THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411120211
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
It took more than a year, but police have put together what they believe are the final pieces of a murder-for-hire scheme with the arrest of a Chesapeake electrical contractor and the man they allege he paid to kill his wife.
Clark C. Bedsole Sr., 46, owner of Clark Electric in Deep Creek, and Marlon D. Williams, 21, of Portsmouth were charged Friday night with the Nov. 9, 1993, murder of Helen Bedsole, 44.
Clark Bedsole was being held in the Virginia Beach City Jail on an unrelated charge when the new charges were filed. He remained in the Virginia Beach jail Friday night. It was unclear when he would be transferred to Chesapeake. Williams was arrested Friday at a construction site in Norfolk where he was employed.
Police believe Clark Bedsole hired Williams to kill his Bedsole'swife of 25 years, the mother of their two children. She was found Nov. 9 in the kitchen of her home in the 1100 block of Shore Drive in the Chesapeake subdivision of Geneva Shores. She had been shot twice at close range, once in the head and once in the neck, with a handgun.
At a news conference Friday night, Chesapeake police spokesman Tony Torres said information leading to the arrests came together this week after police received a Crime Line tip ``that let us narrow down the case.''
He would not say whether either suspect had made a statement to police, however. ``We're not going to talk about any confessions or admissions that have been made,'' Torres said.
The murder investigation is continuing, Torres said, although he would not say if any additional arrests are expected.
Torres said Williams and Clark Bedsole were introduced by a mutual friend who was not identified.
Late on the afternoon of Nov. 9, Williams broke the knob off the front door of the Bedsole home, entered and shot Helen Bedsole while she waited for her new female roommate to arrive with furniture, police said. The roommate discovered the body a short time later.
The murder scheme, police believe, was the last act in a stormy marriage that was within days of ending in divorce.
``The murder was domestic-related and involved the Bedsoles' estate,'' Chesapeake Detective R.W. Young said Friday.
``The investigation was focused on Mr. Bedsole almost from the beginning.''
Young, who investigated the case for more than 12 months with Chesapeake Detective C.E. Whitehurst, said police connected Williams to the case about a week after Helen Bedsole was murdered.
Investigators knew where Williams was living in Portsmouth, but tying him to Clark Bedsole took time. ``We had most of the pieces,'' Young said, ``but it took a while to put them together.''
According to Helen Bedsole's family, friends and court records, there was a long history of domestic abuse, stop-and-go divorce proceedings and wrangling over assets that led police to suspect that Clark Bedsole orchestrated the murder of his wife.
Court papers show that as early as 1985, Helen Bedsole tried to end her relationship with her husband and start a life of her own.
When she filed for divorce that year, she claimed her husband had committed adultery on ``sundry occasions,'' physically assaulted her and threatened to kill her.
She was granted a restraining order, but dropped the divorce petition in 1986 when the couple agreed to give their marriage another try.
The couple had much to lose by splitting up, friends said. They had two children, a successful electrical contracting business, a video store in Portsmouth and numerous rental properties in Hampton Roads and on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
But, they said, Clark Bedsole was obsessed with controlling his wife and her life, and was able to persuade her to follow his lead.
``It was more like a sickness with him,'' said Toni Andrews, who worked with Helen Bedsole at C&P Telephone in Norfolk.
``Here was a person whose marriage had dissolved and he couldn't get over it.''
``He always sweet-talked his way back in,'' said Cindy Hoggard, who is married to Helen's nephew.
Clark, however, refused to be faithful, according to court papers. He carried on a long-term relationship with a Portsmouth woman and even moved in with her for a while.
That prompted Helen Bedsole to again file for divorce in 1990 and 1992.
She alleged cruelty, adultery and bizarre behavior and, in one complaint, charged that her husband had bugged her telephone and burglarized her home.
By 1992, her family and friends say, she had committed to obtaining a divorce.
She had a new attorney and was demanding that she be given 50 percent of what the couple had accumulated.
She was killed a week before her divorce was to have been final.
In June, attorneys for Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. filed a lawsuit to keep from paying Clark Bedsole the benefit payment on a $132,000 life insurance policy.
The lawsuit maintained that Helen Bedsole was a murder victim in a murder-for-hire scheme and that Clark Bedsole was a suspect. The suit put the $132,000 in the control of the court until a beneficiary could be found.
On the one-year anniversary of Helen Bedsole's murder, Geneva Shores residents lit candles in her memory at their homes.
Many were convinced that her husband was involved in the murder after witnessing years of their marital problems.
On Friday, they celebrated the arrests.
``This is something I have been praying for every day for a whole year,'' said Ann Cascell, Helen Bedsole's sister-in-law.
``I thank God this has happened. I really do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Helen Bedsole
Clark C. Bedsole Sr.
Marlon D. Williams
KEYWORDS: MURDER MURDER-FOR-HIRE
by CNB