ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 28, 1996 TAG: 9612300084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
THE PHRASE "The Killing Fields" was scratched on the siding of the house beside the front door.
Lots of people heard the gunfire. But apparently, no one bothered to call police.
The following week, residents of a Southwest Roanoke apartment house began to notice a foul odor. But it was not until Friday, when the smell at 429 Day Ave. became overpowering, that William Myatt walked to his landlord's office to lodge a complaint.
It was only then that a maintenance man unlocked the door of an upstairs apartment and made a grisly discovery: the decomposed bodies of two men whose disappearance for eight days over Christmas had prompted little response from family, friends or neighbors.
"This is terrible," said Lisa Castanon, who lives in the house next door. "How could somebody be dead for a week and nobody know it, when people live right downstairs?"
Roanoke police confirmed Friday they had not received any reports of gunfire from the home in the past week. But after the bodies were discovered, more than a half-dozen residents recalled hearing shots the night of Dec.19.
At about 2:15 p.m. Friday, after the maintenance man rushed out of the house and called police, authorities examined the two bodies in the living room area of the apartment. The men appeared to have been dead for about a week, police said.
A gun was found next to one of the victims. Because the bodies were so decomposed, authorities are waiting for an autopsy to determine how they died.
The identities of the men are being withheld until police can notify their families.
Authorities are investigating the possibility of a murder-suicide, a theory supported by the facts that the apartment door was locked and there were no signs of forced entry.
As police and rescue workers swarmed around the house Friday afternoon, residents of the other apartments sat on the front porch and watched the activity with more interest than alarm. One of the first police officers to enter the house donned an oxygen mask and latex gloves before stepping inside.
Next to the front door, which bore a "Merry Christmas" ornament, someone had scrawled the words "The Killing Fields."
Neighbors speculated that one of the victims was a man in his 50s who had lived alone in one of the upstairs apartments for about a year.
"The last thing I heard or seen from the man was last Thursday night," said Gerald Martin, who lives downstairs. "At that time I heard two gunshots in that apartment, and I haven't heard or seen anything else since then."
Some neighbors who heard gunshots Dec.19 said Friday that they wished they had called police. But, they added, gunshots are not uncommon in their neighborhood, which consists mostly of frame houses converted to rental units.
"Half the time, you don't even want to look outside" when shots are fired, Castanon said. "After dark, I wouldn't walk from here to the corner to use the telephone."
Myatt, who lives across the hall from the apartment where the bodies were found, recalled that his neighbor had lots of visitors, often late at night.
"He had a lot of people coming and going out of that apartment," Myatt said. "But I didn't ask any questions. I just went to sleep and minded my own business."
Myatt said he heard one shot the night of Dec.19, although other neighbors recalled hearing as many as six.
By Christmas Eve, Myatt said, a foul odor seemed to be coming from the apartment. On Friday morning, he walked to the offices of Hall Associates Inc., which manages the property, and made a compliant.
Roger Rash, a maintenance man for Hall Associates, arrived several hours later. He knocked on the man's door but received no response. As he checked the attic for a dead animal, Rash said, he remembered that he had not seen the apartment's resident for the past week. Finding nothing in the attic, Rash returned to the apartment fearing the worse.
He knocked a second time, but no one answered. Rash then used his master key to unlock the door, he said. He opened it just wide enough to see the bodies of two men, one lying on the floor and the other on a couch.
Rash slammed the door shut, ran outside and called police from a nearby home.
Police said it will probably be next week before they identify the victims and make a ruling on whether the killings were a murder-suicide or a double homicide. Before these killings, there had been 11 homicides this year in Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER Staff. 1. L.M. Otterman with the Roanoke Cityby CNBPolice Department guards the doorway of 429 Day Ave. S.W. 2. A
police officer opens a window to clear the odor of decomposing
bodies in the Day Avenue apartment. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY