THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SARAH HUNTLEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
Denise Holsinger's mother threw open the door and stepped out onto the front stoop of her daughter's Navy townhouse. Her bottom lip quivered and her forehead creased as she blurted, ``I don't think she did it.''
Barbara Evans looked slightly dazed as she denied charges that her oldest child - and only girl - orchestrated the bloody rampage that left four dead at the Witchduck Inn on June 30.
``Denise is the type of person who cries when she sees a TV program where someone is hurt. It's just not her.''
Exhibit A - Denise Rayne Holsinger - the sensitive, troubled mother of three.
Earlier in the week, confessed killer Michael Clagett sat at the city jail, tormented by the fatal shootings of bar owner LamVan Son, a bartender, a patron and the bar's handyman. With a wild look in his eye, he called his accused accomplice and lover, Holsinger, ``evil,'' and said she ordered him to pull the trigger.
Exhibit B - Denise Rayne Holsinger - the villainous vixen.
The accounts present two different portraits of one woman who now faces four counts of first-degree murder and life in prison for her alleged participation in Virginia Beach's worst mass murder ever.
To hear ex-convict Clagett tell it, Holsinger was the scheming instigator, a manipulator bent on robbery and revenge, because she had been fired from her job at the Witchduck Inn two months earlier.
But Evans said her daughter feared Clagett.
``She was afraid of that man,'' Evans said. ``She came home one night and said, `He's not who I thought he was. I thought we were friends. He wants more than that, and I'm not willing to give it.' ''
Evans made her daughter promise not to spend time alone with Clagett.
A week before the murders, Holsinger told Evans and former colleagues that Clagett had threatened to kill one of her other boyfriends, a man named Carl, if she saw him again.
Her mother believed her. The other bartenders didn't.
Night bartender Angela ``Red'' Brown characterized Holsinger as ``a chameleon.''
``She told wild, elaborate stories,'' Brown said. ``She believes her own lies and, in turn, other people start to believe them too.''
Dottie Miller, day bartender, said Holsinger's tall tales were a way of keeping the spotlight bright.
``Denise was somebody who needed her ego constantly filled,'' she said. ``She'd walk around the bar and say `I'm the prettiest bartender,' and we'd all look at her like, what is she talking about.''
Evans offered little insight into Holsinger's need to be noticed, carefully guarding the details of her daughter's early life. She did say, however, that Holsinger grew up in Arizona, where she was a ``sensitive'' child. She never had any run-ins with the law, her mother said.
Holsinger married Randy Holsinger, who serves in the Navy. The couple has three children - two girls and a boy. As many Navy families do, they moved around as her husband's duties dictated. They were stationed in Tennessee before settling in Virginia Beach a few years ago, Evans said.
Randy Holsinger declined comment, but friends said the marriage went bad about a year ago, and Denise moved out - temporarily. She returned to the home of her husband and children in the 600 block of Hempstead Court several months ago, but her marriage was still on the skids.
Facing an almost certain divorce, Holsinger began a series of jobs. She worked as a waitress/bartender at Country Legends, Divina Italian Restaurant and the Witchduck Inn - one after the other, never lasting too long at any place.
In March, Holsinger knocked on the side door at Country Legends - a country-and-western restaurant, dance club and billiards hall on General Booth Boulevard - and asked for a job. Owner Edward W. O'Hara gave her one.
Holsinger was on the payroll as a daytime waitress for a month, but she only worked a total of eight days, he said.
``When she got off work, she'd get zapped. Then she couldn't come in the next day. She'd call in sick,'' O'Hara said. ``I tried to give her every benefit of the doubt. When she was sober, she was a good waitress, a good bartender, very personable. I liked her.''
She worked at Divina for 10 days before she quit and started tending bar at the Witchduck Inn, where her tenure wasn't any more successful. LamVan Son, his employees said, was a soft-hearted man, but he had two rules: no dating the customers and no drinking during the shift. Holsinger broke both of them. She quit involuntarily.
Both the Witchduck Inn and Country Legends had written Holsinger off as a waitress, but not as a customer. She returned again and again.
``She would drink, be happy, play pool and have a good time,'' O'Hara said. ``She liked to play pool. She could hold her own with the best of them.''
The situation was more tense at the Witchduck Inn, but she partied there, too.
``Lam's policy was that when he fired someone they couldn't come back into the bar, but she wanted to hang out here. Lam spoke with her about it and she agreed she would behave herself and not cause any of us bartenders problems,'' Miller said.
According to her bar buddies - the closest friends she had - Holsinger's social life was at least as turbulent as her professional one. One by one, they ran down the first names or descriptions of her ex-lovers and boyfriends. The list ended with Clagett.
Holsinger was a master at working the bar, sources said.
``She was a good bartender because she knew how to keep men at the bar,'' said Country Legends owner O'Hara. ``She had a good rapport with the customers, maybe too good.''
When she flirted, Holsinger took on a ``redneck'' identity. ``It was an attention-getter. The more she drank, the more her drawl would come out,'' Brown said.
The day of the slayings, Holsinger celebrated Clagett's 33rd birthday with him. They spent the afternoon at Country Legends, slamming down rum and Cokes and guzzling beer.
It was a scene O'Hara can't forget.
``One of the last things I remember her saying to me was, `This is my boyfriend. It's his birthday,' '' O'Hara said. He poured Clagett a complimentary rum and Coke.
As Holsinger and Clagett left, around 2:30 p.m., Holsinger came over to O'Hara and said goodbye. ``I'll see you. Thanks for the drink. See you tomorrow,'' she told O'Hara, giving him a one-armed hug around the neck before slipping out the door.
Clagett said they plotted the killings later in the evening, around 9:45 p.m., as they made love at the condominium where Clagett lived. Holsinger phoned the Witchduck Inn before going there to make sure Carl, the other boyfriend, wasn't there, Clagett said.
According to Clagett's confession, Holsinger whispered ``do it, do it'' in his ear before he fired a bullet into the forehead of the bar handyman, Wendel ``J.R.'' Parrish Jr., and killed the three others. Clagett said Holsinger also ordered him to shoot LamVan Son's 4-year-old boy, who was asleep in the back office. He couldn't bring himself to do it, Clagett said, and the boy was left unharmed.
``I don't know. It's hard for me to believe she did that,'' O'Hara said. ``She didn't seem strong-willed enough to make someone do that. You can lead a horse to the trough, but you can't make him drink. I don't believe it, and I won't until she says she did it.''
He paused to swallow a spoonful of soup and think for a moment.
``I saw one side of her, maybe I never saw her wild side,'' O'Hara said, shaking his head. ``I just don't know.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Denise Holsinger is accused of being an accomplice in the Witchduck
Inn killings.
KEYWORDS: MURDER ROBBERY
by CNB