Two Wigs, A Gun
And A Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are
Stranger Than The Crime
(Page 1 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond
professor and devoted father, was gunned down in
his driveway on Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS) |
|
Quote
"I learned pretty early on that people said 'I have no
idea who would wanna do this to Fred, but have you
talked to his ex-wife?'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Detective Coby Kelly
In the fall of 2004, the sleepy suburb of Richmond, Va.
was all dressed up for Halloween. But as Harold Dow
reports, the spookiest day of the year arrived early for
this close-knit neighborhood.
"On the morning of the 30th, I got up planning on going
to the gym to work out. I was putting on my running
shoes, when all of a sudden, my husband and I heard
three loud sounds. Bang, bang, bang. We kind of looked
at one another like, 'What could that possibly be?' I
said, 'Well, maybe people are hunting, duck hunting down
around Tuckahoe Creek,'" recalls neighbor Megan
McCreary, who shrugged it off and went to the gym.
Just down the road, neighbor Bob McCartel saw something
he couldn't ignore. "I saw someone running down the
street in the front of my house. It was so dark out I
couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman," he remembers.
Bob's wife, Doreen, called 911 — and within minutes,
police were searching the area. But officers told
McCartel they hadn't been able to find any sign of a
shooter or a victim.
"About 45 minutes later, Doreen and I took our dog out.
Walking towards Fred's house, Doreen looked up and saw
something up on the driveway," Bob recalls.
Lying in his driveway was Fred Jablin, a well-respected
52-year-old college professor and devoted father to
three children.
Officer Harry Boyd, who lived three blocks from the
Jablin home, remembers that his pager went off at 7:30
a.m.
Meanwhile, McCreary returned from her workout and got
the grim news from her husband. "My first thought was,
where are the kids?" she recalls.
Boyd was also concerned about the children — his kids
were close friends with the Jablin children. Police
entered the home and found Fred Jablin's children — his
12-year-old son, and his two daughters, ages 10 and 15 —
asleep.
Boyd took the children back to his house. He remembers
the tough task of telling the children their dad had
been murdered. "It was just a nightmare to have to do
that," he explains.
Boyd told the children they'd be staying with his
family, until their uncle Michael Jablin, who lived two
hours away, could get there.
Fred’s ex-wife, Piper Rountree, says she was stunned
when she learned of his murder. "I got a phone call from
a friend of mine who had heard about it and nobody knew
what had happened," says Rountree, who was living in
Houston, where she'd moved after the divorce.
Back in Richmond, Homicide Det. Coby Kelly was put in
charge of the investigation. Kelly's theory was that
Fred was on his way to pick up his morning newspaper.
"I suspect that someone or something drew his attention
back this direction as he was walking down to get the
paper. And that whatever confrontation took place
probably happened right here in this area," says Kelly,
who thinks the victim may have actually talked to his
killer.
After analyzing the crime scene, Kelly went to work on
suspects. His first hunch was that it might have been a
student that hadn't done well in one of Jablin's
classes.
Police went to the University of Richmond to check out
that angle. But Kelly knew what all homicide detectives
know when looking for suspects: Start close to home.
"I learned pretty early on that people said 'I have no
idea who would wanna do this to Fred, but have you
talked to his ex-wife?'" recalls Kelly, who then called
Piper in Houston.
"And he said that all of the immediate family was under
suspicion. Michael Jablin and me," she recalls.
At the time of the murder, Piper and her ex-husband had
been apart for almost four years. She had started a
whole new life in Houston. Not only that, but police
would soon learn that she had an alibi for the day of
the murder.
A family friend and attorney, Marty McVey, remembers
Piper stopping by his Houston office on the very day her
ex was murdered, more than 1,000 miles away.
While detectives continued to check out Piper's story,
another name surfaced — and unlike Piper, this woman had
nothing nice to say about Fred.
"He was a very, very egotistical person," says Piper's
sister, Tina.
On the afternoon of the murder, Kelly got a major lead
from airport officials in Virginia: Southwest Airlines
had a passenger on their manifest with the last name
Rountree. The name on the ticket: Tina Rountree.
