THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502120064
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 224 lines
Just before midnight, June 30, Virginia Beach detectives were dispatched to the worst crime scene in the city's history. Inside a bar, they found four people slain and the cash register empty.
The bar owner, two employees and a patron had been shot to death in a robbery.
But the crime was the city's worst for only three weeks, when, on July 22, detectives found four more bodies in a Seaboard Road house.
In that crime, a 16-year-old boy stands accused of robbing four family members and shooting them. Among the victims was the boy's bedridden grandmother.
The back-to-back quadruple killings helped push Virginia Beach slayings to a record number - 36. The old record, 29, was set in 1991.
In Chesapeake, a triple slaying Dec. 23 led the city to eclipse its previous homicide record of 16.
Janice Eastman confessed to bludgeoning her 36-year-old husband with an 8-pound sledgehammer and then stabbing him and her two children to death with a kitchen knife. The slayings were among 20 that Chesapeake detectives investigated last year.
Even the police weren't immune. On the Peninsula, two officers were killed in Newport News and one in Hampton, an unprecedented one-year toll among law enforcement agencies in Hampton Roads.
Even with the surges in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, homicides in Hampton Roads climbed only 5 percent from 1993 to 1994 - from 177 to 186. That slight increase followed two consecutive 12 percent drops in 1992 and 1993.
THE ODDS
The numbers may seem alarming, but few people here actually are at risk. Last year, less than 0.02 percent of the region's population of more than 1 million was slain. That puts the risk of being murdered at roughly 1 in 5,400.
While the number of murders in which the victim didn't know the suspect is rising locally and nationally, the number of ``stranger'' slayings remains statistically low in Hampton Roads.
A person's greatest chance of being killed by a stranger will be in a traffic accident, statistics show. And in Virginia, a person is far more likely to take his or her own life than to be murdered.
An analysis of the 186 homicide cases in 1994 shows what local detectives already know: young, black males are at the highest risk of being killed in Hampton Roads.
Of the 186 victims, more than half - or 101 - were black males. The average age of black male victims was 26. Drugs were known to be involved in 16 percent of those killings, and were probably involved in up to 29 percent more, investigators said.
White males accounted for one in every five homicide victims. Drugs were involved, or probably involved, in about 13 percent of the slayings of white males.
Interracial slayings were as uncommon in 1994 as they were in 1993.
Of the 150 cases from 1994 that were solved, 65 percent were black-on-black crimes. Whites killed whites in 23 percent of the cases.
That means in nearly nine murders out of 10, the suspect was the same race as the victim.
Of the remaining cases, blacks killed whites in 9 percent. Whites killed blacks in 1 percent. In the remaining 2 percent, the suspect or victim was of another race.
In Newport News, all suspects arrested were black, except one. Detectives solved all 25 of the city's slayings. Portsmouth detectives solved less than half of the slayings that happened in 1994. The drug trade and a lack of cooperative witnesses are partly to blame, detectives in that city said.
Just as in Newport News, all but one of the Portsmouth suspects were black.
THE MOTIVES
About half the females killed in 1994 died in domestic disputes. Twenty-one of the 45 female victims died at the hands of family members, or in family disputes.
Sometimes they stepped into an already boiling situation. Sometimes they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes they were the targets of jilted lovers.
Many were children killed by their parents or guardians.
Unlike men and boys, women and girls almost always will know their killers.
Norfolk police said an enraged 46-year-old Barbara Johns stormed into her front yard where her younger, romantic rival was waiting in her estranged husband's pickup. Johns opened fire with a handgun, police said, killing Peggy Sue Damron, 35. It was Valentine's Day.
In Hampton, 70-year-old Queen McJunkins was shot in the head when she got caught in the middle of an argument between Tammy Barnes and Barnes' former boyfriend, police said.
Men were most often killed in arguments. Sometimes, over trivial matters.
In Hampton, Dennis Painter was stabbed to death in an argument over rent.
In Portsmouth, Gary Watts was killed in a dispute over loud music.
George ``Skip'' Fedon was murdered in a suburban Virginia Beach Food Lion. He became involved in a checkout lane fight when beer was rung up on the wrong tab.
WOMEN AS VICTIMS
As in years past, females older than 17 were most often slain by the men who shared their beds. Police investigated 31 cases in 1994 where women were victims; 16 were killed by husbands or boyfriends.
That's up from nine similar cases in 1993.
``Since I've been in here, there has been a definite increase'' in domestic slayings, said Virginia Beach Detective Shawn Hoffman, a homicide investigator five years. ``From year to year, we have more and more. And we've had more homicide-suicides.''
Such was the case of Donna and Lamont Shinn.
Early on the morning of Feb. 25, Lamont Shinn called his father to pick up the couple's two young children and take them to school. Then the Virginia Beach computer specialist shot his 33-year-old wife in the head and killed himself while police talked to him on the phone.
