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

DATE: SATURDAY, June 3, 1995                   TAG: 9506050051
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

EX-WARDEN SUSPECTS TURNER HAD GOTTEN GUN

A former top official with the state Department of Corrections believes Willie Lloyd Turner had a gun inside the Greensville Correctional Center and that he could have gotten it only with the help of a staff member.

Toni V. Bair, a regional prison administrator for Virginia until 1991, said, ``I can see where Willie Turner would have the charisma, the intelligence, the resources, the money - obviously - to get a staff member to get him a gun. I just don't know of any other way ... other than he paid some staff member quite a considerable amount of money to bring it in to him,'' said Bair, who knew Turner while both were at Mecklenburg Correctional Center.

Bair was named warden at Mecklenburg, home of Virginia's death row, in the wake of the 1984 escape of six death row inmates, masterminded in part by Turner.

Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Kilgore declined to respond to Bair's remarks, citing a current state police investigation.

by CNB