Records showed that two days before the murder, Tina
Rountree had flown from her home in Houston to Virginia,
where Fred was killed. On the afternoon of the murder,
records showed that Tina was booked on a return flight
back home to Houston — a flight that was already in the
air.
Kelly contacted the Houston Police Department and
explained the situation — by the time officers arrived
at the airport, the plane was about to unload.
"I knew I was looking for a 40-something white female —
we had some driver license photos of both Tina, the
sister, as well as Piper Rountree," remembers Det. Breck
McDaniel.
Piper had brown hair while Tina was blonde. McDaniel
says his officers stopped at least a dozen women. But
the passenger they were looking for had disappeared in
the crowd.
In fact, that mysterious passenger managed to pick up
her luggage at baggage claim without being noticed, and
then vanished.
Two
Wigs, A Gun And A Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are
Stranger Than The Crime
(Page 2 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond
professor and devoted father, was gunned down in
his driveway on Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
|
|
At that time, around 4:30 p.m. on the afternoon of the
murder, Kelly didn't know what he would later discover:
The Rountree sisters have a remarkably fierce devotion
to one another. Learning more about the extent of that
devotion would become one of the stranger twists in this
already twisted tale.
"Piper and I are soul sisters. We're incomplete without
each other," says Tina, who is eight years older.
Their age difference mattered when they were younger.
"My mother used to always make me sleep with her, and I
didn't like her crawling in my bed and having to sleep
with her," Tina remembers. "And she wanted to be
snuggled — you know, she wanted to snuggle. But she was
a child. She was wanting attention. But the family
environment was very close."
By the time Piper was in high school, the Rountree
family was living in a small town in Texas, near the
Mexican border. But Piper had bigger plans: She headed
off to the prestigious University of Texas at Austin,
with dreams of becoming a lawyer.
While away at college, Piper caught the eye of another
admirer — her communications professor, Fred Jablin.
Fred was 29 and very driven; Piper was a free-spirit and
eight years younger.
"He was very witty and very different. … One of the
brightest men I think I've ever met. And I've always
looked up to him," Piper remembers.
They married two years later, in the fall of 1983.
Fred was also proud of his wife and her plans to become
a lawyer. After graduating from law school, Piper landed
a big job in Austin, as an assistant district attorney.
A few years later, Fred and Piper started a family.
Fred's brother, Michael, says the marriage was solid.
"They had two lovely children who were born in Texas,
Jocelyn and Paxton, and they enjoyed themselves," says
Michael.
But for Piper, a working mom, life was hectic. "I'd be
in the courtroom, and I'd be looking at my watch
thinking, 'I've got to go pick up my child at day
care,'" she recalls.
But in 1994, life changed for the family: Fred accepted
an offer to teach at the University of Richmond and
uprooted his family to Virginia.
"Piper did not want to leave Texas; that was her home
base, her family was there," Michael says.
About six months after a ruptured atopic pregnancy that
she says almost killed her, Piper got pregnant again and
had her third child, Callie.
Piper decided to change the focus of her life and became
a full-time mom to Callie, Paxton, and Jocelyn.
But Piper missed the rest of her family back in Texas
and her marriage started to suffer. She admits she and
Fred started drifting apart, having separate lives once
they came to Richmond.
Tina never forgave Fred for moving Piper so far away
from her. "One of the main reasons that they moved to
Richmond was so that Fred could get Piper away from her
family because she's a very strong family person," she
claims.
Eventually, Piper told Fred she was leaving him. But
that's when she says the real trouble began: Fred
decided to fight for sole custody of the couple's
children.
While the idea of losing her children was devastating to
Piper, it was inexcusable to Tina. "She, I mean — how
many hours spent with her cry — I mean she was crying.
It was horrible."
Two
Wigs, A Gun And A Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are
Stranger Than The Crime
(Page 3 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond
professor and devoted father, was gunned down in
his driveway on Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS) |
|
One day after the murder,
Kelly hopped a plane to Houston.
"We were interested in talking to Piper," he explains.
"We certainly were not ignoring anything that would lead
us in a different direction, but at that point it was a
pretty good place to begin."
