DNA apparently links man to 88-year-old woman’s slaying
The DNA profile of a man accused in the slaying of an elderly widow more than three decades ago allegedly was found on the victim's undergarments this year.
After the evidence was outlined at a hearing yesterday, rape and murder charges against Thomas Pope Jr., 53, were certified to the Greensville County grand jury.
The victim, Eva King Jones, 88, a retired teacher, lived alone in a brick home across the street from the Emporia police station. She was assaulted and slain in the home the night of Jan. 2, 1975.
Pope, a small, balding man with a salt-and-pepper beard, wore glasses, leg chains and an orange jail jumpsuit yesterday. He was convicted of two unrelated sex offenses in Richmond in 1991.
Sitting a few feet behind Pope during yesterday's preliminary hearing was Jeffrey Moore of Staten Island, N.Y., son of the late Curtis Jasper Moore -- an apparently innocent man wrongfully convicted of the crimes in 1978.
Moore died in April 2006 and never learned of the new DNA evidence. While he died in freedom -- his convictions were tossed out after a court ruled his rights were violated -- a cloud of suspicion remained.
"Why did it take so long?" his son asked after the hearing. "DNA is the greatest thing," he said.
Eugene King, a relative of the slain woman, agrees. At an earlier hearing, King credited former Gov. Mark R. Warner for the testing program that led to Pope's arrest.
Moore had just been released from a mental institution when police picked him up less than a week after the slaying. After implicating himself during questioning, he was convicted in 1978. He was released in 1983 and was living with family in California when he died.
Then in August, Pope was charged as a result of a groundbreaking, 3-year-old DNA review. Warner, now a Democratic U.S. senator-elect, ordered the review of evidence in old state forensic files to clear people wrongly convicted of serious crimes from 1973 through 1988.
Moore has not yet been exonerated, but his son said yesterday that he and his family never doubted his innocence.
"It took a lot of willpower for us to stick together," he said.
Lisa Schiermeier-Wood, a DNA examiner and supervisor with the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, testified yesterday that tests on samples from two of the victim's undergarments and a pillow found her DNA and that of another person.
Pope's DNA profile also was developed, and he could not be excluded as the donor of the DNA found on the evidence. His profile would be expected to be found in one in 1.1 billion whites, one in 81 million blacks and one in 1.7 billion Hispanics.
Schiermeier-Wood said she could not determine whether the DNA found on the crime-scene evidence was from blood, saliva, semen or other biological material.
A state police special agent testified that when he spoke with Pope last summer, Pope denied committing the crimes and said he had no idea how his DNA wound up at the crime scene.
General District Judge Theodore J. Burr Jr. certified the charges to the grand jury at the end of the hearing.
Greensville County Commonwealth's Attorney Patricia Watson said the grand jury is expected to meet Feb. 3. She said that if he is indicted, Pope's trial is expected to take place next year.
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