THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506020529
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
The supervising investigator in the capital murder case of Dennis Stockton - sentenced to death in 1983 for the murder-for-hire of a teenager in Southside Virginia - said in a statement filed in court Thursday that he believes Stockton is innocent.
Retired Patrick County Sheriff's Deputy Clifford Boyd told a private investigator in an affidavit filed in federal court in Roanoke that ``based on his extensive investigation, Mr. Boyd does not believe that the murder for which Dennis Stockton was convicted occurred in Virginia or that Dennis Stockton killed Kenneth Arnder.''
Boyd has become increasingly skeptical of Stockton's guilt over the years.
This is the first time that a law enforcement official connected to the investigation has said publicly that Stockton is not guilty. Stockton has nearly run out of appeals and he faces execution in Virginia's death chamber. Stockton has said he believes he will be executed in mid- to late summer.
Boyd, who said he worked on the case from the beginning, told the investigator that he believes evidence was withheld from Stockton's lawyers. ``At the time, he didn't think anything was wrong, but now he does,'' the investigator, Harrisonburg-based Doris Pye, said Thursday in a phone interview. ``He thinks something wrong was done. He said he thinks he will write the governor.''
Pye was hired by Stockton's lawyer.
Boyd gave his statement to Pye during a three-hour interview Saturday at his home in Willis Gap, Va. Boyd has refused to talk over the phone to reporters because he is nearly deaf, his wife has said.
This newest twist comes a little more than a month after Randy G. Bowman, the key prosecution witness at Stockton's trial, recanted his testimony in an interview with a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.
During that interview on April 20, Bowman said he never heard the murder-for-hire deal take place. Yet he testified in 1983 that he heard Stockton accept money to kill Arnder.
Boyd has given previous statements in which he said Bowman was upset because he was promised preferential treatment for his testimony by prosecutors and investigators but didn't receive any. In late May, Boyd told a reporter through his wife that ``he wasn't surprised that Randy Bowman recanted.''
On May 15, the state attorney general's office filed an affidavit in which Bowman claimed he never recanted. That affidavit was included with a brief asking the judge to deny a plea by Stockton's lawyers for a new hearing to review the evidence.
In a further effort to persuade the judge, Stockton's lawyers on Thursday filed Boyd's statement with two other affidavits: a statement by the reporter affirming the validity of his story and a statement by the chaplain of Powhatan Correctional Center describing how a prisoner told him that another inmate confessed to lying against Stockton during his trial.
Bowman is a wanted man. Warrants have been filed charging him and his 16-year-old son with breaking into an Elizabethtown, N.C., Laundromat, owned by the son's adoptive father. The burglary in late January netted Bowman $350 to $400, alleged the adoptive father, who requested anonymity to protect his son's identity. Mount Airy police told the adoptive father Wednesday that Bowman had not been located, he said.
Stockton was charged with the 1978 murder of Arnder, 18, whose body was found near Mount Airy. Arnder was shot in the head and his hands were hacked off above the wrists.
Prosecutors said Stockton killed Arnder in Virginia, then moved his body to North Carolina. No physical evidence linked him to Arnder or the slaying to Virginia, and no weapon was found.
But during the trial, Bowman testified that he heard Stockton accept $1,500 from Tommy McBride, another felon, to kill Arnder over a soured drug deal. Prosecutors were able to seek the death penalty because Bowman claimed the slaying was a contract killing. Bowman was the only witness who said he had overheard the deal.
From January 1980 to December 1983, Boyd was a supervisor in the Patrick County Sheriff's Department, reporting directly to former Sheriff Jesse Williams and overseeing investigator Jay Gregory, the case's lead investigator who was elected sheriff months after Stockton's conviction.
According to the affidavit, a man named Jerry Slate was the chief suspect in the investigation, Boyd said. Slate allegedly tortured Arnder in North Carolina just before Arnder's death, the affidavit said. However, Slate was never charged.
This is not the first time Slate - who has a record of drug possession and robbery in North Carolina - has been connected to Arnder's death.
In a January 1989 affidavit, Boyd said McBride had told him in 1983 that he thought Slate killed the teenager.
``McBride said that Jerry Slate had been seen torturing Arnder, while Arnder was tied to a chair, several days prior to the discovery of Arnder's body,'' the earlier affidavit said.
Court records show this was echoed in an October 1982 statement to police by inmate Donald York, who also said Slate cut off Arnder's hands.
Also, a 1986 affidavit by Karen Lynne Davis Parker and a 1989 statement by Parker's sister, Deserath Davis Carpentar, named Danley as a participant. Both women said their mother had knowledge of the killing, and one said her mother helped move the body. Both women said Danley - who has since died - told the mother that Stockton was not involved.
Boyd said in the affidavit filed Thursday that Randy Bowman wanted to speak with ``someone in charge'' at the Patrick County jail while waiting to testify in Stockton's trial.
``Bowman told Mr. Boyd that investigator Jay Gregory and Sheriff Bill Hall (of Surry County) came to Yadkinville prison (in North Carolina) and made promises that if he would testify against Stockton, they would let him out of jail or get him transferred,'' the affidavit said. ``Bowman told Mr. Boyd that he was not going to testify unless promises made to him were kept.''
Stockton's lawyers have said since 1990 that Stockton deserves a new hearing because the state failed to disclose evidence that could have helped him at his trial, including details of an alleged deal that prosecutors made with Bowman in exchange for his testimony. Bowman denied this in his April 20 interview.
On Thursday, Gregory said he did not want to comment because the matter is pending in court.
In addition to Boyd's statement, Stockton's lawyers filed an affidavit by William H. Dent Jr., a Presbyterian minister and chaplain of Powhatan Correctional Center, where Stockton was held until recently.
Dent said that in 1984, he talked with inmate Ralph Kenefick, who has since died. Kenefick said ``he was in jail in southwest Virginia with another prisoner who had testified against Dennis Stockton'' when the other prisoner admitted lying about Stockton on the stand. Kenefick thought Stockton was innocent, the affidavit said.
Dent did not know the other prisoner's name.
However, in a 1984 civil case challenging Patrick County jail conditions, two inmates testified that Bowman bragged about lying in Stockton's trial.
Bowman has denied this. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Dennis Stockton
Photo
Randy Bowman
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH ROW RECANTATION RETRIAL CAPITAL
MURDER MURDER DENNIS STOCKTON VIRGINIA by CNB