Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 8, 1995 TAG: 9507100051
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was that employee, Stuart Arbuckle, who led police to Zelenak and two men. All three were later found guilty of murdering a shoe store manager.
Zelenak, 23, received life plus two years in prison for her participation in the June 1992 robbery and murder of Lorna Raines Crockett, a Pulaski County woman who managed a Christiansburg shoe store.
But Zelenak appealed a 14-year sentence issued by a jury in February 1993. She had pleaded not guilty to charges that she assisted two others in the attempted robbery of Arbuckle, then a Blacksburg pizza shop manager. He was accosted as he made a night deposit at a South Main Street bank - just hours after Crockett was shot.
Arbuckle foiled the robbery attempt, then followed his assailants and called police on his car's cellular phone. When police stopped the car, Zelenak and two men were inside, as well as two guns - including one that authorities later determined was used to kill Crockett. She was robbed of her purse while making a night deposit, then taken a short distance away and shot.
The Court of Appeals initially refused to consider her petition for appeal because it was received a day past the filing deadline.
But last year, The Virginia Supreme Court granted her a limited right to file her petition of appeal again.
Fred Kellerman, a Blacksburg lawyer, was appointed to represent her on the appeal, replacing her trial lawyer, Joe Painter.
Two of the issues in the appeal are:
The claim that an inmate housed at the Montgomery County Jail was not allowed to testify about a conversation he allegedly had with Paul William Morehead, Zelenak's then-boyfriend. Morehead and another man, William Ray Smith Jr., also were convicted in Crockett's murder and the attempted robbery of Arbuckle.
The commonwealth's attorney's use of statements made in Zelenak's competency report to impeach her father's testimony.
No date has been set for the appeal to be heard. Zelenak is being held in the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland.
by CNB