ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609230084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HAMPTON
SOURCE: A.J. PLUNKETT\(NEWPORT NEWS) DAILY PRESS
HE NEVER RAISED A HAND to anyone who stayed at his self-made campsite, even those he didn't like. But two men Harold Robert Haupt knew have been charged in his death.
Harold Robert Haupt was classified as homeless on the impersonal records of the police and the courts. But he had a home.
Haupt's home was deep in the woods along Interstate 64, a home he shared with the other wayfarers who came and went at the campsite by a lake with no name.
They would hang their clothes in trees, smoke their cigarettes as they sat atop logs overlooking the water, eat and drink before campfires built of anything that would burn and some things that wouldn't, sleep on pine needle beds, and bathe with bar soap kept in the reeds beside the lake.
And when Haupt died at the age of 33, he was buried not far from where he ate and drank and slept. But his dying was not peaceful, and the first days after his death were profane.
Police say Haupt was beaten and stabbed to death by a fellow homeless man, then buried in a shallow grave. Police believe Haupt died Sept. 1. His body was not found for 12 days, and the corpse had been desecrated.
Sept. 13, police charged Jonathan McCord, 21, also officially listed as homeless, with Haupt's murder. Steven Sheard, 41, was charged as an accessory after the fact, Hampton police said.
Of all the people who had come and gone at the campsite about a quarter-mile into the woods, McCord and Sheard were the only two Haupt ever said he didn't like, said Sandra Chewning.
Chewning said she had met Haupt a couple of years ago when she took to living at the campsite for a while when she was down on her luck.
``I tell you one thing about Harold: Of all those homeless people who lived out there, he was the only one who would pick up a bar of soap in the dead of winter and get himself clean,'' Chewning said.
Haupt told tall tales of military service, but shunned all violence, she said. Haupt had taken beatings before, but told his attackers ``I won't hit you back,'' Chewning said.
He didn't deserve to die the way he did, Chewning said.
Occasionally, Haupt would tell tales of combat in Vietnam, the fact that he was too young to have served in that war notwithstanding. He was, however, in the Army - twice. Veterans Affairs records show he served for a little over two months in 1982 and again for about five weeks in 1985.
Haupt was known to stand on the median of a highway in Hampton with a cardboard sign that read, ``Will Work for Food.''
According to Hampton General District Court records, McCord had been jailed several times on charges of shoplifting, assault and battery on a police officer and maiming. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer last year but ordered only to pay court costs. He was never prosecuted on the maiming charge.
Sheard has faced charges of petty larceny, being drunk in public and destruction of private property, records show.
With McCord and Sheard in jail, Haupt's home is abandoned for now. On a recent afternoon, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans and a red wool blanket were draped over a tree branch at the campsite. A jacket and towel hung from another branch nearby. A fishing pole sat beside an overturned bucket on the edge of the lake. The bar of soap floated in the reeds.
In the end, Haupt's Bible told the tale.
Haupt took his Bible everywhere, Chewning said. When a friend visited the men recently and saw the book sitting on the jacket but Haupt nowhere in sight, it was clear something was very wrong, she said.
Eventually police found Haupt in a grave barely 2 feet deep just a stone's throw away, on the shores of a lake with no name.
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Harold Robert Haupt called this campsite, where heby CNBbathed, ate and slept, home. KEYWORDS: FATALITY