It was 2:30 a.m. by the time Mike Niday got home, and the beers he’d drunk with friends soon lulled him into a peaceful sleep.
Two hours later, the electronic shriek of smoke alarms jolted him awake.
“I got up and looked out the door and ‘Bam!,’ flames shot back in my face,” Niday said last week as he recalled what happened at his downtown Roanoke rooming house the morning of May 18, 1998.
As thick smoke poured into the room, Niday covered his face with a bedsheet and searched frantically for his clothes in the darkness and searing heat that filled his one-room apartment.
With flames licking his back, Niday gave up his search. He perched on the windowsill of his second-story room, grabbed a drainage pipe and slid to safety.
Across the street, Niday stood in just his boxer shorts and watched a ravenous blaze devour the dry wood of the ramshackle house at 502 Church Ave.
“It was just a scary thing, thinking about if I hadn’t have made it out,” Niday said. “I was just one of the lucky ones.”
Six people were not so lucky. They died in what is believed to be Roanoke’s deadliest arson and the worst mass killing in Virginia since the Department of Criminal Justice Services began keeping track in 1986.
On Tuesday, Brian E. Jackson will go on trial in Roanoke Circuit Court on charges of setting the fire. If convicted of arson and six counts of murder, the 22-year-old will face up to seven life sentences.
As jurors will soon learn, police believe the fiery deaths of Willie Mae Green, Percy Junior McClease, Walter Bernard Green, Summer Green, Robert Conteh and William “Red” Jones were directly related to the shooting death of Kevin Lee Jones just three hours earlier.
Jones was Jackson’s cousin. Willie Caldwell, the man charged with killing Jones, lived at 502 Church Ave.
Police have suspected from the beginning, when the rubble of the rooming house was still smoldering, that Jackson and others set the fire to avenge his cousin’s death.
The origin of such a murderous night? According to earlier testimony, it was a petty dispute over $10 worth of marijuana – something the six fire victims, Niday and about a dozen other rooming house residents had nothing to do with.
A fatal shooting
Tonya Rakes, a Roanoke firefighter/paramedic, was working out of Station No. 3 the morning of May 18 when she was called to the first of what would be seven homicides in a single shift.
When the ambulance arrived at 301 Gilmer Ave. about 1:30 a.m., Kevin Lee Jones was lying on the living room floor, a gunshot wound to his gut.
Overturned beer bottles and scattered throw rugs littered the floor.
“There was beer everywhere, I remember that,” Rakes said recently.
“Everybody was reeking of beer.”
Jones was screaming that he couldn’t breathe. Doctors would later discover that a bullet had nicked his lung, which was steadily filling up with blood.
As Rakes and another paramedic tried to help Jones, he grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go.
Somehow, paramedics got Jones onto a gurney and rushed him to Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital. A short time later, he was dead.
While doctors worked in vain to save Jones’ life, police interrogated Willie Caldwell. The 38-year-old told them that on the night before, Jones, Jackson and two other men had beaten him outside his house at 502 Church Ave.
Caldwell would later tell a jury that Jackson in particular was angry because he had refused to sell him $10 worth of marijuana several days earlier.
“He always run his mouth and stuff, getting smart and stuff,” Caldwell testified. “I said, that daggone weed must be worse than crack if he acting like this for it.”
Several hours after the fight, Caldwell walked to 301 Gilmer, arriving about 1 a.m. He ended up in a confrontation with Jones. Caldwell told a jury in 1998 that Jones pulled a gun on him, and the 26-year-old was shot accidentally as they struggled for the weapon.
The jury believed Caldwell, acquitting him of murder.
Those close to Jones saw it differently. On the morning of May 18, tempers were running hot. As Rakes left the hospital, she noticed an unruly crowd in the waiting area. They were friends and relatives of Jones.
And, Rakes said, “they were pretty angry.”
The fire that followed
Back at the fire station, it was past 4 when Rakes had drifted off to sleep.
Another call came across the radio. A 10-71, police lingo for a fire in progress, was reported at 502 Church Ave. “Flames showing,” the dispatcher said.
Rakes was in the first ambulance to arrive at the scene. Tongues of fire were shooting out of the windows of the three-story house, and the roof was on the verge of collapsing into the inferno.
People later told Rakes that when she shouted into her radio for backup, paramedics and firefighters immediately jumped to their feet – understanding the urgency in her voice before the meaning of her words sank in.
After calling for help, Rakes spotted some people who appeared injured and started toward them. Then, for reasons she still cannot explain, she stopped.
“This guy fell from a third-story window and landed at my feet. He was on fire. It scared me to death. I thought I was in a movie.” Had she not stopped, Rakes said, William “Red” Jones would have landed on top of her.
