Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 13, 1995 TAG: 9507130045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONETA LENGTH: Medium
Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, dressed in heavy camouflage clothing and armed with a pistol, 65-year-old Marlon Detuncq crept through the darkness outside the house where his estranged wife was living with another man.
A few minutes later, Richard Farkas, 62, was awakened by the sound of someone inside his home. He asked Maralene Detuncq, 54, to get him a gun. While she looked, he sent his yellow Labrador, Cash, to ferret out the intruder.
In a hallway of his house, Farkas found Marlon Detuncq. The two men exchanged fire. Detuncq gravely wounded Farkas, hitting him three times in an arm, a leg and his abdomen.
An expert marksman and certified firearms instructor, Farkas killed Detuncq with two shots to the head and abdomen.
That's the way Maralene Detuncq said it happened, according to Don Fairbanks, a friend and neighbor of Farkas'. Fairbanks received a phone call from her minutes after the shooting and was at the scene while sheriff's deputies investigated.
She reported the incident to police as a break-in by an unknown intruder, Fairbanks said, adding that she didn't immediately recognize her husband because he had a hat pulled down low over his forehead, concealing his features.
Bedford County Sheriff Carl Wells released the names of the two men and gave a brief description of the shooting. He provided no information about their relationship to each other.
Farkas remained in critical condition Wednesday night at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. One of his legs was amputated below the knee, and he needed surgery for rips in his colon, Fairbanks said.
Maralene Detuncq was uninjured. She was visiting Farkas and was unavailable for comment.
No charges have been placed against Farkas, and the killing is still under investigation, according to the county commonwealth's attorney's office.
"God, it's just terrible. In a small community like this, it's just horrible. Three lives are ruined," Fairbanks said. Farkas and the Detuncqs lived about a mile away from each other in Beechwood West, a lakefront subdivision off Virginia 750.
Maralene Detuncq, a real estate agent with Owens & Co., and Marlon Detuncq, a part-time handyman, separated two or three months ago, Fairbanks said. Shortly after the split, Maralene Detuncq began dating Farkas, a psychologist who had worked in New York state public schools for 30 years before he retired to the lake in 1988.
"She bounced back and forth between Dick and her husband," Fairbanks said. Then, after she and Farkas returned from a beach vacation last week, she moved in with him, Fairbanks said.
The day before the shooting, Fairbanks said, he and Farkas went to Roanoke to buy a new vanity mirror for Farkas' house.
When Fairbanks arrived at the scene of the killing, Detuncq's body was in a spare bedroom that Farkas uses as an office.
Farkas, he said, was "pretty bad up. He had an oxygen mask on. He wasn't talking. They had him bundled up. He was on a board and they hauled him into an emergency van."
Fairbanks said it was still touch-and-go for Farkas on Wednesday night. "He's the closest friend I have out here. I'm pulling for him."
Police said there was no sign of forced entry, according to Fairbanks, who said some think Detuncq may have copied a key to get into Farkas' house. "Dick always kept his doors and windows locked," he said.
Farkas was a gun collector who taught pistol and rifle courses back in New York and participated in competitive target, skeet and trap shooting.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB