ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 7, 1997 TAG: 9701070090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FINCASTLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
HER EX-HUSBAND did it, sheriff's investigators think. They'll never know for sure. He's dead now, too.
The Botetourt County Sheriff's Office closed a nearly year-old homicide case Monday, but it never will go to trial. The man authorities believe did it died - possibly from suicide - a week after the victim's body was found.
Investigators and Sheriff Reed Kelly are convinced Rebecca Jean Wright Short, a Roanoke woman whose decomposed body was found by the James River near Buchanan in February, was clubbed in the head and thrown into the river by her ex-husband, James Edward Short.
There's no single piece of evidence that points clearly to James Short, just "dozens of pieces of circumstantial evidence," Kelly said.
"Could we win a conviction in court? We'll never know that," he said. "But that's not the burden of proof here."
Few people close to the estranged couple doubt James Short is responsible, Sgt. Delbert Dudding of the sheriff's office said. Jean Short's sister and mother believe it was him, Dudding said. So does Short's brother, Rick Alexander. His grandmother, Elizabeth Campbell, said she can't rule it out.
"My heart says no, but my brain says maybe," Campbell said. "If he did it, he had provocation enough over the years. My heart says he wasn't capable of it. He was such a gentle boy."
The last time anyone saw Jean Short alive was 4 a.m. on Dec. 2, 1995, Dudding said. She left her boyfriend, Jerry Burnette, at the American Hotel and headed down Williamson Road on foot.
Though they had been divorced for several years, Jean Short still lived with her ex-husband and their two daughters. She would leave on weekends when he was off from his job in the pressroom of The Roanoke Times.
James Short said he last saw his ex-wife Dec. 1, but it wasn't until Dec. 10 that her sister, Roxanne Hall, reported her missing.
Two and a half months later, in mid-February, two men collecting cans along the James River found a half-naked and badly decomposed body that turned out to be 31-year-old Jean Short.
The day she was identified, Feb. 16, a Roanoke detective went to James Short's home and told him only that his ex-wife's body had been found in Botetourt County and the sheriff there would have more information, Dudding said.
But when Short called the sheriff's office, Kelly said, he seemed to know more than he should.
"He seemed more nervous than sad," Kelly said.
Short assumed his ex-wife had been murdered, asking "Was she shot, was she stabbed, or what?" according to a tape of the conversation.
"The understanding I get, y'all believe she was killed here [in Roanoke]," he said. That was true, but as far as investigators know, no one had told Short.
Short became a suspect even as he questioned Kelly about the murder.
"It was as much what he didn't ask as what he did," Kelly said. It didn't make sense to Kelly that a man whose missing wife had just been found dead wasn't interested in where she was found, and where her body was now.
That evening, Dudding went to Roanoke to question Short.
"He was pretty drunk," Dudding recalled. "He would cry and holler and scream, and then he'd laugh.''
The next day, Short took a lie detector test, Dudding said, and the results showed him answering deceptively on several questions about the killing.
Two days later, Short bought two new suits, Dudding said; one for Jean's funeral, he reportedly told his brother, and one for his own funeral.
Two days after that, the Shorts' 14-year-old daughter found him dead in his bed on 19th Street Northeast.
Investigators suspected suicide, but a medical examiner could only determine he died of coronary atherosclerosis and cardiac arrythmia.
After that, more circumstantial evidence piled up. Dudding found Jean Short's cigarette case in the home where the estranged couple lived. Friends and relatives said she would never have left the house without it.
Investigators also found a shirt that seemed to match the description of the one she was wearing the last time she was seen alive.
With no known crime scene, and the body found 21/2 months after the crime probably was committed, Dudding said he was fighting an uphill battle. Any potential witnesses had all that time to forget things or concoct a story.
For a while, Kelly said, he and Dudding kept a close eye on a pair of slayings in Amherst County in which women were
killed and thrown into a river. They thought Jean Short's death might be related. That possibility faded, Kelly said, when Amherst authorities made an arrest.
All the while, James Short remained at the top of the suspect list.
"There's been nothing that's ever pointed toward anybody else very long," Kelly said.
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