ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996                  TAG: 9606140047
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: B-4  EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER 

KILLER, 16, MAY HAVE HAD HELP

Tommy Helms, the 16-year-old who fired eight bullets into the head of a young Henry County girl last year, did not act alone, Henry County investigators say.

Mark A. Lieteau, 32, of Martinsville was arrested Thursday and charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Lavina Scales, a Martinsville High School sophomore, according to Lt. K.G. Nester of the county Sheriff's Office. He also is charged with using a gun to commit murder.

He is being held without bond in the Henry County jail.

Scales, 15, was found Oct. 25. Her body had been dumped into a ravine off Virginia 679 near Bassett.

Helms was arrested six days later.

He was tried as an adult, pleaded guilty and was convicted of first-degree murder last month. He is to be sentenced in August and could get life in prison.

Helms - a skinny boy with a thin, childlike face - told investigators that he, Scales and two others were riding around in a car Oct. 23. They stopped on a remote stretch of 679 and he got out to urinate, he said. After hearing a noise in the bushes that startled him, he opened fire with two handguns, emptying them both, and Scales got in the way, he said.

Helms also was convicted of two armed robberies, one attempted armed robbery and the malicious wounding of a man whom he shot after trying to rob - crimes he committed in the weeks leading up to Scales' murder.

Lieteau faces the same charges, in addition to those filed in connection with Scales' murder.

According to Commonwealth's Attorney Bob Bushnell, charges were brought against Lieteau after an investigation turned up evidence that he was "an accessory before the fact, and, in certain cases, was present and a participant in the execution of the crimes."

However, the use of a gun to commit murder charge against Lieteau doesn't necessarily mean that he actually fired a shot, Bushnell said.

A person can be so charged if there is evidence he or she was involved in the planning or carrying out of a murder up to the point of pulling a trigger, he said.

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