ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 12, 1995 TAG: 9512120039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
Paul D. Thompson, a drifter who killed two people and maimed a third during a deadly road trip across the Southeast, accepted a plea agreement Monday that ensured he will die in prison - but not by execution.
In return for Thompson's guilty pleas to the capital murder and robbery of an Old Southwest woman, Roanoke prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Because Thompson was convicted last week of killing and robbing a West Virginia man, he will spend the rest of his life in prison for that offense and for the murder of Virgie Green, who was struck in the head and dumped in a car trunk behind her Roanoke home.
"Mr. Thompson, do you have any expectation or belief that you will ever be eligible for parole?" Judge Clifford Weckstein asked before accepting a plea agreement that set Thompson's punishment at two life terms plus 25 years.
"No," Thompson said.
Appearing in court wearing a navy blue jail suit that nearly matched the color of his tattoo-covered arms, the 26-year-old Texas native showed little emotion. He spoke only to respond "yes" or "no" to questions from Weckstein that will determine the remainder of his life.
Had the plea agreement not been struck, 100 potential jurors would have been called to court Wednesday for the start of an eight-day trial. Thompson has a criminal record so long that even his lawyers admitted that going before a jury would be tempting death.
"We feel like we saved his life," Roanoke lawyer David Damico said after the plea agreement was reached in Roanoke Circuit Court.
But Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell was not convinced the case would ever have reached a sentencing phase, given the many conflicting stories told by Thompson, a co-defendant and a third witness to Green's killing.
David McKeone, who roamed the country with Thompson after they met in a West Virginia prison, has already been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for his role in Green's murder. McKeone insisted at his trial that Thompson killed Green; then called a television station to say that he did it; then recanted in time for his sentencing; and most recently had agreed to testify this week that, yes, he did it after all.
Sherry Sprouse, who traveled with the two men and is now pregnant with Thompson's child, was even worse as a potential witness: She has given six different accounts of what she saw the night of Oct. 23.
Under the so-called trigger-man rule involving capital murder trials with multiple defendants, only the person who pulled the trigger - or in this case, struck the lethal blow with a pipe wrench - can receive a death sentence.
Caldwell believes that person was Thompson, but was not sure a jury would feel the same way under a strict burden of proof.
Without a plea agreement, Caldwell said, "we could anticipate years of affidavits being filed by different people saying, `No, I did it.' And in hindsight, the appellate courts would not want to execute someone in light of the question that someone else was the trigger man."
In order to obtain a death sentence, prosecutors would have been required to prove that Thompson was a future threat to society.
As part of a gambit that proved successful, Thompson's lawyers decided to have their client plead guilty to the August 1994 killing of Harold Jones at his West Virginia farm just one week before the Roanoke trial was scheduled to start.
Because Thompson was sentenced to life in prison without parole in West Virginia, and because that conviction coupled with a Florida carjacking made him ineligible for parole in Virginia, his attorneys hoped a Roanoke jury would not feel the need to impose a death sentence.
Damico first broached the idea of a plea agreement with Assistant Commonwealth's Attorneys Betty Jo Anthony and Greg Phillips at a West Virginia airport, as they waited for a flight back to Roanoke following Thompson's guilty plea last Thursday in Fairmont.
Actually, Caldwell said, his office had decided in November to make such an offerThe offer was extended Friday, and Thompson signed the plea agreement over the weekend in the Roanoke City Jail.
At Monday's hearing, Phillips gave the following summary of the evidence against Thompson:
Last October, Thompson, McKeone and Sprouse rolled into Roanoke and met Green's daughter, Trish, while getting a bite to eat at a fast-food restaurant. They struck a friendship that developed over the weeks, until Virgie Green, 44, invited them into her home on Woods Avenue.
But Thompson was soon restless to hit the road again, worrying that Green - aware of their criminal exploits in West Virginia - might turn them in to police.
At about 1 a.m. Oct. 24, Thompson took a pipe wrench and struck Green in the head from behind as she sat on a bed playing cards. As soon as Green hit the floor, Thompson was rummaging through her pockets in search of $600 he suspected she had. He didn't find the money, but took some change, tools, a television, a vacuum cleaner and a handgun from the home.
Thompson and McKeone then wrapped Green's body in blankets, pulled two trash bags over her head to contain the bleeding, and stuffed her body in the trunk of a junked blue Buick behind her house. Her body was found a week later.
After first going to West Virginia to sell a pickup truck they stole from Green, the two men headed south. They were later involved in the carjacking and attempted murder of a man near Tampa before they were finally arrested in Texas.
Even though the plea agreement leaves no latitude, Weckstein granted a defense motion to review a presentence report before imposing final punishment on Jan. 30.
As she left the courthouse Monday, Trish Green said she would not have been disappointed to see Thompson die for all he did, but that she was nonetheless satisfied with the plea agreement. "I'm not going to say that they made the wrong decision," she said.
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. Paul D. Thompson pleadedby CNBguilty to killing an Old Southwest woman and will spend the rest of
his life in prison. color. Graphic: Chart: The trail of a killer.
color. KEYWORDS: ROMUR