ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996                TAG: 9603070044
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above 

SHE'LL DO MORE TIME THAN HE DID

VERNON LAUGHON was locked in a trunk by his housekeeper for three hellish November days; she faces life in prison for the deed.

The whole time 84-year-old Vernon Laughon was locked in the trunk of his Buick - "curled up just like a chipmunk in the hole of a tree" - he kept pleading with his housekeeper-turned-captor as she drove around Roanoke.

"I'd say, `Mitzi, when are you going to let me out of here?'`` Laughon said Wednesday as he recounted November's ordeal. "`In 15 minutes,' she'd say. `In 15 minutes.'''

But the minutes turned to hours, and the hours turned to days.

For two days and two nights - what "seemed like about a year" to Laughon - he was kept in the cramped trunk with no food or water as his 31-year-old housekeeper stole property from his Patterson Avenue apartment, forged his checks, and drove the car aimlessly around town.

"I was all curled up just like a chipmunk in the hole of a tree," Laughon said. "I couldn't stretch my legs out. ... I was in a hell of a shape."

As he pounded on the trunk, Laughon remembered, "I said, `Mitzi, you're going to get in serious trouble if you don't let me out of here.'"

He was right about that. Mitzi Jean Horton pleaded guilty to charges of robbery and abduction Wednesday at a hearing in Roanoke Circuit Court. She will be sentenced in May, and could get life plus 20 years in prison.

In summarizing the evidence against Horton, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner said Horton was arrested Nov. 18, still seated in the car as it sat idling near Highland Park, after someone told police there was a body in the trunk.

Police opened the trunk to find Laughon "lying in a fetal position, in a semiconscious condition," Gardner said. The retired railroad worker was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, and Horton went to jail.

In an interview after Wednesday's hearing, Laughon said the whole thing started when he and Horton, a friend who cleaned his apartment and often used his car, set out for the liquor store the afternoon of Nov. 16.

Laughon was sitting in the passenger seat, holding a $20 bill, when Horton snatched the money from his hand, he said.

"She grabbed me around the neck and put a half nelson on me," he said. "I'm 84 years old. You take a young woman who's 31; she can do anything she wants with an old man like me. ... I blacked out, and when I came to, I was in the trunk of the car."

For the next two days, Laughon saw daylight only once.

That was when Horton opened the trunk just an inch or two, and asked him if she had spelled his name right on one of his checks that she had just forged. When Laughon said she had, Horton slammed the trunk shut again and went back to driving.

Speaking to Laughon through the closed trunk, Horton later promised she would let him out if he told her where to find money in his apartment. Horton later took money and property from the apartment, but she never freed Laughon.

"I said, `When are you going to let me out?'" Laughon said. "And she said, `I'm afraid to let you out; you might call the police.'''

"I was planning all along to die," he said. "I said `Oh, Lord, please take me now.'''

"I didn't have no pillow or blanket, didn't have no place to go to the toilet, and didn't have anything to eat or drink," he said. "I was a hell of a mess when the police found me."

On the morning of Nov. 18, police got a tip from a woman who had caught a ride with Horton. The woman said she had heard thumps and a man shouting from the trunk area of the car. Horton later told the woman that she had choked Laughon and that she thought he was dead, according to Gardner's summary of the evidence.

When approached by police the morning of Nov. 18, Horton said she was warming the car up for Laughon, but that she had no idea where he was. After charging her with a probation violation, police took a key from her pocket and used it to open the trunk.

Despite all that he went though, Laughon does not want to see Horton punished too severely. After all, he said, "she didn't kill me."

LENGTH: Medium:   81 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Vernon Laughon, at his Patterson 
          Avenue home, was locked in the trunk of his car for three days last 
          November. color.