As the News & Messenger works to bring you the latest on the execution of convicted killed Paul Powell, a team of reporters and a photographer will report from the Greensville Correctional Facility in Jarratt, Va. starting Tuesday. Breaking news reporter Uriah A. Kiser will file video reports for our Web site and has also created a video blog about this event. Watch for them on insidenova.com and watch all of the blog entries in their entirety at youtube.com/whahooa.
The case of convicted rapist and killer Paul Powell gripped Prince William County more than 10 years ago, and now that he is awaiting execution in a Virginia correctional facility, the News & Messenger takes a look back on the events of the crimes that put him on death row.
The following has been taken from court case documents written in 2006.
An enemy inside
Court documents state 16-year-old Stacie Reed and her then 14-year-old sister lived with their mother, Lorraine Reed, and her fiancé, Robert Culver, at their Yorkshire home in 1999.
On Jan. 28 of that year Paul Powell was visiting Stacie at their home. Her sister, Kristie, was at school and her mother and Culver were not home either. When it came time for Stacie to go to work, Powell stayed at the house and waited for Kristie to come home from school.
When she got home, she asked where her sister was. Powell told her she had left for work.
Though court documents do not state what type of relationship Powell might have had with the family at the time, it is clear that at least Stacie and Kristie knew him well.
Kristie became concerned that afternoon because Powell was frantically walking up and down the halls of the home. She called her mother to tell her what was happening.
Lorraine Reed gave specific instructions to Kristie to tell him to leave.
He was familiarizing himself with the house.
The next day, Friday, Jan. 29, Kristie again came home to find Powell inside her house and again did not see her sister.
He told her that she was upstairs in her bedroom. She walked into Stacie's room; she didn't see her, and then she walked into her own room.
There she saw her sister's lifeless body lying on the floor.
Powell came up from behind and ordered Kristie into the basement. Court documents state that Kristie knew from experience that Powell carried a knife.
When in the basement, Powell ordered the 14-year-old to remove her clothes. She told prosecutors she did so be-cause "she didn't want to die." He then made her lay on the floor and raped her.
Afterward he used her own shoelaces to tie her feet and her arms behind her back, leaving her bound and naked on the basement floor.
While he was upstairs, she was able to free her hands and move herself across the floor to hide under the basement stairs. When he returned, Powell put his hands around her neck and strangled her until she fell unconscious.
When he stabbed her, the knife stopped within an inch of her aorta, which is the largest blood vessel in the body. He also cut her neck in various places.
Her multiple stab wounds required extensive medical attention, but she did not die.
When Robert Culver arrived home about 4:15 p.m., he found Kristie on the floor. He called 911. Though Kristie was bleeding profusely, she was able to identify her assailant as Paul Powell.
The arrest
Powell was arrested the next day while at a friend's house.
When police found him, they confiscated a blue sports bag that belonged to Powell.
Inside was a fully loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Also inside was a survival knife with a black sheath and a butterfly knife with a five-inch blade.
The sheath had a reddish-brownish stain on it. DNA results would later reveal that the blood on it was that of 16-year-old Stacie Reed. Investigators said the probability was a near certainty, a one-in-a-billion chance that it wasn't her blood.
After he was arrested, Powell told the police that Stacie was dead because "she was stupid" and that he didn't like that she had a black boyfriend.
Before she died, he said the two had an argument when she clawed his face and then he pushed her to the floor. He told authorities she simply "got stuck on the knife."
He also denied ever raping Kristie. But in a second statement to police, he admitted to the rape and also said he aimed to kill her because "she would be the only witness and he would have to go to jail."
In 2000, Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert put Powell on trial and won. His sentence: death row.
But a Virginia Supreme Court decision overturned the ruling, stating the attacks on Stacie and Kristie were two separate incidents, and that it didn't amount to a capital case.
Powell's new sentence: Life in prison.
Taunting letters
From the comfort of his jail cell, Powell picked up a pen and paper and wrote a series of letters to Ebert, the man he blamed for putting him behind bars.
In those letters he thanked Ebert for botching the case, told him he "saved his life" and said the reason why the Virginia State Supreme Court removed him from death row was because of the way Ebert worded his final arguments -- stating the truth will never be known if Powell planned to rape Stacie "because he will never tell us."
In the letters, Powell went on to reveal the exact events of that fateful day. He wrote in detail about how he killed Stacie and that he tried to rape her, but she resisted.
He also said he had planned to kill the entire family.
Also in the letter, Powell made a statement that he could not be charged again and that he no longer had to worry about the death penalty.
He also sent another taunting letter to the victim's mother, Lorraine Reed.
Another letter went to a person court documents identified only as a "friend."
In it he wrote "about when you asked why I wouldn't do to you what I did to Stacie, I couldn't ever hurt you because you mean so much to me."
In another letter Powell later asked his "friend" to ask someone to threaten Kristie from a payphone, and to tell her to stop talking to police or "she is gonna die."
Powell kept talking and told a police officer that when he attacked Stacie, "she looked up at me, you know … I guess she thought I wouldn't stab her or whatever."
He also told the officer that while she was on the floor suffering from multiple stab wounds, he used his foot to stomp on her throat "until I didn't see her breathing anymore."
With that, Ebert indicted Powell again, this time on charges of attempted rape and murder.
In 2003, Ebert secured another victory and sent Powell back to death row, where he currently awaits execu-tion.
Execution day
Powell and his lawyers are hopeful that either Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine or the Virginia Supreme Court will step in and grant him clemency.
His defense lawyers contend that prosecuting attorney Paul Ebert entered uncertified court documents as evidence for the jury to review during the penalty phase of deliberations.
The documents, allegedly printed from a Federal Bureau of Investigation crime database Web site, had Pow-ell's original capital murder conviction the state Supreme Court later overturned.
To jurors, his lawyers said, it looked like Powell had committed two murders in the same day.
Ebert said he would not make any further comments on the case until after the execution has been carried out.
Though his lawyers later caught the mistake, Powell maintains that he had ineffective counsel during the second trial. So far, that argument has not stood with appeals justices.
Powell is scheduled to be executed by electric chair on Tuesday at 9 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Facility in Jarratt, Va.
Both the victim's mother and Ebert have said they would attend.
Staff writer Uriah A. Kiser can be reached at 703-878-8065.
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