THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINDSOR, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 145 lines
For two days, Leslie Thomas, choking back tears, told jurors in chilling detail how two armed men abducted her and her older brother from their Portsmouth home last March.
The day before the Thomases were to celebrate their mother's birthday, Leslie said, the two men forced Leslie and her brother Wayne to assist in an overnight crime spree that led them throughout southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.
Leslie told the jury last week how, in a desperate final attempt to save her and her unborn son, her brother died. He had been shot three times behind a Windsor convenience store, before he staggered into the store.
Some jurors were moved to tears as Leslie Thomas, 21, recounted how she and another woman in the store dropped to their knees and recited the Lord's Prayer together as her brother lay dying on the floor of the candy aisle.
Her testimony was the emotional climax of the first week of the trial of Charles P. Bond, 45, who faces charges of capital murder, armed robbery and abduction. The Edenton, N.C., man could be sentenced to death if convicted, even though he was in a nearby hospital 1 1/2 miles away when the fatal shots were fired. He was dropped off at Bertie Memorial Hospital to be treated for a gunshot wound after he accidentally shot himself in the foot hours earlier.
Prosecutors argued that Bond had given explicit orders to the alleged trigger man, 16-year-old Theola Saunders, to shoot the Thomases if they tried to resist or escape. Saunders has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, kidnaping, armed robbery and car theft.
The Thomases' ordeal began in the night of March 24, 1994, Leslie testified:
Wayne Thomas, who worked for a pharmaceutical company, was outside his Portsmouth home unloading a bag of groceries from his 1973, orange Volkswagen Beetle. His sister, a cosmetologist apprentice, was inside their home on Elmhurst Lane, preparing a frozen pizza.
The two had just returned from a nearby Farm Fresh, carrying barbecue, soda, and a handful of Wayne's favorite soap opera magazines. They had stocked up for the birthday party.
Returning home, they passed by the Pizza Hut restaurant on Airline Boulevard that, hours earlier, had been robbed, allegedly by Bond, Saunders, and two other men.
When the Thomases got home, Wayne remained outside with the groceries while Leslie Thomas went inside. Bond and Saunders approached Wayne Thomas, Leslie said, demanding his car keys. He hurried into the house, frantic to find them.
``I didn't have any idea anything was wrong,'' Leslie testified tearfully. A small gold cross dangling from her neck, and she trembled as she described how she handed him his keys from the top of the toaster oven.
A few minutes later, she heard his pleading voice outside: ``Please take my car. Please let me stay here.''
Then she heard another man's voice: ``If you don't come with us, we'll kill you.''
She said she looked out the window and saw Bond and Saunders, armed with a shotgun and pistol. Grabbing her brother's soda and her cigarettes, she ran outside.
``I told my brother he wasn't leaving without me,'' she said. ``I felt like if I was with him, I felt like nothing would happen.''
The two were forced to help with several robbery attempts and one armed robbery of a convenience store, she testified.
``Bond told me that if we did what we were told, nothing would happen to us,'' she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue clutched tightly in her right hand. ``He said that his wife was pregnant also and that they needed the money.''
But later, Bond told Saunders that ``if we did anything, to waste us,'' she recalled on the witness stand.
Leslie testified that Bond threatened to kill her brother as they drove through Norfolk, where there were numerous bumps from road construction. ``He said, `If you hit another (expletive deleted) bump, I'll kill you,' '' she sobbed, as several courtroom observers began to cry.
She thought that Saunders had killed her brother during a 7-Eleven robbery in Suffolk. Bond told her brother and Saunders to go into the store and rob the clerk. Bond told Saunders to kill Wayne if he tried to escape, and then they would kill her, she testified.
To avoid detection, she and Bond lay flat on the ground in a clearing, his gun pointed at her stomach. As they waited for Wayne and Saunders to return, they heard a loud thud.
``I thought that Wayne had messed up and (Saunders) was throwing his body out of the car,'' she testified. ``But they had hit a deer instead.''
Bond showed no emotion during Thomas' description of their night of terror. Twirling a blue ink pen, he occasionally passed notes to his lawyer, A. Jackson Warmack Jr.
``Let truth prevail,'' he said stonily as he was led away during a lunch break by Bertie County deputies.
Hours earlier, Bond had nearly been shot, only narrowly escaping Grant Newsome's shotgun.
Like clockwork every evening, Bessie Newsome would open the door of her Portsmouth home to a young neighbor and pass him a treat. It had become such a habit that she rarely even looked outside her door when the doorbell rang at 8:30. But on March 24, as she handed the young man a bag of popcorn, she noticed two armed men approaching her front porch, she testified.
A middle-aged man carried a pistol and was followed by a teenager cradling a shotgun.
Before she could close the door, Bessie Newsome testified, Bond stuck his foot inside the storm door and forced his way into her Bradley Avenue home.
Holding her hands above her head, Bessie Newsome described how she backed into the house and obeyed Bond's command to ``give me your car keys.''
Screaming, she ran to the den to retrieve the keys to the family's blue Thunderbird.
But her husband, waking from a nap, appeared in the hallway, dazed and unaware of the two armed men in his home.
``I told my husband I knew these people and it was fine,'' she said. ``I told him not to worry and to go back to bed.''
She turned around to face the teenager, whom she led to the Thunderbird parked out front.
``I wanted to get him out of my house,'' she said.
``If I got them out of the house, I felt I'd be safe.''
At the same time, in a back bedroom, her son, Grant, had been talking to his girlfriend on the phone and had heard his mother's screams, he testified. He set the phone down and went to investigate.
Hearing an unfamiliar male voice, he left his room and walked down the hall, where he saw Bond standing in the kitchen. Their eyes locked.
``He pointed the pistol at me,'' Grant Newsome said. ``He said, `Give me the keys, the keys to the car.' ''
He returned to his room, and Bond followed.
``After I gave him the keys, he walked out of the room,'' he said. ``I asked him not to kill me.''
Terrified, he shut the door to his room and locked it. He ran into the adjoining bathroom and locked himself inside. But he realized his parents were alone with the gunmen.
He then ran back into his bedroom and grabbed a shotgun he kept under his bed. He used it for deer hunting.
He loaded the gun, cocked it and ran out of the room.
As he walked down the long hallway leading to the front door of his home, he said, he saw Bond walking out the front door.
He raised the shotgun and placed Bond in his sights. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The gun's safety was still on.
He followed Bond outside, where he saw his parents' car in the middle of the street.
``I hadn't seen my mom. I raised the shotgun at one of the tires,'' he testified.
But then ``I heard my mom yell, `Don't shoot, don't shoot.' . . . I heard her voice on the side of the house.''
A few hours later, the pair had allegedly abducted the Thomases.
``It could have very easily been us instead of them,'' Bessie Newsome said, leaving the county courthouse. ``It was just fate.''
The trial, which could last two more weeks, resumes today.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL by CNB