Instead, he fell head-first onto the pavement of Fifth Street. Rakes dropped to her knees and was surprised to find the man still alive. As she began to check his airway and vital signs, bedlam reigned all around her.
Sirens wailed. People screamed. Glass exploded from the heat. More residents of the home jumped from windows. The roof and upper floors collapsed in a shower of sparks, and the raging fire spread to a vacant house next door.
Firefighters pumped 3,000 gallons of water a minute onto the fire, but it was like trying to douse a campfire with a thimbleful of water.
On the way to the hospital, Jones “kept asking if he was going to be OK,” Rakes said. “We’re not supposed to lie, so I said ‘I don’t know.’ I just told him I would try my best to take care of him.”
With third-degree burns covering 60 percent of his body, Jones was airlifted to the University of Virginia Medical Center. He died there three weeks later.
By then, autopsies had identified the five bodies, burned beyond recognition, that were pulled from the building’s remains. With Jones’ death, May 18 accounted for half the homicides in Roanoke for all of 1998.
“It was incredible,” Rakes said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The trial to come
Rakes and Niday were among more than 100 witnesses subpoenaed to testify at Jackson’s trial, which is scheduled to last through Friday.
But last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that their testimony will not be needed. In a move that Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell said would speed up the trial considerably, both sides agreed to stipulate – or tell the jury there was a mutual agreement – that the fire was deliberately set, and that the six victims died as a result of it.
That eliminates the need for testimony from fire investigators, medical examiners and witnesses from the fire scene.
An abbreviated prosecution is expected to focus instead on the testimony of others who were either involved with the fire or claim they later heard Jackson make incriminating statements.
Michael “Jay” Clements, a friend of Jackson’s who was with him the night of the fire, has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of arson as a principal in the second degree. In return for a 25-year prison sentence, Clements agreed in October to testify for the prosecution against any others charged in connection with the fire. The following month, Jackson was indicted.
At an earlier hearing, prosecutors said Clements has given the following account: After learning that Jones had died, he and Jackson were riding around when they picked up a third, unidentified man.
In exchange for drugs, the man agreed to buy gas at an all-night convenience store and set the fire at 502 Church Ave., Clements said. Although the fire was intended for Caldwell, he was in police custody by then. Oblivious, the men drove off, leaving the fire to claim six innocent victims.
Since Clements gave that account, no charges have been filed against the suspect, who has not been identified in court.
The man, currently serving a prison sentence for an unrelated crime, has been subpoenaed as a defense witness, according to sources close to the case.
Chris Kowalczuk, a Roanoke lawyer who, with Richard Lawrence, represents Jackson, declined to say last week if the man is expected to testify.
“We have subpoenaed many people that we think will be able to help Mr. Jackson,” Kowalczuk said. “Brian Jackson maintains his innocence, as he has done from the beginning.”
Clements and the third suspect may not be the only witnesses to appear before the jury wearing jailhouse clothes.
Prosecutors said last week that they were negotiating with three inmates -derided by Kowalczuk as “jailhouse snitches” – who have offered to tell a jury about incriminating statements they reportedly heard Jackson make since his arrest last year.
The defense wants to learn more about those witnesses. On Friday, Judge Clifford Weckstein postponed the start of Jackson’s trial from Monday to Tuesday to give lawyers more time to prepare.
A crime scene forgotten
In better days, the Victorian house that stood at Church Avenue and Fifth Street was a bustling, vibrant place. At the turn of the century, it was a boarding house for men who came to Roanoke for high-paying jobs with the railroad.
By the 1990s, though, it was “clearly a neglected property, and in need of significant repair,” according to a neighborhood study conducted for the city.
The house had the kind of slightly spooky look that attracted producers of “The Addams Family,” who strongly considered filming the movie in Roanoke before settling on a different site.
With rooms that went for $60 a week, 502 Church attracted the poor, the transient, the socially disadvantaged. The 13-unit house was just two blocks from the city jail, and many residents had slept in both places.
A private investigator who worked the fire said the rooming house, known on the streets as the “Honeycomb Hideout,” was a popular spot for people who had good reason to keep a low profile.
Within days of the fire, what was left of the house was bulldozed and hauled away. All that remains today is a gravel parking lot.
There is no monument to the six victims, no marker to designate the spot of the city’s most devastating fire in recent history.
The only reminder of what happened is a bouquet of roses tied to a utility pole with a yellow ribbon, apparently left behind from a candlelight vigil held last month on the fire’s two-year anniversary.
The roses are faded now.