Kelly met up with the Houston team working the case —
and together they headed over to Piper's house.
They knocked on the door, rung the doorbell and hung out
but got no answer. Next, they decided to pay a visit to
Tina. But just in case, one of the officers stayed
behind at Piper's.
"Did Piper ever come out of the house?" Dow asks.
"She did," says Kelly. The officer sitting outside the
house saw her get into her vehicle and drive away. He
followed her and relayed the route information to the
rest of the team.
Soon, police cars followed Piper on the Interstate; the
pursuit ended on a residential street in central
Houston.
Kelly says Piper pulled into a parking spot. When he
introduced himself, he says Piper said "Come on inside."
Piper had driven to the law office of trial attorney and
friend Marty McVey. As it turned out, McVey wasn't alone
— Tina had arrived a few minutes before her sister.
"The first time I heard that Fred had been killed. She
(Tina) came in and said, 'Did you know? Have you heard
Fred was killed yesterday morning?' I said, 'No I
haven't,'" McVey remembers. He was in for another
surprise, when Piper walked in with four detectives.
"I went and asked her, 'Who do you think would’ve done
something like this?' — which was a good entrée into
getting her to talk to us," says Kelly.
But Piper says she had only one thing on her mind: Who
was taking care of her three children? Until that
meeting, Piper hadn't been told her children were safe
with Fred's brother, Michael.
"Did at any point did you sense that Piper was being
accused of this murder?" Dow asked McVey. "To the
opposite. They told her she was not a suspect in this,"
he says. "The majority of Piper's conversation with them
was concerning her children."
Later, Kelly and a few other officers drove to Tina's
house, hoping to talk to her alone. "She said to bring
the kids here and then we’ll talk," Kelly remembers.
"But we ended up pretty much getting ejected from her
house."
Meanwhile, Piper was doing her own detective work. She
needed to firm up her alibi — putting her in Houston,
not Virginia — the night before Fred’s murder.
Piper returned to a bar where she claimed she’d been on
Friday, to see if anyone remembered seeing her there.
"Bartender called to me and said 'Do you remember seeing
her?' And I said 'Yeah I remember seeing her the
previous weekend," a bar employee recalls. "And she
wanted our phone numbers so that she could give them to
the police so that she could substantiate that she was
here," he adds.
It was the alibi Piper was looking for, and she passed
it on to Kelly. So now Piper had witnesses who saw her
in Houston the night before the murder to go along with
her lawyer friend who saw her on the afternoon of the
murder at the same time the airplane from Virginia was
landing.
But Tina says she couldn't have been on the plane either
because she was seeing patients all day at her women's
health clinic.
Kelly didn't know what to think. But he was sure of one
thing about the Rountree sisters: "I think that neither
one of them acted in the manner which we would expect
family members would normally act when they've learned
that a former loved one has been murdered. Both of them
acted oddly as far as I'm concerned."
It wasn't long before the investigation would zero in on
just one of them. Asked if she killed Fred, Tina
Rountree says, "The answer is no."
Two Wigs, A Gun And A
Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are Stranger
Than The Crime
(Page 4 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond professor
and devoted father, was gunned down in his driveway on
Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
As Kelly learned more about the Jablins' nasty divorce,
he started to see the scars it left with Piper and Tina.
The almost 19-year marriage hadn't been working for
quite some time. A year and a half before the divorce,
Piper got a warrant charging Fred with domestic violence
and filed for a protective order against him.
Tina says she never witnessed physical abuse but says
she believes what her sister told her. According to
Tina, Fred's abuse was also directed at their children.
"I saw him frequently lose his temper with the kids,
because he was — you know, you get into a mode when
you're a professor, and they all say, 'Yes, sir,'" she
recalls.
In February 2001, Piper finally moved out of the house
and later filed for divorce; in July 2002, the divorce
went through.
Fred decided to fight for full custody of their
children. And according to Tina, Fred was a trained
expert at winning arguments.
At the custody trial, Fred pulled out all the stops: He
painted Piper as an unstable mother and told the judge
Piper had racked up about $50,000 in debt, without his
knowing.
He also accused Piper of being unfaithful. Tina says her
sister didn't have an affair during the marriage.
