ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FLOYD
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
A Floyd County jury probably will decide today what punishment to give David Joel Hall, who was convicted Wednesday of the first-degree murder of his girlfriend last June.
Ellen Marjorie Plocki's body was found June 14 inside a room of a garage where the two lived in the Willis community. The 18-year-old, originally from Austinville, had been badly beaten.
The 11-woman, one-man jury also found Hall guilty of five other charges, including abduction of an acquaintance who testified that Hall forced him to go into the room and look at Plocki's body, threatening to kill him if he told anyone what he had seen.
Cecil Wayne Brown testified he didn't want to go in the room. He said he feared what was there, given Hall's erratic behavior at 4 that afternoon when Hall asked for a ride to the store. There, he bought an artificial rose for his girlfriend, some wine and gasoline for a Jeep that was being repaired at the garage.
Hall, 33, kept asking Brown to wreck and kill him and to cut his hair for him. Brown testified that at first he chalked up the talk to Hall's intoxication.
But Brown told the jury that as Hall became more insistent that he had something to show him behind the locked door, he began to piece things together.
Plocki was lying on a makeshift bed of a mattress atop two couches, wrapped in a blanket. Hall uncovered the young woman's face. She had been severely beaten.
"When I looked at it, I almost lost it," Brown testified, saying Plocki was barely recognizable.
Brown told the jury that after showing him Plocki's body, Hall held a shotgun on him and threatened his life if he told anyone.
"I wasn't going to tell nobody, [but] I couldn't leave that girl over there wrapped up like that. ... I'd never seen nothing like that in my life," Brown said. He told his mother, who called authorities.
Stanley Harmon told the jury that Hall came to his house about 5:30 p.m., asking to borrow his pickup truck. He testified that Hall ``said he had a load of stuff to take to the Dumpster, and he had to do it right then.'' But, Harmon said, he didn't let Hall take the truck.
About the same time, several Floyd County deputies and state troopers converged on the garage at Virginia 630 and Virginia 764, believing Hall was holed up inside. Hall drove up just as a SWAT team was preparing to enter the garage, former Sheriff Tom Higgins testified.
Hall was arrested on several traffic charges, including driving under the influence. He was not supposed to be driving because he had been declared a habitual offender.
Trooper J.D. Howery testified that Hall was taken to the Sheriff's Office, where a Breathalyzer test done just before 9 p.m. showed he had a 0.24 percent blood-alcohol level.
John Perry, a special agent for the Virginia State Police, testified that Hall denied living at the garage, saying he was there only occasionally. Hall cut short the interview after a brief statement, Perry said.
Hall, who has been held in the Floyd County Jail since his arrest, did not testify.optional graf
Besides convicting Hall on the murder and abduction charges, the jury also found him guilty of using a shotgun to commit abduction, possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony, unauthorized use of a vehicle and operating a vehicle after being declared an habitual offender.
The jury reconvenes this morning to decide Hall's punishment. He faces life in prison.
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