THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 11, 1994 TAG: 9411110632
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
One afternoon last April, George Lee Presley robbed and terrorized four women at knifepoint while out on bond for sodomizing another woman. The next day, he attacked a sixth woman in an attempt to take her car.
He described himself as a predator. Women, he said, were his prey.
One woman believed in his goodness - Mabel Hobbs, his elderly landlady, who forgave him when he stole her insulin needles to shoot up drugs. Who sold her antiques to pay for his lawyers. Who put up her house on Brighton Street to post his $200,000 bond.
In her own way, prosecutors said, she was his victim, too.
On Thursday, Circuit Judge Alfred W. Whitehurst made certain that Presley, 31, wouldn't be preying on women for a long, long time - if ever. He sentenced Presley to five life terms plus 420 years for the daylight sodomies, robberies, thefts and abductions to which he pleaded guilty earlier this year.
``I know I'm not as bad a person without the drugs as I have been portrayed,'' Presley said before his sentencing. ``I know the victims must be considered first. . . . I know I must be punished. But if I could open my heart, you'd see I've tried to change.''
Whitehurst was unmoved. ``I don't think drugs is the only answer to this,'' he said. ``It's a cowardly thing you did. You just do not have a right to be around other human beings.''
Four deputies moved behind Presley, who stood stock-still, taking the sentence quietly. The court was unusually full: Clerks, prosecutors, defense lawyers had all heard about the case. A prostitute awaiting sentencing told a friend, ``I partied with him once - I didn't know he was that bad.''
Whitehurst turned back to Presley. ``In a way, you know, you're lucky,'' he said. ``After January, you would not be eligible for parole'' under a new state law passed in September.
Who was the real George Presley? The man characterized as a monster, who sodomized one woman in DePaul Medical Center's parking lot, then threatened to hunt her down if she didn't watch him stalk another? Who tortured all of his victims psychologically, planting fears that he could find them again?
The man who thought himself a charmer, who wrote a letter to prosecutors Lisa Caton and Elizabeth Hovell that began, ``Dear Lisa and Elizabeth,'' then asked for a reduced sentence?
Or Mabel Hobbs' surrogate son, the man who stayed with her after her 1992 stroke and did all the housework? The man she said ``was kind, sweet and quiet, very quiet. He never talked back to me and he always said thank you.''
Details are sketchy, but testimony on Thursday portrayed his childhood as a long trip through hell. His alcoholic father beat him. His alcoholic mother rejected him, refusing to come to his trial, Hobbs testified. One sister was a prostitute; another sought help at a shelter for battered women. One brother was convicted of manslaughter, another of drug use.
He was committed four times to juvenile detention homes, starting at age 11. His teens and 20s were filled with 10 convictions for property crimes - he always needed money for drugs and loan sharks. He was out on parole when the first violent assault occurred in May 1993.
Mabel Hobbs, now in her 70s, met Presley eight years earlier, when her husband took him under his wing and tried to get him a job on a tugboat. When her husband died, he told her ``to look after (Presley) . . . to hold him up and give him a life,'' she said. ``I have been trying ever since.''
Presley took care of her house. He moved in after she had her stroke while taking out the garbage. He divorced a woman in Pennsylvania and dated an Ocean View prostitute whom Hobbs described as ``a fine girl.''
``I'm the only person who would sit him down and talk to him,'' Hobbs recalled. ``He'd talk to you like a person . . . he'd look you in the eye.''
Then came May 7, 1993. That day, he attacked a 27-year-old Navy woman as she talked on a pay phone to her cousin. He forced her to drive to an automatic teller machine at Halprin Drive and East Little Creek Road, where she withdrew $50. He made her drive to Ocean View, where he forced her to sodomize him.
He was arrested the same day and stayed in jail until Nov. 9, when Hobbs posted his $200,000 bond. The trial was continued several times. He was supposed to be tried on April 4, but he fired his second lawyer and the hearing was rescheduled.
Nobody can explain what set George Presley off on April 25, 1994 - the day he attacked four women. His explanation was drugs. Prosecutors said it was cruelty.
It started at 12:45 p.m. when two women finished lunch at a Taco Bell in the 8400 block of Hampton Blvd. and walked to their car. Presley threatened them with a brown-handled pocketknife and demanded their money. He placed the knife between one victim's breasts and placed his other hand in her lap while telling them what he could do to them. He took about $300 and ran away.
At 4:30 p.m., the 27-year-old wife of a Norfolk policeman left a building at DePaul where she had been visiting, and walked into the parking lot. Presley was waiting.
As she got into her car, Presley ran up, pressed the knife to her throat and forced his way inside. He took her wedding ring and other jewelry, fondled her and forced her to sodomize him. He said he would kill her if she screamed.
He had stolen her driver's license and told her that ``he had a car and was watching her and that if she did call for help he would come back, find her and kill her,'' court records said. He blocked the car door and told her he was not leaving the parking lot until ``he got money for drugs and that they were going to sit there until someone else came out.''
At 4:40 p.m., a 44-year-old woman walked into the lot. Presley left the policeman's wife and approached his newest victim, also a hospital visitor. He robbed her of $82 at knifepoint, but as he did so the policeman's wife escaped and summoned help. Presley didn't stay to sexually assault the second woman when he saw the first victim get away.
A manhunt was on, but it wasn't until the next day that Presley's luck ran out.
It was shortly after noon in the parking lot of Military Circle Shopping Center. A 36-year-old woman was getting into her car when Presley tried to rob her. But the woman broke free and started screaming. Mall security guard Ronnie Eubanks heard the screams, caught Presley, handcuffed him and put him in the back of his 1993 Ford van. Then he called police.
But Presley wasn't done. When police arrived, Eubanks stood outside the van and told them what had happened. Presley had jumped into the driver's seat and drove off, still shackled. Officers caught him six blocks away.
Hobbs didn't learn this side of her boarder until she attended his trial.
``You say you know him, but then you say you don't know him,'' Whitehurst said to Hobbs. ``Do you feel guilty? Do you feel like you should pay that $200,000? . . . He was out on that bond when he committed these horrible crimes.''
Mabel Hobbs started to stammer. Whitehurst didn't let up: ``Would you bail him out again?''
``No,'' said the woman who tried to be Presley's substitute mother. ``No,'' she pleaded. And softly started to cry. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
George Lee Presley
Graphic
CRIMES & TIMES
George Lee Presley was sentenced for attacks on six Norfolk
women:
May 7, 1993: Presley abducts a woman talking on a pay phone. He
was sentenced to 80 years for robbery, life for abduction and life
for forcible sodomy.
April 25, 1994: Presley attacks two women in a restaurant parking
lot, and another two in a parking lot at DePaul Medical Center. He
got life for forcible sodomy, life sentences on each of two
abductions, and 80 years apiece for four counts of robbery.
April 26, 1994: Presley is arrested after trying to rob a woman
at Military Circle shopping center, then driving off with the
security guard's van. He is sentenced to 20 years for grand
larceny.
KEYWORDS: ROBBERY ASSAULT SEX CRIME TRIAL
SENTENCING by CNB