Son on trial in mother's murder

By: Bill McKelway | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: June 02, 2009

A team of Henrico County prosecutors isn't letting what's written in stone bog down a murder case.

Retired teacher Colette Lynn Lockard, 61, is buried at Quantico National Cemetery. Her tombstone, next to that of her late, Korean War veteran husband, says that she died on July 11, 2005.

But in an hourlong opening argument yesterday, Henrico Commonwealth's Attorney Wade Kizer said Lockard, in fact, died June 29 that year, killed by her son with a shotgun blast to her back that "shredded her spine," according to medical testimony yesterday.

Kizer and two top deputies are trying the case four years after Lockard's son allegedly killed his mother to reap the rewards of a life-insurance policy that Lockard was about to alter, Kizer told a Henrico jury yesterday.

Defense lawyer Christopher Collins told the jury in his opening argument that Clayton Lynn, 41, may be a "jerk" but isn't a killer.

Collins said the prosecution's case, based on heaps of circumstantial evidence, will amount to a courtroom dramatization of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing."

During jury selection before opening arguments yesterday, one juror was passed over because the notion of a son killing his mother was too abhorrent to her. She said she would reject the idea even with the testimony of an eyewitness.

Lockard moved to Henrico in 2002 after retiring from three decades of teaching in Fairfax County. She was an energetic volunteer for her church and financially helped her only son, a maintenance worker with mounting legal and financial problems, according to court records.

But Kizer said yesterday that Lynn was leading a double life that consisted of two marriages, a child by each woman, a history of criminal convictions for larcenies, and, finally, a switch to the Mormon church, which infuriated his devout Baptist mother.

Prosecutors argued that Lockard at one time took in Lynn's wife and child while, unknown to his mother, he lived with another woman in a home Lockard had helped pay for.

"He lived a life of lies," said Kizer, who is prosecuting the case with Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Duncan Reid and Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Cerullo.

But Collins said there is no direct evidence that Lynn killed his widowed mother.

According to testimony yesterday, Lockard's rapidly decomposing body was found at the foot of her basement stairs in the 1600 block of Lucie Lane off Gaskins Road. It was July 11, 2005.

Out-of-state family members had called police after becoming concerned that Lockard, who kept in touch with them almost daily, could not be reached.

Kizer said that cell-phone records showed that Lockard seemed to drop from sight June 29, 2005; she missed a regular hair appointment with a beloved stylist in Northern Virginia, and Lynn's suggestions to neighbors that his mother was likely on a church trip proved groundless.

But Collins, in cross-examinations of witnesses yesterday, established that in a home with a half-dozen weapons, including two shotguns, no fingerprints turned up of Lynn's; nor were there other indications of his presence that were inconsistent with someone who would often visit the home.

A firearms expert said that no shotgun shell casing turned up that could help establish the murder weapon.

Lynn told police he had visited the home three times after June 29 but did not notice his mother's body.

And he attributed the smell of rotting flesh, which investigators said almost overcame them, to his discovery of some old meat.

The trial could last through Friday.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.