THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994 TAG: 9406200034
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940620 LENGTH: NEWPORT NEWS
The call came from an officer who was making a routine traffic stop, only one block from where Schindler was patrolling.
{REST} It seemed like nothing out of the ordinary, just the regular sort of request for assistance on the tightly knit midnight shift. The officers who work those hours, Schindler says, are used to pitching in and watching out for one another as they drive along the darkened streets of Newport News.
So Schindler responded quickly, but without being overly concerned. As she approached the other police car, however, Schindler realized immediately that something wasn't right, that this was not a routine traffic stop.
There was a bullet hole in the top of the windshield. She saw the officer slumped in the front seat. He had gunshot wounds in the head and neck.
``I had a funny feeling when I drove up, but it wasn't until I saw him that I realized what was really going on, that this was really big,'' Schindler remembered last week. ``I knew just by looking at his wound that he was dead right there. There was no question in my mind.''
Newport News police officer Larry Bland, 48, had been slain by a convicted killer and parole violator whom Bland had stopped for a traffic check, police say. Police believe Bland placed Maurice O. Boyd, 29, in the back of his cruiser, radioed for backup and was shot from behind at least twice.
Boyd was arrested later that morning several blocks away. He was charged with capital murder.
For Schindler, Bland's death was a double tragedy. She lost a colleague. She also lost a fiance. The two officers, who met soon after Schindler graduated from the police academy in 1991, had planned to marry later this year.
``I was glad that I was the first one there,'' Schindler said. ``That is the way we would have wanted it. I know he heard my voice on the radio. He would have heard me. He would have known I was coming. He wanted to be the first one for me and I wanted to be the first one for him. It was really hard, but that is the way he would have wanted it.''
Schindler, 42, has been battling despair and depression ever since. She went on administrative leave immediately after the morning she found her murdered fiance.
During the past month there have been whole weeks when she did almost nothing but cry. There have been nights on end when she went without sleep. Her life, she said, seemed for a while to be over. She thought it was stolen away just as she and Bland found happiness.
Recently, Schindler says, things have improved. She has made progress toward accepting the bad hand that life has dealt. She says she has benefited both from professional counseling and from the comforts provided by many close friends on the Newport News Police Department.
``I was crying all the time,'' Schindler said. ``And I still cry. But it is getting better.''
Yet there lingers an anger that Schindler says will not go away.
``I was so angry when I found out Boyd is a convicted killer and he was out on the streets again,'' Schindler said. ``This is what has to be changed.''
Schindler is committed to seeing that change come about. On Tuesday, in Richmond, she will testify for Gov. George F. Allen's parole-reform legislation. Allen has asked that she help, and that he be allowed to use the Bland tragedy to make a difference in the way the criminal-justice system works.
Schindler is prepared to continue testifying for the new law until the no-parole promise that Allen made during his campaign for governor is kept in full. But she wonders sometimes why it had to come to this.
``This is my thing,'' she said. ``But do you have to lose everything to make a difference? The fact that a convicted killer is put out on the streets to kill again, I can't understand how that can be. How can the courts do that? How does the system work that way? The parole system has got to be changed.''
Boyd's case is a classic example of how the present system is flawed. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter in 1983, but was paroled after six years and seven months. Boyd later violated parole and was charged in 1990, the same year he was charged with grand larceny.
As late as April 1994, Boyd was in the Newport News City Jail in connection with an April 14 assault on a security guard at a Food Lion supermarket. But on April 22 General District Judge Joan T. Morris released him on a personal recognizance bond without checking his criminal history.
``Larry would still be alive if this guy was behind bars for the length of time he was supposed to be,'' Schindler said. ``I don't understand why they let him go. The judges aren't doing their job. I don't think they are competent if they don't have the record of the person that they are sentencing in front of them.''
Schindler isn't sure when she will return to her job, but she has no intention of quitting. She wants to work again on the streets and would like to go back to the midnight shift.
``I enjoy the midnights,'' she said. ``The camaraderie among midnight officers is very tight. We watch out for each other. We have to because we only meet the dirt bags at night. The better half are in the bed sleeping, where they are supposed to be. The only better people we meet are the victims.''
Schindler, who has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, has come to believe that Bland has not really left her. She thinks that before dying he helped prepare her for her professional life.
``He was not only my fiance,'' she said. ``He was also my best friend, my teacher and my partner. Now I've come to the conclusion that Larry is my guardian angel. He accomplished what he was supposed to accomplish. And then he was taken away. When I hit the street again, he is going to be with me always.''
{KEYWORDS} MURDER PAROLE
by CNB