DATE: Saturday, September 20, 1997          TAG: 9709200382

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   73 lines

FINAL CHAPTER ON BOOKSTORE WHERE CLERK WAS KILLED

Too many memories and too few customers will close a bookstore where a clerk was killed last year.

The Bookhaven in Suffolk Plaza Shopping Center on North Main Street will close today after unsuccessful attempts to save it, owner Don Shelton said.

The store - clean but cluttered with bestsellers, classics, cards, gifts and current editions of national magazines - served Suffolk for more than 20 years.

Bookhaven had been robbed twice before the December 1996 killing. Shelton installed a video security system after back-to-back robberies in 1995.

A few days before Christmas last year, two teens - one a middle school student, the other in his first year of high school - walked into the store and left after Margaret M. ``Peggy'' Lilley's throat was slashed with a box cutter shoplifted from a nearby store.

Lilley, 55, had worked there about 10 years. She was a widow and a grandmother who painted landscapes and enjoyed talking with customers.

``We went for 17 years without incident,'' Shelton said. ``Then, there were two robberies close together. The first was masked; the second an impulsive thing. He pulled a hunting knife on Peggy.

``I had told them all, if it happened again, to do whatever to get them out of there, to give them anything.''

Lilley apparently followed those instructions, but it wasn't enough for the two teens, who testified that they had planned to rob the store.

There was no evidence of robbery when Lilley's body was found in the back of the store.

``There was shoplifting, of course, but I never expected anything like that - in a bookstore, of all places,'' Shelton said. ``My employees were like family. Closing this store is something I have to do.''

Owners and employees in shops nearby said that Lilley's murder had everybody concerned for their own safety for weeks. S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co., owner of Suffolk Plaza Shopping Center, hired a security guard who stayed through the holiday season and into January.

Shop owners were deluged by salesmen for security systems, said Nancy DeJarnette, owner of Skin-Sational, a skin care and cosmetics shop. But the security system didn't save Lilley, DeJarnette said.

``We'd been real fortunate in Suffolk up until then,'' DeJarnette said. ``Crime here isn't a drop in the bucket compared to other areas. There could be two or three murders a night in Virginia Beach or Norfolk. People seem to think that Bookhaven was something that could have happened anywhere.''

Denise Dowdy, a clerk at Levenson's 14K Plus, said that employees at her shop still talk about what happened to Lilley. But the thought is a part of today's world, she said.

``My son likes to go into the store to look for comic books,'' she said. ``We'll miss it. The first time we went in after the murder, I couldn't walk to the back of the store. There was just an eerie feeling. But I know this kind of thing isn't unusual anymore. It can happen anywhere.''

Shelton's wife died of cancer a few months before Lilley's death. He says now that he's glad his wife didn't live to see what happened in the shop that meant so much to her, to a woman she knew so well.

He said business has declined at least 50 percent since the murder. He plans to concentrate now on his store in Franklin in the Armory Plaza Shopping Center, a busy, well-traveled area.

``If I weren't still reeling so after everything that happened and trying so hard to keep everything from folding, I'd relocate,'' Shelton said. ``But - I don't know - I don't feel safe anywhere anymore.''

June D. Sykes, a 15-year-old charged with Lilley's death, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in court last month. He faces a maximum of life in prison and will be sentenced Oct. 8.

George M. Fenner Jr., 16, but 15 at the time of the murder, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He faces five to 45 years in prison and will be sentenced on Oct. 15. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Don Shelton KEYWORDS: MURDER

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