Parole Board cites seriousness of Meekins’ crimes despite his role as a state’s witness 30 years ago. Former prosecutors and a retired detective had spoken to parole officials on Meekins’ behalf.

The Virginia Parole Board has denied parole for Briley brothers accomplice Duncan Eric Meekins, officials said today. The board cited the serious nature of the crimes committed by Meekins. Authorities say Meekins and the three Briley brothers—Linwood, James and Anthony—murdered at least 11 people in the Richmond area in 1979. Linwood and James Briley were executed.

More relatives of victims in a triple murder committed by one of the Briley brothers and accomplice Duncan Eric Meekins are opposing parole for Meekins. Shurrane Webb, whose sister Judy Diane Barton was killed along with her boyfriend, Harvey W. Wilkerson, and their 5-year-old son in Richmond on Oct. 19, 1979, contacted the Virginia Parole Board this week. Webb said she is writing a letter to the board opposing Meekins’ parole, which is under consideration.

The two prosecutors who won convictions of the Briley brothers spoke on behalf of the killers’ accomplice yesterday in a closed meeting with a member of the Virginia Parole Board. Robert J. Rice, now a criminal defense attorney, and Warren Von Schuch, still a Richmond-area prosecutor, talked with Rudolph C. McCollum Jr., a former Richmond mayor who sits on the parole board, for about 30 minutes at the board’s offices in Richmond.

A relative of three people killed by the Briley brothers gang has asked the Virginia Parole Board not to release the brothers’ accomplice when board members begin voting next week. “I have not healed, nor will I heal, nor will I forgive,“ said Robert Jones of Southlake, Texas, adding that he will travel to Richmond if that’s what it takes to make himself heard.

The Great Escape on May 31, 1984, at Mecklenburg Correctional Center wasn’t the only turmoil in Virginia’s prison system that year. In June, two maximum-security inmates on an outside work detail at the State Penitentiary in Richmond briefly escaped. On July 10, mini-riots at Mecklenburg injured six inmates and 10 guards. And in early August, 32 maximum-security inmates at Mecklenburg held nine employees hostage. The takeover attempt was quelled the next morning as scores of correctional and law-enforcement officers gathered in a show of force.

On a balmy day in April 1977, Gov. Mills E. Godwin and a bevy of prison officials, some dressed in seersucker suits, performed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a cluster of grand new buildings. The cost of the state’s newest maximum-security prison would run to $19.6 million. The set of five matched units, each housing 72 inmates, promised to become a bulwark of economic opportunity across hundreds of square miles of job-poor Southside Virginia.

Linwood Earl Briley was the oldest brother, the calculating leader of the Briley brothers gang. As far as police know, he began his murderous career at age 16 when he shot and killed a 57-year-old neighbor, Orline Christian, on Jan. 28, 1971. She was hanging laundry in her backyard. She had just buried her husband, so relatives thought stress might have caused a heart attack. But when the funeral home returned the robe she had been wearing, the family noticed a small, bloody hole in the back.

Authorities list these incidents of mayhem in which the Briley gang was involved.

Times-Dispatch staff writer Bill McKelway covered the capture and the condemned prisoners last meals.

Times-Dispatch staff writer Frank Green recalls his trip to North Carolina on the hunt to find the Briley brothers. Waiting for dawn when police thought the escapees were near, nerves were fragile.

Times-Dispatch staff writer Jeff Schapiro recalls being pulled off a political convention to cover the manhunt for the Briley brothers. Word was, they wouldn’t be taken alive.

Times-Dispatch photographer Joe Mahoney remembers staking out the police station and sleeping in his car during the manhunt for the escaped killers.

Times-Dispatch staff writer Rex Springston remembers the fear in Richmond fear during the killing spree 30 years ago. .

In Richmond’s deadliest murder rampage, three Briley brothers and a teenage accomplice killed at least 11 people 30 years ago. Five years later, two of the Brileys made a stunning escape from prison. A two-part series based on exclusive new interviews begins Saturday.