THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 18, 1995 TAG: 9504180278
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER AND LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
In an apparent change of heart, Michael Clagett, accused of multiple killings, is no longer asking to bypass a trial and be executed immediately. Instead, he wants to plead not guilty, his attorney told a judge Monday.
Clagett, charged with the capital murders of four people at the Witchduck Inn last June, has confessed repeatedly to the cold-blooded shootings of his former friends.
He has expressed remorse at his own actions and begged for punishment. But Monday, his attorneys argued that his plea for punishment should never be heard by a jury.
``It is up to the jury to decide whether he dies,'' said Clagett's attorney, Public Defender Peter T. Legler. ``It is not law that the defendant be allowed to commit legal suicide. If so, he could order a lethal injection at the jail next week.''
In sharp contrast to the disheveled appearance and emotional intensity of his previous interviews and court appearances, Clagett sat quietly through the one-hour hearing, his long hair neatly combed and held back with a rubber band.
In his first court appearance in July, Clagett asked the judge to let him go directly to the electric chair. ``Can we skip the preliminaries and go straight to sentencing?'' he asked.
Later, in an interview, Clagett, 33, elaborated. ``It's just wasting the taxpayers' money. I may have been drunk and smoking, but I know that I did it. Just go ahead and electrocute me.''
Monday, Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. delayed ruling on the issue for two weeks, asking attorneys on both sides to research court decisions in other states.
Clagett's trial, originally scheduled for Monday, was postponed until June 26.
Meanwhile, another judge is deliberating whether to allow the confession of Clagett's former lover and co-defendant, Denise R. Holsinger, into evidence at her trial, scheduled for May 1.
The ruling on her confession, which became public for the first time last week, is expected next week. Holsinger's attorney, Wilson G. Nelligar, has argued that the confession, a videotape of which was played last week in Circuit Court, was illegally obtained.
In her first story to police the day after the killings, Holsinger said she knew nothing about the city's first quadruple murder. But by the end of two days with police interrogators, Holsinger's version of events nearly matched a detailed confession given earlier by Clagett.
In Clagett's version, the two, during a love-making session on the couch, planned to rob their favorite watering hole. A few hours later, Clagett told police, he shot and killed four people, including the owner, and he and Holsinger fled to North Carolina.
Both were charged with the deaths of bar owner LamVan Son, 41; tavern handyman Wendel G. ``J.R.'' Parrish Jr., 32; bartender Karen S. Rounds, 31; and patron Abdelaziz Gren, 34.
Holsinger has said repeatedly, however, that she was shocked by the shootings and that they were not part of the game plan.
As she sat in court last week wearing a bright-orange jail pantsuit, Holsinger, 30, cried softly as she watched herself on videotape.
The Denise Holsinger on the television screen sat dejectedly in a corner of the interview room, nervously chain smoking, supporting herself on the corner of a table with a small ashtray.
During the statement, she gave an increasingly self-incriminating version of events, eventually describing how that night, after they made love, they went to the bar.
In the first version, Holsinger told police she knew nothing of the slayings. Then, she said she had been there but hadn't seen or heard anything. Next, she confessed she was there, and that Clagett had put a gun to her head and ordered her to leave.
Finally, after police told her that there was a hidden security camera inside the bar with video that showed her inside the bar when the shooting occurred, Holsinger gave a more incriminating version.
She told police that after Clagett killed the four, she stepped over the bodies to clean out the cash register, then went with Clagett to North Carolina, cleaning the gun with her T-shirt as he drove.
The two co-defendants differ on two important issues - premeditation and Holsinger's role.
Clagett told police that the couple planned the robbery together while making love and that Holsinger convinced him they could be the next Bonnie and Clyde. But Holsinger says she was making dinner when he began fantasizing about robbing the bar.
Clagett told her he'd had a dream about killing the owner, she told police. She said she took bullets to his gun out of her purse and put them on the table, then watched him load the gun and play Russian roulette, but she told investigators she had no idea he would actually hurt anyone.
Clagett, however, told police that after the couple went to the bar, Holsinger calmly ordered the execution of the four, whispering, ``Do it. Do it.''
Clagett describes Holsinger as ``evil'' and says she told him ``she was in my blood and I'd never get rid of her.'' Holsinger says when she confronted him about the shooting, his only explanation was that she was a ``sexy mother------ .''
Holsinger told police that she threw the bullets and the gun out the window as they drove to the Outer Banks. She changed her shirt at the motel. ``It was dirty. . . . I felt dirty.''
At times during her statement, Holsinger seemed to be fearful of Clagett, and asked about his whereabouts.
``Y'all don't have him (in custody), do you?,'' she said. ``And he's still gonna get me.''
At one point, she professed to have terminal stomach cancer and said: ``I just want to die. I really do.''
She echoed Clagett's sentiments, expressed in a television interview shortly after his arrest. ``I know I'm going to die for it,'' Clagett said. ``I want to.''
``I did it. I killed them,'' Clagett told WTKR-TV reporters in an emotional interview from the city jail. ``I deserve to die.''
Clagett said of the victims, shot on his 33rd birthday: ``Believe it or not, they were my friends. They were all my friends.''
For Holsinger, it all seemed to be a bad dream.
``It didn't seem real, it didn't seem real,'' she told police. ``I just kept waiting to wake up.'' ILLUSTRATION: AWAITING TRIAL
- Michael Clagett
- Denise R. Holsinger, Clagett's former lover
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL MURDER SHOOTING HEARING by CNB