ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 TAG: 9610150090
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
Five days ago, Annie Lester sat on the wooden furniture of her cousin Betty Lester's Astroturfed side porch and talked about church, the work she was having done in her kitchen and fruitcake.
Walnuts had triggered the fruitcake talk. Annie Lester had two walnut trees in her back yard. She would pick up the nuts that fell and rolled against her house.
"I told her last Thursday I was going to make fruitcake with some of her walnuts," Betty Lester, 82, said. "She said she was going to make some too. That was something she hadn't done in two years."
Instead, Annie Lester, 87, was killed Saturday. Police have told family members that Lester was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death at her home at 810 Radford St..
James Reed, 51, of Christiansburg, was arrested Saturday evening and charged with first-degree murder.
Police have not announced a cause of death or a motive for the killing. But Christiansburg Police Lt. Gary Brumfield said Reed apparently knew Lester and had done some painting and cleaning work in her home.
Bill Lester found his cousin's body when he stopped by Saturday to deliver a bag of day-old bread.
Before that, he stopped at Tom and Betty Lester's house next door where the three ate ham sandwiches and tomato salad. Then he walked across a wide, overgrown vacant lot to drop off Annie's bread and pick up a bag of walnuts so Betty could start on her fruitcake.
Bill Lester knocked on Annie's back door, Betty Lester said. With no answer, he walked around front and poked his head in the screen door.
"Then I looked up and saw him coming back around the field," Betty Lester said. "I thought he was coming back with a bag of walnuts. But it was Annie's bread. Then Bill said, 'Betty, something's happened in there.'"
What happened, according to family members who said they've talked to police investigators, is that Annie Lester was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death and her neatly kept home was ransacked.
Brumfield said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the investigation.
A local merchant, whose business is across Radford Street from Annie Lester's house, said he gave a ride home to a man who approached him from across the street on the day of the slaying.
The man had blood on his jacket and shoes, was drunk, and looked liked he'd been in a fight, according to Gary Eanes, owner of Eanes Body Shop.
That information led police to Reed, who is expected to be arraigned this morning in Montgomery County General District Court.
"I think the man just had a problem," Betty Lester said. "I think it was more than the whiskey though, the way she was butchered up. Can you even think of anybody molesting a woman 90 years old? I just can't."
The family is taking some solace in indications that Annie Lester put up a fight.
"She was small but she was strong and lively," Tom Lester said.
That Annie Lester knew who killed her makes sense: she'd lived alone since her sister died two years ago and she always locked her door.
Betty didn't used to.
"I do now," she said. "I didn't think it was that bad but I do now. You almost have to, don't you?"
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB