DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709260743

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   71 lines

INMATE HANGS HIMSELF IN PORTSMOUTH THE TRIAL FOR KILLING HIS ESTRANGED WIFE WAS TO START THURSDAY

Just hours before he was to go to trial on charges of killing his estranged wife, Sanford Palmer apparently hanged himself in his jail cell.

A deputy with the Portsmouth Sheriff's Office discovered Palmer, 38, hanging from sheets tied to the bars about 11:10 Wednesday night, said Lt. Betty Aronson, public affairs officer for the sheriff's department.

The trial was scheduled to begin Thursday morning.

Palmer was accused of shooting his estranged wife six times and leaving her to die on a street near her Merrifields home.

A prosecutor had planned to introduce the tape of the 911 call made by Angela Palmer minutes before she was killed April 13.

Earlier this month, a judge had ordered that Palmer surrender a sample of his voice to be compared with that on the tape.

He was required to say these words:

``Come on. Come on. Come on now. Hello. Need who. You got the wrong number.''

The voice sample was to be analyzed and compared to the voice on the 911 tape by the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.

Robin Holley, the prosecutor, said the voice comparison was inconclusive because there was an ``insufficient amount of voice on the 911 tape.''

According to a police statement filed in court papers, the 26-year-old woman told the 911 dispatcher that her ``ex-husband''was breaking into the house and that he was under a restraining order to stay away from her.

The dispatcher could hear an intruder in the background and a ``physical struggle as if the male was hitting the female,'' according to a statement the 911 dispatcher gave.

According to that statement, also filed in court papers, the dispatcher called back and a man answered, told her she had the wrong number and hung up.

The dispatcher tried calling back several times, but the phone stayed busy.

When police got to the house they found the door open and heard gunshots nearby. Police chased a man driving a black vehicle from that area, according to an affidavit.

The driver eventually jumped from the car and got away.

Four hours later, Sanford Palmer turned himself in. Palmer was interrogated by police but denied that he killed Angela Palmer.

Palmer was being held in the Portsmouth City Jail in lieu of $25,000 bond.

He had been in isolation for his own protection after confrontations with other inmates, Aronson said.

``He didn't get along with most people in the jail for some reason,'' she said. ``We moved him and moved him and moved him.''

A deputy had checked on him at about 11:01, she said. Another deputy checked on him about nine minutes later and found him hanging from the sheets.

Aronson said the sheets had been worked around the bars in such a way that deputies had to cut through them to open the door and get Palmer down.

Deputies performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation but couldn't revive him, she said. The coroner pronounced Palmer dead at 11:55 p.m.

Aronson said deputies told her Palmer did not appear despondent Wednesday but actually had seemed cheerful.

She said Internal Affairs is investigating.

The last such incident at the Portsmouth City Jail occurred Feb. 2, 1996, she said. An inmate was revived after attempting suicide but later died at a hospital.

Before that, the last suicide occurred in 1986.

Aronson said they are rare at the Portsmouth City Jail.

``We certainly don't want them to happen,'' she said.

The Palmers had a 3-year-old daughter who was found safe in the house the day Angela Palmer was killed. The child now lives with her maternal grandparents in Delco, N.C. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Sanford Palmer KEYWORDS: PORTSMOUTH CITY JAIL SUICIDE

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