THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180530
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Prosecutors drew a road map Wednesday linking far-flung pieces of evidence that they say will point to Lt. Cmdr. Michael Fricke as the man who ordered his wife gunned down in 1988.
Fricke's defense lawyers saw potholes in the plan. ``The road map,'' they said, ``is to the wrong destination, and their car broke down before they got started.''
Thus began a court-martial for capital murder, unprecedented for Norfolk. Deciding Fricke's guilt or innocence and whether he will be sentenced to death is a 14-member jury - six Navy captains and eight commanders; 13 men and one woman.
The 37-year-old officer is accused of hiring an auto electrician to kill his wife for insurance money. Roxanne Fricke was shot to death as she left a supermarket in the Kempsville section of Virginia Beach on May 13, 1988.
Fricke was a supply officer at Oceana Naval Air Station at the time.
Agents acting on a tip from an informant arrested Fricke last October. Lt. Jeffrey Henson, chief prosecutor in the case, told the jury in opening remarks Wednesday that he would prove Fricke wanted his wife dead.
``He was threatened (by Roxanne) with leaving and taking their son away,'' Henson said. ``He was overheard at Oceana saying, `She's taking my son and leaving me over my dead body.' ''
After the slaying, Henson said, federal agents secretly tape-recorded Fricke and an alleged accomplice discussing the aftermath of the slaying in three phone conversations. There were references in those talks to payoff money, a gun, Fricke's wife and a middleman, Henson said.
The road map, he said, will include evidence showing that Fricke, who was captain of his base softball team, skipped a sports awards banquet on the night his wife was slain, saying he had to get home.
It took him two hours to get there, Henson said.
Fricke also was $12,000 in debt, the prosecution said, but found the resources to buy life insurance policies for both his wife and himself two months before her death.
Fricke used the payoff from the policy to pay the debts, give his girlfriend a diamond ring and move her in with him, the prosecution says. The prosecution also alleges that Fricke and the girlfriend, Cynthia Kelly, had a love affair that started six months before the slaying of Roxanne Fricke.
Henson also said that three days after the slaying, Fricke walked out of Naval Federal Credit Union with $5,000 in cash through a line of equity credit he had secured earlier.
The man who had been accused of shooting Roxanne Fricke, Angelo Rivera, 37, was released from jail in December when Virginia Beach prosecutors failed to come up with the evidence they said they needed to convict him.
The only witness linking Fricke and Rivera, Gilroy Lamar Brunson, has said he served as middleman in the case and drove the getaway car.
Brunson was granted immunity from prosecution in return for cooperating with prosecutors, but Rivera's attorneys attacked his credibility. Brunson is serving time in a federal prison on unrelated charges.
Defense attorney J. Warren Tomlin told the jury none of the points are related to the slaying.
Tomlin found fault with the investigation of the case, saying Virginia Beach police ignored other leads, Brunson made up his tales from reading newspaper accounts of the slaying, and the taped conversation between Brunson and Rivera was deceitful. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Roxanne Fricke
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING TRIAL COURT MARTIAL by CNB