ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605220047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
MITZI JEAN HORTON was drunk and high when she attacked and then locked an elderly friend in his car's trunk for two days, crimes that earned her a 14-year sentence.
The prosecutor called it an act of torture - "one of the most horrible crimes I've seen in a long time."
Mitzi Jean Horton couldn't explain why she did it - why she choked an 83-year-old friend and then locked him in the trunk of his own car without food and water for two days.
"I had no reason for wanting to harm him," Horton, 32, wrote the judge. "Anything I wanted, Vernon provided it for me. But that night it was something different. I was full of so much anger and rage. ... I just wanted to choke the life out of him."
On Tuesday in Roanoke Circuit Court, Horton paid for those two days and two nights of booze, drugs and crime. Judge Diane Strickland sentenced her to 14 years in prison for abduction and robbery.
Horton asked for mercy - so she wouldn't be away from her baby daughter for too long. She said she finally was getting her life together.
Even Vernon Laughon, the man she attacked and imprisoned in his trunk, asked the judge to go easy.
"I don't want her to get a lot of time" was the request Laughon, who was unable to make it to court, passed on through a probation officer.
Strickland said Laughon "seems to be filled with forgiveness. ... He truly must be a very remarkable man."
But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner said society must be protected from Horton: "This is not a murder trial today - but it easily could have been."
Strickland ordered that Horton serve the last two of years of the 14-year sentence in a drug and alcohol treatment center.
Horton and Laughon were friends. She cleaned his apartment and often used his car.
She had a long record of burglary and theft charges going back to 1984. She had a baby in June and was trying to get her life together, she testified, but wasn't making much progress. She said she was under a lot of pressure; she was trying to hold a job, take care of her baby and find a place to live.
She was drunk and high when she attacked Laughon on Nov. 16. She testified that she had downed three pints of Jim Beam and two cases of beer, and smoked four "rocks" of crack cocaine.
"And you were still standing after all this?" Gardner asked.
"Yes, of course," Horton said.
She said she and Laughon started arguing - she couldn't explain why - as they headed to the liquor store in his Buick.
Laughon said he was in the passenger seat, holding a $20 bill, when she snatched it out of his hand. Then she choked him until he blacked out.
Horton wrote that she wanted to kill him, but "I was snapped back to reality by the littlest noise. My daughter was in the back seat."
She looked at Laughon and saw he wasn't moving.
"He was bleeding from the mouth," she wrote. "From what I could tell he wasn't breathing." She put him in the trunk because "I thought he was dead and I was trying to decide what to do next. I was scared to death."
He spent the next two days curled in the fetal position in the trunk as she drove around town. He begged her to let him out, but he didn't get out until the police - acting on a tip from a woman who had caught a ride with Horton - pulled the car over and opened the trunk.
Gardner said the evidence was clear: Horton wanted Laughon to die, because she never got him food or water or took him to a hospital.
But Horton said that, despite her blind rage, she didn't want Laughon dead.
"I could have killed him. I could have," she said. "But it just wasn't in me."
LENGTH: Medium: 81 linesby CNB