THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601240369
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER AND MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Maintaining his innocence to the end, convicted murderer Richard Townes Jr. was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection for killing a convenience store clerk in Virginia Beach in 1985.
Townes died at 9:25 p.m., with no complications, prison officials said.
``I'm innocent,'' Townes whispered to the warden after he was strapped to a table in the execution chamber. ``That's all I have to say. I'm innocent.''
No minister was present, at Townes' request, and no protesters were outside the Greensville Correctional Center.
Townes was convicted of the execution-style slaying of Virginia Goebel, a 32-year-old mother of two, during a robbery at the Gulf Majik Market on Indian River Road.
The victim's family gathered Tuesday night in Goebel's mother's home in Pungo and learned of Townes' execution on the 10 p.m. television news.
``We're just glad it's over,'' said the victim's sister, Lucy Aygarn.
Among the execution witnesses were Sgt. Thomas Baum, a Virginia Beach detective who led the investigation into Goebel's death.
He said Townes never showed remorse.
``I found him to be a very cold and uncaring individual,'' Baum said.
He also said Townes intimidated witnesses from his prison cell, suing some, filing change of addresses with the post office for others. ``What he's been able to do to the witnesses has truly made their lives hell,'' Baum said.
After the execution, Townes' attorney, David Wadyka, read a long, rambling statement from his client. Throughout it, Townes maintained his innocence and condemned the death penalty.
``The commonwealth continues to advocate the mythical belief'' that capital punishment will make society safer, Townes wrote.
Wadyka was critical of Gov. George F. Allen and the courts for not preventing Townes' execution.
``He's gone to his death because there are too many deaf ears in the judicial system and in the executive,'' Wadyka said. ``We have become too callous (to executions) in the false hope that this will make us safer.''
The execution was carried out after 11th-hour appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and the governor.
The Supreme Court rejected three emergency requests to postpone the execution Tuesday, the last at 6:30 p.m.
Then, the governor announced at 8:30 p.m. - just a half-hour before the execution - that he would not intervene.
Townes was the second Virginia inmate executed this month. Walter M. Correll Jr., convicted in the 1985 abduction and murder of a Roanoke man, died of lethal injection Jan. 4.
Townes is the 31st Virginian to be executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s. Virginia is third in the country in executions, trailing only Texas and Florida.
Investigators working on Townes' behalf recently contacted 11 of the 12 jurors in his 1986 trial. In affidavits signed Sunday, two jurors said they would not have sentenced Townes to death if they had known that, under Virginia law, he could not have been paroled.
``In fact, I do not believe any of the jurors would have sentenced him to die under those circumstances,'' juror Ethel Keith said in an affidavit.
She said that she and other jurors worried that Townes might one day get out of prison, and they didn't want that to happen. ``I remember that none of the jurors wanted to sentence Mr. Townes to death, but we felt we had to,'' she said. MEMO: Staff writers June Arney and Joe Jackson contributed to this story.
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VIRGINIA MURDER SHOOTING
EXECUTION by CNB