THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996 TAG: 9603070431
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLISE LYLES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
At the small church on Peach Street, mourners crowded the sanctuary doors, spilling down the steps onto a windy walk. About 350 people had come to say goodbye to Samuel J. Gary, better known as Sammy.
At two other churches in Hampton Roads last week, families and friends gathered to say goodbye to the people Gary killed.
``I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everybody, those people and their families,'' said Jermaine Smith, 22, who said he was Gary's best friend. ``I apologize for my friend's actions.''
But, said Smith, as he watched mourners make their way from Gary's memorial service, ``If he was such a monster, how could all these people love him?''
It is a perplexing question with painful, ambiguous answers for those who knew and loved the perpetrator of an apparent act of random violence.
The only things certain are the victims.
Feb. 20, Ronald Hagins, 24, of Chesapeake was shot four times but survived. Ann Jungja Lim, 52, a Suffolk Realtor, was shot to death Feb. 23 outside Janaf Shopping Center in Norfolk. The next day, Paul A. Bernard, 37, a father of three boys, was carjacked and fatally shot in a Kmart parking lot on Military Highway. Later that day, police shot and killed 20-year-old Gary as he fled the stolen vehicle and opened fire on them.
In the aftermath, Gary's family rejects easy answers.
They refuse to link Gary's behavior to a childhood tragedy. His father killed his mother and then turned the gun on himself when Gary was 3 years old.
``That happened almost 20 years ago,'' said Stella Coles, the woman who raised Gary as her own child. ``It makes me sick to my stomach to think that people would blame this on that. Sammy must have had some reasons. That boy must've been scared to do what he did.''
They refuse to view the incident as Gary's attempt to live up to the reputation that his father Jerome Gary earned as one of the ``baaddest cats'' to walk the streets of Portsmouth.
And they continue to try to piece together a bizarre series of events that branded Samuel Gary a killer and ended his life.
``He wasn't crazy,'' said 19-year-old Albert Gary of his older brother. ``He wasn't a maniac. He wasn't no animal.''
Then who was Samuel J. Gary and why did he do what he did?
Sammy Gary came from a neighborhood of paradoxes: neat working class homes, privacy fences and an occasional boat just blocks away from interstate signs riddled with bullet holes.
Stella and Phillip Coles took Gary and baby brother Albert into their modest house on Eckstine Drive in Cavalier Manor after the deaths of the boys' parents. An older brother went to live with his grandparents.
In a living room adorned with artificial flowers, Stella Coles sat trying to understand how the young man she reared could take someone's life.
Gary's mother, Carolee Gary, had been Coles' best friend. As godmother to the three Gary boys, Coles frequently babysat while Carolee worked at the Portsmouth Police Department. ``It was natural for me to take the children,'' said Coles, a woman of 49.
``Sweet, sweet, sweet'' is the way most folks describe Carolee Gary. She sang solos in the choir at her father's church. In the 1968 I.C. Norcom High School yearbook, she smiles as a majorette, modern dancer and Miss Sophomore.
She married her school sweetheart, Jerome Gary, better known on the streets as Scobie-D.
In his best-selling memoir ``Makes Me Wanna Holler,'' Portsmouth native Nathan McCall portrayed Jerome Gary as the ``baaddest cat to come out of Cavalier Manor.''
``He had a medium build, bronze skin, flaming red hair, and a sizzling hot temper to match,'' McCall wrote. ``Everybody, teachers and girls included, feared and respected him. . . . When he lost his temper he'd take on anybody and will himself to win.''
He led gang rapes and shot a man at point-blank range, McCall wrote.
But, said McCall in a telephone interview, ``I distinctly remember seeing Scobie taking his kids places, to the store to buy them candy. He seemed to be a very concerned, involved father, which I thought had sort of helped to mellow him.''
Amid echoes of his father's legendary reputation, Sammy Gary grew up playing little league and going to Sunday school at his grandfather's church.
The Coles' love was not second hand.
``Sammy was the type of son when an anniversary or birthday came around, he tried to give me something,'' said Coles. ``He was a very thoughtful child.''
