Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150313
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
KILLER ESCAPES CHAIR WITH PLEA BARGAIN
With a guilty plea that saved him from facing the electric chair, George L. Via admitted Friday that he stabbed a Roanoke man 14 times, ransacked his house and took his belongings to finance an addiction to crack cocaine.Under an agreement reached in Roanoke Circuit Court, Via pleaded guilty to the capital murder of Larry Andrea Shovely in exchange for a sentence of life in prison.
The killing was especially brutal; Shovely's body was found in his Fairfax Avenue home bound hand and foot with a vacuum cleaner cord, a towel wrapped around his head and a sock stuffed in his mouth.
But prosecutors sought a plea agreement, in part because key witnesses in the largely circumstantial case might have come under credibility questions because of their ties to Roanoke's drug subculture.
Via, 35, showed little emotion Friday as he sat slouched in a swivel chair at the defense table, seemingly bored with the proceeding. When Judge Roy Willett sentenced him to life in prison, Via covered his mouth with his hand to suppress a yawn.
Police never obtained a confession from Via. But late last year, his girlfriend went to authorities with a story that implicated him.
Several nights after Shovely, a 38-year-old custodian, was found dead in his home last April 22, Via was having trouble sleeping, the woman said.
Asked what was wrong, Via told his girlfriend that he felt he was going to make the "America's Most Wanted" list for killing a man, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom said in summarizing the evidence.
The girlfriend told authorities that Via said he killed the man because he was "fiening" for crack and that the victim was not being cooperative in providing either money or drugs.
Several hours after the killing, Via showed up at the door of a reputed drug dealer with Shovely's television and VCR and offered them for sale.
Over the next few days, other witnesses saw Via driving around town in Shovely's car, which had been taken from his home the night of the killing, Branscom said.
Via's attorney, Public Defender Ray Leven, said an investigation by his office did not dispute many of the facts that Branscom outlined. However, Leven said that had the case gone to trial, many of the prosecution witnesses would have been challenged.
Shovely's body was found two days after the killing, after relatives became worried when he did not show up for work.
When police arrived at the Northwest Roanoke home where he lived alone, they found Shovely face down in the living room floor.
An electrical cord had been cut from a vacuum cleaner and used to tie Shovely's hands and feet, Branscom said. He had been stabbed seven times in the chest.
When police removed a towel wrapped around Shovely's head, they found that he had been cut another seven times on the face, and that a sock apparently had been used to gag him.
In the closest thing to a display of emotion, Via leaned back in his chair and covered his face briefly with his hand after he was shown color photographs of Shovely's body.
Numerous items, including two television sets, a VCR, a toaster oven and other appliances, were discovered missing from the home.
But Via left something behind unintentionally; his fingerprints were found on a soft-drink bottle in the kitchen. Police later found a pair of blood-stained blue jeans in a home where Via was staying.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop additional charges of robbery and abduction. Via then pleaded guilty to a charge of capital murder during the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, which carries only two possible sentences - life in prison or death in the electric chair.
Branscom said Via will have to serve at least 22 years in prison before he will become eligible for parole.
Keywords:
ROMUR