ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110083
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
James Reed told a 15-year-old boy he "wanted to kill all the black women in Christiansburg" two days before Annie V. Lester was found stabbed to death, the youth testified Tuesday in Montgomery County General District Court.
Judge John Quigley certified a first-degree murder charge against Reed, 51, after testimony by witnesses who said they saw Reed intoxicated and dressed in bloody clothes on Oct. 12, the day Lester, 87, was killed.
Both the victim and the suspect are black. There was no other testimony Tuesday about Reed's alleged threat before the crime.
The charge will go before a Circuit Court grand jury next month for possible indictment.
Reed told the court Oct. 15 during his arraignment that his name was spelled "Reid" but it remains "Reed" in official records.
The boy who testified during Tuesday's preliminary hearing shared a bedroom in the Christiansburg home where Reed lived with friends. The newspaper is not publishing the boy's name because he is a minor.
The 15-year-old also testified that Reed drank for two or three days before Lester's death and used cocaine. He said when Reed came home Oct. 12, the man stumbled upstairs and took off the bloody jacket and shoes he was wearing.
A cousin testified that he found Lester's body on the bedroom floor of her home at 810 Radford St. that afternoon.
An investigator said that Lester was naked except for tennis shoes, socks and knee-high hose. She had multiple stab wounds in her chest and neck, he said.
Soon after Christiansburg police officers began their investigation at Lester's home, Jorge Eanes walked across the street from his father's business, Eanes Body Shop, to tell police he refused to give a ride to a man with bloody clothes.
Eanes said the man, whom he identified as Reed, asked him for a ride the afternoon Lester was killed and appeared intoxicated.
"He had a lot of blood on his jacket, shoes, hands," Eanes said. "I was kind of scared."
Eanes said he refused several of Reed's requests for a ride home. He said Reed was mumbling and was saying some things that did not make sense. When he asked Reed why he had blood on this clothes, Reed said he had been in a "fight for love" and had tried to commit suicide, Eanes said.
It was Gary Eanes, Jorge Eanes' father, who agreed to give the man a ride home.
Gary Eanes testified that he felt sorry for Reed and thought it best to take him for his own safety. Not until police called him later, Gary Eanes said, did he know the woman he sometimes took wood to had been killed.
Investigator Tom Lawson told the court most of the evidence taken from Lester's home remains at the state crime lab for forensic tests. He said more than 30 items were seized including a "barber-style" pair of scissors covered in blood that could have been used to cause the stab wounds.
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