The firemen had successfully beaten back the early-morning blaze and were searching the second floor of the residence for survivors, creeping through heavy, roiling smoke and an overpowering stench, when their flashlights panned across the body of a man laying on a bed. The man's body was partially hidden by a pile of laundry and, incongruously, a torn-down curtain. Working in the weird light, they determined he was dead and set off to continue the search. Abruptly, one of the searchers returned to the body for a second look, then scrambled back to his partner. As he would later explain to a jury, ?I was trying to tell Bobby, you know, that something wasn?t right here; people just don?t bleed from smoke inhalation. They throw-up and things, but they don?t bleed like that.? Minutes later, Vinton Police Chief Rick Foutz had been awakened and was racing through the dark, quiet streets to the scene of a crime that would dominate practically every waking hour for the next three years of his life.

The Town of Vinton, Virginia lies on the south and southeast edges of the City of Roanoke, once the hometown of the Norfolk Southern Railroad. The railroad has moved it?s headquarters to Atlanta, but the huge complex of yards remains. That, and the proximity of I-81, have made Roanoke and the adjoining areas an important trucking and transportation center; United Parcel Service, Kroger, and numerous mail-order distribution companies have built important hubs there, and trucks from dozens of companies rumble along the major arteries at all hours of the day and night. The muscular, industrial appearance can be misleading, however. Roanoke has been selected as an All-American city repeatedly, and with good reason. The crime-rate is relatively low, and mostly penny-ante; violent crimes are rare. The schools are no worse than anywhere else, and the libraries are very good. The public- and private-sectors usually manage to swallow their differences and work together to advance the interests of the entire community. But the area?s best feature is the exceptional friendliness of it?s people. Leave the thoroughfares and get into the neighborhoods, and one has the sense of having traveled back in time. The streets are clean, the houses well-tended, neighbors stand on street-corners chit-chatting. People here know their neighbors, and look after them. Further, newcomers are made welcome; on moving-day some neighborhood mother will send over a child bearing a plate of hearty sandwiches, and another will stop by to drop-off his tool-box because ?you?ll need them, and it may be a while before you find your own.? Within a few days the new family will receive a dozen callers, all of them dropping-by just to introduce themselves and invite the family to church.

Nearly always, highly-educated professionals whose careers might flourish in some larger city will explain their decision to live and work in the largely blue-collar Roanoke Valley with the words "It's a great place to raise kids."

Monday, August 29, 1994 marked the end of summer for the valley?s children, for that was the day the new school year began. At approximately 4:50 that morning, a postal employee driving to work observed thick smoke billowing across the roadway. Looking sideways, he saw flames through the first-floor windows of a small, Cape Cod-style residence. He pulled his car to the curb and, along with another early-morning commuter that had stopped, ran to the house. Intending to alert the occupants and unable to open the front door, the men smashed a window; a blast of heat pushed them back. Retreating, they called fire and rescue services, then watched helplessly as the flames continued to feed on the house. The fire-trucks arrived within minutes, and the fire was quickly extinguished. Then the search for survivors began. Continuing through the second-story after finding the first body, the searchers crept into another room. There, the firemen found the intertwined bodies of two girls lying in a bed. These corpses, too, were bloody. The body of a woman, aflame when the firemen entered the home, lay on a couch on the first floor. She was so badly burned that no one would guess how she had died, and it appeared to firemen that an accelerant had been used to start the fire. Stunned firemen and police removed the bodies for autopsy, strung police-tape and, shaking their heads with disbelief, wondered just what had been going on inside that house. As the town police called-in local and state personnel and laboratory resources, launching a crime-scene investigation that would last more than a week, neighbors milled on the sidewalks and gossiped. Passing vehicles would slow to almost a crawl as they threaded their way through the thickening phalanx of ambulances, police cars, fire trucks; one of those vehicles, a neighbor later recalled, was a battered, familiar-looking white pickup-truck with a black tailgate.

The deceased were William Blaine Hodges, 41, his wife Teresa, 37, and their daughters Winter, 11, and Anah, 3. Blaine Hodges had been shot once in the left temple. Winter and Anah had each been shot twice in the head; the gun had been pressed against Winter's skull when fired, and Anah had been shot from a few inches away.

Police were forced to consider a lot of possibilities as the investigation got underway.

Murder-suicide? This was the early favorite among police and neighbors, because Blaine Hodges was a convicted felon about to begin a jail sentence. In 1991, Hodges was working as a clerk at the Vinton Post Office. A routine audit found that his cash drawer was more than $4600 short. Convicted of embezzlement in 1993, his appeal had been rejected just weeks earlier and he was scheduled to begin a six-month prison sentence within a few weeks. Further, he had to repay the money he'd stolen and an additional $4600 fine. Perhaps he had snapped at the prospect of separation from his family and removal to a federal penitentiary, to be followed by a long financial struggle.

