
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 14, 1995                   TAG: 9504140045
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ABINGDON                                LENGTH: Medium

TRUCKER HELD IN KILLING

A North Carolina man has confessed to the killing of a woman whose body was found Jan. 23 on an Interstate 81 service road in Washington County, but it appears he will be prosecuted in Tennessee.

Sean Patrick Goble, a 28-year-old truck driver who gave an Asheboro, N.C., address, was arrested early Thursday in Winston-Salem, N.C., on a warrant from Washington County. He was jailed without bond in Winston-Salem.

Sheriff Joe D. Mitchell Sr. said Goble confessed to strangling 45-year-old Brenda Kay Hagy of Bloomington, Ind., and said the slaying occurred next to a 76 Truck Stop on Interstate 81 at East Knoxville, Tenn.

"The case now comes under the jurisdiction of Tennessee," Mitchell said.

Berkeley Bell, the district attorney in Greene County, Tenn., said he will file first-degree murder charges against Goble.

Mitchell said Virginia could prosecute the case if, for any reason, Tennessee authorities declined to do so.

Mitchell said the investigation into Hagy's death led to the Winston-Salem and Asheboro, N.C., areas over the past few days. He said his officers arrested Goble at 8:10 a.m. Thursday without incident.

Investigators have considered the possibility that Hagy was a victim of a serial killer suspected in the deaths of at least 18 women in Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New York.

The man described in a 1985 attack on a woman who was choked and left for dead would be 50 to 55 years old now. So Goble appears unlikely to be the elusive trucker known only by the CB handle of "Stargazer," who is alleged to have picked up women at truck stops and killed them.

Goble is still being investigated in connection with other killings, however. Mitchell said Kingsport, Tenn., authorities were interviewing Goble on Thursday afternoon in Winston-Salem in connection with the death of 36-year-old Rebecca Alice Hanes.

Hanes, who had been charged with or convicted of prostitution in Ohio and Texas, was found slain March 19 along Interstate 81 on the outskirts of Kingsport.

The Kingsport authorities also may have questions about an earlier slaying, that of 26-year-old Margaret Sue Goins of Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., whose body was found Nov. 14, 1991, within a mile of where Hanes' body was discovered.

The Associated Press contributed information to this story.

by CNB