As a substitute teacher, the Rev. Robert E. Forbes taught Gary at William E. Waters Middle School. ``He was almost tenderly soft spoken,'' said Forbes. `` But he was a definite leader. The other boys listened to him and followed.''
As he grew, Gary winged away from church and left school in the 10th grade. He still sent weekly tithes and he encouraged younger brother Albert to graduate.
As a juvenile, Gary ran into trouble with the law on stolen auto charges and spent time in a detention center.
Sammy Gary's life spun into a complex maze of street life and social withdrawal. He courted a few girls, but had no children. His friends included a top-ranked Deep Creek High School graduate, but there were also shadowy figures that his family didn't take to.
``I always had a feeling about some of his friends,'' said Stella Coles. ``A lot came to the door, but I wouldn't let them in the house.''
His turf was sometimes the Virginia Beach strip or a college campus where he dressed smartly and won popularity.
``That's all I talked about in college was my friend Sammy,'' said James Taliaferro, now a freshman at North Carolina A&T. ``His sense of humor. When you were with him there was no anxiety. It was like he cared for you. I know that sounds inappropriate for what's happened, but that is the person I knew.''
Other times, he roamed tough neighborhoods in military-style garb.
One day the subject of guns came up in Stella Coles' house. Was Gary carrying a gun like other boys she had heard about? He told her the truth.
``I didn't like him carrying it,'' said Coles. ``I disapproved. But he told me, `You got to out there.' ''
``Armed and dangerous.'' On Wednesday, Feb. 21, Coles saw Gary's picture on the TV screen.
``I could not believe it,'' she said, her eyes widening to show the shock she felt. `Armed and dangerous.' That is like a license to kill.''
Robbery? Carjacking? An all-out crime spree? Gary's family doesn't pretend to know what happened in the course of five days that turned their Gary into a killer. Dozens of holes remain. Police have not interviewed the family.
But Norfolk police say they are still probing to piece together events that began on Feb. 20 in Portsmouth and ended several days later with two slayings in one of Norfolk's busiest shopping districts.
Gary's friend Ronald Hagins of Chesapeake said Gary just went berserk Feb. 20 and tried to rob him and two friends.
In the 100 block of Wilson Parkway, Gary shot Hagins four times in the back, arm and face. Hagins said he was lying on the ground when Gary fired.
``Why would Gary rob anybody,'' Albert Gary asked. ``He had plenty of money.''
Since age 18, the Gary brothers each received monthly checks from their mother's insurance policy, Coles said. She did not disclose the amount.
Asked whether drugs might have been involved, Coles said, ``He never used drugs in this house. Out on the street, I don't know.''
Albert Gary wonders whether the three men might have attempted to rob his brother first.
The day after the television report, Gary tried to telephone home, but hung up fearing police had tapped the line, Albert Gary said.
``Whatever he did, he did out of panic, which still doesn't make it right,'' said Coles.
On Friday, Ann Jungja Lim was shot to death in the Janaf Parking lot in an apparent botched robbery. Gary's family doesn't understand how police linked Lim to Gary.
Even after speaking with police, Peter Lim still puzzles over what happened to his wife. Her pocketbook with ``credit cards and money and everything'' were in the front seat of the car when police arrived at the scene, he said. But apparently a satchel of documents had been snatched and recovered from nearby, Lim said.
Albert Gary believed that on Saturday his brother was trying to steal a car to flee to New York when he fatally shot Paul Bernard. The Norshipco worker was waiting in the Kmart parking lot for his wife and son to finish shopping.
Later that day, police felled Samuel Gary as he fled in the 1984 Thunderbird he had stolen from Bernard. An unidentified neighbor said Gary opened fire on police. One officer's pants leg was shot through.
``At first I felt it was my fault . . . that I ran out of time,'' said Albert Gary. ``I kept thinking that tomorrow I'll be able to talk to him and he'll go (to turn himself in). I wanted my brother to do the right thing.'' ILLUSTRATION: Samuel J. Gary's violent end is a mystery to his family.
by CNB