Hunley: Unknown brush with a killer

The pending execution of Paul Powell reminds me of my family's own relationship with a convicted killer.

Barring unlikely action by Gov. Bob McDonnell, Powell will die in the electric chair 10 days from now.

The gruesome use of electricity will end the life of an even more gruesome individual.

Powell killed one of two sisters then raped and attempted to kill the other sister in Yorkshire in 1999.

At the time, I was working at the Potomac News, one of this newspaper's forebears, and I remember people describing Powell as "pure evil."

It seems odd that I'm in Prince William County again now that Powell is about to get the ultimate punishment.

More odd, though, is that less than two months after Powell committed those unspeakable crimes, a man who used to work with my dad was executed.

No one in my family was the victim of any crime, and none of us was around Virginia's death house in Jarratt when David Fisher was put to death by lethal injection.

But my father was told he was on the short list of people whom the 57-year-old Fisher agreed to see before the end.

Dad read and watched everything he could on Fisher's trial on charges of conspiracy to kill an 18-year-old man on a hunting trip.

But he hadn't talked to Fisher in years at that point, and he certainly wasn't going to visit him on Death Row as his last day approached.

My father met Fisher at Lotz Funeral Home in Roanoke. Dad worked there for more than three decades as a funeral director, but Fisher was there only for about a year. He wasn't a licensed mortician in Virginia, but he took care of other tasks, such as working funerals and washing hearses.

I was only 7 years old when Bobby Mulligan killed David Wilkey in Bedford County at the request of Fisher, who had taken out a life insurance policy on Wilkey only months earlier.

So I would have been even younger when Fisher worked with my dad.

I don't remember interacting with him at all. But my parents tell me that he was a friendly coworker to my dad and that he frequently had weekend dinner with my family -- sometimes even at our house.

"He was right here in the home and everything," my mom said on the phone Sunday.

Overall, he seemed like an average, clean-cut guy, my parents said. No one pegged him for someone who would mastermind a killing-for-hire scheme.

My dad was the shift supervisor when Fisher worked, and he said the man was even a good employee.

"He was a hard worker," he said.

Dad does remember two weird things, though: Fisher sometimes popped black capsules -- maybe some kind of stimulant to stay awake -- and he said he knew people who could burn down our family's rental houses if we wanted to participate in an insurance-fraud scam.

The latter could be done for only about $50, Fisher told my dad.

(We didn't do that, if you're wondering).

By the time Fisher was on trial, however, it was disclosed that he was in the witness-protection program.

So my dad figures now that Fisher stayed in trouble basically all his life.

My point in bringing all of this up is not to equate my brush with Fisher with Powell or his acts.

It's just to serve as a reminder that crime really can happen anywhere or touch anyone -- even regular folk in "good neighborhoods."

That doesn't mean we should live in daily fear -- even this close to Washington, an obvious target for terrorism.

But we also shouldn't go blindly through life assuming nothing bad could possibly take place.

If my mother, who doesn't even like to watch movies that contain profanity, can unknowingly break bread with a career criminal, anything really can happen.

Jonathan Hunley is a staff writer at the News & Messenger. Contact him at 703-369-5738 or at jhunley@insidenova.com.