Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 22, 1990 TAG: 9003222186
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Salmons was committed to the state mental health system and taken to Central State Hospital in Petersburg. Three court-appointed psychiatrists will examine him in periodic evaluations, starting in about six months, as to whether he can safely be discharged.
He had been scheduled for a jury trial April 4-6, but defense attorneys Joseph McGrady and Thomas Jackson waived that and chose to submit the case to Judge Duane Mink. After another jury trial was canceled Wednesday in Carroll County Circuit Court, Salmons' case was heard.
Salmons was charged with two counts of capital murder in the shooting deaths of two neighbors, Thomas Jefferson Hardy Jr., 63, and his son, Kenneth Wayne Hardy, 38.
Their bodies were found Oct. 22, 1987, on a road near their farms east of Hillsville. They had been trying to catch whoever had been pulling down no-trespassing signs on their property.
Salmons also was charged with using a firearm in the commission of felonies, and with attempted capital murder of two troopers after he rammed their cruiser in November 1987 when he was arrested after a high-speed chase near Floyd.
Commonwealth's Attorney James Ward summarized the testimony as both sides agreed it would have been at a jury trial. He said a ballistics examination showed the fatal bullets came from a .357 Magnum revolver found in Salmons' home and that a witness saw Salmons leaving the area where the bodies were found shortly after the killings were discovered.
Mink said the evidence was sufficient to prove Salmon guilty of all charges. The only question remaining was whether he was sane at the time of the offenses.
Four psychiatrists said no. Dr. J. Richard Frazier of Roanoke and three state doctors - William M. Lee, Henry O. Gwaltney Jr. and Miller Ryans - said Salmons suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and his condition was chronic. They said he suffered from delusions not based on reality.
Salmons had not been classified as a suspect in the Hardys' deaths until after his arrest Nov. 17, 1987, when he did not stop when ordered to do so by police until his vehicle was disabled by several bullets. He was being sought at the time for firearms violations.
A search warrant turned up five handguns, five long-barreled weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition at his home. A federal law prohibits the possession of such weapons by someone who has been committed to a mental institution.
Salmons had been involuntarily committed in 1976 to St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital in Radford, where he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Paranoia is characterized by delusions of persecution and schizophrenia by a separation of emotions from thought processes.
Authorities later found that Salmons bought six firearms between 1977 and 1983 from stores in Hillsville and Wytheville, apparently falsifying the forms he had to fill out to buy them. He had worked on a dairy farm owned by his father.
by CNB