Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110103
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUCKINGHAM LENGTH: Medium
The case of the Stinson family - a brother, sister and the sister's daughter who were killed in May 1992 - has become an affair "with no closure," said Commonwealth's Attorney E.M. Wright. "It's just hanging out there."
For months after the killings, relatives of the Stinsons waited as investigators developed a suspect and the grand jury indicted him on three counts of capital murder. Then they waited for the trial.
But now the relatives and residents of the Spears Mountain area of western Buckingham County, where the Stinsons lived, have learned that Mays W. Tate Jr. of Culpeper County has been found mentally incompetent.
Wert Stinson, 69, the father of one of the victims and the estranged husband of another, thinks about how things turned out and shakes his head. "They say he's crazy, huh?"
"It's like three people are just gone," said Edna Sorrentino, 76, another relative. "Good people. Our people. Don't nobody like it."
A neighbor found the bodies at the family farmhouse May 31, 1992. Clarence Stinson, 66; his sister, Roberta Stinson, 62; and Roberta's daughter, Gloria Stinson, 40, all had been shot to death.
A grand jury in April 1993 indicted Tate, 22, the grandson of Clarence Stinson's estranged wife, on three counts of capital murder. The trial was set for September but repeatedly postponed. Wright changed two of the capital murder charges to first-degree murder.
But while at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville late last year, Tate apparently began hurting himself and tried to injure another inmate. He was taken to Central State Hospital outside Petersburg.
Psychiatrists there diagnosed Tate as having a "psychotic disorder and antisocial personality disorder," according to court documents. They treated him, prescribed medication and sent him back to the jail in January.
A doctor at Blue Ridge Hospital outside Charlottesville interviewed Tate twice in February and found his "emotional responses were subdued and curiously inappropriate with incongruous grinning and laughter at various times throughout the interviews," according to a letter to Buckingham Circuit Judge J.R. Snoddy Jr.
The doctor requested an evaluation by Central State psychiatrists. They declared Tate unable to assist in his defense, making a trial impossible. Wright said Tate, who now lives at Central State, could stand trial if his condition improves.
by CNB