Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 21

D3 Youth loses appeal, will stand as adult VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) A 16-year-old high school student charged with killing two younger boys lost an appeal Wednesday of a ruling that he face a murder trial as an adult. Circuit Judge Jerome B. Friedman, after listening to about 20 minutes of arguments, concluded that Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Frederick P. Aucamp properly sent the capital murder case of Shawn P. Novak to the Circuit Court.

Friedman said he found no flaws in Aucamp's transfer order of April 25. The ruling allowed Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Humphreys to seek an indictment against Novak, who is charged with killing Daniel Wayne Geier, 9, and Christopher Scot Weaver, 7. The two elementary school youngsters who lived in the same neighborhood as Novak were reported missing March 4 while riding their bicycles. Their bodies, with the throats slashed, were found about 24 hours later in a wooded area not far from their homes. Novak was arrested three days later.

If convicted of capital murder in Circuit Court, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment or death. In juvenile court, the maximum punishment would be detention to age 21. Clark Daugherty, one of Novak's lawyers, claimed a number of procedural flaws in Aucamp's ruling. Among them, he said, was that the judge failed to consider whether Novak would benefit from the lower court's counseling and other services available to juvenile defendants. But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Frank Zanin said Aucamp's finding was that the juvenile court was not equipped to handle a case stemming from such a crime, which the prosecutor called "heinous and barbaric" "At all points in the proceedings, the juvenile court has attempted to follow the letter of the law," Zanin said.

"Every i has1' been dotted and every has been crossed." The grand jury will convene June 3. Daily Presa, Thursday, May 16, 1991 trial any Romanian orphans trapped by bureaucracy was no way of anticipating tins numher." "1 5 I' ROANOKE (AP) Virginia and Pennsylvania residents who went to Romania two months ago to adopt orphans have found that getting out of the country with children is much more difficult than it was to get in. The return of Diana Howell of Roanoke and 19 people she is traveling with is being delayed because the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest is overwhelmed with cases. The group met in Lynchburg and traveled to Romania in March.

arranged the trip after learning from news reports on the Romanian revolution that vast numbers of children were living in orphanages. President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed in December 1989, had banned contraception and abortion. During his dictatorship, he had ordered women to have at least five children so he could put them in his army. Many Romanian families could not afford to keep the children and sent them to orphanages that became overcrowded and were poorly maintained. Thousands of American families have gone to Romania in the past year to adopt the children in orphanages.

The embassy is seeing 25 people each day who want U.S. immigrant visas for an adopted child, State Department spokesman Greg Garlansaid. "There are very limited resources in the embassy," he said. "It's a very tense situation. There v1 111 a fog Fog hovers above the intersection of 75th Street and River Road Wednesday morning in Newport News, as seen from this view of Windward Towers.

The highest temperature recorded Wednesday at Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport was 86. The low was 65. Today will be mostly sunny and warm with a high near 80. Tonight will be partly cloudy. Conservation group launches campaign preserve the farms and fishing villages that buffer the reserve.

Sawhill declined to say how much the conservancy plans to spend. The campaign will involve land purchases, easements, donations and other protection strategies. The University of Virginia researched the pollution of ground water and surface water that was used in drafting the buffer zone plan. Howell said Tuesday that about 40 Americans were protesting ouj-. side the embassy because their requests for visas had been denied.

t-lav irrniin urae iravttasi Kir embassy not to adopt children whp may not be "clearly said in a telephone interview from Bucharest. According to U.S. immigration law, the embassy will not issue visas for children who have two legal parents, even if both parents' sign a waiver to give up the children. A child given up by its birth parents for adoption to a particular; couple is not considered aban-' doned. The law states that a child must be abandoned by a parent who cannot provide proper carer After two months in Romania, only two members of the group are returning with children.

Both arje; expectea DacK in tne united states this week. Four are waiting for. visas and the remainder are star trying to find a child or complete the adoption process. "It's still not 100 percent that we'll all get Howell said. "Many of us are at our wits' endif Howell has resigned herself to.

staying in Romania another two weeks. She honed to eet Dermis- old girl but first had to get tlie required documents including a birth certificate and passport for her new daughter, Simona, before they can return home. The conservancy, U.Va. and the. National Science Foundation operate an ecological research station -near Oyster on the Eastern Shore.

The conservancy said the cur', rent campaign emerged from the Eastern Shore project. The organization began acquiring its 12 barrier islands in the mid-1970s to save a key habitat for rare shorebirds, waterfowl and other species. based on only 10 months. "i A total of 43,341 Virginia children were the subject of child pfti-tective services investigations completed during fiscal 1990. Neither, abuse nor neglect could be established in cases involving 31,212 children.

