ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 20, 1996 TAG: 9602200084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
As he sat in a patrol car after being arrested on suspicion of robbing two Giles County convenience stores Dec. 5, Benjamin Lilly asked Pearisburg Police Chief Bill Whitsett to kill him, the officer testified Monday.
Lilly told Whitsett he was going to hell to meet his brother, who had committed suicide almost eight years earlier, Whitsett said in Montgomery County General District Court during a preliminary hearing for Lilly. The 27-year-old Montgomery County man is charged with killing a Virginia Tech student earlier on the night the stores were robbed.
Whitsett said that while he was guarding Lilly, he had no idea that Montgomery County authorities were investigating that killing and that Lilly would be named as the trigger man by two co-defendants - his brother, Mark Anthony Lilly, 20, and Gary Wayne Barker, 19, of Merrimac.
Lilly called the chief over to the patrol car and "asked me if I would do him a special favor ... if I would put the barrel of my shotgun to his mouth and pull the trigger," Whitsett testified.
Whitsett told Lilly he couldn't do that. "Do I look like a murderer?'' he recalled saying to Lilly. "What's a murderer look like anyway?''
Whitsett testified that Lilly hesitated and sat back in his seat. "I thought I heard him say, `Me,''' the chief told Judge John Quigley.
Quigley sent capital murder charges against the three men, and charges of abduction, robbery, carjacking, and four charges of using a firearm to commit the crimes, to the next Montgomery County grand jury. He also certified charges accusing the trio of the two convenience store robberies to the next Giles County grand jury. Both panels meet in April.
An additional charge against Ben Lilly of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony also was sent to the Montgomery County grand jury to consider for indictment.
Max Jenkins and Christopher Tuck, Ben Lilly's court-appointed lawyers, tried during the hearing to shift the blame for the shooting of Alexander DeFilippis, a 22-year-old Virginia Tech student from McLean, away from Ben Lilly.
They pointed to testimony that Barker was the one who held a pistol on the clerks at the H&L Mini-Mart in Eggleston and the M&W Market in Pembroke. They also focused on testimony that Mark Lilly was the last of the three to be captured and that he gave police a false name when he was apprehended. Ben Lilly had surrendered immediately, while Barker was taken into custody 10 to 15 minutes later. Mark Lilly was at large for about an hour.
In a statement to Lt. Gary Price, a Giles County Sheriff's Office investigator, Ben Lilly said he wanted to stop to buy beer in Giles County after hitching a ride with his brother and Barker. His statement makes no mention of being with the pair when DeFilippis was abducted and killed. He said he was surprised when his brother and Barker decided to rob the convenience stores. And he said he tried to make sure a woman working at the Eggleston convenience store wasn't hurt, motioning for her to get down on the floor.
A Giles County deputy testified that Lilly tried to coax his brother out of hiding by using a patrol car's PA system.
But Deputy Mark Wilburn also recalled that Lilly said over the PA that his brother hadn't done anything wrong.
Skip Schwab, assistant commonwealth's attorney, said he still plans to focus on Ben Lilly as the trigger man. While all three have been charged with capital murder, prosecutors can pursue the death penalty only against the shooter. The other two defendants - who would face charges of first-degree murder as principals to capital murder - could be sentenced to life in prison.
DeFilippis was abducted outside the Hethwood Xpress off Prices Fork Road in Blacksburg. He was carjacked, then taken to the Whitethorne community several miles away, where his body was found at about 10:50 p.m. by Montgomery County deputies. He had been stripped to his underwear and socks and had been shot in the head.
Price testified that Mark Lilly told him the trio had been together for a few days and that "they all had been drinking" for several days. He testified that Mark Lilly told him Ben Lilly had fired the shots from 10 to 15 yards away.
About a half-dozen family members and friends of DeFilippis, including two aunts and a cousin, watched the proceedings from the front row of the courtroom.
Bernadette Falcon, one of the aunts, said DeFilippis' parents were still too distraught to attend the hearing. She and other family members were there to see how the judicial system worked, she said.
Falcon expressed the family's appreciation for the outpouring of sympathy DeFilippis' mother has received from Montgomery County residents, none of whom knew the family.
"It's just amazing," she said after court. "It's been hundreds of letters she received. And she's trying to answer them."
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. 1. Benjamin Lilly (far right) watchesby CNBone of his attorneys, Max Jenkins, cross-examine Pearisburg Police
Chief Bill Whitsett, who testified that Lilly asked to be killed.
color. 2. Store clerk Mona Hilton shows pictures of the M&W Market
in Pembroke, where she was robbed at gunpoint.