Police negotiators heard the self-inflicted gunshot, and Lamont Shinn's last breaths.
Eric VanPoortfliet strangled his wife in May 1991. He put the corpse in the passenger's seat of his car and drove it around for weeks. When the body began to reek, he wrapped it in plastic and buried it behind his mobile home. Police didn't discover the murder until February of last year.
Broiling emotion between intimates is a reason for the extreme violence, Hoffman said.
``People say and do things to their spouses that they would never say or do to their friends,'' Hoffman said. ``If they did, they wouldn't have any friends.''
Even a court order didn't protect 45-year-old Marion Garetson from her estranged husband. On April 1, Joe Garetson barged into her Virginia Beach office and shot her several times. He then killed himself.
Police said an argument between 40-year-old Jacqueline Cherry of Norfolk and her live-in boyfriend, Alfred Parker, ended when Parker doused Cherry with a flammable liquid, set her afire, and locked her in the bathroom. She died a week later of massive burns.
But, it appears, women are fighting back.
WOMEN AS SUSPECTS
Domestic slayings of men by women more than tripled from two cases in 1993 to seven cases in 1994.
Unlike men, women accused of killing their husbands or boyfriends usually do so in self-defense. That's what Hoffman has drawn from interviews with suspects.
``The women are getting to the point where they are not going to be beat on and abused any more,'' Hoffman said. ``I think their tolerance level is diminishing. When they snap, they believe it's the only alternative. That's what they say.''
Natasha Baldwin wasn't old enough to drink beer, or even vote, when she was charged with murdering her 21-year-old husband.
Natasha, 17, told police she was no longer attracted to her husband - who was more than twice her weight - and didn't want to have sex with him. After he hit her and tried to force her to submit, she shot him in the head.
The bullet ended a stormy marriage that had at least once seen Torrey Baldwin charged with assaulting his bride. Natasha was convicted of second-degree murder.
In Portsmouth, Jesse L. Lewis died after he was slashed by his live-in girlfriend, police said.
Hampton police arrested Karen Hill for allegedly stabbing her husband in the chest. He died a short time later.
JUVENILES
Natasha Baldwin was one of 28 juveniles charged with murder in Hampton Roads in 1994. Twenty-five were black males.
According to area statistics, homicide is increasingly becoming a group activity. And increasingly, juveniles are in the groups.
In 1993, local police said, 15 homicides were committed by groups of two or more. That doubled to 30 in 1994.
In 1993, only three of those groups contained at least two juveniles. In 1994, that number jumped to eight.
VICTIMS IN UNIFORM
In Newport News, detectives investigated the slayings of two fellow officers.
Just 11 days into 1994, officer Steven Rutherford was robbed and shot while posing as a pizza delivery man.
Four months later, officer Larry Bland was shot by a man he detained.
``I can tell you it was very hard on everyone involved,'' said Newport News Lt. Carl Burt. ``It was very stressful. We wanted to stay focused and we wanted to apprehend the individuals involved.
``The first homicide in January was devastating enough,'' Burt said. ``And then to have another one, it was like, `What's going on here?' All kinds of thoughts were going through our minds. Through it all, everyone maintained focus and we apprehended those responsible in a very short time.''
Hampton police officer Kenny Wallace was the third of three Peninsula officers murdered in 1994. He was shot in the head in February.
The names of all three officers will be added this year to a national memorial in Washington.
HOW WE COMPARE
Once every 47 hours of 1994 in Hampton Roads, a homicide detective was dispatched to a slaying.
Their homicide logs would be much thicker, detectives said, if it weren't for talented rescue workers and hospital staffs.
In 1994, the trauma centers at Sentara Norfolk General and Virginia Beach General hospitals treated 695 victims of serious stabbings, beatings and shootings.
Even with the rising violence, Hampton Roads cities are statistically much safer than some of their neighbors.
In Richmond, with a population of just over 202,000, police recorded 160 homicides last year. Norfolk, with a population of more than 261,000, recorded 61.
And in Washington, with a population of just over 600,000, there were 417 slayings.
For the first time in at least two years, New Year's Day passed in Hampton Roads without a killing. The body count didn't begin until Jan. 4.
Norfolk police found Ernest R. Walker, of the 2100 block of Shop St., stabbed and unconscious on the stairs between the second and third floors of a home in the 1000 block of West 37th St. He was pronounced dead a short time later. MEMO: Database editor Lise Olsen contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JOHN C. BELL/File
The quadruple slaying on June 30 at the Witchduck Inn in Virginia
Beach was the city's worst crime scene - but only for three weeks.
On July 22, four family members were found dead in a Seaboard Road
home. The back-to-back killings in 1994 help push the number of
Virginia Beach slayings to a record high of 36.
Graphic
Research by Mike Mather and Lise Olsen; Graphic by Robert D. Voros
HOMICIDES 1994
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: MURDER HOMICIDE STATISTICS HAMPTON
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