Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Years after she remarried, Walton received letters - sometimes several a day - from McTeer, who blamed her for ruining his life by seeking child support, which now totals $31,000.
While even his attorney concedes that the letter-writing campaign was harassing, whether it was threatening to Walton was up to a jury this week.
Thursday night, a jury in U.S. District Court in Roanoke decided that half the letters the government introduced as evidence reached the level of threatening bodily harm. The jury convicted McTeer of eight counts of mailing threatening letters out of a 15-count indictment.
"There was nothing but tragedy all around," said McTeer's attorney, Peter Katt. "The family history dating back just shows two people who had a bad situation. Neither party took any steps to make the situation better, and unfortunately, they decided to make a federal case out of it."
There was no federal case, however, until after McTeer had been approached by FBI agents last year and told to stop writing to Walton. But the letters continued. Walton lives in Covington and McTeer in Twentynine Palms, Calif.
The two married as teen-agers and had two children during their four-year union. McTeer was the one who asked for a divorce, but he continued to write to her, his ex-wife testified, with the letters getting more abusive after child-support enforcement proceedings began in 1990.
The letters escalated to what Walton described as threatening in May 1994. McTeer also enclosed photos of her in several letters, one with slash marks through it from a razor and red paint depicting blood droplets.
None of the letters contained overt threats of harm, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Campbell argued that Walton believed they contained veiled threats to hurt or kill her.
After reading one sexual letter, Walton said, "I felt very violated, I felt sick. I take it as rape."
McTeer also was found guilty of sending one threatening letter to the district manager of the Department of Child Support Enforcement in Roanoke, Wayne Chapman.
McTeer has not seen his two sons since 1981 and sought to abandon parental rights in 1992, as well as get out of paying the back child support. He reported to the court that he has been unemployed since July 1991, when he held a $5-an-hour job.
McTeer considers himself a political prisoner and went on a hunger strike this spring while in the Roanoke City Jail, where he has been held since his March arrest. In his letters, he tells Walton she has ruined his life.
"I did not reject fatherhood," McTeer wrote to the court when declaring his hunger strike. "It was maliciously denied and precluded by Ms. Walton."
His attorney ended closing arguments after the two-day trial by reading from Revelation, a chapter of which McTeer had cited to Walton, to show the jury how McTeer felt about her. "Is it fair to say he considers you an evildoer of biblical proportions?" Katt asked Walton during cross-examination.
Campbell said she was pleased with the verdict, but she doubts it will stop McTeer from writing letters. Katt said he plans to appeal.
by CNB