The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 16

14A Z9' 1994 THE WVn ails teeples past reve evidence of troubled PL I MP 1 iEMI-ANNUAL i SHOE CLEARANCE Choose from a Great Selection of Famous Brands, summer colors and styles NATURAIiZER, FOOTWORKS, NINA, CANDIES, MARGARET JERROLD, IMPO, JASMIN and many, many more! Famous Brands like GIORGIO BRUTINI, NUNN BUSH, STACY ADAMS many, many morel Entire stock not included. LOTS OF LADIES' HANDBAGS 25-40 OFF, TOO! Shop Early! Open Today 1-5, and Monday. Memorial Day 10-6. LOTTIES GREEN HILLS LOTTIES MADISON 3825 Green Hills Village Phone 385-341 8 838 Madison Square Phone 868-1 978 10-8; 10-6; Sun. 1-5 10-6; Sun, 1-5 Memorial Day Savings! resulted from "a drinking incident," Yarbrough said.

Shortly after the discharge, Steeples began serving a three-year term in a federal penitentiary on charges of taking a stolen car across state lines. Steeples went back to the Chicago area for several years after his 1964 release. He ended up in Memphis sometime in the early 1970s, where Steeples did odd jobs until he started working in the computer business. In 1977, Tom Steeples and Tillie Ruth Trest, an IBM systems engineer from Nashville, were married shortly after Steeples finished his sentence on the 1975 assault conviction in Memphis. The two started Computer Forms and Supplies 1120 Elm Hill Pike, in Nashville.

Within a few years, they had two children: Ashley, now 15 and a student at Donelson Christian Academy, and John, 13, who attends Mount Juliet Junior High School. From outward appearances, Steeples settled into the comfortable life of a successful businessman with a family. But in 1991, evidence of new problems surfaced. Tillie Steeples filed for divorce, making some allegations that even her lawyer, Steven Gill, thought were unusual. Among them were that Steeples: "Boasted to his wife of 'multiple affairs' with 'three to five whores per week.

Passed venereal diseases contracted from prostitutes to his wife "repeatedly." Assaulted and attempted to rape another woman Nov. 29, 1991, in a makeshift tepee that stood in the couple's back yard, and that he hit and choked his wife when she tried to stop him. Tillie Steeples sought and received a temporary restraining order blocking Tom Steeples from contact with her and the couple's computer business. About a month later, on Jan. 7, 1992, Tillie Steeples told police she found several suicide notes from her, husband in their Mount Juliet house.

That day she found him in the couple's second house in Donelson, according to a police report. He was sitting in his truck with a hose running the exhaust pipe into the cab, the engine running, the report said. Tom Steeples pushed his wife away, and, when police arrived, he ran out of the truck to the back of the house, where he collapsed, the report said. Tillie Steeples later dropped the divorce proceeding, saying the couple had reconciled, Gill said. Less than two years later, Steeples started using cocaine, police and prosecutors said.

And, they said, he also started gambling and losing large sums on video poker at the Corral Club on Lebanon Road. Last October, Steeples bought a police said. Early on Oct 17, after Corral Club owner Ronald Bingham fell asleep in his bar, Steeples shot him to death, doused his body with gasoline and set the bar on fire, police allege. Steeples has pleaded not guilty to that homicide charge, and Yarbrough last week said detectives had "a weak case" based on circumstantial evidence. On March 7, while out on $150,000 bond on that charge, Steeples went to the Stagecoach Lounge on Murfreesboro Road, witnesses said.

That night, the witnesses have told police, he met a young couple there who had just driven in from California Rob and Kelli Phillips. some people who know Steeples, the murder charges in the couple's slayings were no surprise at all. "He's a horrible, horrible said a woman who in 1975 accused Steeples of raping her in Memphis. Tm still very, very scared of him." Steeples has refused two requests by The Tennesse-an for an interview. In the past three years: Steeples wife, Tillie Ruth Steeples, alleged in a 1991 divorce petition that he bragged of regularly hiring prostitutes, who gave him venereal diseases that he in turn transmitted to her.

Tillie Steeples also alleged in divorce papers that her husband beat and choked her after she discovered him beating and attempting to rape another woman in a tepee in the Steepleses' back yard. No charges were filed by either Tillie Steeples or the other woman, who was not identified in the divorce petition. Tillie Steeples also has refused to talk with reporters. However, about two months after filing the divorce petition, she withdrew it and remains married. Tom Steeples, 49, tried to commit suicide at least once, in 1992, by inhaling exhaust from his pickup truck, according to police reports.

He was charged in the October 1993 shooting death of a Lebanon Road bar owner. His lawyer has said his client has a cocaine problem. But Steeples' problems go back further. In 1975, before his marriage to Tillie, Steeples was driving a young woman to her home after their first date. Once there, according to a Memphis police report, Steeples told her he was either going to have sex with her in his apartment or in a van parked next to it He then began choking her and forced her to have sex in the van, she alleged.

The woman who earlier this month told The Tennessean she had "blocked out" the attack decided not to prosecute Steeples for rape. The charge was lowered to assault He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail. About the same time, Steeples was fired from his job as warehouse manager at McCormick Business Forms in Memphis after an argument with the owner. "When you first met him, he seemed like a really nice guy, very normal," said John McCormick, president of the company. "But after you got to know him, there was something about him that wasn't completely honest He lost his temper, that kind of thing." Steeples' lawyer, Ed Yarbrough, said he couldn't talk about specific charges of wrongdoing and knew little other information about his client's background.

Yarbrough did say that some of Steeples' problems might stem from difficulties with his adoptive father, a police officer in a Chicago suburb. Yarbrough said that when Steeples was about 11 years old, authorities removed him from his father's house for about a year after allegations that his father beat him. Some seven years later, Steeples was booted out of the Marine Corps after serving one year and one day in jail, according to military records. The discharge Get Quality Film Developing and a Second Set of Prints FREE! Jit i only $550 KJii 24 exposures, 4x6 prints with Plus Card discount 2nd Set of Prints Film Developing 24 exposures, 4x6 prints No limit on number of rolls developed with this coupon. With this coupon get film developing for $6.50 (24 4x6 prints) and get a second set of prints for FREE at time of developing from 35mm, 126 or 110 color print film.

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