Richard Townes was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Virginia Goebel
According to court documents Richard Townes would rob a store and in the process shoot and kill the clerk Virginia Goebel
Richard Townes would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Richard Townes would be executed by lethal injection on January 23 1996
Richard Townes Photos
Richard Townes Case
A female employee was working the night shift alone at a convenience store. She was observed working in the store by two policemen after midnight. A woman who often patronized the store came in about 2:00 a.m. and observed that the employee seemed to be frightened. The customer saw a man in the back of the store, but upon being told by the clerk that there was no problem, she bought a soft drink and left. Several hours later a policeman went inside the store where he found the employee’s body. She had been shot in the head and the paper money was missing from the cash drawer. Only one other sale had occurred after the sale of the soft drink. Four weeks later the customer who had bought that soft drink came forward to the police and was shown a photoarray of six men. She picked two “possibles”, including the defendant. At a live lineup she identified the defendant as the man who had been in the store before the murder. The defendant was also identified as the person who had bought an automatic .45 caliber handgun a few days before the murder.
The defendant worked on a construction job near the convenience store. A few days after the murder another worker observed a gun in the defendant’s pocket and asked to see it. He purchased the gun along with ammunition, and an unusual cleaning rod. The superintendent of the construction work found a religious tract, a law book and an essay in defendant’s handwriting concerning murder in his office. The worker who had purchased the gun from the defendant decided to turn it over to the police. However, as he was telephoning an investigator from a public telephone, the defendant appeared and blocked his car. Defendant took the weapon and gave the man another gun.
The next day the defendant was arrested and charged with the offenses of which he was later convicted. The trunk of his car was searched and an unusual cleaning rod for a .45 caliber weapon was found. The defendant was placed in a jail block along with an acquaintance to whom he admitted that he had committed the murder. A firearms expert testified that the casing from the bullet which had killed the woman had been fired from the same gun as had the casings which the construction worker had saved from some shooting he had done with the .45 caliber gun he had bought from the defendant.