Many loose pieces in Staunton crime drama

AUDIO:
• The witness
• AUDIO: The investigator

As police officer Davie Bocock cruised by the High's Ice Cream store in the tiny Terry Court shopping center that Tuesday night of April 11, 1967, Staunton's most sensational crime was going down.

Constance Hevener, 19, and sister-in-law Carolyn Perry, 20, were dying in the store's cramped back room, each shot once in the head at very close range with a .25-caliber handgun. One lay on her stomach, the other on her side with her hand in a mop bucket. Blood was everywhere.

But more than 40 years later -- and after a halting death-bed confession from the woman who says she was their killer -- questions still abound about Staunton's most notorious crime.

Did the murderer really kill her two co-workers because they taunted her for being a lesbian?

Was it just a coincidence that Bocock, the alleged copgone-bad, drove by the scene within minutes of the murders?

And what would make Bocock want to protect the killer, charge an innocent man, risk prison himself and stall justice for decades?

. . .

One witness who was in the parking lot the night the young women were killed made a remarkable claim -- that Bocock drove through the parking lot three times around the time of the murders.

Bocock, who died in 2006, wrote in his notes that he drove through the parking lot once, accompanied by Detective Curtis Horn, "checking the places of business."

The man disputing Bocock's claim is William W. Thomas Jr., who as a 24-year-old Buffalo Gap High School teacher was arrested by Bocock and charged with the young women's deaths. He was tried and acquitted in 1968 of killing Hevener, and the murder charge against him in Perry's death was just recently dropped.

"He came by three times, once by himself," Thomas told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a telephone interview Thursday. Thomas, who was at a phone booth in the shopping center calling his father that night, also said it wasn't Detective Horn with Bocock but rather Detective Floyd Jarvis -- Bocock's best friend and partner.

Thomas, whose life was forever changed by the murders, said finding the killer "was a miracle . . . as was her confession."

Sharron Diane Crawford Smith confessed to the crimes in a series of interviews with Staunton detectives just before she died Jan. 19 of a variety of ailments, including heart failure. She was 60.

In Smith's sometimes-rambling, confusing and contradictory confessions, she said Bocock knew she was the killer, that he let her stay at his farm outside Staunton right after the murders -- and that he even buried the murder weapon in a metal box on his farm while she watched.

Smith never explained why Bocock protected her.

She claimed Bocock was just a friend who had taught her how to shoot. At one point in her confession, however, she said Bocock visited her often before the murders.

They would have been an unusual pair. Bocock, who was tall, lanky and married, was more than twice her age. One of Staunton's police detectives told Smith during an interrogation: "Bocock, he ran the town, is what we were told . . . so he had a lot of dirt on a lot of people from what we understand."

Bocock's son Robert still lives in Staunton. A family member who answered the phone at Robert Bocock's house said he would not discuss his father or the crimes.

. . .

Constance Hevener, known as Connie, had been a cheerleader at Fort Defiance High School in Augusta County and was married. Carolyn Perry, also married, was the mother of a 2-year-old girl.

At the time of the murders, Smith was an 18-year-old high school graduate who was working low-paying jobs at the ice cream store and at Western State Hospital. She was on her own, driving a 1957 Chevrolet and living in various apartments in Staunton.

Joyce Bradshaw, her supervisor at the hospital, described Smith as a woman who was "very smart. Mean smart. She had a glare in her eyes. She thought she was superior to other people."

Smith was bisexual, according to several people who knew her. She was married for 10 years and had children, but she lived the last two decades of her life in Staunton with a woman. Police said they believe Smith killed Hevener and Perry because they taunted her for being a lesbian. Though more than $130 was taken, police don't believe robbery was a motive.

In her rambling confessions, in which investigators often prodded her and asked leading questions, Smith said she argued with her co-workers that night.

"Things got heated," she told police, according to the transcripts of the confession. "And it was just bickering back and forth, back and forth until we got to the back room.

"I told Connie I couldn't work the next night, and she got upset and started saying things, and Carolyn came from the back and started saying stuff.

"And it happened."

