THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505270403
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY AND JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 142 lines
The Department of Corrections is investigating the discovery of a loaded gun and a dozen spare bullets in the typewriter of death-row inmate Willie Lloyd Turner shortly after he was executed by lethal injection Thursday night.
In a press release issued late Friday, state Secretary of Public Safety Jerry W. Kilgore said the investigation will look at security procedures at the prison where Turner was held and the circumstances surrounding removal of the typewriter and discovery of the gun.
The probe also will involve reviewing Turner's visitor list and will examine ``any and all possible criminal charges,'' he said.
Turner's attorney, Walter Walvick, his wife and two Virginian-Pilot reporters were present in Walvick's hotel room when he used a screwdriver to open the compartment behind the typewriter ribbon and found the .32-caliber revolver.
Emporia police, who later removed the gun from the typewriter, found 12 extra bullets and a piece of paper bearing the handwritten word: ``Smile.''
Gov. George F. Allen on Friday called the discovery of the gun ``an allegation'' and speculated that it was a ``stunt by the defense attorney.''
``I don't think you should assume that the statement by his attorney is true or false,'' Allen on his ``Ask Governor Allen'' radio show. Allen's show is carried on WRVA-AM in Richmond and several other stations around the state.
After the show, Allen met on the sidewalk with reporters and again cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that Turner had smuggled a gun onto death row.
``I don't think you should accept as fact that Turner had a gun in his typewriter,'' he said. ``If it is (true), though, then it is a very serious matter.''
Responding to Allen's suggestion that Walvick had planted the gun, Walvick said: ``Let's just say he couldn't have really meant it. Let's just say that I'm sure he's under a lot of pressure and he couldn't have really meant what he said.''
To the end, Turner took pride in his ability to outwit his jailers.
``I want you to know I'm letting you do this to me,'' he told E.C. Morris, deputy director of the Department of Corrections, when Morris came to visit him in his cell Thursday.
Soon after Morris' visit, Turner died, strapped to a gurney in the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center as lethal chemicals filled his bloodstream.
An hour later, Walvick unscrewed a piece of the typewriter, which Turner had had with him in the death chamber, and found a loaded gun nestled in crumpled toilet paper inside.
Turner had asked corrections officials to give his property to Walvick after his death. About 30 minutes before Turner was taken to the death chamber, Walvick said, Turner told his lawyer to ``look in the back of the typewriter when you get home. I didn't use it because of you.''
After the execution, Walvick moved his car closer to the prison, and corrections officers helped him put the typewriter and a box containing Turner's other possessions in the trunk. He then drove to his Emporia hotel room, where he spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out where in the typewriter Turner had wanted him to look.
``Son of a bitch,'' the lawyer said upon discovering the gun. He immediately called police.
During his 15 years on death row, Turner gained widespread notoriety for his ability to fashion weapons by hand and conceal them from his jailers.
Last year, in a telephone interview from Greensville, Turner said he took ``pride'' in his ability to make and stash contraband and resented state officials ``making me sound like an amateur, like a fool.'' In addition to fake guns, saw blades and knives, he also had a 3-foot ``Samurai-sword-type knife'' that he made from part of his bed frame, and keys that opened his cell door and those of other cells.
He had been making and stashing them for years, he claimed.
Using keys and other devices he had fashioned, Turner claimed, he could have ``sprung everybody in M Building,'' where he was housed. He said his keys could open all the cellblocks on each tier. The building houses more than 70 inmates.
This is how Turner said he made the keys:
He watched carefully as guards used their keys to let him in and out of his cell, memorizing the key's size, shape and dimensions. Using this mental picture, he stripped pieces of aluminum from his toilet, fashioning it into the shape of the key. This aluminum was just soft enough to bend and shape, but strong enough to open the cell door, Turner said.
If the key didn't work the first time, Turner said, he would ``fiddle with it'' until it did. He said he could usually make a key in one day and had made one for every cell he had ever lived in.
Turner said he stashed his weapons, saws and keys in areas he chiseled out of the wall and in areas of the toilet from which he had removed the aluminum. He then covered the hiding places with a mixture of soap and toothpaste. After the paste hardened, he colored it the same institutional gray as the walls.
``Willie is a very smart man'' for somebody who never finished grade school, a cousin who lives in Richmond said in an interview last year.
``He's always been real handy. For him, it's a point of pride. After he got caught . . . he went ahead and showed the guards where the rest of the stuff was. He said he could have walked out in 1987 . . . when he started making all this stuff.''
Turner, whose death-row nickname was ``T,'' was one of nine inmates who planned a death-row escape from Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984. Only six inmates followed through, however. Turner and two other inmates stayed behind.
Plans for the breakout took shape in C Pod at Mecklenburg while a guard watched TV and napped nearby, death-row inmate Dennis Stockton wrote in his diaries. The inmates placed law books from the prison library on the table ``so it would look like we were working on our appeals,'' Stockton wrote.
Each had an assigned task. Turner's was to make, stash and hide weapons. During a crackdown before the breakout, corrections officers conducting cell searches never found where Turner had stashed the weapons.
``They had a road map that would have taken them right to it,'' Stockton wrote. ``But they still didn't find it.''
At least a dozen officers and three nurses were taken hostage in the breakout. All were released by Turner and Joe Giarratano, another inmate who had decided not to go.
Turner had hidden the weapons in his wall. MEMO: Staff writer David Poole contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by LAURA LAFAY
An hour after murderer Willie Lloyd Turner was executed, a loaded
.32-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver was found in his typewriter,
which he had kept with him in the death chamber. About a half-hour
before Turner died, he reportedly told his attorney: ``Look in the
back of the typewriter when you get home. I didn't use it because of
you.''
Color photo
Officer B. Richardson of the Emporia Police Department reacts to the
discovery of the bullets found beneath the gun. Richardson arrived
at the hotel room of Walter Walvick, Turner's attorney, after
Walvick found the gun. The bullets were with a one-word note:
``Smile.''
Photo
Officials say they will review the list of Willie Lloyd Turner's
visitors.
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT INJECTION by CNB