Revenge? This was a possibility too. Teresa Hodges' brother, Michael Fulcher, was a sometime police-informant, petty criminal, and one-time DEA drug-runner. Had the Hodges run afoul of someone in Fulcher's circle?

An intruder? The family wasn't wealthy.

Investigators methodically began interviewing family, friends, neighbors, compiling the details of the family's final hours.

Blaine and Teresa had turned to selling Amway products following his dismissal from the Post Office, and they believed their little business was about to go zoom. The preceding Friday evening they'd attended a regional meeting of Amway distributors in Charlottesville, Virginia with another couple from the Vinton area, leaving their two daughters with a relative. They'd returned home at about 3:00 AM Saturday.

Blaine picked-up his two girls and returned home at about 11:00 am. Nothing about his behavior struck relatives as unusual.

At about 12:30, an Amway colleague visited the Hodges' house. Blaine and Teresa seemed untroubled to him, too. The only odd thing occurred when he had briefly been alone in the basement with Winter, testing a stain-removal product; a grandfatherly man who'd been painting the rear door had castigated her for being alone in the basement with him. Beginning at 5:05, Blaine spoke on the telephone for about half an hour with yet another Amway colleague; the colleague doesn't recall anything out of the ordinary about the conversation.

At 9:30 that evening, Teresa had a telephone conversation with the mother of one of Winter's classmates; they concluded by agreeing they'd talk late the next afternoon to coordinate car-pooling plans for Monday, the first day of school.

That's the last time the telephone was used. Sunday morning, the Hodges missed church. That evening the Hodges were to host a meeting of Roanoke-area Amway distributors; when they arrived at the house at about 7:00 PM, they found a note written by Teresa that said simply "Had an emergency. Back late Sunday, early Monday."

It is axiomatic that the first hours of an investigation are the most important. Eyewitness accounts are none-too-reliable in the first place, and the significance of physical evidence might not be recognized in time to prevent its inadvertent destruction. Even as a criminal flees, the crime scene is irreparably changed by the investigation, and gossip combined with the innocent tendency to fill the blanks in what one saw may damage memories.

Shocked by the deaths and anxious at the possibility that a quadruple murder may have occurred, police from several jurisdictions poured into the neighborhood in response to the town's request for assistance. Repeatedly over the course of that long, first day of interviews, the Hodges neighbors and friends would tell them "You really ought to talk to Earl." Earl Bramblett was a family friend, a ubiquitous presence at the Hodges home, the man that had chastised Winter for being alone in the basement with Blaine's business associate. Late that afternoon Vinton Police called Bramblett's place of employment, a silk-screening shop; he was unavailable. Bramblett returned the call later that afternoon, and agreed to meet with police that evening.

The interview began shortly after 5:00 PM. When told that the Hodges family had died in a fire, police say Bramblett exclaimed "The sorry son of a bitch! Had a beautiful family. He did them and he did himself." But according to police, no one had yet said anything about homicide or murder-suicide. In truth, Bramblett already knew the family was dead; police would later learn he had called his ex-wife that afternoon to tell her about the fire, and had predicted that the police would "blame it on me." Further, according to court records, On 08-29-94 Bramblett was interviewed by Special Agent B.R. Keesee with the Virginia State Police and Sergeant M.A. Vaught with the Vinton Police Department. During the initial stages of the interview, the officers attempted to ascertain when the last time was that Bramblett saw Blaine Hodges, one of the deceased. At this, Bramblett blurted out, "Why? Are you going to charge me with murder?" After this, and during the rest of the interview, Bramblett was visibly defensive and evasive. He did, however, tell Keesee that he was at the Hodges residence on the day before the fire. This was confirmed by a neighbor to Special Agent Jon Perry, also of the Virginia State Police. When Perry questioned Bramblett about this in the presence of Keesee, Bramblett denied being at the Hodges residence that day. When pressed by Keesee over the discrepancy, Bramblett stated, "Why don't you go on and charge me with murder and get it over with?"

By Tuesday afternoon, slightly less than 36 hours after the fire and the discovery of the bodies, the autopsies were complete. As anticipated, the medical examiner found that Blaine, Winter and Anah had each died from gunshot wounds. Teresa had been strangled and, further, the accelerant used to start the fire had been poured directly on her corpse. As investigators wondered why Teresa had died differently than the rest of her family, the medical examiner handed them another startling fact: Blaine had died 12 to 24 hours earlier than the rest of his family, sometime between early Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.

Police now knew with certainty that they were looking for a killer. Clearly, Blaine could not have been the prime-actor in a murder-suicide, and there was no way that Teresa had strangled herself and then set the fire.