Michael Jablin wouldn't go into details with 48 Hours,
but he believes his brother's accusations. And he isn't
alone.
"I think the judge reviewed the case and thought Fred
would make the better parent," Michael says.
In July 2002, Fred won full custody of their three
children.
"Piper could have visitation. It was a hard decision
because normally mothers get custody. In this case, it
was very unique. The judge saw that Piper had some
problems, and Fred provided more stability in the home
life," says Michael.
Remarkably, Piper not only lost her children but was
ordered to pay Fred almost $900 a month in child
support, in part to pay back some of the thousands of
dollars in debt she owed her ex-husband.
Piper had failed the bar exam in Virginia, so after the
divorce she struggled to find a job.
Piper then moved back to Texas to find work, with her
three children staying behind in Richmond with their
father.
"She was not very happy when she was having to pay
alimony when she was struggling, and not having much
money," says Jerry Walters, who became close to Piper
shortly after she moved to Texas. But he, too, says
Piper never voiced any hostility towards Fred.
"She was not enamored with Fred, by no means, any
longer. But she did not walk around the house, muttering
under her breath, 'I hate Fred. I hate Fred,'" says
Walters.
If Piper was bitter towards her ex-husband, she hid it
well.
Tina, on the other hand, had different feelings. "It
seems a blatant — some blatant misjustices," she says.
At the time of Fred's murder, Piper says she'd come to
terms with her situation, making money, living
comfortably and earning enough to pay child support. But
she did want to see her children.
But someone else, according to Piper, was angry enough
to kill Fred. Piper says there was someone who had a
grudge against her husband.
Two Wigs, A Gun And A
Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are Stranger
Than The Crime
(Page 5 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond professor
and devoted father, was gunned down in his driveway on
Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
A couple days after Fred's murder, Kelly learned more
about the round-trip airline ticket booked under Tina
Rountree's name. The person who'd paid for that ticket
was Jerry Walters.
It didn’t take them long to learn that Walters knew
Piper. "Piper Rountree and I, at one time, were
girlfriend and boyfriend," says Walters. Piper started
dating Walters in 2003, shortly after moving to Houston.
Even though Walters was living in Baton Rouge, La., they
made it work. Their long-distance relationship lasted
for about a year.
"Then that evolved into a continuing close relationship,
close friendship," says Walters. So close, that Walters
was one of the first people Piper called the night of
the murder. Walters wasn’t able to go to Houston, but he
did his best to comfort Piper by phone.
Four days after the murder, Kelly tracked down Walters
to find out why his card seemed to be connected to a
murder.
Walters told Kelly he had no idea who could have used
his bank card during the weekend of the murder because —
as far as he knew — his card had been stolen before
then.
Walters says it wasn't until the day after the murder —
when he tried to withdraw cash from the account — that
he even found out something was wrong with his card.
"And that's when they said, 'Well, Mr. Walters, the
account's overdrawn,'" he recalls. Walters says the bank
told him he had pending ATM charges in Richmond.
Walters immediately called Piper, because if anyone was
going to know about his card it was her. Why's that?
Because the card wasn’t really his — it was Piper's.
Almost three months earlier, Piper had asked Walters to
open up a bank account for her — under his name — so she
could hide assets from Fred. Piper said she only needed
the account for a couple of months, and she promised to
pay all of the bills.
Piper told Walters someone might have stolen the card.
What didn't make sense to both Walters and Kelly were
some of the other charges found on the card.
"We were also able to determine that wigs were purchased
during this time, with that card, from Wigs.com," says
Kelly. Before the murder, someone had purchased two wigs
— one blonde, one auburn.
"We knew that they were sent to a location in Kingwood,
Texas. There was a box, rented in the name of Piper
Rountree, which also had Jerry's Walters' name on that
box. And that’s where the wigs had been delivered to,"
says Kelly.
It was all starting to add up for Kelly. He theorized
Piper had flown to Richmond — using her sister's name —
to kill her husband. "As things came to light, it was
apparent she did have a plan, and attempted to disguise
who she was — and thought she could get away with it,"
says Kelly.
