?''' said one of Buchanan's lawyers, Jimmy Turk. "I said, `Yeah, Fred, they said you didn't do it.' Fred said, `I told them I didn't do it.' He was real happy.''
Waddle's body was found Oct. 21, 1993, in the home where she lived alone in the Waddletown community. She was 77.
At first her death was thought to have been an accident, but an autopsy showed she was killed by a knife wound to the throat. Police said robbery appeared to have been the motive, with the fire set to cover the slaying. Police said items from the woman's home - jewelry, a television and a telephone - were found in the Buchanan brothers' possession.
William James ``Jim'' Buchanan was found guilty in September of first-degree murder and robbery. A Bland County jury sentenced him to two life terms in prison.
Mickey Newberry, Bland County's commonwealth's attorney, had set out last week to prove that Fred Buchanan was the man who actually killed and robbed Waddle. She argued that Buchanan's claims that his brother committed the murder and robbery, then threatened him into complicity, were fantasy - the result of Fred Buchanan's reversing roles in his mind with his brother.
Newberry and an assistant special prosecutor, Mike Doucette of Lynchburg, had argued that Jim Buchanan, who has emphysema, was physically incapable of committing some of the acts for which Fred Buchanan blamed him.
But jurors apparently were swayed by defense testimony that Fred Buchanan, with an IQ of 53, would be unable to hold to a made-up story.
Jimmy Turk, who along with his brother Bobby represented the Bluefield, W.Va., man, said Buchanan's testimony cinched the case. It was bolstered by medical testimony that he would have been unable to continue the charade for 15 months without varying his story.
Fred Buchanan had told police his brother stuck a knife in the woman's neck, then sexually abused her. He said he wanted to get help for Waddle, but said his brother held a shotgun to his head, threatened to put him in a mental hospital and ordered him to set the fire.
"His story just never wavered," Turk said.
The acquittal surprised Jimmy Turk.
"I'm amazed at the verdict from the standpoint that the crimes were so severe," and a jury could have felt pressure to find him guilty of something, he said.
by CNB