Phone call disallowed as evidence in Va. case

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – A federal judge has barred from evidence a murder suspect’s phone call that prosecutors hoped would tie him to the 1996 slayings of two hikers in Shenandoah National Park.

U.S. attorneys argued that Darrell D. Rice, 35, killed the lesbian couple and then used a phone number from one of the victim’s belongings to call the Spectrum Center for Gay and Lesbian Affairs in San Anselmo, Calif.

Authorities contend that Rice killed Julianne Williams, 24, of Burlington, Vt., and Laura Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, because of their sexual orientation. The two women were found bound and gagged with their throats slit.

U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon said no evidence shows that the phone number was among the hikers’ belongings at their campsite. “The government’s argument requires too many speculations,” Moon wrote in a ruling filed last week.

The judge noted that the Spectrum number Rice called from his home in Columbia, Md., combines two numbers the defendant dialed regularly.

The Spectrum number dialed on May 28, 1996, was (415) 457-8644. A Grateful Dead information line he called occasionally is (415) 457-6388. Rice’s work number was (410) 715-8644.

The judge granted a request from Rice’s attorney, Fred Heblich, to exclude the phone call from evidence in Rice’s trial this summer.

Heblich said Tuesday that allowing the phone call into evidence “would be a waste of time, would yield nothing of value and would only cause confusion.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant declined to comment on the ruling.

Rice is to stand trial July 24 in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

U.S. attorneys believe Williams had the Spectrum number with her in a journal Rice would have taken with him after killing the couple.

The number was the unpublished direct line to the Rev. Jane Spahr, the Spectrum founder who has written and preached on Christianity and homosexuality. Spahr had spoken at Williams’ church in Vermont, Moon wrote.

Investigators found at the murder scene a journal Williams kept that had a reference to one of Spahr’s works and her name, but not the minister’s phone number, the judge wrote.

For Rice’s phone call to be relevant to the case, a jury would have to conclude that Williams had Spahr’s direct number and had it written on something at the crime scene that was removed and never located, Moon wrote.

Jurors would then have to infer that Rice was at the crime scene, took the journal or notebook home with him and called Spahr from his home, the judge wrote.

“These assumptions require piling inferences on top of other inferences, and the evidence directly conflicts with some of the conclusions suggested,” Moon wrote.

It is unlikely Williams ever had Spahr’s direct line at Spectrum, the judge added.