With Fred dead, Piper wanted to win back her kids, who
were staying with Fred's brother Michael and his family.
She asked for a custody hearing in Virginia family
court.
Kelly was all for Piper attending the hearing, scheduled
for nine days after the murder. But not for the reasons
Piper thought — with her back in Richmond, it would make
it easier to make an arrest.
At the hearing, a judge made decided to grant permanent
custody to Michael Jablin.
Piper left the custody hearing shaken. Little did she
know that just minutes later, she would be arrested for
murder.
"They could have taken this from a scene from a gangster
movie," Piper says. "The police just jumped out with
what seemed like machine guns and dragged me off to tell
me that they were arresting me for the murder of my
ex-husband."
Two Wigs, A Gun And A
Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are Stranger
Than The Crime
(Page 6 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond professor
and devoted father, was gunned down in his driveway on
Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
After her arrest four months ago, Piper is having a
tough time adjusting to life behind bars but she's
anxious for her day in court and ready to stand trial.
"I don't think I would be intelligent if I weren't
worried or concerned. But I have an incredible amount of
faith," she says.
In opening arguments, Prosecutor Wade Kizer launches
right in with, what he says, is Piper's chilling motive:
it all came down to money. He says Piper was tired of
struggling to pay child support to her ex. So, he says
she killed him.
When the defense attorney Murray Janus has his turn, he
tells jurors the state's explanation of a motive doesn't
add up. And more importantly, Janus says there isn't
anyone who can put Piper at the crime scene.
Janus didn't dispute the state's claim that there was a
lot of evidence showing someone planned this murder, but
he suggested that the wrong Rountree sister is on trial.
"There's one name you're gonna hear over and over and
over again, and that's the name of Tina Rountree," Janus
says.
And he says all the evidence will point to her. "I think
you'll hear evidence that Tina had certainly at one time
a gun herself, a .38 caliber. You won't hear any
evidence that Piper Rountree owned a gun," he says.
While Piper is obviously aware of her attorney's defense
strategy, she wouldn't flat out accuse her sister of
murder when she spoke with Dow before the trial.
Asked by Dow if Tina killed Fred, Piper says "I don't
know." She admitted that Tina would have a motive.
With the trial underway, prosecutors call Walters to the
stand to help show that Piper hatched an elaborate plan
to get away with murder. Using the bank account Walters
had opened for her, prosecutors say Piper purchased that
blonde wig – and they say Piper wore it the weekend of
the murder – so it would look like her sister, Tina,
committed the crime.
And prosecutors say Piper used Walters' card to buy that
ticket, booked in her sister's name, to fly to and from
the murder.
Kathy Molly – the agent – remembers selling a ticket to
a woman using the name Rountree and for the first time
in court a witness is able to identify Piper. And, in
fact, Molly says the brunette checked in – as a blonde.
That's not all. Molly's biggest surprise? She says Piper
was carrying the murder weapon. Asked if she remembered
something unusual, Molly says, "Nothing, she was going
to check a firearm."
But that gun wasn't the prosecution's smoking gun. After
doing their best to show it was Piper – not her sister
Tina – who flew to Richmond two days before the murder,
prosecutors present more evidence that they say shows
Piper stayed there until right after the murder.
That evidence? Piper's cell phone records, showing calls
were made from Richmond all weekend. But now they have
to prove it was Piper – not someone else – who was
actually using that phone.
Looking at cell phone records, detectives saw that a
call was made to a pizza chain store. Records from the
pizza store indicated that a delivery was made to a
person named Rountree at a hotel.
That led Det. Chuck Hannah to the hotel manager, who
remembers the guest in Room 171.
The manager said the woman had a reservation under the
name Tina Rountree, but identified Piper as the hotel
guest in court.
And then a second eyewitness takes the stand. Raymond
Seward says he saw Piper on Saturday morning, just a few
hours after Fred's murder.
He remembers Piper returning a car to his rental agency
near the airport - the same airport where that flight
carrying a passenger named Tina Rountree would later
take off.
And if eyewitness testimony wasn’t enough to put Piper
in Richmond, prosecutors say they have Piper caught on
tape. They say the woman seen walking into a Richmond
gas station is Piper, in disguise.
