Born To Die

Marion sits in south-western Virginia, in Smyth County, four square miles with a population of 5,555 and about 9,000 more people living outside the town on a Marion mailing address. The town peaked in the 1970s and has been shrinking since, down 12.5% since 2000. Its median age is 48, its median household income is $31,933 against a national average of almost $58,000, and the median home costs $103,400. James reads out its mottoes, its Main Street designation and a handful of online reviews, then goes back to June 1984.

In Woodford, Vermont, five miles from the Canadian border, a short, heavy-set, bearded man walks into the Red Mills gift shop, holds up the counter with a knife and takes $80. He drives off in a sky-blue 1978 Ford Ranger XLT with vanity plates, a truck stolen in Afton, North Carolina. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed He was in a near coma as an infant, suffered a head injury as a child, and was drinking heavily by the age of ten. His aunts Catherine Norris and Eunice Burgess later described him as friendly and good natured, raised the best his parents could manage and taken to church.

On 12 September 1971 police in Virginia received an anonymous call directing them to a vacant farmhouse near Seven Mile Road. Inside they found Shirley Brickey, 18 and already married, lying on a soiled mattress with a cloth round her throat and her face under a pillow. The autopsy showed she had been beaten, raped and strangled. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now A witness who had seen Brickey go into the house with a male companion early on the Saturday night identified him. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

Four months later he was back in Marion. On the night of Saturday 28 May 1983 he went to a dance at the American Legion lodge, where he asked the man on the door if he could check his gun. He was told there was no gun check, left briefly, came back saying it was taken care of, and spent the evening dancing with three women at a table. One of them was Jessie Geneva Havens, 52, a grandmother who had come with two friends and had her granddaughter waiting at home. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it They saw her waiting by the passenger door while he opened the trunk. The dance closed at one in the morning.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Havens never came home. By six the following evening her family had heard nothing and reported her missing.

In the early hours of 2 June 1983 trooper R. M. Freeman was sent to Highway 81 in Pulaski County to look for a black pickup truck with a camper. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now A .25-calibre automatic was seized. At the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office he volunteered that they would want to talk to him about a missing person, and once in Smyth County he waived his rights and said Havens could be found over a bank on Hubble Hill Road near Seven Mile Ford, less than a mile from where Brickey had been left. Asked what had happened to her, he said: "I don't know, but she's there." Then he asked for a lawyer.

At about 9.30 that morning an investigator followed his directions and found her, jeans round her knees, blouse pulled up, underwear and tights pulled down. The autopsy recorded abrasions and bruises to her forehead and neck, a bite mark that broke the skin on her right breast, bruises on her arms, thigh and vagina, and a single .25-calibre gunshot wound to the chest. There was no semen in the vagina; there was semen in her rectum. details of the account remain covered until revealed The seized .25 matched the murder weapon.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now The defence asked for its own psychiatrist; the court refused, even when counsel offered to pay. A change of venue was refused despite heavy publicity. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The judge refused individual questioning.

this part of the story is covered for now The defence had no expert to challenge the rape ea covered nameent. In closing the prosecutor argued that the killing was outrageously vile, that she had been bitten repeatedly, and that anything less than death would let him do it again. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now They faked a disturbance, overwhelmed guards with homemade knives, took their uniforms, put a fire extinguisher under a sheet on a stretcher as a supposed bomb, demanded a van and drove out at 10.47 p.m. The six were responsible for 17 murders between them. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He insisted he had made the others agree to no violence. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now In February 1991 he wrote to President Bush and Governor Douglas Wilder asking to be sent to fight Saddam Hussein, citing The Dirty Dozen and claiming training with machine guns, grenade launchers and C-4.

details of the account remain covered until revealed On 12 December 1996 Governor George Allen refused ccovered nameency. this part of the story is covered for now He had arranged for his body to be cremated and his ashes flown to England to be scattered in a wood.