Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 5, 1995 TAG: 9508070047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Five days ago they were strangers - people whose only common bond was the murder of a loved one. Throughout the past week they shared their memories, their grief and their frustration.
"He just doesn't realize what he took from all these families," said Kelly Robson, whose mother, Susan Hutchinson, was gunned down with four of her friends during a New Year's party.
What began as a celebration ended in tragedy when Robert May fired a barrage of shots at the partiers early Jan. 1.
In the cramped quarters of an Old Southwest carriage house apartment, there was nowhere for the victims to run. Even if they could, it is likely they were too drunk to think clearly enough to do so.
May killed indiscriminately, not taking his hand off the trigger until he had killed the three men and two women:
Carl Stroop, 42, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest.
Dale Arnold, 36, gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
Daniel Mason, 47, gunshot wounds to the head and abdomen.
Cynthia LaPrade, 43, a gunshot wound to the head.
Hutchinson, 44, gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
This week, their relatives crammed onto the wooden benches of a Roanoke Circuit courtroom.
They hugged in the hallway during breaks. Some walked hand-in-hand into the courtroom moments before May's life sentence was handed down.
"What makes me sick to my stomach is that ... my mom came from a broken home. She was an alcoholic, but they didn't go out and kill anyone because of it. ... It doesn't make any sense to me to blame it all on alcoholism," said Loretta LaPrade, Cynthia's daughter.
The five slain friends led troubled lives - alcoholism, joblessness, isolation. But those troubles bound the group together.
In life, each had his or her own penchant:
Hutchinson, who loved to cook her speciality, fried chicken; Arnold, who - like his killer - had been a house painter; Mason, who could make almost anything out of wood; LaPrade, who cherished small treasures in life; and Stroop, who kept a Rebel flag on a wall.
Stroop, Mason and LaPrade lived in an apartment on Mountain Avenue Southwest, where the friends often gathered to watch Sunday afternoon football games.
Hutchinson and Arnold, her boyfriend, lived together in the carriage house apartment.
As autopsy photos of the five flashed on a screen in the courtroom and as a videotape focused on the carnage of the crime scene, the surviving relatives watched.
Being in the courtroom has been "like being at the murders," Cynthia LaPrade's son Michael said. "It definitely has been worse than the funeral. I kind of wish I hadn't come. It's going to scar me. I can't think about her having a peaceful death or Robbie just losing it for a piece of time."
"I think about it all the time," Michael LaPrade's sister Loretta said. "I cry a lot but it doesn't seem to help."
For all, it was the first time they had seen May.
"It amazes me that someone can do something like that," Loretta LaPrade said. "I was actually scared to see him. At first I felt sorry for him, until I heard the letter" May wrote to his step-brother.
In the letter, May bragged about the killings, saying he could kill again and that he was justified in murdering the three men.
"After watching him through the whole trial - he has absolutely no remorse," she added. "Now I do firmly believe in the death penalty."
When May was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Loretta LaPrade wept.
Her brother said afterwards, "I feel like if it would have been more important people that got murdered, [May] would have gotten the death penalty," he said.
The victims' relatives struggled with the possibility of May's life being spared throughout the weeklong bench trial and sentencing.
"You prepare yourself all week long but when it finally comes, it just kills you," Robson said. The sentence basically says that "Robert Michael May's life is worth more than my mother and all five people."
Keywords:
ROMUR
by CNB