It's a mountain of evidence that they hope will knock
down any suggestion that it was Tina in Richmond the
weekend of the murder.
Now prosecutors take their case one step further. They
set out to show how Piper made sure that when she shot
Fred she wouldn’t miss.
Prosecutors called a witness — Mac McClenahan, who, they
say, will show Piper had planned the murder in advance.
Mac worked with Piper and in Oct. 2004 was Tina's
boyfriend.
On one of their rides home together, the week of the
murder, Mac told Piper he was going to stop at a
shooting range after he dropped her off.
On the stand, Mac says Piper told him she wanted to come
along to the gun range.
After shooting a few rounds with Mac, Piper returned to
the front desk and exchanged the gun she was shooting
for a different-caliber weapon — the same type of weapon
used to gun down Fred: a .38 revolver.
A couple days after the murder, Mac ran into Piper in
Houston.
"I told her I was sorry. To hear what had happened. And
she hugged me and said, 'I love you.' And then she said
'Please don't say anything about the gun range, it'll
just complicate things,'" Mac testified.
With one of their last witnesses, prosecutors deal a
final blow to Piper. It turns out the alibi Piper
thought she had for the night before the murder had
fallen through.
Kevin O'Keefe — who'd originally thought he'd seen Piper
at a bar on Friday night —told jurors he was mistaken.
In fact, it was Saturday night, the night after the
murder.
"Were you in the Volcano at all on Friday," he was
asked. "No," O'Keefe replied.
After being battered by the dozens of witnesses against
her, Piper – a former prosecutor - knows she's in real
trouble. And now she has to make one of the most
important decisions of her life: should she take the
stand?
Two Wigs, A Gun And A
Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are Stranger
Than The Crime
(Page 7 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond professor
and devoted father, was gunned down in his driveway on
Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
After listening to the 49 witnesses testifying against
her, with the state's case finished, Piper was looking
like a goner.
Piper realized she had only one option: She took the
stand.
Piper, who says she realizes the risk of testifying,
took the stand on the fourth day of the trial, only four
months after Fred was shot dead.
Piper tried to answer to a jury. Her defense lawyer,
Murray Janus cut straight to the chase. Asked by her
attorney whether she killed Fred, she replied on the
stand, "I did not."
"When did you first learn that Fred Jablin had been shot
and killed?" Janus asked.
"That evening," she answered.
In a small, shaky voice, Piper would testify it was
impossible for her to shoot Fred in Virginia, because at
the time of the murder she was in Texas.
But it wasn’t just Piper's whereabouts she and her
defense team would use as an alibi. Their strategy was
based on showing the jury what kind of person Piper
really is.
Piper told jurors the last thing she'd do is hurt her
kids. "Yes, it was not an easy divorce. But I had no
right to take away the children's father," she
testifies. "The children need both parents."
When it came to her alibi about being at the Volcano
Bar, she insisted she was there that Friday before the
murder — even though Kevin O'Keefe had told prosecutors
he wasn't even there that Friday night.
Piper still insisted she was at the bar and said she
even ended flirting and drinking with a stranger. But
when it came time for the prosecution's
cross-examination, Piper came up short on answers,
starting with the bitter reality of her divorce from
Fred.
The prosecution would take the jury down a trail,
starting at the airport, where no one denies Piper's car
was parked the weekend of Jablin’s murder.
"Can you explain why the records from the Houston Hobby
Airport show that your vehicle was in their parking lot
on Thursday and Friday and Saturday?" she was asked.
"No. I have no explanation," Piper replied.
Then there were the guns — guns that authorities say
Piper practiced with when she and her friend Mac went to
a Houston target range just days before Fred was shot
with a .38.
There were also were the wigs. "You wanted the blonde
wig so bad that when you got the box with the paprika
wig in it and with a note saying they didn’t have it in
stock and you’d have to pay an additional charge, you
said, 'Send it anyway. I want it.' Correct?'" she was
asked.
"Tina had wanted it," she testified, admitting paying
the extra money for the wig.
