DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997          TAG: 9702260441

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON 

        STAFF WRITER  

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   62 lines

SUFFOLK TEENS WAIVE HEARINGS; MURDER CASE WILL GO TO GRAND JURY

A teen-ager arrested in the December knife slaying of a bookstore clerk has been declared sane and competent to stand trial.

The youth, June D. Sykes, and co-defendant George M. Fenner Jr. waived preliminary hearings Tuesday, sending charges of first-degree murder and stab, cut or wound directly to a grand jury.

Prosecutors agreed not to prosecute an additional charge of breaking and entering while armed with a deadly weapon against Sykes and Fenner, both 15.

No evidence was presented Tuesday in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

The grand jury on March 24 will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to try the teens. If probable cause is found, they will be arraigned that afternoon. No trial date has been set.

The teens were arrested Dec. 19, 1996, and charged in the death of Margaret M. ``Peggy'' Lilley the day before. Lilley, working alone at The Bookhaven in the Suffolk Plaza Shopping Center on North Main Street, was found dead on the floor at the rear of the store by a man who came in about 4:15 p.m.

A psychological evaluation of Sykes, who is accused of cutting Lilley's throat, showed the teen-ager competent and capable of standing trial, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jo Anne Spencer said Tuesday.

Sykes' court-appointed guardian, Michael D. Eberhardt, was relieved of his duties. Eberhardt then was appointed by Judge William R. Moore Jr. to assist Johnnie E. Mizelle in defending Sykes.

Spencer plans to prosecute the defendants together if the cases go to trial.

Moore refused to grant a motion by Mizelle to release his client on bond. Public defender Timothy E. Miller and his assistant, John C. Lauterbach Jr., who had been appointed to represent Fenner, did not request bond.

The teen-agers were returned to Tidewater Detention Home in Chesapeake, where they have been held since their arrests.

They face possible life sentences on the first-degree murder charge and a maximum of five years on the charge of cut, stab or wound.

They will be tried as adults if probable cause is found, Mizelle said.

They are the first juveniles in Suffolk to be charged with murder after the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1996. The act stipulates that juveniles who are at least 14 and who are charged with violent felonies can be routinely tried as adults.

Sykes, an eighth-grader at John Yeates Middle School, and Fenner, a ninth-grader at Nansemond River High School, were identified after police viewed the store's videotaped recording of the events. Court records show that both teen-agers later admitted to police that they had participated in Lilley's death.

Police listed the motive as ``revenge and robbery.'' According to a search warrant on file in Circuit Court, Sykes told police he had stolen magazines from the shop a couple of days earlier.

Police recovered a metal blade of a utility-type knife, believed to be the murder weapon. ILLUSTRATION: June D. Sykes, left, and George M. Fenner Jr. will go

before a grand jury in March in connection with the killing of a

bookstore clerk in Suffolk. The teens, who waived preliminary

hearings, are being held in the Tidewater Detention Home in

Chesapeake. KEYWORDS: JUVENILES MURDER GRAND JURY

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