THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607270198
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 138 lines
In early 1995, when his 33-year-old wife arranged for a separation agreement after less than two years of marriage, Eric Ferguson began to fantasize about her murder.
The separation agreement was traumatizing for Ferguson. It put a halt to one of the only satisfying relationships that the quiet and lonely Chicago native had ever experienced. And it threatened to end the marriage between him and Andrea B. Ferguson - both Navy enlistees - that Ferguson considered sacred.
Ferguson became so angry at his wife that he spent part of the Memorial Day weekend in 1995 digging her grave in a secluded wooded area near the Greenbrier Parkway exit of Interstate 64.
The grave sat empty for 2 1/2 months. Then, on Aug. 12, Ferguson turned fantasy into reality by burying his wife there after he brutally strangled and beat her to death with a metal pipe while their 13-month-old daughter slept in a crib in an adjoining room.
A jury on Friday found Ferguson guilty of first-degree murder and felony child neglect after a week long trial before Circuit
Judge Frederick B. Lowe. The panel recommended a total sentence of 37 years in prison. Under Virginia's no-parole system, he will serve at least 31 1/2 years.
Just before he was arrested for the crime last Aug. 21, Ferguson described, to police detectives, the violent outburst that had been building inside him for months.
``It felt so good,'' Ferguson told two Virginia Beach homicide detectives. ``I just enjoyed it so much.''
And then Ferguson began to realize what the consequences were.
``This is premeditated murder,'' he told the police officers. ``I am going to get life.''
The jury, however, stopped short of giving Ferguson the maximum penalty for his crime.
Ferguson accepted the verdict with quiet resolve, expressing no emotion or remorse. He sat next to his lawyer, Norfolk attorney Stanley Sacks, staring at his hands folded in his lap.
It was typical behavior for Ferguson, according to friends, family and acquaintances.
``He is very unemotional on the outside,'' testified Eric's father, Carl Ferguson. ``He has a lot of emotion on the inside, but has never showed it. I think he felt it was not a manly thing.''
``Eric is not an extrovert,'' said John Stiefel, who was stationed with Ferguson on the amphibious assault ship Guam. ``He is not one to show emotion.''
Saks claimed Ferguson's introverted personality made him an isolated loner until he met Andrea. When Andrea began to withhold her love, Ferguson struggled to keep her and he eventually snapped, Saks said. Because the killing was not premeditated, Saks said, Ferguson was guilty only of voluntary manslaughter.
But Prosecutors Pam Albert and Paula Bruns argued that Ferguson's quiet exterior masked a calculating and violence-prone mind. It allowed Ferguson, an electronics technician who had served in the Navy for 10 years, to methodically plan his wife's murder, brutally strangle her, carefully clean up the murder scene, and then deposit the body in a well-concealed grave.
It also allowed him to commit the crime within feet of his daughter Kathleen and then leave his young child unattended for 36 hours. A co-worker of Andrea's found the girl smelling of urine and covered with her own feces at Andrea's home at 1832 Havilland Drive.
Andrea Ferguson was reported missing when a co-worker found Kathleen home alone on the morning of Aug. 14. The co-worker had gone to the home when Andrea did not show up for work.
Eric Ferguson was at sea at the time and was unavailable for questioning until the ship returned to port on Aug. 20. He was immediately taken to police headquarters.
The jury watched a grueling six-hour interrogation of Ferguson by police. During the first five hours, Ferguson denied knowing anything about his wife's disappearance. He told police that he visited Andrea and Kathleen on Aug. 12, and left to return to his own apartment early in the evening.
But under intense questioning from detectives Al Byrum and Steven Dunn, Ferguson finally broke. During the last hour of his videotaped statement, Ferguson described in chilling detail how his relationship with Andrea deteriorated from marriage to murder, until, ``On the 12th of August, my soul was lost.''
Ferguson said the two met in Spain in 1993, where they both were stationed in the Navy, and experienced a whirlwind romance. They were married on Aug. 20, 1993. The romance faded quickly.
Ferguson told police that when Andrea became pregnant, ``there was a lot of tension between us . . . I didn't want to be a father.''
That attitude toward Andrea's pregnancy, he said, ``was just enough to separate us beyond repair. . . . But I wanted to hold on because marriage is sacred.''
There also were financial strains on the marriage, Ferguson said.
``I brought to the marriage money,'' he told police. ``She brought to the marriage debt.''
Ferguson said that after his child was born in July 1994, he tried desperately to make the marriage work. He helped pay off Andrea's credit card debt and other bank loans. And he tried his best to learn how to be a father.
But it wasn't enough for Andrea, Ferguson said in the statement.
``I was a clod, I didn't know anything about a baby,'' Ferguson said. ``I was trying to learn it all over night and all she did was bitch at me. I wasn't learning fast enough.''
When she gave him his rings back at a U.S. naval base in Spain, Ferguson said, ``I was in shock . . . I felt that I had done so much for Andrea and it looked like Andrea never even wanted to be married.''
When Andrea was relocated by the Navy to Norfolk at the end of 1994, Ferguson said he was hopeful that their relationship would improve. But then Andrea hit him with the separation agreement, he said, and still badgered him for money.
Ferguson said he began to see that ``she is spreading herself thin and she is using me to make ends meet. That seemed wrong to me.''
On Aug. 12 Ferguson visited his wife and child in the afternoon, he told police. After Kathleen was in bed, and Ferguson was getting ready to leave, Andrea let him know that she was going to get a divorce and she wanted Ferguson to pay for half of it.
``This was the straw that broke the camel's back,'' said Sacks, Ferguson's attorney. ``He snapped.''
Ferguson told police that he followed his wife into the kitchen, placed a plastic bag fastener around her neck and tried to pull it tight. Then he reached with his other hand into his backpack, where he had a metal pipe.
``I clobbered her,'' he said on the videotape. ``Once in the head and once in the arm.''
The two struggled throughout the house, Ferguson said. He used the pipe and his bare hands to beat Andrea and strangle her, he said.
``That's when I looked into her eyes and pretty much watched her life pass,'' he told police.
``I had been thinking about this for many months,'' Ferguson told police in a cold, matter-of-fact monotone in his taped confession. ``There was a hole in the ground waiting for her.''
Ferguson said he spent 90 minutes cleaning up the blood-splattered living room where the crime occurred and another 90 minutes getting his wife's body into her car. Then he drove her body to the grave site he had prepared 2 1/2 months earlier. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by HUY NGUYEN, The Virginian-Pilot
``I had been thinking about this for many months,'' Eric Ferguson
told police in a cold, matter-of-fact monotone in his taped
confession. ``There was a hole in the ground waiting for her.''
Ferguson told police that he began to fantasize about his wife's
murder after she demanded a divorce.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL CONFESSION SENTENCE by CNB