The Church Avenue fire
SHOT TO DEATH
– Kevin Lee Jones, 26. Shot to death on the morning of May 18, 1998 in a fight with Willie Caldwell, the culmination of a feud that began over a small drug deal. Authorities say friends of Jones then set fire to Caldwell’s rooming house to avenge his death. Caldwell, who said the shooting was accidental, was later acquitted.
FIRE VICTIMS
– Percy Junior McClease, 48. Injured while parachuting from a helicopter in Vietnam, he was on disability. He and his girlfriend had lived at 502 Church for about a year.
– Willie Mae Green, 50. McClease’s girlfriend. They had been together about 10 years. She worked at the Ramada Inn on Franklin Road.
– Walter Bernard Green, 21. Son of Willie Mae Green.
– Summer Green, 18. Wife of Walter Green. Once aspired to be an actress, but dropped out of school and obtained her GED. She and Walter were described as inseparable.
– Robert Conteh, 51. A native of Sierra Leone, he came to the United States in 1977 to study at Hampton University. But he battled alcoholism, and wound up working odd jobs in Roanoke.
– William “Red” Jones, 43. Disabled, the Maryland native settled in Roanoke because he loved the mountains. He jumped from his third floor window, and died several weeks later in the hospital.
PLEADED GUILTY
Michael “Jay” Clements. Pleaded guilty in October to arson, and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the fire. Authorities say he was present when the fire was set.
CHARGED
Brian Jackson. The former member of the Patrick Henry High School basketball team is charged with six counts of murder. Authorities say he was present when the fire was set.
A THIRD PERSON?
Authorites say a third person bought the gasoline and set the fire, but he has not been identified or charged.
Witness names 3rd man in arson as trial begins
Pointing to where his friend sat in the defendant’s chair, Michael “Jay” Clements told a jury Tuesday he had help setting a fire that killed six residents of a Roanoke rooming house.
Clements identified Brian E. Jackson as one of the two men with him the night they torched 502 Church Ave.
In honoring a plea agreement that gave him 25 years in prison in exchange for his testimony against Jackson, Clements did two things: He ended the suspense over whether he would go through with the deal, and he named a third suspect who previously had not been identified in court.
Andrew “T-Bird” Terry was the one who actually set fire to the downtown rooming house while Clements and Jackson waited in a car during the pre-dawn hours of May 18, 1998, Clements testified.
He said Jackson urged Terry to buy gas and set the fire, offering drugs as an incentive, because he was angry that his cousin had been shot three hours earlier by a resident of the rooming house.
“Brian said he wanted the house burned down,” Clements told a jury in Roanoke Circuit Court, where Jackson’s trial enters a second day today.
Since pleading guilty to his role in the arson last year, Clements has told authorities that Terry set the fire. But so far, he and Jackson are the only ones to face charges. Asked about the possibility of a third prosecution against Terry, Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell said Tuesday that he could not comment until Jackson’s trial is over.
As the defense sees it, anything Clements says is suspect – tainted by his own self-interest in accepting a plea agreement and further clouded by his many inconsistent statements.
“Jay Clements has told so many different versions of this. … It’s hard for me to keep track,” defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk told the jury in his opening statements.
On cross-examination, Kowalczuk grilled Clements about accounts he reportedly gave to fellow inmates that portrayed himself or others besides Jackson as the culprits in the city’s worst mass murder in recent history.
“I’m not sure,” Clements responded over and over, appearing more and more reluctant as the questioning wore on. When pressed further, he did not deny making earlier statements that are in direct conflict with the version he now says is the truth.
“Sir, how does anyone know when you’re telling the truth?” Kowalczuk asked.
Clements responded that he has more motivation now than ever before to tell what really happened. Five more years would be added to his 25-year sentence if he refused to testify, he said, and authorities threatened to bring perjury charges against him if he didn’t cooperate.
Still, when asked if he was testifying because he got caught, Clements responded: “That’s exactly right.”
Although Kowalczuk filed a motion Monday stating that Clements had told him he did not plan to testify against Jackson, the defense attorney did not ask him about his decision to reconsider.
There was speculation that Clements feared the consequences of being labeled a snitch in the prison population, and that he was loath to incriminate his friend. His testimony seemed to cut both ways: While he avoided the possibility of another five years by incriminating Jackson, he did it in a way that left him vulnerable to credibility attacks from the defense.
Without telling the jury whether his client plans to testify, Kowalczuk outlined the following defense: Jackson was home at the time the fire was set by Clements, who implicated his good friend only after the police had closed in on him.
“This man is innocent,” Kowalczuk said of his client.
However, the prosecution has witnesses who can place Jackson at the rooming house just 10 hours before it was set on fire. The 22-year-old was part of a group of angry young men who threatened to return and burn the house down, Caldwell said.
