Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 19, 1990 TAG: 9005190200
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
"I decided that if anybody was going to get help for my husband and myself, it was going to have to be me," said Joyce Slusher, a medical clinic receptionist. "My anger at what had happened was overcoming my fear at what had happened."
James Burton McGee, 29, of Glade Spring, was bound over to the Carroll County grand jury by General District Judge George B. Cooley on charges stemming from the Jan. 22 incident - attempted capital murder, robbery, burglary, abduction and assault.
Joyce Slusher, arriving home from work moments before her husband, discovered that their back door had been broken open. Before she could warn him, an intruder shot him several times as he came into the house.
She ran into the living room and tried to hold the door shut against a man lunging against it, she said. The intruder fired through it and, after forcing it partly open, fired four more shots at her.
"At that time, this person said, `Give up? Come on out and make it easy on yourself,' " she said. She asked him to let her help her husband, but he handcuffed her hands behind her back, took her upstairs and tied her feet with a rope.
She never identified McGee, but said the intruder told her someone was paying him $50,000 to kill them although he did not know why.
The man told her he had attended to her husband's wound and given him a pain-killer. He repeatedly threatened to kill her if she tried to escape. He said he had enough explosives to blow up the home.
Tommy Slusher testified that, far from helping him, "the gunman who had shot me came back . . . and shot me again in the shoulder." He said he was shot four or five times.
Hearing the intruder rummaging through the house, and fearing that an extension cord tied to her was connected to an explosive he had mentioned, Joyce Slusher managed to untie herself and make her way downstairs.
The front door was locked and her keys were gone. Using a screwdriver with her hands still cuffed behind her, she freed a bolt on another door and walked more than a mile for help.
Tommy Slusher identified a radio, camera and other items later found in McGee's possession as missing from the home.
A Smyth County man said McGee sold him two pistols, one of which was taken from the Slusher home and the other shown by a forensic expert to have fired shells found on the floor of the home. Slusher also identified his watch, which a deputy found on McGee.
by CNB