Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 27, 1993 TAG: 9308270201
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
Her defense attorney, Harry Garrett, urged a Bedford County jury to keep an open mind, however. He said Whitt, 45, had led a hard, soap-opera life where money was a struggle, but that she never collected on Thompson's insurance.
"This lady is not the ogre that she has been made out to be," Garrett said.
Garrett called the commonwealth's attorney's case largely circumstantial, and he said there are two sides to every story.
But Updike said he would prove that Whitt destroyed Thompson's marriage, took control of his life and finally ran him down with a pickup truck "to make herself rich" by collecting on his $100,000 life insurance policy.
He called on the jury to give Whitt the maximum penalty for first-degree murder - life in prison.
"She schemed and connived," he said.
It started in August 1990, Updike told the jury in his opening statement.
Through much of his statement, Whitt sobbed from her seat at the defense table and dabbed at her tears with a tissue. Afterward, she continued crying in the corridor outside the courtroom and was comforted by family and friends.
Updike said Whitt befriended Thompson, 45, and his wife, Patsy, after Whitt's daughter and Thompson's son started dating.
Once she learned of Thompson's $100,000 life insurance policy, Whitt began plotting, Updike said.
"He won't be married for long," Updike said she told an acquaintance. That witness will testify as the trial continues today and next week.
Whitt said she would get rich off Thompson, Updike said. "I'm a pro at this. I know how to do it," he said she told the witness.
Two months later, Thompson's marriage broke up and he started living with Whitt. She started calling herself his wife, although he never divorced Patsy Thompson.
A co-worker with Roy Thompson at Babcock and Wilcox in Lynchburg testified that Thompson told him initially that he loved Whitt and that his marriage to Patsy Thompson was a mockery, that they only stayed together because of their children.
But the co-worker, Breck Elder, said Thompson later told him that he thought he had made a mistake in ending his marriage.
Thompson started having financial problems, Updike said. He lost his job at Babcock and Wilcox. He and Whitt went to see a bankruptcy lawyer.
Whitt said Thompson was depressed, Updike said. They went to see a counselor, and the counselor said Whitt did most of the talking.
Whitt called Babcock and Wilcox, insistent on getting details about Thompson's life insurance, a benefits worker for the company testified.
Insurance information sent to Thompson by Babcock and Wilcox was intercepted by Whitt, Updike said. The same information sent to Patsy Thompson also was intercepted by Whitt - twice, he said.
Whitt then changed the beneficiary on Thompson's $100,000 policy from Patsy Thompson to herself, signing the conversion form herself.
"Roy didn't sign it. She did," Updike said.
Whitt has said Roy Thompson gave her permission to change the beneficiary and sign the form.
Updike also said that Thompson gave Whitt power of attorney to control his finances.
Ten days later, Thompson was killed on an isolated road, Virginia 670, near Goode when he was struck by his own pickup truck, driven by Whitt.
He died of internal bleeding from a ruptured aorta caused by the impact of the truck, Updike said. Both of his legs were broken 13 inches above the ankles, and his right wrist also was broken.
His body had bounced off a rock embankment and was found 49 feet from where it had been hit.
At the accident scene, Whitt was hysterical, Updike said.
She told several motorists who stopped to help that Thompson had been depressed, that she was his wife, that he had given her power of attorney, Updike said.
"That was part of the scheme and the plan," he said.
In several interviews with police investigators, Whitt recounted what had happened. Some of the interviews were taped.
"You're going to hear her tell story after story after story, and none of them match," Updike said.
The day before Thompson's funeral, Whitt went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Roanoke and transferred the titles of his pickup truck and his motorcycle into her name.
She also ordered a special license plate for the motorcycle that read, "For Sue," Updike said.
"Roy's not even buried yet," Updike said.
A few weeks later, she tried to claim his $100,000 policy.
When asked three days after that by a state police investigator if Thompson had a life insurance policy, she answered no, he was destitute, Updike said.
"She lies again, and it continues on," Updike said.
Updike said he would produce a witness to testify that Whitt said if Thompson somehow were alive again, she would kill him again.
But Garrett told the jurors that this witness and Updike's other key witness had questionable motives for testifying against Whitt. He said he would work to discredit them.
Garrett also questioned why it took police 20 months to charge Whitt. Thompson was killed in July 1991; Whitt was indicted in March.
He said Whitt called herself Thompson's wife because they had informally married each other. He said he has photographs taken at the ceremony.
"She truly thought that she was his wife," Garrett said.
Garrett said Whitt didn't manipulate anything. "Roy Thompson was very much his own man. . . . He wasn't somebody you could lead around by a ring in his nose."
Garrett offered a different scenario for what happened along that road.
He said Whitt was trying to find Thompson after he became upset over some bills and got out of the truck to take a walk.
She was looking one way, and Thompson stepped out in front of her, Garrett said. He said she wasn't traveling fast - around 20 mph - and he called a pickup truck an "inefficient means to take someone's life."
Whitt has four children, two of them still in school. When Garrett called on the jury to clear Whitt and allow her to remain with her children, she nodded slightly in agreement and smiled.
by CNB