Those threats were made after Clements, Jackson and Jackson’s cousin, Kevin Lee Jones, got the better of Willie Caldwell in a fight outside his home at 502 Church Ave. A short time later, Caldwell confronted Jones at a Gilmer Avenue home. Jones was fatally shot as they struggled for a gun.
According to Clements, he and Jackson recruited Terry to set the fire less than three hours after Jones was shot. “More or less revenge for shooting Kevin,” he said when asked why Jackson wanted Caldwell’s house burned down.
The three men then drove off without realizing the deadly consequences of a petty dispute that started over Caldwell’s refusal to sell them drugs, according to earlier testimony. Killed in the fire were Willie Mae Green, 50; her boyfriend, Percy Junior McClease, 48; her son, Walter Bernard Green, 21; his wife, Summer Green, 18; Robert Conteh, 51; and William “Red” Jones, 43.
Even if Jackson did not actually set the fire, prosecutors contend, there is ample evidence to convict him of arson and six counts of murder.
The question is “not that he struck the match, not that he was even present when it was lit, but that he was involved in the planning and execution of this fire,” Caldwell told the jury.
Later in the trial, Terry is expected to testify. He will say that he bought gasoline for Clements the morning of the fire, but that he had nothing to do with what happened after that, Kowalczuk said.
The multi-convicted felon, currently in prison on a charge unrelated to the fire, is also expected to tell the jury that Jackson was not in Clements’ car at the time he bought the gas.
The case is scheduled to resume this morning at 9:15.
Police say Jackson had motive for arson
As the search for bodies began amid the charred rubble of 502 Church Ave., Brian E. Jackson was sitting in an interrogation room at the Roanoke Police Department.
Across the table was Sgt. Stan Smith, who knew Jackson had fought with one of the rooming house’s residents, Willie Caldwell, the night before. Smith also knew Caldwell had been charged with killing Jackson’s cousin a short time later. And he knew Caldwell’s house had later gone up in flames.
No bodies had been found at the time, but police figured they had a multiple homicide on their hands. And Jackson was a prime suspect.
As Smith explained: “That has kind of crossed our mind a little bit and that’s just another reason why we wanted to talk to you, because you’re a relative.”
Jackson: “Yeah.”
Smith: “You were there when the altercation took place.”
Jackson: “Uh-huh.”
Smith: “You left the hospital [where Jackson’s cousin died] about 4 o’clock. You would have had an opportunity to go by there, dump a little gas, set a little …”
Jackson: “Nah!”
Smith: “… fire and slide on away.”
Jackson: “Nah. I swear, man. I’m getting ready to tell you right now: I’m strong. I wouldn’t do no s— like that … That’s sinking too low, but my mom raised me better, man.”
More than two years later, Jackson is now charged with arson and the murders of six people who died in the rooming house fire. During the second day of his trial Wednesday, a tape recording of Jackson’s statement to Smith was played to jurors in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Jackson is adamant throughout the statement that he had nothing to do with the blaze, which broke out about 4:30 a.m. May 18, 1998. “I’m stronger than that,” he said when asked if he could have set fire to a home while its occupants slept.
The 22-year-old told Smith that he, his cousin Kevin Lee Jones, and two other friends got the better of Caldwell in a fight the night of May 17 outside his run-down rooming house across Church Avenue from the downtown YMCA.
And he said he was upset to learn some hours later that Caldwell had confronted Jones and shot him at a Gilmer Avenue apartment. Jackson said he waited at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for word on Jones’ condition until about 4 a.m.
But he told Smith he was home during the crucial hour of 4 to 5 a.m., when the fire was set.
Michael “Jay” Clements, a friend of Jackson’s who was with him for much of the night, told a different story to the jury Tuesday.
Clements – who pleaded guilty last year to helping set the fire and received a 25-year sentence in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors – testified that he and Jackson left the hospital about 4 a.m. and ran into Andrew “T-Bird” Terry.
At Jackson’s urging, Terry purchased gasoline from an all-night convenience store and set fire to the rooming house while Jackson and Clements waited in the car, Clements told the jury.
Clements said Jackson wanted the house burned down to get back at Caldwell for shooting his cousin.
Although defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk lambasted Clements on cross-examination for the different versions he has given about what happened, the statement Jackson gave police was not without conflicts.
Jackson first told Smith he found out about the fire by watching the early morning news at his mother’s house. He later said a friend told him. And he later said that he happened across the smoking building while making yet another drive to the hospital to check on his cousin.
As his words were played to the jury, Jackson sat with his head bowed, studying a transcript of the tape-recorded statement.
