Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 5, 1990 TAG: 9004060873
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Raymond W. Jones, 56, pleaded no contest to murder and use of a firearm in committing the murder during a hearing in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Jones, a thin, balding man with tattoos on both arms, told police he "just went off his rocker" when his estranged wife, Patricia Rickman Jones, refused to speak to him last December when he visited her at her job at the lunch counter of Woolworth's at Towers Shopping Mall.
Patricia Jones, 33, was shot in the chest at point-blank range as she sat at a lunch counter booth with Raymond Jones.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Mac Doubles said he will ask for the maximum sentence - life in prison - when Jones is sentenced later.
Although he was trying to cope with a drinking problem and depression brought on by a failing marriage, Jones told police he had no intention of killing his wife when he sought her out the morning of Dec. 11.
"I loved the damn woman," police detectives have quoted Jones as saying in earlier hearings.
But other witnesses have told police that Jones said he planned to "put a hurting" on Patricia Jones.
After sitting down with Patricia Jones at a booth, Jones became frustrated when she refused to talk to him about some insurance papers he had brought for her to sign.
"She wouldn't talk . . . I just went off my rocker," Jones told police.
After firing three shots into the woman's chest, Jones placed his revolver on the table and waited calmly next to her slumped body until police arrived.
Assistant Public Defender Roberta Bondurant had asked earlier this year that Jones receive a psychiatric examination to determine if he is competent to stand trial. The tests determined that Jones is not legally insane.
by CNB