THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 TAG: 9610150251
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CURRITUCK LENGTH: 86 lines
The elderly Moyock woman had lived alone for 20 years when she decided to seek companionship through two personal ads in a shopping guide.
Henry Gregory Lumsden answered the second ad, in which the woman mentioned she owned her own truck and house.
After their first date, he moved into her home. Two weeks later, he asked for her hand in marriage, and she accepted.
On Monday, Lumsden admitted in court that he used his own hands to strangle Mary Frances Lumsden, on Sept. 22, 1995.
Lumsden, 47, had been charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder at a hearing in Currituck County Superior Court in Currituck.
A sentence is expected to be issued by Judge J. Richard Parker today.
Shortly after being arrested in September 1995, Lumsden confessed to police that he had killed his wife during an argument. Her age was listed as 66, but she was believed to be in her 70s.
But he claimed then that he didn't intend to kill his wife when he grabbed her neck during a struggle at their home on Guinea Road.
``It was at this time that my hands must have accidentally squeezed too hard,'' Lumsden was quoted as saying in the confession read in court by Special Agent Christopher Haas.
Lumsden originally told police he awoke at 5 a.m. on Sept. 22, 1995, and his wife was not in their bed. He claimed he found her lying face-down over the side of the bathtub toilet. and believed she had fallen off the toilet.
Lumsden called a stepdaughter in Chesapeake twice that morning to say he was concerned about her mother's condition and with being late for his job at a Chesapeake sewage treatment plant.
He said he called emergency services about an hour after finding the body. When paramedics and police arrived, the body already had begun to stiffen from rigor mortis.
A Greenville medical examiner that weekend ruled the cause of death a homicide by manual asphyxiation.
The most powerful testimony during Monday's sentencing hearing came from one of the victim's seven children, Linda L. Campbell of Manteo.
Campbell cried frequently as she told of how Lumsden moved into her mother's life so quickly. He apparently had been living in his car prior to their meeting in March 1993.
At the time Lumsden asked the woman - who was known as Frances - to marry him, he still was married to another woman in Virginia. Frances Lumsden eventually paid for his divorce, and the two married the next day: Sept. 17, 1994.
Prior to their marriage, however, Frances Lumsden found a personal ad that Lumsden planned to run in the same publication that had brought them together.
It included a description of Lumsden, his two dogs and a home and truck in North Carolina that he said he owned. But Frances owned the house and truck at the time.
The ad had been left in a home office that Lumsden normally kept locked. Lumsden at first said the ad was just to make her jealous, then said it was done for a friend.
Campbell testified that her mother's marriage to Lumsden began to deteriorate after six months.
Frances Lumsden, who kept all her cash at home, noticed money was regularly missing. Eventually she placed $12,000 in a safe deposit box.
Greg Lumsden previously had been ``very, very charming and very flattering and very nice,'' Campbell said.
But he eventually became angry often and talked cruelly to people. He also demanded more and more money from his wife for things such as expensive guns and an upcoming hunting trip, Campbell said.
``It was like an actor coming off a stage. It was completely different,'' Campbell said.
About two weeks before her death, Frances told her daughter she was considering a divorce.
Then insurance agents began to call frequently about policies Lumsden was considering taking out on his wife, policies she knew nothing about, Campbell said.
Lumsden's attorney, H.P. Williams of Elizabeth City, suggested Lumsden also was planning to take out a policy on himself and name his wife as the beneficiary.
Apparently no policies were signed for either of them.
Days before her death, Frances Lumsden told her daughter she feared for her life.
``When I looked in her eyes, I could really see that she was terrified. And for the first time, I could see that she was really serious,'' Campbell said.
Campbell urged her to leave, but said her mother did not want to part with her longtime home and its belongings.
Lumsden faces up to 34 1/2 years in prison for the second-degree charge.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL by CNB