Earlier in the day, jurors watched a grisly videotape that showed five bodies, burned beyond recognition, being pulled from the remains of the rooming house, which was destroyed.
“It was probably the worst crime scene that I’ve ever seen,” said Smith, a long-time veteran of the Police Department.
Killed in the fire were Willie Mae Green, 50; her boyfriend, Percy Junior McClease, 48; her son, Walter Bernard Green, 21; his wife, Summer Green, 18; and Robert Conteh, 51. A sixth victim, William “Red” Jones, 43, died three weeks later.
When the trial resumes this morning at 9:15, the jury is expected to hear from Willie Caldwell – who has been acquitted of murder in Kevin Jones’ death – about the events leading up to the fire.
Jury to get Church Avenue mass murder case today
After hearing three days of conflicting stories as thick as the smoke that rose from Roanoke’s deadliest arson, a jury must decide today if Brian E. Jackson goes to prison for his role in the fire.
Jackson is one of three men accused of killing six residents of a run-down rooming house at 502 Church Ave.
With no eyewitness to say who torched the house while its occupants slept, the jury will return to Roanoke Circuit Court today to consider different accounts told by Jackson, co-defendant Michael “Jay” Clements, and a third suspect implicated by Clements but not charged by authorities.
That man, Andrew “T-Bird” Terry, testified for the defense Thursday, two days after Clements accused him of setting the fire at Jackson’s direction.
Terry, a convicted felon and crack addict, told the jury he bought 94 cents worth of gasoline in the predawn hours of May 18, 1998, with no idea it would be used minutes later to fuel a deadly fire.
As he walked the streets of the West End neighborhood at 4 a.m., Terry testified, Clements and another man pulled up in a white Nissan, offering him drugs if he got gasoline for them from an all-night convenience store.
Clements told the jury as much, but for one detail. Clements said the man in the car with him was Jackson; Terry swore that it was not. And Terry said there was no truth to Clements’ testimony that after buying the fuel, he set fire to 502 Church Ave. while the other two men waited in the car.
“No, I did not,” Terry said when asked by defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk if he set the fire.
Although Terry has not been charged, prosecutors have said they suspect a third person was involved. Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell has declined to comment about the possibility of additional charges until after Jackson’s trial.
Jackson, 22, maintains he was home when the fire was set by Clements.
Jackson’s best friend later implicated him as a way to strike a deal with prosecutors, the defense asserts. Clements was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year on a reduced charge in exchange for his testimony.
If the jury convicts Jackson of arson and six counts of murder, the trial will enter a sentencing phase. He could face a maximum punishment of seven life terms in prison.
With Jackson electing not to testify, the jury heard his version through a tape-recorded statement in which he told Sgt. Stan Smith he would never sink so low as to set fire to a houseful of sleeping people.
“I’m stronger than that,” Jackson told Smith.
When closing arguments are made this morning, prosecutors will lay out their theory that Jackson, accompanied by Clements, set out to torch the rooming house to avenge the death of Jackson’s cousin, who was fatally shot three hours earlier by one of the house’s residents.
Willie Caldwell, who was later acquitted of murdering Kevin Lee Jones, testified Thursday that the shooting was an accident. He said it happened during a struggle for a gun several hours after Jones, Jackson and Clements had beaten him up in front of 502 Church Ave.
As his attackers left the scene of the first fight, Caldwell testified, they threatened to return and make things worse.
“We’ll burn this house down,” he quoted Jackson as yelling from the window of a car that sped away from the rooming house, which stood across Church Avenue and Fifth Street from the downtown YMCA.
According to Caldwell, the street feud began several days before the fire, when he refused to help Jackson buy $10 worth of marijuana.
Before resting Thursday afternoon, the defense called just two witnesses.
Terry’s testimony followed that of Kerrin Tisdale, a witness to Jones’ shooting. While Tisdale’s description differed from Caldwell’s, what he said on cross-examination bolstered the prosecution’s case.
Of the friends and relatives who converged at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital as Jones was near death, Jackson and Clements were the first to leave, Tisdale said.
They drove off about 4 a.m., half an hour before the fire broke out.
Killed in the fire were Willie Mae Green, 50; her boyfriend, Percy Junior McClease, 48; her son, Walter Bernard Green, 21; his wife, Summer Green, 18; Robert Conteh, 51; and William “Red” Jones, 43, who died three weeks later.
Just how did they die? The jury can consider the following alternatives:
As told by Clements, Terry set the fire while he and Jackson waited in the car. Under that theory, Clements and Jackson would be guilty as principals in the second degree, the offense Clements was convicted of last year.
