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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 29, 1995                   TAG: 9506290079
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COURT HEARS DRIFTER'S DESCRIPTION OF ROANOKE WOMAN'S SLAYING

David McKeone sat hunched over with his head down, tears dripping from the tip of his nose, as he listened Wednesday to his tape-recorded description of how he and a fellow drifter killed a Roanoke woman who had befriended them.

The 28-year-old is charged with murder and robbery in the death of Virgie Green, who was beaten to death in October and dumped in the trunk of a junked car behind her Old Southwest home.

McKeone and Paul D. Thompson are accused of roaming the East Coast last year in what authorities say was a multistate crime spree that left Green and a West Virginia man dead, and a Florida man beaten nearly to death.

At the first day of McKeone's bench trial Wednesday in Roanoke Circuit Court, prosecutors played the tape-recorded statement that he had given to police Detective N.W. Tolrud.

In the interview, McKeone put much of the blame on Thompson - saying the 25-year-old approached Green from behind as she sat cross-legged, playing cards with them the night of Oct. 24, and smashed her in the head with a blunt instrument that "looked like a sledgehammer."

McKeone, who told Tolrud he liked Green because she invited them into her home when they had nowhere else to go, began to cry silently as he listened to his statement played in court.

He requested a recess and was led to a holding cell, his tears leaving a damp spot on the courtroom carpet.

There was no testimony Wednesday that McKeone struck the fatal blow. But prosecutors Joel Branscom and Greg Phillips are holding him responsible, because, they say, he knew of Thompson's plan and then helped steal Green's belongings and put her body into the trunk of a car behind her Woods Avenue home.

Green's body, wrapped in a blanket, was discovered the following week by her daughter. A plastic garbage bag had been pulled over her head. Her truck, car and personal property - including a television, jewelry, guns and cash - had been taken.

Defense attorney Mary Harkins has subpoenaed Thompson, who is charged with capital murder, to testify when the trial resumes today.

McKeone and Thompson, who authorities say met while serving time in prison, are charged with killing a West Virginia man two months before they came to Roanoke, where they met Green, 44, through a chance encounter with her daughter.

After Green's death, they caught a bus to Florida, where they have since been convicted of attempted murder in the beating of a elderly man several days later.

Police eventually tracked them down in Texas, where they were arrested and returned to Roanoke for trial.

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