ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 1, 1996 TAG: 9610010060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
THE WIFE OF the Pulaski County man found dead Friday said she thinks authorities have the men responsible for his death.
Elmer Eugene Fisher's widow said she will not feel safe until all three men accused of killing her husband are dead.
"They killed him, and I want them three dead; ... We want to be there when it happens," Jacquline "Jackie" Fisher said while sitting in her parents' Radford home.
Monday, the three suspects were arraigned on capital murder and armed robbery charges, which could carry the death penalty.
Joseph Ray Graham Jr., 27; Darick Dewayne Wetzel, 22; and Douglas Edward Gibson, 31; are accused of stabbing, drowning and robbing Fisher, 48. The Fairlawn men were arrested outside the county over the weekend.
Sheriff Ralph Dobbins said Fisher's killers left his body floating in the New River near Parrott on Sept. 22. Gibson led authorities to the body Friday morning.
On her arm, Fisher wore the watch investigators removed from her husband's body. On two of her fingers were large rings that he also was wearing. Missing from the jewelry was her husband's wedding band, which she said no one has found.
Oct. 9 would have marked nine years ago that Bobby Fisher slipped that band onto his finger while he recited his wedding vows, Jackie Fisher said.
She said her husband had warned her three weeks before he was killed to "keep the doors locked and watch her back" because Graham had threatened him with a knife at a poker game.
Police suspect Bobby Fisher was killed after a poker-game argument that reignited on the banks of the river. His wife had reported Fisher, also of Fairlawn, missing Wednesday, she said, after he failed to return home the previous Sunday.
"If he was gone overnight, he usually called," Jackie Fisher said.
Fisher said she suspected something was wrong and thought the men she and her husband had known barely two months were to blame. Fisher's mother, Mitzie Bain, agreed and said she believed money was the motive.
On Sept. 22, the same night her husband was killed, Jackie Fisher said her husband tried to hand her a roll of bills that amounted to $1,000. Graham, Wetzel and Gibson were in the couple's trailer on the Lee Highway when Jackie Fisher said she waved her hand at the money and told her husband she didn't need any.
The men left, but not before Bobby Fisher hid $721 under a rug in his bedroom, his wife said. She did not know the money was there until she found it several days later. She said the men accused of killing her husband apparently did not know it was there either.
All four men stopped at a grocery store to buy three 12-packs of beer before heading to Parrott, Jackie Fisher said. She believes the men knew her husband still had several hundred dollars with him because Graham told her two days later that her husband pulled $100 out of his pocket to pay for the beer.
No one but the killers knew Fisher was dead until an investigator working on several break-ins at Eagle View Trailer Park met a man who said he heard Wetzel and Graham bragging about the slaying.
Originally, Gibson told police that Graham and Wetzel stabbed Fisher with hunting knives after Fisher tried to escape into the New River. It was in the river, according to Gibson, that Graham and Wetzel repeatedly stabbed Fisher and held his head under water.
On Monday, Dobbins said the investigation revealed what his office believed all along: that Gibson was not just a witness to the killing, but was actively involved. Gibson was arrested Saturday in Richmond and charged in connection with the killing.
Gibson was arrested Saturday in Richmond and charged in connection with the killing. Dobson said his office had suspected all along that Gibson was not just a witness but a participant in the crime.
Dobbins said two knives were used to kill Fisher, but only one has been found. That knife was found beside Belspring Road where it apparently was tossed out of a car window, Dobbins said.
Investigators believe the second knife was thrown in the river and probably won't be found, Dobbins said.
Jackie Fisher turned her husband's rings on her fingers as she listed the things the construction worker loved: fishing, kids, family.
"He would get along with anybody," Jackie Fisher said. "He was just an outgoing person."
All three men charged in the case are being held without bond, according to Dobbins. Wetzel and Graham are in cells on separate floors of the Pulaski County Jail and Gibson is being held in the Montgomery County Jail, according to Capt. Donnie Simpkins.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Wetzel, Graham. Gene Dalton. Jackie Fisher,by CNBholding a wedding photograph showing her husband, Bobby, said he
warned her three weeks before he was killed to "keep the doors
locked and watch her back" because one of the suspects had
threatened him with a knife.