Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 21, 1995 TAG: 9503210089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
But, psychiatrists found, she also was in a deep depression and saw the fire as a way for the financially strapped country club to recoup losses and start over.
Dean, 49, pleaded guilty to arson Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court. She entered what's known as an "Alford plea" to a second charge of embezzling more than $8,000 from the club. Both pleas were the result of a plea agreement.
An Alford plea is entered when defendants believe prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them and don't want to gamble with a sentence a jury may hand down.
Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith saw a jury trial as a gamble, too. A plea agreement guaranteed a finding of guilt in a case where a jury might have been swayed by the insanity defense Radford lawyer Dick Davis was planning, he said.
When the hearing was over, Dean - who was free on bond for the past year - was led off to the Montgomery County Jail to begin serving 11/2 years of a seven-year sentence. Dean, who until recently was working as a bartender at a Christiansburg restaurant, will be put on work release if Sheriff Ken Phipps approves.
After she serves the year-and-a-half, the rest of the sentence is to be suspended and Dean will be placed on probation for four years. She also will have to pay back $745,548 to Travelers Insurance, which paid the country club's claim.
She'll do that "a little bit at a time," Davis said after the hearing.
With a psychiatrist for the prosecution ready to testify that Dean was competent at the time of the fire, and a defense psychiatrist equally convinced that she wasn't, Keith said taking her plea of guilty and admission of liability was "better than battling psychiatrists."
Dean sat quietly throughout most of the hearing, answering each of Judge Designate Kenneth Devore's questions with a quiet "yes, sir." Her head bobbed and she wiped at her eyes. She had to steady one arm with another as she took a drink of water from a paper cup.
There was "a great deal of evidence to the effect that she was not herself," the night the Blacksburg Country Club burned, Davis said after the hearing.
The country club was going through financial difficulty in the winter of 1994, and as manager, "Ms. Dean was very concerned about that," Keith told Devore while giving a brief summary of the evidence
"She decided that the [action] that was necessary to save the country club and save its business was to burn it down and collect the insurance," he said.
The night of the fire, Keith said, Dean splashed gasoline throughout the building.
The fire destroyed about two-thirds of the clubhouse, located in the Ellett Valley near Blacksburg. Rebuilding has started and the new clubhouse may open by August.
Suicide notes were found, and authorities and club members at first feared Dean was inside the building, Keith said. But she later was found at a nearby maintenance shack on the club's grounds.
"She fully admitted she had set the place on fire," the prosecutor said.
As Keith was summarizing the evidence against Dean, a loud, buzzing alarm went off repeatedly, momentarily startling - then amusing - courtroom spectators.
The embezzlement charge was entered after investigators found that Dean had used $8,333 belonging to the club to buy a computer for herself and to pay the Internal Revenue Service for her 1987 taxes, Keith said.
Dean repaid the country club $8,000 before Monday's hearing got under way. Dean also will have to pay the remaining amount she embezzled and the $1,000 insurance deductible, Keith said.
Davis said Dean has been continuing treatment for depression.
"She's a very strong and very fine young lady," Davis said.
Country club members have been divided over how Dean's case should be handled. Keith said he had received letters chastising him for pursuing the case, while other members were equally adamant that she be brought to trial.
"There are some people who will never be satisfied," Keith said. "... There's a number who will say she was a poor pitiful lady who was whacked out at the time."
by CNB