Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050068
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
When town police charged Eric L. Lokey in January, they said they believed his arrest had helped crack a motel theft ring that has operated up and down the East Coast for years.
More than $200,000 in jewelry, cash and credit cards have been stolen from the Hampton Inn and Days Inn off Interstate 81 in Christiansburg since 1991.
Monday, a Montgomery County grand jury returned seven indictments accusing Lokey, 28, of Orangeburg, of three counts of breaking and entering; three counts of grand larceny; and one count of credit-card theft.
The charges involve burglaries in 1991 and 1993. No other arrests have been made in the burglaries, but an investigation is continuing.
At a preliminary hearing earlier this year, Jean Masterson of Myrtle Beach, S.C., testified she and her husband had unloaded their luggage at the Days Inn in September 1993, then left their room to go to dinner. They noticed nothing unusual when they returned about an hour later, but when she unpacked her bag at home the next day, she noticed her jewelry was missing from her overnight bag. The six or seven pieces of rings and earrings were valued at about $8,000, Masterson said. Masterson identified several pieces of the jewelry police had recovered during an investigation.
Christiansburg Lt. Doug Marrs said the thefts happened when guests went to dinner or breakfast. One person would act as lookout while another would enter the rooms, replace door locks with dummy locks and make a master key to fit other rooms, Marrs said.
Christiansburg's case against Lokey began to take shape after the department learned North Carolina police stopped Lokey and others Sept. 2, 1993, - one day after the Days Inn break-in - and found homemade master keys and two keys inscribed "DI I-81 CHRIS" in the car. Police also found $9,000 worth of jewelry now thought to have been taken from Days Inn rooms, Marrs said.
A former Forsyth County Sheriff's Office detective testified at the preliminary hearing that Lokey and two others in the rental car said they didn't know how the items had gotten there and didn't know whom they belonged to.
Lokey is being held in the Montgomery County Jail.
The grand jury returned 137 indictments Monday, including the charges against Lokey. Others indicted and their charges include:
Steven Allyn Ackerman, 21, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute:
Ackerman is one of two people facing felony marijuana charges after a November investigation by the Montgomery County Drug Task Force turned up large quantities of marijuana and cash.
During a February preliminary hearing, the testimony offered against Ackerman was as follows:
Police had searched another student's apartment in Blacksburg in mid-November and found marijuana. The student said the marijuana had come from Ackerman and said he could buy some more, testified Lynn Roach, a Virginia State Police special agent who coordinates the Montgomery County Drug Task Force.
When two task force members later knocked at Ackerman's Giles Road apartment door, his roommate, Brandon McCulloch, answered. They told him they had reason to believe marijuana was in the apartment. McCulloch let them in and gave them some marijuana, according to testimony.
When Ackerman pulled in to his parking lot, Roach identified himself, and told him "I knew that he had marijuana in the pickup truck and I asked if he would give it to me."
"At that point, he went to his pickup truck, got a back pack, and handed it over," Roach testified.
Ackerman told police he had gotten the marijuana from a Radford University student, Roach said.
A lab analysis showed the marijuana weighed 14.7 ounces and had been separated into 16 plastic bags.
McCulloch, 20, from Vienna, who was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession, was entered into a Youthful Offender Program for first-time offenders.
As part of the same drug bust, Timothy Richard Irwin, 21, a Radford University student from Burke, waived preliminary hearing last month on felony charges accusing him of possessing marijuana with intent to distribute.
Task force members say they confiscated $13,000 in cash and about 17 pounds of marijuana from Irwin's Downey Street apartment.
His cases will likely go to Radford city's grand jury to consider for indictment in June.
Frank Garrett Edwards, 25, of Blacksburg; two counts of making bomb threats. The indictments accuse Edwards, originally from the Smithfield area, of making two bomb threats against the College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech.
Edwards, a graduate student in crop and soil environmental sciences, is suspected of calling the Tech Police Department twice on Nov. 17 warning that a bomb would go off at the college that evening.
by CNB