THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150434
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
An ex-convict captured in Virginia Beach after a highway chase has confessed to killing his girlfriend and wounding her stepgrandfather near Elizabeth City, Pasquotank County Sheriff Randy Cartwright said Tuesday.
Richard S. ``Ricky'' Hogarth, 30, plans to plead guilty and ask for the death penalty, the sheriff said.
Hogarth was being held Tuesday in the Norfolk City Jail, awaiting an April 5 arraignment on robbery, abduction and firearms charges that originated in Norfolk. Hogarth said in court Tuesday that he won't fight extradition to North Carolina, Cartwright said.
District Attorney Frank Parrish said officials have yet to determine how Hogarth's prosecution in the two states will unfold. But Parrish said the March 8 killing here ``has all the appearances of a capital murder case.''
At a morning news conference in the Pasquotank County Courthouse, Cartwright described his interview with Hogarth, which lasted nearly five hours after the ex-convict's capture Monday.
``He gave us a complete confession, the details of the crime that he committed,'' Cartwright said.
``He seemed to be kind of tired and almost relieved,'' said Cartwright, who knew Hogarth from earlier brushes with the law. ``He told me he wanted to go ahead and tell me everything he had done.''
Hogarth is accused of shooting to death his girlfriend, 24-year-old Tracy Dawn Crafton of Camden County, and wounding her stepgrandfather in a convenience store parking lot north of Elizabeth City.
The shootings occurred after Crafton left Hogarth's truck and got into the van of her waiting grandparents, who had come from Virginia to pick her up after she told them Hogarth had been abusing her.
Officials on Tuesday recovered a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun that police said Hogarth had thrown from a car while being chased along Route 13 in Suffolk early Monday, Cartwright said.
The car, a 1989 Acura, had been stolen from an acquaintance of Hogarth's in Ocean View about an hour after the shootings.
Before returning to the Hampton Roads area, Cartwright said, Hogarth had driven to Tupelo, Miss., where an ex-wife lives, had stopped in Florida, and had spent two nights in a Georgia hotel.
Officials tracked Hogarth's movements by tracing phone calls to many of his contacts, Cartwright said.
Hogarth was calm and expressed little remorse after his capture, the sheriff said.
``He just seemed to be level-headed and straightforward about it,'' Cartwright said. ``He never said he was sorry. . . . He did say he was sorry that all this had happened. He was not exactly sure why he did it.''
KEYWORDS: SHOOTING MURDER CONFESSION by CNB