Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 7, 1992 TAG: 9202070272
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
MURDER DEFENDANT'S WORDS RECOUNTED TO JURY
More than anyone else's, Kenneth Stewart's own words have made up the prosecution's case against him.And Stewart has never taken the witness stand. He hasn't had to.
In two days of prosecution testimony in Stewart's trial for capital murder, Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney James Updike spotlighted damning, if sometimes inconsistent, statements Stewart made to friends, investigators and jailers in the days and months after the deaths of his wife and baby son last May.
As Updike hauled in experts on blood stains, hair strands and gun operation, jurors looked blank and drowsy Thursday.
It was Stewart jurors wanted to hear from and they did - indirectly - again and again.
However, they didn't always hear the same story.
Two days after the bodies of Cindy and Jonathan Stewart were discovered in their Huddleston farmhouse, Carolyn Brown got a 4 a.m. phone call from Stewart.
He was calling collect from somewhere in Ohio and he sounded drunk, Brown, a Bedford County friend of Stewart's, testified.
"He said, `I've destroyed everything that meant anything to me' - you know, his wife and his baby," Brown said, recalling the May 14 call.
That was the first anyone in Bedford had heard from Stewart since he had disappeared after the killings.
A day after the phone call, Stewart was nabbed for being drunk in public in Parma, Ohio.
When Bedford County authorities arrived to pick up their suspect that night, Stewart made an even more incriminating statement to them, this time on an audiotape.
In the tape, played for jurors, Stewart admitted to putting a pistol in his boot, going to his estranged wife's home and arguing with her about their separation.
The next thing he knew, he told the investigators, he was driving along a freeway in New York.
He admitted that he "thought" he'd killed his wife and son, but pressed to detail the shootings themselves, Stewart could remember nothing.
He had no idea where the gun was, he said.
Had he premeditated the killings? "I - no, I don't think so," he told investigators at that time.
Four months later, Stewart had a different, more damaging answer for a jailer who was making his hourly rounds.
Stewart, who had been in the Bedford County Jail since his arrest, stopped Sheriff's Deputy George Anderson one evening in September as Anderson passed through the cell block.
Anderson testified Thursday that Stewart said Sept. 2 that he had done a "hideous thing."
"It was premeditated," Anderson recalled Stewart saying.
His original plan, Stewart told Anderson, was to kill his wife, take his 5-month-old son to Stewart's parents home in North Carolina and then return to Bedford to confess to the murder of his wife.
Stewart told Anderson he'd thrown the pistol in a wooded area near Smith Mountain Lake, Anderson said.
A day later, Stewart was talking again.
Stewart again stopped Anderson as he made his rounds in the jail.
This time, Stewart asked to go with investigators to help find the weapon. He said he didn't want it laying out there, where it could end up hurting a child, Anderson said.
Stewart did point out a brush-filled area along Virginia 805, but authorities, along with a dog trained to smell guns, never found the pistol.
On Sept. 4, Stewart stopped another jailer and asked to talk.
That time, Stewart was turned over to an investigator and given a chance to make his statement on another audiotape, which was played for jurors Thursday.
In it, Stewart said the killings were "premeditated and executed," but he did not offer many details.
He did say that he wanted to be executed for what he had done because he couldn't live with it.
The prosecution is expected to rest its side of the case early today.
The defense then will have its chance to present evidence. Stewart's defense attorneys have not said whether Stewart will take the witness stand - or what version he will tell.