Virginia State Police say probe of 1967 Staunton murder is thorough

Virginia State Police called Staunton detectives' cold-case investigation of the 1967 High's Ice Cream murders "thorough and responsible," ending a four-month probe into a mystery that appears bound to linger.

Because of the "significant lapse of time" since the murders, concerns about lead investigator Davie Bocock's handling of the case could not be resolved, state police said in a news release Tuesday. Bocock died in 2006.

Staunton Police Chief Jim Williams requested the investigation after suspect Sharron Diane Crawford Smith, 61, confessed to the crime and told authorities she had given the gun to Bocock and he had subsequently buried the weapon on his property. Smith died Jan. 19. Police never found the .25-caliber revolver used in the slayings.

"We're committed to finding the truth in this thing," Williams said, "but unfortunately 42 years have passed."

State police reviewed case files and investigators' work in the past year, tracking down answers and unearthing more questions in the April 11, 1967, slayings of Constance Hevener, 19, and her sister-in-law, Carolyn Perry, 20, at High's Ice Cream stand.

Bocock initially fingered William W. Thomas, a 24-year-old Buffalo Gap High School teacher at the time. Thomas was tried and acquitted in 1968 for Hevener's murder, and a charge against him in Perry's killing was dropped last year.

Staunton businessman Lowell Sheets and former Staunton police Detective Roy Hartless cracked the case last summer when they learned that Joyce Bradshaw, a distant relative of the murdered women, initially told police that Smith had displayed a weapon and vowed to kill her stepfather and Hevener.

Hartless said he confronted Smith last year, and she confessed.

Authorities arrested her in December on her deathbed after she told them she'd fired the fatal shots over having been teased for being a lesbian. Bocock, Smith said, taught her how to use the gun.

Speculation since has swirled over Bocock, his role and his motive. Those riddles and others, Williams said, likely never will be solved. Staunton police have abandoned their search for the murder weapon.

"Right now," the chief said, "there's nothing that we're actively following up on."

Tony Gonzalez is a staff writer for the Waynesboro News Virginian.