As told by Jackson, he was home when the fire was set. The defense now maintains it was Clements who torched the house.
As told by Terry, Clements and an unidentified passenger in his car presumably set the fire after Clements paid him in crack for buying the gasoline.
All three accounts have a common trait – to some degree, the tellers have offered other, conflicting stories about what happened or did not happen the night of Roanoke’s worst mass murder in recent history.
Sometime today, after all is said in the courtroom, jurors will take their seats around a circular table and begin deliberations. Jackson will be in a nearby holding cell, waiting for their verdict.
2-year wait for justice stretches 7 ½ more long hours for victims’ kin
Twenty minutes after the jury filed out of the courtroom to begin deliberations, Angela Linkous looks at her watch.
It is 12:15.
“I just hope it won’t be that long,” Linkous says as she pushes her mother’s wheelchair down a hallway in the Roanoke City Courthouse.
For the past four days, Linkous has been sitting in courtroom No. 3, listening to how her daughter, Summer Green, died with five other people in Roanoke’s worst mass murder in recent history.
“It’s been really hard,” she says.
But the hardest part – waiting for the verdict – is just beginning.
12:50. Outside the courthouse, Doris Triplett sits in her wheelchair and smokes a cigarette.
“I hope they take long enough to come to the right decision,” says Triplett, Green’s grandmother. Two years ago, Triplett watched the trial for Willie Caldwell, who was accused in the shooting that led up to the arson of 502 Church Ave.
“When they came out and said he was not guilty, I almost passed out,” Triplett says. “I couldn’t believe it. I guess it just shows you never know what’s going to happen.”
1:10. Harold Durham shifts uncomfortably in one of the hard, plastic chairs outside the courtroom. He has been here every day since Tuesday.
“I wanted to see justice for the people that passed away in the fire,” he says. Durham could have been one of them; he was a resident of the rooming house, and escaped the May 18, 1998, fire by jumping through a window.
The worst thing about the case, as he sees it, is that six people died over an argument they had nothing to do with.
1:35. Linkous, Triplett and other relatives of Green’s make a quick trip to the courthouse snack bar, figuring a verdict is still some time away. The jury might want to view some of the exhibits, which include a gruesome videotape of the bodies being removed from the rubble.
Linkous could not see the video from where she sat, and for that she is grateful. “I wanted the last memory I had of her [Summer] to stay with me.”
That memory was of the Saturday night before the fire, when Linkous, Summer Green and friends spent a carefree night dancing.
1:50. The jury files back into the courtroom, but there’s no verdict. The panel has asked for a tape player so they can listen a second time to defendant Brian E. Jackson’s statement to police.
2:25. As anticipation builds, the crowd in the third-floor hallway grows larger. Liza Sowers rejoins the group. A resident of the house, she called 911 the morning of the fire, then listened helplessly as her friends inside called for help.
“Yeah, I think they’re all guilty,” she says. She wonders why Michael “Jay” Clements, Jackson’s co-defendant, got just 25 years in prison, and why a third suspect has yet to be charged.
She thinks it may be because everyone who burned up in the fire was poor. “I guess if you’ve got a name or money, more’s done,” she says.
3:22. Anticipation turns to boredom. Kathy Barker paces the hall, looking at the portraits of long-dead judges that line the wall. It’s been more than three hours now, but she and other relatives refuse to think there might be acquittal.
“At least they’re going through everything,” Barker says. “They’re not jumping the gun. Besides, God’s the one that’s going to do the right thing.”
4:30. As television crews set up outside the courthouse for live shots, Doris Triplett keeps her wheelchair close to the courtroom. She wonders about an acquittal. “In a way, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
One thing she’s sure of: If her granddaughter had survived the fire, she would be there in the courthouse hall, waiting for justice for the victims.
“Summer was a very compassionate person,” Triplett said.
5:55. “Six hours, and I don’t have the foggiest idea why it’s taking so long,” Linkous says as she walks the hallway for the umpteenth time.
“I just know it’s been the longest six hours of my life,” she said. As bad as hearing some of the trial was, she said, this is worse. “Not knowing what’s going on back there, that’s the hardest part.”
6:45. There’s a stir among the reporters and spectators waiting in the hall when Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell and defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk make an appearance. But the lawyers have no news.
7:35. Kowalczuk appears again, and this time the news is clear from his expression. He nods. The jury has a verdict.
As the courtroom quickly fills, Caldwell walks over to Linkous and the other relatives. “Remember what I told you before,” he tells them. No matter what happens, no outbursts.
Deputies lead Jackson from his holding cell. He is wearing the same blue plaid shirt and the same poker face he has shown all week.
