ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: VIRGINIA EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A jury convicted Raymond H. Mahoney of murder and arson Wednesday night, catching him in what prosecutors called a "web of lies" that he spun around his involvement in a fatal Roanoke house fire.
The jury set Mahoney's sentence at 30 years in prison.
In testimony earlier Wednesday, Mahoney denied setting the fire that engulfed an Old Southwest house about 5 a.m. May 13, leaving Brenda Ann Davis dead from smoke inhalation in an upstairs bedroom. Mahoney told the jury he was asleep in his girlfriend's nearby apartment when the fire broke out.
But in a case based entirely on circumstantial evidence, prosecutors contended that the 30-year-old waiter at an upscale Roanoke restaurant torched Davis' house in retaliation after he had been beaten there several hours earlier during a botched drug deal.
Witnesses testified that Mahoney, his face bruised from the beating he had just received at the hands of Davis' brother, left 369 Washington Ave. S.W. early May 13 with the warning: "I'll be back."
Mahoney's neighbor testified that less than a hour later, he was jolted awake by screaming and heard Mahoney tell someone over the telephone that he had gasoline and was going to burn a house down.
Although there were no eyewitnesses, no confessions and no physical evidence linking Mahoney to the fire, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Teaster hammered away at the constantly changing story that Mahoney told police in the following hours and days.
"He left a trail of evidence and a web of lies that entrapped him in this crime, and he can't get out of it now," Teaster told the jury.
Assistant Public Defender Michelle Derrico had argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict her client of a crime that other people had ample motive to commit, given the fact that Davis, 40, was a drug dealer.
"Nobody knows how many people got ripped off there, nobody knows how many people may have had grudges there, and unfortunately we may never know," she said.
Mahoney testified that he first lied about his whereabouts the night of the crime because he did not want police to know he was trying to buy drugs. He later said he went to Davis' house to strike a drug deal, and she took his money and agreed to find a supplier.
But after going to a nearby open-air crack market, Davis became angry when she found her daughter there, witnesses testified. She returned to the house in a foul mood, accompanied by her brother, and told Mahoney to leave.
Tempers flared, and Mahoney was severly beaten by Davis' brother. In later statements to police, he first said he was mugged before admitting to the drug-related incident. He then said he was asleep in his apartment in the next block at the time of the fire, before changing his story to say he was at his girlfriend's.
After deliberating more than three hours before reaching a verdict about 8:15 p.m., the jury took only 15 minutes to set Mahoney's punishment at 20 years for first-degree murder and 10 years for arson. He had faced a maximum sentence of two life terms.
Because the offenses happened after no-parole laws took effect Jan. 1, Mahoney will not be eligible for release until he serves at least 85 percent of his sentence - 25 1/2 years.
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