Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It forced his parents to commit him to a psychiatric center after he threatened to kill his father, attacked his mother and pulled a knife on his brother.
It haunted him as a young adult, as he amassed a record of 29 criminal convictions.
And it sparked the shooting spree that killed five people early New Year's Day in an Old Southwest carriage house.
Tuesday, the 27-year-old man - described by the psychiatrist he saw as a teen-ager as having "budding psychopathic tendencies" - was convicted by Roanoke Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein of capital murder and related charges.
The conviction ended the prosecution's summary of evidence against May and launched the penalty phase, in which Weckstein will decide if May should be sentenced to life in prison or death.
From the onset of May's bench trial, defense and prosecution attorneys agreed the issue was not whether May was the killer, but what punishment he would receive.
Roanoke Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom asked Weckstein to sentence May to death. Prosecutors must support that request by proving the "vileness" of the crime and the "future danger" of the defendant.
Public Defender Ray Leven asked that May be spared that sentence, explaining that if he were in jail for the rest of his life, he would no longer be a threat to society.
May has an "understanding that if the court chose life as a sentence, he would not be available for parole," Leven said. "When we're talking about a continuous threat to society, I'd remind the court that we're not asking May to go free, to get a slap on the wrist or not to be punished. But ... this court has already decided that Mr. May will die in the penitentiary."
May's conviction followed more than a day of testimony that included graphic evidence of the crime scene.
In the tiny kitchen, police found the bodies of Dale Arnold, 36; Carl Stroop, 42; and Daniel Mason, 47.
Arnold and Mason had been shot several times. Stroop had been shot once in the chest, a wound that caused him "to drown in his own blood," Dr. William Massello, assistant chief medical examiner of Western Virginia, testified Tuesday.
In an adjoining room, the bodies of Susan Hutchinson, 44, and Cynthia LaPrade, 43, were found. Both appeared to have been at rest when they were shot in the head.
Prosecutors depicted May as a cold-blooded killer who gunned down the three men during an argument and shot the two women execution-style. During the penalty phase Tuesday, they tried to underscore May's future danger to society.
Witnesses characterized May as a troubled, aggressive and defiant person. As a 13-year-old patient of psychiatrist Dr. Richard Frazier, May was "introverted" and exhibited a "strong feeling of inferiority." Human relationships often equalled conflict for May, Frazier said.
"His anger came on quickly and progressively to the point of uncontrollable rage," Frazier testified.
It soon became apparent that May often expressed himself with physical force rather than words. As a young man, he was convicted of two felonies and a series of misdemeanors. He vandalized cars, hit his boss, stole from a downtown Roanoke store and pummeled a next-door neighbor. The neighbor got a restraining order against him.
Even after he was arrested for Roanoke's largest mass murder since 1973, May continued to prod people. To his girlfriend's 14-year-old daughter, he wrote a letter saying he was sorry. Exactly for what is unknown, since the girl testified she ripped up the letter.
A short time after the letter arrived, May called the girl's house collect from jail. According to court testimony, when asked who was placing the call, he said to the girl: "You're the next one to die, bDefense testimony is expected to begin today.
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