DATE: Wednesday, August 20, 1997            TAG: 9708200449

SECTION: FINAL                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: JARRATT                           LENGTH:   84 lines

BEACH WOMAN'S KILLER IS PUT TO DEATH

Carlton Jerome Pope was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night for the 1986 murder of Cynthia Gray, a 24-year-old Virginia Beach woman.

Pope was pronounced dead at 9:10 p.m. In a final statement, he said: ``I thank God for giving me peace. I love my mother. I thank God that Jesus Christ died for my sins.''

Pope, 35, was 23 when he met Gray and her sister, Marcie Kirchheimer, outside a Portsmouth pool hall on the night of Jan. 12, 1986. According to testimony at his trial, the sisters agreed to give Pope a ride home and shared a bottle of wine with him on the way.

Upon being delivered to his doorstep, Pope shot Gray in the face, struggled with Kirchheimer and then shot her. Kirchheimer, who was shot in the neck, survived.

The crime devastated Cynthia Gray's family, said her mother, Marie Gray of Virginia Beach.

Unable to cope with her sister's murder, Kirchheimer, who had been trying to recover from heroin addiction, plunged back into it.

Richard L. Gray, Cynthia's older brother, contracted a rare virus and died two months after the murder. He was 26. His mother is convinced his immune system was weakened by his grief.

Richard P. Gray, Cynthia's father, ``swept the garage for two years and hardly talked,'' said Marie Gray. He died of cancer in 1992.

``So many people don't understand that a murder doesn't just involve burying a loved one,'' said Marie Gray. ``It devastates a family. This execution will not put an end to it.''

Marie Gray described her daughter as ``big-hearted'' and ``full of life.''

``Her greatest virtue was her love for other people,'' Gray said. ``She would give people rides. She would give them money. She believed if you were good to people, they would be good to you. And it was unfortunately that virtue that got her killed.''

Pope, a seventh-grade dropout with an IQ of 79, was ``unable to write the alphabet without errors'' during a 1991 psychological evaluation.

One of five children, Pope grew up in Portsmouth, the child of an alcoholic ``inconsistent, erratic and verbally and physically abusive'' father. By age 9, according to the psychological evaluation, he, too, had become an alcoholic.

``On average, during the summers, he would drink a case of beer or 24, 12-ounce cans, and a fifth of wine on a given evening,'' said the evaluation.

At 17, Pope suffered a head injury when he fell from a building while working at a construction site. At 20, he shot a friend in the toe during an argument and was convicted of malicious wounding.

Although sentenced to 10 years, Pope was paroled after serving two. He had been out of prison for only three months when Gray was killed.

Pope's lawyers have argued in appeals that the jury that sentenced Pope to death heard nothing about his background. The lawyers have also maintained that Portsmouth prosecutors ``knowingly introduced'' false testimony about robbery in the case - a key element of the capital murder charge - and that they withheld evidence favorable to Pope.

``When no jury has had the opportunity to consider the true facts, and when the true facts raise a serious and reasonable doubt as to the defendant's guilt of capital murder, justice requires that clemency be granted,'' the lawyers wrote in a clemency petition submitted to Gov. George F. Allen on Friday.

Allen denied Pope's clemency plea about 2 p.m. Tuesday.

``I find no reason to overturn the decision rendered by the jury and upheld by the courts, and consequently I shall not intervene,'' he said in a statement.

Cynthia Gray's younger brother, Mark Gray, drove to the Greensville Correctional Center with a friend Tuesday to watch Pope die.

``A lot of persons might say this about their sister, but she was one of the nicest persons I ever knew, sister or no sister'' he said. ``She thought of other people before herself.''

``Maybe now we can get some closure. If there is any.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

``HER GREATEST VIRTUE WAS HER LOVE FOR OTHER PEOPLE''

Marie Gray, the mother of murder victim Cynthia Gray, visits the

grave of her daughter. ``So many people don't understand that a

murder doesn't just involve burying a loved one. It devastates a

family,'' she said. ``This execution will not put an end to it.''

Color photos

Cynthia Gray, 24, was shot to death in 1986 by Carlton Jerome Pope,

whom she had offered a ride home. KEYWORDS: EXECUTION DEATH PENALTY CAPITAL PUNISHMENT