The jury comes back into the crowded but silent courtroom and takes the same seats they have occupied all week. The first verdict Judge Clifford Weckstein reads is the arson charge.
Guilty.
Then the murders.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Kowalczuk flinches slightly after the first verdict, but his client remains stone-faced.
Across the courtroom, Linkous grabs Barker’s hand. But for all the anxiety that led up to this moment, she is relatively unemotional.
There is no glee, no gloating that Jackson will spend much of the rest of his life in prison.
“I just want to say that our prayers are with his family,” Linkous says later, after a 125-year sentence is recommended for Jackson. “They lost somebody just like we lost somebody. We can understand that.”
Jury convicts Jackson of arson, 6 murders
Brian E. Jackson was convicted Friday night of Roanoke’s deadliest arson in a trial that proved how a trifling street feud led to horrible consequences.
After deliberating 7 1/2 hours, a Circuit Court jury found Jackson guilty of arson and six counts of murder for his role in torching a ramshackle rooming house while its occupants slept, killing six people.
With some jurors near tears, the panel recommended that Jackson serve 125 years in prison. A sentencing hearing is tentatively set for July 24.
Both sides agreed on this: As awful as his crime was, Jackson never meant to kill anyone in the fire, which was set as part of an ongoing dispute that began with angry words over $10 worth of marijuana.
The jury’s sentence is the lowest term the 22-year-old could receive. And, lawyers said, it was an obvious sign that the jury had struggled with a case that rested largely on the much-disputed testimony of co-defendant Michael “Jay” Clements. In return for his testimony against Jackson, Clements received a 25-year prison sentence as part of a plea agreement.
“I do appreciate the jury’s obvious turmoil with the problem that the commonwealth had to enter into a deal with the person who was equally responsible for this,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell said after the verdict.
But with no eyewitness and less-than-credible witnesses all around, Caldwell said he had no choice but to cut a deal with Clements to bring all the culprits to justice.
Although the jury heard many accounts of what happened in the predawn hours of May 18, 1998, it settled on this one:
Jackson, Clements and a third suspect set the fire to avenge the death of Jackson‘s cousin, who had been shot hours earlier by a resident of the rooming house at 502 Church Ave. The shooting evolved from an earlier fistfight at the house, which in turn evolved from an earlier argument over drugs.
Throughout the four-day trial, defense attorneys Chris Kowalczuk and Richard Lawrence assailed Clements’ believability, saying he set the fire and framed his best friend to avoid seven life sentences.
But in his closing argument, Caldwell produced an item of evidence that was hardly mentioned during the trial.
It was a letter Jackson wrote to Clements a few months after the fire.
Clements was in jail on an unrelated charge, and police were close to charging him with the fire, based on comments he had made to an inmate-turned-informant who was secretly tape recording him.
“After you read this letter, ball it up and throw it away,” Jackson wrote.
“My lawyer told me that they wired some weeny up in da’ joint, and supposedly you was running your mouth about that night. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Jackson was convicted on evidence that he did not actually set the fire. All the jury needed was proof that he aided in the arson – evidence that Clements provided when he said it was Jackson who wanted the house burned down, and Jackson who had a crack addict do the job for him.
And even though prosecutors admitted there was no calculated plan to kill six people, Jackson was still convicted of murder because the arson led to deaths. Had there been proof of intent, he could have faced a capital murder charge.
Jackson did not testify, but he maintained through a statement he gave police that he was at home when the fire was set.
His lawyers argued that Clements’ testimony was too self-serving and too filled with inconsistencies to be believed.
“The evidence that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt came from the mouths of proven liars, and that’s not a foundation on which to find anybody guilty,” Lawrence told the jury.
Defense lawyers also tried to impugn Willie Caldwell, who was charged and later acquitted of the murder of Jackson‘s cousin Kevin Lee Jones. Caldwell testified that during an earlier fight that led up to the shooting, Jackson threatened to burn his house down.
Less than 10 hours later, and just three hours after Jones was shot by Caldwell as they struggled for a gun, the rooming house was in flames.
Killed in the fire were: Willie Mae Green, 50; her boyfriend, Percy Junior McClease, 48; her son, Walter Bernard Green, 21; his wife, Summer Green, 18; and Robert Conteh, 51. A sixth victim, William “Red” Jones, 43, died three weeks later.
According to Clements’ testimony, a third man actually set the fire.
Clements said he and Jackson picked up Andrew “T-Bird” Terry, a convicted felon and crack addict, and paid him in drugs to buy gasoline and set the fire.
Terry testified for the defense that he did buy gasoline, but with no idea it was going to be used for such a deadly purpose. He said Clements had him buy the fuel, but that a second person in the car with them was not Jackson.
