Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003290180
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Medium
Debbie Williams no longer believes her father's death was an accident, as it was listed by the Smyth County Sheriff's Department.
The body of 53-year-old Jackie Wayne Litton Sr. was found in his burned-out home Nov. 11 just south of Marion on Virginia 16.
The report by Lt. Doug Henderlite - who had been a police science classmate of Williams at Wytheville Community College - said that a gasoline can, Coleman lantern fuel and some black powder were among the combustibles found in the home.
The home had sheltered three generations of the family. Litton, a deaf-mute, had built it with his father. Litton's mother, who died seven months earlier, had lived there and Williams and her three brothers had been raised there.
Williams was at her home in Marion when she heard the fire siren shortly after 5 p.m. Minutes later, she got a call from her younger brother, Ronnie Litton, who had been living with their father since their grandmother's death. He had returned that day to find the home in flames.
"Debbie, you've got to help me. The house is on fire. Daddy's inside and I can't get him out," he said. It was not until Williams got into her car that her brother's words sank in, she said. "I don't know to this day how I got there. . . . I don't remember driving that car."
Ronnie Litton had broken in the back door and almost became a casualty himself, lost in the flames and smoke until he saw a fireman's flashlight, grabbed for it and was dragged out.
It was days later before family members began to wonder whether the fire was accidental.
Williams found no sign that either the house's furnace or wood stove had started the fire. When she returned to the remains of the house two days after her father's funeral, she saw for the first time that his clothing had been removed from his dresser and wardrobe and scattered on the floor. The contents of his refrigerator also were pulled out.
Since her grandmother's death, she had helped her father with his checkbook and money matters. She said he had between $800 and $1,000 in the home, and usually kept it in one of his suits.
He also kept money in a Bible inside a locked cedar chest. Williams' brother found the chest open, and no money inside. "If he didn't put the money in one of those two places, he'd usually give me the money and I'd hide it in the refrigerator, my refrigerator," Williams said.
She said she would have been satisfied to find ashes of the money. "I don't want the money. I want to know that nobody took it," she said. Only about $7 was found on her father.
Both the front and back doors of the home were locked; and the locks were the kind that could be set before the doors were shut, she said. But her father never locked the front door in all the time she lived there or visited him, she said. She had never even seen a key to that door.
The family found in the debris wires, electrical tape, a King Edward cigar box and a milk jug with a gasoline-like odor, she said, and believe none of those things belonged to Litton.
She said her father had been drinking, but that his sense of smell was such that he would have smelled smoke.
A pack of cigarettes, usually kept in his shirt pocket, was found 7 feet in front of him, "so we feel he went down with some force," Williams said. His lighter still was in the pocket.
Williams, who now studies business management at the community college, went to lawyer Danny Lowe to see about pursuing the investigation. She also hired Marion private investigator Robert Picklesimer to look into the case.
Picklesimer said the autopsy showed Litton's blood alcohol level was 0.26 percent, which is more than double the legal level for driving under the influence. But Litton had built up a tolerance level because he had been drinking for some time, he said.
Williams' husband had picked up their car, which Litton had been using, earlier in the day. Picklesimer's theory is that someone thought Litton was not at home, entered the house to steal his money, knocked him down when he walked in on the search of his clothing, and set the fire to cover it all up.
"I don't believe that anybody would've hurt my father," Williams said. "I don't believe, if the house was set on fire, they meant for him to burn up in it. I don't!"
But she was not satisfied with the official investigation. "I feel like I've been betrayed. I do. I feel like the justice my father deserved, he's not getting."
So she and Picklesimer went to Commonwealth's Attorney Roy Evans with their data. Evans agreed to ask for a state police investigation.
"If the state police don't pick this up, I'm not going to stop until every piece of information I have is answered," Williams said. "This investigation, as far as I'm concerned, will never be closed."
by CNB