ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
As Raymond H. Mahoney fled from a Roanoke house, his face bruised from a beating he had just taken after a botched drug deal, he reportedly warned his attackers: "I'll be back."
Prosecutors contend that he returned to the home on Washington Avenue in Old Southwest several hours later, at 5 a.m. on May 13, and set a fire that killed Brenda Ann Davis.
As Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Teaster outlined the evidence Monday in his opening arguments to a jury in Roanoke Circuit Court, it became clear that the murder and arson charges against Mahoney are based solely on circumstantial evidence.
With no eyewitnesses and no confession, Teaster is relying to what he called "a web of lies that was spun" in conflicting statements Mahoney made to police in the hours and days after the fire.
Teaster also told the jury that during the trial - expected to last four days - one of Mahoney's neighbors will testify that just hours before the fire started, he overheard an angry Mahoney tell someone over the telephone that he was going to burn the house down.
However, Mahoney's lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Michelle Derrico, cautioned jurors to listen carefully to the witnesses on cross-examination before deciding how much weight to give their testimony.
Because Davis' death was surrounded by drug dealing and other illegal activity, witnesses often were reluctant to tell police what really happened, Derrico said. She also told the jury that other people had the motive and opportunity to torch the house of a woman that even prosecutors described as a cocaine dealer.
According to Teaster, this is what happened:
Mahoney, 30, and a friend went to Davis' house at 369 Washington Ave. on May 13 hoping to strike a drug deal. Davis, 40, took their money and went looking for a supplier at an open-air crack market, where she was angered to find her daughter.
After returning home in a foul mood, Davis and her brother told Mahoney to leave. Tempers flared, and Davis' brother ended up taking Mahoney outside and "beating him to a pulp," Teaster said.
Minutes after Mahoney warned that he would be back, a witness testified Monday, a brick came flying through the window.
Later, Teaster said, a man sleeping in his apartment adjacent to Mahoney's in the 400 block of Washington Avenue was awakened by screaming. Looking at his clock, the man saw it was 3:21 a.m. Then, through the wall of his apartment, he heard Mahoney tell someone over the telephone that he had gasoline and was going to burn their house down, Teaster said.
At 5 a.m., flames were spotted coming from the front of Davis' home. Firefighters later found her body in a second-floor bedroom. An autopsy determined that she died of smoke inhalation.
When police later approached Mahoney, he told a constantly changing story, Teaster said. To explain the bruises on his face, Mahoney first said he was mugged, but later admitted to being beaten during a drug deal.
He then gave conflicting statements about where he went and whom he talked to in the hours leading up to the fire.
When police asked to examine the clothes that Mahoney had been wearing, he gave them a pair of black pants and a tuxedo shirt from his job as a waiter at an upscale restaurant on the Market Square. Police tested the clothes for gasoline, only to learn later that Mahoney had not been wearing them on the night in question.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Mahoney. color. KEYWORDS: ROMURby CNB