THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 16, 1994 TAG: 9406160481
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940616 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH
It took jurors about 3 1/2 hours to decide the fate of petite, soft-spoken Natasha Baldwin after a two-day trial that invoked comparisons to the cases of Amy Fisher and Lorena Bobbitt.
{REST} Because Baldwin is a juvenile, jurors do not recommend a sentence. Circuit Judge Alan E. Rosenblatt set sentencing for Aug. 1. Baldwin faces five to 40 years in prison for killing Torrey Baldwin and three years on the firearms charge. She also could be punished as a juvenile, meaning she could be sent to the state Department of Youth and Family Services for an indeterminate length of time until age 21.
Theirs was a love story gone terribly wrong. Natasha and Torrey married on June 1, 1993, after a three-month courtship in San
Diego. They came to live in Virginia while Torrey attended a Navy school in Dahlgren, in King George County.
Natasha is 5 feet 3 inches tall and 112 pounds. Torrey was 5 feet 10 inches and 230 pounds. He wore her name in a tattoo across his chest. He also bought her flowers and teddy bears.
But on Feb. 6 this year, Natasha, a bride of less than a year, fired a single bullet into her husband's brain. Nearby, in the living room, were the Valentine's Day cards they had exchanged.
He was 21. He wanted her to have sex with him but she refused. It had been two months, he told her. She didn't care. She wasn't physically attracted to him anymore, she told police.
The day's arguing began because she wanted him to clean up the kitchen and do the dishes. He said he would but took a nap instead. She went out and got Chinese food for her and her 3-year-old daughter from an earlier relationship. She didn't bring any food home for Torrey.
They argued again. He wanted to make up and tried to coax her into having sex.
On Wednesday, Natasha told jurors that she didn't want to have anything to do with her husband because he forced her to perform sex acts against her will. Entered into evidence was a handwritten letter dated Oct. 25, 1993, in which Torrey explicitly described various acts and vowed to show her no mercy. He signed the letter ``Love, Thor.''
Natasha, who sometimes cried as she testified, told jurors that her husband held a gun to her head the night of the shooting and threatened to force her to have sex with him. He put the gun down and laughed at her, then hit her in the back of the head, she said.
``I just picked up the gun,'' she said.
``I didn't point it. It went off. I don't remember pulling the trigger. All I remember was the gunpowder that was in my nose.''
That was when she put the gun in a plastic bag and set it out by the trash bin, she said. Then she jumped in the shower. Minutes later she knocked on a neighbor's door and told her that someone had shot her husband while she was in the shower. Eventually, she changed her story and admitted the shooting.
The defense characterized Natasha as a child acting in self-defense against a man more than twice her weight with a passion to make her his ``love slave.''
``This woman was petrified,'' said her lawyer, Lynndolyn Mitchell. ``She was victimized by this man. She was in a situation where she couldn't get out. She believed he'd use that gun on her, and she feared him.''
Virginia Beach police had charged her husband with assault in November 1993 when they were called to the couple's home after a domestic dispute.
But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ramona Taylor portrayed Natasha as a woman who had been on her own for three years and who knew exactly what she was doing.
``Is she such a child that she panicked or is she such a cold, calculating human being that she thought out what she was doing minute by minute?'' Taylor said. ``Ms. Mitchell would like you to think of her client as someone who had no choices. It was either her life or his. She had options.''
{KEYWORDS} MURDER SHOOTING TRIAL CONVICTION JUVENILE
by CNB