Asked if she wants the jury to think that Tina committed
the murder, Piper says, "I have no idea what happened."
But then there was the evidence that seemed to
physically pinpoint Piper near the scene of the murder:
hotel records and the receipts from her bank card — a
card Piper now claimed had been stolen.
Then there was the trail where time was tracked to the
second — cell phone records showing Piper's phone being
used in Virginia at the time of the murder.
She claimed to have lost it on Tuesday but to have found
it Saturday at Tina's house. Confronted with the theory
she is trying to convince jurors Tina committed the
murder, Piper says, "No."
Still, Piper had that other alibi for the afternoon of
the murder: Marty McVey.
McVey testified he saw Piper in his Houston office,
around 4:30 p.m. Marty was Piper's best witness, because
it was physically impossible for her to have been in his
office at the exact same time police say she was still
on a jet returning from murdering Fred.
Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Paige Aiken, who
covered the story, wound up being part of the story
itself. She'd testify about what Marty McVey told her.
Aiken would swear that McVey told her that Piper had
visited him Sunday, Oct. 31, not Saturday, Oct. 30.
But put back on the witness stand, McVey stuck to his
story and his dates.
The prosecution had made its case. The defense had tried
to rebut.
Piper seemed dazed and exhausted.
She admitted to Dow that she was afraid.
Two Wigs, A Gun And A
Murder
When A Professor Is Gunned Down, The Clues Are Stranger
Than The Crime
(Page 8 of 8)Aug. 5, 2006
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Fred Jablin, a beloved University of Richmond professor
and devoted father, was gunned down in his driveway on
Oct. 30, 2004. (CBS)
Throughout Piper's murder trial, the brother of the
victim has watched closely, in disbelief. In his mind,
there was no doubt Piper is guilty. "And I was very sad
about the whole thing, hearing it, about how somebody
with such a high level of education could have plotted
such an event," he says.
Piper's mother, Betty Rountree, sat in the courtroom
every day. She couldn't believe her youngest daughter is
a killer. "Do I think she’s guilty? Is this what you’re
saying? No I do not."
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before reaching
a guilty verdict. No one seemed surprised, not even
Piper.
Within an hour, the jury heard more testimony and then
would recommend her sentence – anywhere from 20 years to
life.
Piper's mom pleads leniency for her daughter — so the
children who have already lost their father won't lose
their mother, too.
In less than an hour, the jury decides to recommend the
harshest penalty — life imprisonment for first-degree
murder.
Within minutes of the verdict, Dow talked to Piper in a
holding cell. "I think I'm still in shock," she says.
Has reality hit yet? "Not so much," she says. "Somewhat.
I don’t know."
In spite of all the evidence and the jury’s swift
verdict, Piper still insists she's innocent.
Piper seems to be in denial about the verdict and about
the future with her children. "I just love them and miss
them," she says. "And want to talk to them."
What kind of mother would do this?
"I don't know what kind of mother would leave them
without a father and without a mother," says Michael
Jablin. "It's very hard to understand that. It's very
sad when you have to think about that."
The verdict may be in. But what was the jury thinking as
they watched the halting testimony of Piper?
"That was the most serious moment in the trial for me.
It was the nail in the coffin," says juror Bruce Ladd.
"The four or five words we got out of her weren't a lot
and they weren’t convincing," says fellow juror Joel
Howell.
"It was kind of odd when she took the stand she could
turn her tears on and off during her testimony," recalls
juror Timothy James.
Of all the evidence against her, what was it that sealed
Piper’s fate?
Ladd and James say the cell phone evidence was key.
And what of Tina, the sister Piper pretended to be, the
sister many people say was Piper's best friend?
"It’s impossible to know if Tina knew that Piper was
going on a trip to murder her ex-husband. But based on
how close they were, it's hard to imagine that Tina was
not knowledgeable in some sense that something very
serious was going to take place," says Ladd.
Why did jurors give her life in prison?
Says Ladd, "We didn’t want ever want her to come back
into her children's lives."
Still the mystery remains: why did she do it?
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Michael Jablin now has legal custody of Fred and Piper's
three children. Piper will be eligible for release in
2020. She will be 60 years old.
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