Although Terry has not been charged, Caldwell made it clear in his closing arguments that he suspects the man was involved. But he would not say for sure after the trial if he plans to charge him.
“It’s been a long and tedious process of getting two-thirds of the way there,” he said. Had the jury found Clements unbelievable and acquitted Jackson, he said, authorities would not have tried to bring more charges.
But now, he said, that’s something that will be considered.
Jurors struggled for just verdict
One juror said she couldn’t sleep at all Friday night.
Another cried Saturday morning when she saw Brian E. Jackson’s photograph on the front page of the newspaper.
Sitting in judgment of Jackson “was the worst experience of my life,” she said.
It wasn’t that anyone on the jury thought Jackson had nothing to do with a fire that killed six residents of a Roanoke rooming house two years ago.
But convicting Jackson of arson and six counts of murder, then recommending a 125-year prison sentence for a 22-year-old, was especially difficult for several reasons, according to three jurors who asked not to be named.
First, there was no physical evidence that Jackson actually torched the house while its residents slept — only testimony that he got a crack addict to do the job for him. And that testimony came from co-defendant Michael “Jay” Clements, who received a 25-year sentence in exchange for testifying.
“There was a feeling that Mr. Clements got off light,” one juror said. “Real light.”
Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell made no apologies for his plea agreement with Clements.
“I don’t want to have to embrace him; he’s embraced out of necessity,” Caldwell told the jury Friday in his closing arguments. “You have to use people like this to get to the other people involved.”
Yet Caldwell seemed well aware of the jury’s qualms. After winning convictions in the city’s worst mass murder in recent history, the prosecutor did not go for Jackson’s jugular by recommending the maximum punishment of seven life sentences.
He made no recommendation at all. Instead, he asked for one.
“I am asking you to give me some feedback in your recommendation,” he told the jury. After the panel came back with the lowest sentence it was allowed to impose – five years for arson and 20 years for each of six murders – Caldwell said he was considering a step rarely taken by prosecutors.
Judge Clifford Weckstein has the power to reduce Jackson’s punishment, and Caldwell said he was considering asking the judge to do just that when Jackson is formally sentenced. Caldwell said after the trial that he needs to consult the victims’ families before making a final decision.
Caldwell also said he is considering charges against Andrew “T-Bird” Terry, the admitted crack addict Clements accused of setting the fire. But that could prove to be an even tougher burden for another jury. Unlike Jackson and Clements, Terry had no role in the events leading up to the fire.
For all the concerns the jury had, they also were influenced by what one of them called “the horrible burden that none of us wanted” – representing the community in deciding how to deal with such a terrible crime.
“The enormity of it, when you look at six murder charges, your heart just goes up into your mouth,” one juror said, her voice quaking with emotion as she recalled the graphic police videotape of charred bodies being pulled from the remains of 502 Church Ave.
“I hope to God I never have to do it again.”
The atrocity matched only the stupidity of what the young men did – setting fire to an occupied house in the dead of night to settle a score that started with trash talking about a $10 drug deal.
That’s what stirred the bad blood between Jackson and Willie Caldwell, a resident of the rooming house. Angry words led to fists, and fists led to bullets. After Caldwell shot Jackson’s cousin in a struggle the morning of May 18, 1998, the jury was told, Jackson paid Terry in drugs to set fire to the house as a way to get even.
It was undisputed that Jackson had no evil intent to kill six innocent people.
One juror said she believed Jackson “was a follower like his mom said he was, and he just got caught up in this damn macho stuff with young men these days. … He probably grew up seeing all of that on TV.”
While the jury struggled for 7 1/2 hours to reach a verdict, it look less than half an hour for the panel to recommend the minimum sentence. That was after Jackson’s mother testified in tears that her son would never commit the crime for which the jury had just convicted him.
“Brian wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Norma Knopp told the jury. “He would actually catch a fly and put it outside.”
Although jurors were confident Jackson had some role in the fire, they agonized over the law that instructed them to find him just as guilty for aiding and abetting in the blaze as he would be for setting it.
“He could have been a mile away,” one juror said. But if he encouraged Terry to set the fire as Clements testified, she said, “then he was as guilty as if he had his hand on the match.”
And that is why Jackson, who played on the basketball team at Patrick Henry High School before graduating to what one juror called a promising future, will spend most of his life in prison for one foolish night.
In a way, nine lives were lost: Clements and Jackson to prison; Kevin Lee Jones to a bullet; and six people to fire – Willie Mae Green, Percy Junior McClease, Walter Bernard Green, Summer Green, Robert Conteh and William “Red” Jones.
As one juror put it: “I think everyone felt, what a waste.”