In 8,308 cases, abuse or neglect was substantiated. In an additional 3,821 cases, social service work-' ers determined there was reason to suspect that abuse or neglect had occurred. The Tidewater region received' the largest percentage 28.5 of the state's complaints. Northern Virginia region followed with' 20 percent, and the Richmond region; was third with 1 6. 1 percent.

The annual report said thererjs" a "common misconception" that many of the unfounded complaints resulted from referrals made by parents involved in custody.or divorce actions. Only 8.7 percent of all complaints were believed to be a consequence of such actions. at colleges and universities. The study will examine at least' three issues: ways to encourage the reporting of rape and sexual-' assault Dy siuaeni victims; meia-ods of educating students on rape' onrannftcs and mAactiroe trt fm- vide better security against rape oh campus. ir The study will present an initial report to the General Assembly in January and a final report tn December 1992, Mullen said.

The council will also look at the role of substance abuse in rape cases more closely than will the-; governor's task force, said Gordon Davies, executive director of the. council. 28 kids died in '90 of abuse, neglect Stabbing Continued from Bl the townhouse Williams and Spencer shared on Newport News Avenue. Spencer was not there when they arrived, but Thomas said he saw her in the living room as he was leaving sometime dur- ing the early morning of March 17. Thomas said he had been shoot- ing up cocaine in the bathroom for about 20 minutes and came out to see Spencer "acting upset." He said he saw Williams lying on the floor, but saw no blood and assumed his friend was asleep.

He said he left and went home. On Tuesday, Spencer gave a different account. She said she was awakened on the couch by someone pulling her up and beating her in the head. She I said she recognized the attacker as I Thomas. Although she did not see stab her boyfriend in the back, Spencer said she saw Thomas pull the wooden-handled butcher knife I from his back.

Spencer said she offered 'Thomas money and begged him to leave her alone, but the attacker made her strip and then stabbed several times. She held her 'breath and pretended to be dead until Thomas left through the back door. Davis told the jury Wednesday that probably saved her life. "Ladies and gentlemen, that's iprobabh the only reason she didn't up like this," the prosecutor said in her final arguments, flashing jurors an 8-inch-by-10-jnch KENNETH SILVERStaff photographer The Nature Conservancy already has established the Virginia Coast Reserve, composed of 43,000 acres of fragile barrier islands, coastal bays and patches of mainland along a 55-mile oceanside stretch from the Maryland line to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Under the new program to save the "Last Great Places," the organization will work with local governments, residents and others to ents and recalled the morning phone conversation with her husband.

She said her husband denied killing Mrs. Lowery. "He said when he was having sex with her she had a heart attack," Mrs. Beavers said. Beavers' father, Thomas Howard Beavers said his son told him Wednesday morning, before police led him away, that he "killed a lady over on Teach Street." Of the Tuesday night break-in, his wife said, "He said he broke into her house because he wanted to steal some things to get some money." When detectives searched the Beavers' home, Mrs.

Beavers said they seized two diamond rings and a cluster birthstone ring. Beavers had told his wife he received the rings in lieu of money from drug sales, she said. Mrs. Beavers said she had worn the cluster ring for almost a year. Police would not say whether the rings belonged to Lowery, but Mrs.

Beavers said an officer told her they matched "the rings that the lady had." Tears welled in Mrs. Beavers' eyes as she described her husband's cocaine problem, which she believes began two years ago. "He was on drugs real bad. He would always come home late at night and want to fight," Mrs. Beavers said.

He had frequent nosebleeds, which she said were caused by the cocaine he snorted But she said she never saw him use drugs. "Every time we tried to get him help at a drug and alcohol center, he'd quit because he'd say they'd talk about the same thing over and over again," she said. He dropped out of Hampton schools in the eighth or ninth grade, his wife said, and worked a few years for a foreign car repair shop before going to Newport News Shipbuilding as a rigger. color photo of Williams lying in a pool of his own blood. "Dead on her kitchen floor." The knife used in the crimes was never found, but Joyce Smith, Thomas' girlfriend at the time, testified that she had a butcher knife that fit the description of the murder weapon in her dish drainer ore March 16.

On March 17, when police came looking for it, she said, it was gone. So was Thomas. FBI agent William P. O'Leary testified that after being notified by Hampton police in January of this year that Thomas might be in Los Angeles, he found Thomas working in a homeless shelter under the name of Albert Cochran. He said Thomas told him he left Virginia to seek help for his cocaine addiction.

