Trial continues in 28-year-old slaying of young boy

The trial of a man charged with a 28-year-old murder continued this afternoon.

Yesterday a witness testified that John Bradley Crawford, talked at a party decades ago about tying up someone who "didn't put up much of a fight."

Teresa Wade of Ashland, a former classmate of Crawford's at Lee-Davis High School, told a rapt jury that his comment came in the days or weeks after the near-naked body of 6-year-old Alexander Paul Glanz was discovered in a patch of roadside weeds on Dec. 6, 1980.

Dead of exposure, the child was face down, bound at the wrists and ankles.

"I tied him up. He was kicking," Wade said she heard Crawford say, with no explanation of whom Crawford was allegedly referring to then or the context of the comment. "He didn't put up much of a fight."

Wade said, "I heard [Crawford] say [the victim] was yelling and no one could hear."

Television news reports this year told of a second mistrial in efforts to convict Crawford of Glanz's murder, and Wade said they jogged her memory. She said she called Hanover County Commonwealth's Attorney R.E. "Trip" Chalkley III to report what she remembered.

Wade told the six-man, six-woman Hanover Circuit Court jury yesterday that she had been only vaguely aware of court proceedings involving Crawford and had thought for decades that Crawford's criminal past had been dealt with.

He was convicted in 1982 of abducting two Hanover girls -- then 10 and 15 -- tying them up and leaving them in a wooded section of the county. Both survived, and Crawford was arrested shortly after the May 1981 incident. Weeks before his scheduled release from prison in late 2006, he was charged with Glanz's murder.

Six months before the sisters were abducted, a hunter discovered Glanz's body.

A Hanover detective testified yesterday that the girls' abduction prompted a second look at Crawford's possible connection to the Glanz case.

A common thread was pesticide residues on the ligatures that Crawford used to bind the girls and is accused of using to bind Glanz's wrists and ankles, Chalkley said.

The whisper-thin Highland Springs Elementary School student disappeared after getting off his school bus at his home. His mother, Diane Glanz, testified yesterday that she frantically rushed home from work when her son did not call her.

She discovered the house key still in the front door and her son's school belongings just inside the house.

"The next time I saw him, he was in a casket," Glanz said.

Crawford, then 19 and an employee of his family's pesticide business, was familiar with the home of the girls and of Glanz; the company had contracts to control pests at both addresses, according to testimony.

While a half-dozen witnesses yesterday tracked through details of finding Glanz's body off Cold Harbor Road and of the investigation into his death, Wade drew the most attention.

Her testimony apparently is the only new evidence developed in the case in 28 years, and Chalkley primed the jury for her appearance.

As the jury panel took shape, Chalkley questioned potential jurors about their willingness to believe detailed recollections of events decades old. And his first comments yesterday to the jury in opening arguments referred to what Wade would tell them.

Crawford, a solemn man shackled at the ankles at the defense table, stared blankly at Wade during her testimony.

And defense lawyer Ed Riley seemed skeptical and somewhat taken by surprise.

His first question to Wade was whether she is related to Henrico Sheriff Mike Wade. She said no.

Riley openly challenged Wade about why it took her so long to suddenly make public the overheard conversation. He pointed out the barrage of publicity that accompanied not only Glanz's death but Crawford's arrest in 2006 and subsequent jury trials, both of which ended with deadlocked juries.

Wade said she rarely watches television or reads newspapers and was living in Washington for a time.

"You've lived in a cave for 28 years?" Riley asked her at one point.

Left unanswered yesterday is whether the man Wade said Crawford was talking with will appear in court to substantiate what Wade said she overheard.

Wade identified the man as Dale Smith.

Hanover court records reveal Smith as being Ryland Dale Smith, who was convicted in October 1995 in Hanover of multiple counts of sodomy, sexual battery, possessing pornographic images and attempted fondling of a child.

According to news reports, Smith, then 33, was arrested in May 1995 and was being investigated in connection with a multistate child-pornography ring.

Smith, now 47, is housed at Sussex II State Prison.
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .