Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 11, 1992 TAG: 9202110275
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GUNSHOTS KILL 3 IN SALEM
More than four years ago, Patricia Simpkins complained about the violence that sometimes surrounded her marriage.Monday, she died from it.
She, her husband, Stephen, and another man, Frankie Law, all were killed when pistol shots pierced their heads at the Simpkins' house on Texas Hollow Road in Salem.
Police said Stephen Simpkins was the shooter.
Salem Police Chief Harry Haskins said Stephen Simpkins apparently killed his wife and Law with a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol during a domestic dispute and then turned the gun on himself.
When police arrived shortly before 6 a.m., the body of Stephen Simpkins, 49, was lying in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. A pistol was found nearby.
The bodies of Patricia Simpkins, 46, and Law, 30, of Elliston, were lying in the kitchen.
Haskins provided no further details on the motive.
"There was drinking going on," he said.
Drinking had been a problem throughout the Simpkins' 29 years of marriage. In 1987 divorce papers filed in Salem Circuit Court, Patricia Simpkins complained that her husband suffered from alcoholism.
She said he had "verbally, emotionally, and physically abused" her. She said the abuse had caused her to seek psychiatric treatment and caused her to have ulcers.
She left the house "out of concern for her physical and emotional health," the court document said. Later in 1988, the couple asked that the divorce case be dismissed.
Sunday evening, Patricia Simpkins returned home after being out with Mary Witt.
Witt said they arrived at the house about 11:30 p.m.
"I know there was no argument, no fighting going on," said Witt, who had been drinking before falling asleep on the couch.
Police said Witt was too intoxicated to be interviewed at the time they arrived.
"I was asleep when it happened," Witt said in a telephone interview Monday morning. "I woke up and found them."
She first spotted Stephen Simpkins - a housepainter by trade - lying in the floor as she made her way toward the bathroom.
"I stepped over Stephen," she said. "I thought he had passed out."
Witt, of Glenvar, looked into the kitchen, where she saw the two other bodies.
She called for called for the Simpkins' son, Michael, who was asleep upstairs. Michael Simpkins called police.
"I told him to come down," she said. "Something's wrong. I just sat on the couch. I couldn't do nothing."
Keywords:
FATALITY