Some of the arguments included jabs about Smith being a lesbian, though Smith never used that word. She gave no details of the actual act of shooting and often spoke in a strange, surreal way.

"And [the police] never hunted you down to question you or anything?" Smith was asked during one interrogation.

Smith: "Well, I took up the art of hiding, a good one."

"You did what?"

Smith: "Took up the art of hiding, a good one."

"Did Mr. Bocock help you with that hiding?"

Smith: "Yeah."

. . .

The murders touched off hysteria in the small town.

Residents called in names of people who simply owned small-caliber handguns. They called in to report acquaintances who suddenly had cash.

But Bocock zeroed in on Thomas as his fall guy so zealously that almost up until Smith's arrest, police still considered him a suspect.

The mystery of who killed Hevener and Perry was solved only by the initial efforts of Bradshaw and Lowell Sheets, a Staunton businessman with an interest in the case.

Bradshaw said she knew it was Smith from the moment she learned the two ice-cream store clerks were killed. Bradshaw recounted how Smith picked her up for a drive sometime before the murders and went to a fast-food restaurant in Staunton. In the parking lot, Smith told Bradshaw to look in the glove department; Bradshaw saw a small handgun.

"I think she was trying to impress me," Bradshaw said.

Smith told Bradshaw she had a bullet in the gun for her stepfather and another "for the Hevener girl who lived on Grubert Avenue." That was where Constance Hevener lived. Smith also called the gun her "baby."

Bradshaw, after hearing about the murders, went to Bocock with her story. "I knew she had done it," Bradshaw said. Bocock seemed dismissive. He claimed that ballistics performed on Smith's gun as well as a lie-detector test eliminated her as a suspect.

Bradshaw said she didn't believe Bocock.

"I didn't trust him," she said. "He always had eyes for women and a smirky grin.

"I wanted to talk to someone about this for years," said Bradshaw, who is now 74. She said that in the past few months, attempts have been made on her life because of her part in the investigation. Twice, she said, cars have come close to hitting her, including once when she stood at her mailbox and was forced to jump out of the way as the car hurtled by.

Sheets, who runs an appliance business in Staunton, said that when he met with Bradshaw on June 24, she "told me exactly what I was trying to find out. . . . It was just an amazing thing, Joyce coming forth. I don't know if we would ever have come onto [Smith] if not for Joyce. Then I really went into high gear."

Sheets, with the help of a friend, found Smith dying in a Harrisonburg medical facility and confronted her about the murders.

"Her reaction to me was not of an innocent person," Sheets said. "Her lips turned white and they were quivering. I had no doubt in my mind that Sharron Diane Crawford Smith was involved in this."

Sheets said he didn't believe Smith was sorry for the crimes.

"I don't think she showed one bit of remorse, almost like it was just two bugs she stepped on," he said.

. . .

Sheets turned over all of his information to private investigator Roy Hartless, a former Staunton detective, who also was investigating the case. Beginning at the end of July, Staunton police began their investigation of Smith.

Though critics said police dragged their feet in the Smith investigation, hoping Smith would die, Staunton Police Chief Jim Williams has said investigators were eager to solve the case.

Hundreds of pages of documents, notes and court papers from the investigation were released to reporters last week to quash suspicions that the police were still protecting their own. The papers are comprehensive and show that police, at times, moved with bureaucratic slowness, and at other times with vigor.

Bradshaw doesn't believe the two girls were killed for taunting Smith about her sexual preference. She believes the women were killed over a romantic triangle that involved Bocock.

Sheets also doubts the motive and believes that a dispute over Bocock may have been the motive.

But Thomas, whose life was so disrupted, is not yet ready to let the story go.

"The hardest part is to not let that be a reason for failure. I've done nothing spectacular or made a lot of money. . . . I've had an interesting life though I couldn't hold a relationship," he said. "But I'm satisfied I was heard and I was believed, and I'm relieved she did confess.

"But there's more of the story to come out."

Meanwhile, the Staunton Police Department on Friday requested assistance from the Virginia State Police to review its investigation into the murders of Hevener and Perry. Staunton police are also continuing their efforts to find the murder weapon, dealing with national media attention and trying to put to rest the city's crime of the century.

Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or .