But when the conversation turned to Williams' murder, said O'Leary, "He became visibly upset and asked that the interview be terminated." Thomas, who has three felony convictions in his background, testified that he left town at daybreak after the killing because a friend had told him he was a suspect. "I felt I was in jeopardy, like physical jeopardy," he said. Defense attorney Joseph J. Stel-lute said in his opening remarks that Thomas would testify that he "had a confrontation" with Spencer, but that it was she who actually killed Williams. The lawyer backed away from that in closing arguments, explaining that he was there to defend Thomas and not to prosecute anyone.

Richmond Detective Steve A Dal-ton. During Jones' trial, Dalt on quoted him as having said he strangled or stabbed the three because "they had to be punished." Jones confessed to stabbing Ronald Jones, 31, in 1980; and strangling Marinda Zimmerman, 24, in 1981; and Shirley Marie Jones, 36, in March 1990. Dalton said that on Oct 6, 1980, Willie Jones picked up Ronald Jones and they went to Willie Jones' apartment. After learning that Ronald Jones was a man dressed in women's clothing, Willie Jones stabbed him and dumped the victim's nude body in an alley behind the apartment building, Dalton said. WASHINGTON (AP) The nation's largest conservation organization has launched a major campaign to protect ecosystems on Virginia's Eastern Shore and 1 1 other sites in the United States and Latin America.

The Nature Conservancy will create models on how people and nature can exist together, John C. Sawhill, president of the conservancy, said Tuesday. Suspect Continued from Bl jailed without bond. Police say he pried open a rear window of a 46-year-old woman's home and raped her about 9:20 p.m. Tuesday; the crime was reported about 11 p.m.

Charges for the May 1, 1990, murder of 61-year-old Marguerite E. Lowery were added later Wednesday morning, Bingman said. He would not say what linked Beavers to the Lowery death. Detectives went to Beavers' home about 4 a.m. Wednesday after the victim of Tuesday night's attack identified her assailant, according to a Circuit Court affidavit.

She told police that his hands were wrapped with white medical gauze, the affidavit stated. Detectives believe he cut his hands on the broken window. They did not explain how he might have bandaged his hands. The victim told police the intruder carried a screwdriver with a mustard-colored handle. "He forced the victim to a bedroom where he had sexual intercourse with her against her will," the affidavit says.

The attacker left after the victim "convinced the intruder she would not report the incident to police." The woman drove herself to a hospital. Last May, nude body was found on a bed in her home in the 700 block of Teach Street, a block from Beavers' home. Lowery, who retired in 1988 from her job as a cafeteria manager for Hampton schools, had been sexually assaulted and smothered with a pillow, police said. Commonwealth's Attorney Christopher W. Hutton said Beavers could be charged with capital murder because police say Lowery was sexually assaulted.

Wednesday evening, Mrs. Beavers stood in front of the tiny faded green bungalow where the couple lived with their 10-month-old son, LevaiL and Beavers par RICHMOND (AP) A total of 28 children died from child abuse or neglect in Virginia last year six fewer than the number who died during the previous year, the state Department of Social Services reports. The Child Protective Services Annual Report issued by the department this week said 17 children died as a result of abuse. Skull fractures, internal injuries, shaken baby syndrome and gunshot wounds were among the types of injuries suffered by the children. Ten died from neglect, most often from accidents resulting from lack of supervision.

The precise cause of death for one child was undetermined. Half of the victims were under 2 years old. A quarter were between the ages of 2 and to 5. Because the department implemented a new computer system in September 1989 for recording and maintaining its child abuse and neglect data, some of the data for fiscal 1990, which ended June 30, is Salaries Continued from 1 bers described plans for a study, authorized by the General Assembly, of sexual assault on public and private campuses. The study, which will begin in the fall with a survey of 3,000 students, will be used to complement the Governor's Task Force on Substance Abuse and Sexual Assault on Campuses.

J. Michael Mullen, deputy director of the council, said the task force will rely mostly on testimony and the council's staff will look at model programs already in place Man gets 60 years for lolling prostitutes RICHMOND (AP) A man who confessed to killing three prostitutes because "they had to be punished" was sentenced Tuesday to 60 years in prison without parole. Willie Ben Jones, 38, had pleaded guilty March 27 to three counts 'of second-degree murder. Richmond Circuit Judge James B. Wilkinson imposed the maximum 20-year sentence for each convic-Ition.

Because Jones was convicted of three separate murders, he is subject to Virginia's "three-time loser" law and is not eligible for parole. The former Richmond resident was living in Washington last November when he surrendered to the FBI. He later gave confessions to.