THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411290314
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 139 lines
Three women suffered when Navy signalman Ernest Blackwell's obsession for Holly Stirling turned to murder.
There was Holly, the 21-year-old Scottish immigrant intrigued by East Ocean View's dealers and prostitutes, whom Blackwell strangled with a knotted cord after learning she was engaged to another sailor.
There was Blackwell's wife, left alone in Ohio with their 7-week-old baby, who learned of the murder when detectives knocked on her door.
And there was Holly's mother, who was trying to conquer a fear of open spaces until the call came on Sept. 10, 1992, that her daughter had been killed.
On Monday, the long and winding tale of Holly Stirling ended when Blackwell pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Circuit Court. He entered an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to admit no guilt but concedes that the evidence was sufficient to win a conviction. When Blackwell is sentenced on Feb. 22, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.
``He killed my daughter - I don't see why he doesn't get the death penalty,'' said Holly's mother, Nancy Winfree, after the verdict. Winfree was unable to attend Monday's hearing because of her agoraphobia, and depended on prosecutors to phone her about what happened. ``I wish I could have been there. . . . I feel guilty that I wasn't.''
For years, Winfree feared such a tragedy. Like many immigrants, she envisioned America as the land of opportunity when she left her native Scotland for Virginia in 1978. But in 1987, a combination of health problems and growing homesickness led to a panic attack, and she became agoraphobic.
She was afraid to leave the house. America had become dangerous, she thought. Then her daughter was killed.
``When he murdered my daughter, I had started to get better,'' Winfree said. ``I could get several miles from home. But that knocked me right back down. Now I'm trying to work myself back up. Now I can go two miles from home.''
Every time Winfree returns to her brick ranch house in Virginia Beach, Holly's ashes await. They rest in a vase on the mantle, surrounded by mementoes of Scotland, memories of a happier time.
The investigation of Holly's murder by homicide detectives R. Glen Ford and Joseph Clark took six months, hundreds of miles and scores of interviews. There were rumors at first that she was involved in Ocean View's drug or skin trade. Although she hung around street characters, there was never any evidence that she was a player, too. Holly slept with several men, logging their names in a diary; Ford and Clark flew around the country, interviewing the lovers, taking polygraphs from a few.
Yet from the beginning, police suspected Blackwell, now 23. An angry note from Holly to Blackwell, telling him to stop breaking into her apartment on 16th Bay Street, was found among her possessions. Legwork eliminated the others, steadily focused on him.
On March 11, 1993, after three interviews and a failed polygraph examination, Blackwell admitted to her murder in a confused and rambling statement, records show. ``It was an accident,'' he said despondently. ``It was an accident.''
``Tell us how it became an accident,'' the detectives asked.
``I'm not going to lie anymore,'' he answered. ``I didn't kill the girl. She's not dead. She's not dead.''
Holly and Blackwell had met by accident a little more than a week before she died. On Sept. 2, 1992, he was walking home from an Ocean View bar when an acquaintance, the acquaintance's girlfriend and Holly picked him up. They drove to Holly's apartment, where they played strip poker. Holly and Blackwell then went to bed and made love, records show. The next day, he slept over again and Holly drove him to his ship, the dock landing ship Portland, based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
For the next week, Blackwell kept hanging around Holly's apartment, driven by what police later dubbed a sexual obsession. The Friday before her death, a friend dropped by Holly's house and caught Blackwell hanging around Holly's front porch. The friend followed as Blackwell walked around back, slipped the lock on the back door with a credit card and left a note. That night, Blackwell and Holly's friend met Holly at a bar.
Other times, he went to her house, found the door unlocked and entered, he told police. He warned her that this was a dangerous part of Ocean View, that she should lock her door, he said.
But the break-ins angered Holly, records showed. She taped a note to her front door, telling Blackwell never to break into her apartment again. Afterward, she told him she was marrying another man.
Exactly what happened to Holly on the night of her death was never fully explained. She was last seen alive in the early hours of Sept. 9, 1992, eating pizza with friends. An autopsy showed she died 2 1/2-to-4 hours after that meal.
On Sept. 10, Holly's fiance and an exterminator broke into the apartment after the fiance grew concerned at her disappearance. They found her body, nude from the waist down, near the front door. A black cord was around her head. Blood was splattered about the apartment. A curtain was wrapped like a cowl around her face to soak up blood.
During the investigation, Blackwell told two shipmates that he was one of the last people to see Holly alive. He told them he was a suspect and that he had had sex with her. He described the inside of her apartment in detail.
Each time he talked to police, Blackwell added more details of the room and the body. Finally, he admitted that he broke in the night she was killed. The kitchen light was on. She was already dead, he said.
But there were discrepancies in his statement. He said her hands were tied. When the body was found, her hands were not tied, but evidence showed they may have been at one point. He said that he untied the cord from around her neck and laid it on the floor. In fact, the cord was wrapped about her head.
Finally, he broke down, crying that it was an accident, that Holly was not dead. He then asked for a lawyer.
Soon afterwards, Investigator Clark met with Blackwell's wife, who had come from Ohio and was staying at base housing. He asked if she knew about the murder. Only what her husband had told her, she answered - Ernest had only briefly known Holly, whom, he told her, had been raped and killed in her car.
Clark asked the wife if she noticed any unusual behavior in Blackwell during the time of the murder. She had been in Ohio then, she answered. She had their baby there.
Police notes show that Clark told her: ``If she had any further questions, to get in contact with us, and we would help her as best as we could.'' Then he left.
Records do not reflect the wife's feelings. But she was alone in a strange city. And in a brief time she had learned two facts that would shake her world to its foundations.
Her husband was accused of cheating on her - and of killing the woman with whom he had the brief, murderous fling. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
THE VICTIM
Holly Stirling
THE KILLER
Ernest Blackwell
HER MOTHER
``I don't see why he doesn't get the death penalty,'' says Nancy
Winfree. The native of Scotland says a fear of leaving her home
flared anew after the killing.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL SENTENCING
by CNB