THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 10, 1996 TAG: 9602100295
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
An 8-year-old pledge to continue to investigate the brutal rape and murder of a Ghent woman has landed the man who was first charged back behind bars.
And with his arrest, Ricky DeWayne ``Jett'' Rogers, 40, of Chesapeake, is facing, for the third time, the prospect of life in prison.
He is again charged with the death of Grace Elizabeth Payne, an Old Dominion University graduate who had been working as a secretary for a Smithfield company when she was found slain Oct. 20, 1987.
Rogers has twice eluded a possible life sentence. In the Payne murder case, charges were dropped after one witness died, another recanted, and DNA evidence proved inconclusive. Then, in 1991, he was charged with abducting and raping two women in Portsmouth. A jury acquitted him on the most serious charges, finding him guilty only of sodomy.
His arrest Friday came as good news, but no surprise, to Payne's sister.
``I'm very pleased,'' said Dale Pennell, 46. ``I never gave up hope. I never did. And I can credit the police department and the commonwealth's attorney's office for never letting me give up. It was very clear to me that they would pursue this, and it meant a great deal to me.''
When then-Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Robert C. Slaughter III made the motion to dismiss charges against Rogers on June 21, 1988, Slaughter told the judge he still believed police had the right man. And, he said then, ``the investigation will continue.''
``Old cases never go away,'' Larry Hill, a police spokesman, said Friday. ``In the past several months, we started taking a look at some of the older cases and re-investigating them, and this is one of them.''
In a significant twist, Hill said ``new technology'' is playing a role in the case - just as it did when Rogers was first put on trial and prosecutors tried to use DNA evidence to link him to the killing.
In 1988, the use of DNA technology was in its infancy in criminal trials. It had never been used in Norfolk. And comparisons of evidence from the murder scene with samples taken from the suspect were inconclusive.
Methods for using DNA have advanced dramatically. And while authorities declined Friday to detail exactly what their ``new technology'' is in this case, Hill specifically would not rule out DNA.
Hill said homicide investigators Pat Dunn and Maureen Evans began to re-examine the case several months ago, using evidence long in police custody. They also tracked down and re-interviewed many of the original witnesses.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jon R. Zug worked closely with the investigators, Hill said. ``They took an aggressive stance in this case, developing new evidence and working very closely with one another on how to proceed.''
On Wednesday, Zug took the case before a grand jury, which indicted Rogers on charges of murder, rape, robbery, credit card theft and credit card forgery.
A surprised Rogers offered no resistance, Hill said, when he was arrested Friday afternoon at a construction site at Norfolk Naval Base.
Rogers was working for H.B. Ballard Construction Co. and had recently been working for the company at the site of a new wing of the Norfolk City Jail.
He was still being questioned late Friday, and no decision had been made on whether bond would be set for his release or if he would be held pending a preliminary hearing.
Grace Elizabeth Payne, then 28, was found dead on a bed in her Ghent apartment in the 800 block of Westover Ave. after her sister and co-workers became concerned that she had not shown up for work.
It was a particularly grisly murder.
She had been raped, bound, and strangled with electrical cord. A sock was stuffed in her mouth, and her face had been burned with lye and covered with tape. One knife was buried in her chest; another, in her abdomen.
An autopsy revealed that she had died of a combination of multiple stab wounds and strangulation.
Although there were no signs of forced entry, the attic apartment where she had lived for eight months had been ransacked. Two guns, and three bags containing about $1,900 in silver coins, were missing.
In November that year, police arrested Rogers, an Tennessean who was then an unemployed drifter.
At the time of the slaying, however, he had been working occasionally for Campeco Cleaners with Payne's boyfriend, Jay Michael O'Connor. And he had visited Payne's apartment with O'Connor on several occasions.
Rogers was arrested after O'Connor identified him as the man photographed by a Crestar bank camera withdrawing $300 with Payne's Visa card about 24 hours after she was murdered.
Rogers told police he was boarding a TRT bus at the time of Payne's slaying and denied any involvement. He described the bus driver as a black woman, and said she could identify him. But when police checked his story, they found that a white woman had been driving the bus. And she did not back up Roger's claims.
Police tried to bolster their case by using a new technique to link him to the murder.
Investigators had gathered hair samples, believed to be from the suspect, from the victim's bed. They also had blood and semen samples taken from the victim.
But the DNA tests were inconclusive, as were FBI analyses of the hair samples, fingerprints on the two knives left in the woman's body and on the tape wrapped around her mouth and nose.
Investigators also were unable to match Rogers' hair to hairs found on Payne's bed and a towel found in her apartment.
The FBI could not even positively identify Rogers as being the man shown in the bank photograph.
Police did have witnesses, however. And they pressed forward, seeking the death penalty.
Then they lost the witnesses. One was killed during a domestic dispute before he could testify. The other, Randall Lucy, recanted on testimony he had given earlier.
Lucy - himself on trial for arson - later claimed police had offered him a deal if he testified against Rogers.
With no strong evidence and no witnesses, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges against Rogers - leaving open the possibility of retrying him - rather than have him acquitted.
Rogers was back in court in two years.
In August 1991, Rogers was arrested after he and two other men allegedly assaulted a female cab driver and the woman's female friend.
The cab driver and her friend were in Portsmouth on Aug. 8, when they picked up Rogers and another man on Effingham Street. Rogers wanted to go to a house on Campostella Road in Norfolk.
According to testimony, Rogers and his companion forced the two women into the house at knifepoint. Then the two men and another man, already in the house, raped and sodomized them. They also stole the driver's business cards and other possessions.
A few days later, Rogers visited the main newsroom of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, promising to surrender to police. He did so Aug. 13.
Rogers admitted having had sex with one of the women. But, under oath, he insisted that she had consented. His attorney said the women had gone out with the men and later concocted the story to explain why they had been late returning the cab.
Rogers also admitted to spending nearly all of his weekly $250 paycheck on cocaine that night.
During that trial, the victims and their relatives had support from an unexpected source - family and friends of Grace Payne. Among them were O'Connor and Dale Pennell, boyfriend and sister of the slain woman.
Pennell said she attended the trial for ``solidarity.'' She said she had waited three years to see Rogers convicted of a crime.
They could only cry out and gasp, however, when the jury returned with the verdicts: Not guilty of rape. Not guilty of abduction. Not guilty of robbery.
Only on the charge of sodomy did the jury convict. And because he had already been in jail six months, Rogers had effectively served the sentence he could get. He was released.
After the trial, O'Connor called Rogers ``a walking, talking, deadly disease.'' He said he still believed Rogers was guilty of killing Payne.
``If he's arrested 20 years from now, I'll be there,'' O'Connor said after the verdict. ``He's going to get his someday. And I'd love to be there to witness it.''
He'll honor that promise.
``I've had eight years to think about this,'' O'Connor said Friday night. ``Oh, yeah. I'll be there.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Suspect: Ricky D. Rogers
Victim: Grace E. Payne
KEYWORDS: ARREST MURDER RAPE STABBING DNA TESTING by CNB