The investigators met that Tuesday to review what they had learned, and to determine what ought to be done next. The next morning, they decided, they'd set up a roadblock to intercept regular, early-morning commuters; perhaps someone had seen something. They agreed, too, that Bramblett's unexpectedly hostile behavior warranted a closer look at him. The roadblock turned-up two intriguing leads. The first came from a newspaper carrier who'd been in the area between 4:00 and 4:30 that morning. She'd seen a burgundy Toyota with New Jersey license plates several times that morning, at several different locations near the Hodges residence. Sometimes there was just one man in the car, and sometimes two. At one point she'd seen a man carrying a duffel bag get out of the car and run into nearby woods. The second came from an elderly woman who worked at a nearby fast-food restaurant. At about 4:30 that morning, she told investigators, a light-pink truck with a dark tailgate had pulled out of the Hodges driveway just as she was passing the house, lingered behind her briefly, and then sped past her and away.

Much later, police would recreate that sighting using a white truck. At that location, under the light prevailing at that time of the morning, the test truck would exhibit a pinkish tinge.

Meantime, investigators were learning everything they could about Bramblett's past, and some of it was ugly. A successful high school athlete, he'd won a track scholarship. Though he eventually attended three different colleges, he'd never been granted a degree. In 1969 he'd moved to Roanoke to work in a sign-painting shop owned by his father, and soon afterward he'd volunteered to be an assistant track coach at a local high school; it was there that he and Blaine Hodges, then a student, had met and become friends.

Bramblett had welcomed neighborhood youngsters at his shop, and in 1977 two regular visitors - both 14 year old girls - had skipped school and vanished without a trace. Three years later the then-38 year old man was partying with some neighborhood teens when, drunk, he reportedly fired a gun and began crying, saying he wished that he hadn't "hurt Tammy," one of the missing girls. Police questioned Bramblett, but he was never charged with a crime. In 1984 Bramblett was charged with molesting a 10-year old girl who worked in his shop. The judge in that case threw out the charges when Bramblett provided an alibi showing he couldn't have been at the shop on the day in question. 1984 is the year Bramblett left the business and became a nomad wandering aimlessly about the country, living in motels when he was a few bucks ahead, otherwise sleeping in his truck or staying with friends.

Just then, Bramblett was living in an inexpensive motel south of Roanoke. That Wednesday morning following the fire, a Vinton police officer and Blaine's brother went there at about 9:00 AM; they hoped a family member could induce Bramblett to cooperate. Calm at first, he soon became distraught and blurted-out that he'd written a suicide note. He then became angry at the officer's questioning, but calmed down enough to agree to return to the Vinton police station at about noon for further discussion.

He didn't show, though, so the police returned to the motel that afternoon. When there was no answer at the door the officer, recalling Bramblett's mention of a suicide note, persuaded the manager to unlock the door. Right then, Bramblett arrived at the motel in a taxi and ordered the police to leave, saying he would never help the investigation because he believed they'd twist whatever he said and use it to lie about him. Once again, he asked the police "Why don't you just arrest me for murder?"

That afternoon, two of Blaine's brothers returned to the motel to try again to persuade Bramblett to cooperate with the police. One of them wore a hidden microphone provided by the police. Bramblett, who'd been drinking heavily, declined once again to offer any assistance to the investigators. He said that the lawyer who had represented him when accused of molesting the 10-year old had advised him not to talk with anyone.

Leaving, one of the brothers saw an unfired, small-caliber bullet wedged into the crease of one of the motel chairs.

Confronted with Bramblett's refusal to cooperate, his awareness that the deaths weren't accidental, his mention of a suicide note, and the bullet, Vinton police filed an affadavit seeking a search warrant for Bramblett's motel room; the affadavit was kept sealed to prevent public disclosure of the details of the investigation.

The warrant was executed just after midnight, early September 1st. The inventory lists miscellaneous writings in Bramblett's hand, gathered from different locations throughout the room; four bullets and four bullet casings, from Bramblett's truck; a .22 caliber revolver; and a detective magazine.

Bramblett left town, arriving at his sister's home in Indiana at about 7:30 the following evening. She would later describe him as upset, and say that when she asked if he had an alibi he'd told her only that he'd left the Hodges home at midnight on the preceding Sunday. The murders, he told her, were drug-related. Sometime that evening he happened to glance out a window and see a police cruiser pass the house; alarmed, he abruptly decided to leave, and by 2:30 AM Saturday he was on the way back to Roanoke.

A year earlier Bramblett had mailed his sister two boxes, asking her to store them for him. Now, believing her erratic brother had wandered into the ambit of killers, the presence of the boxes made her uneasy. She and her husband decided to call the county sheriff. He wouldn't open the sealed boxes, but said it would be legal for her to open the boxes and give him the contents. Using the sheriff's pocketknife, she sliced the packing-tape. Inside they found six dozen microcassette recording tapes, hundreds of photographs, and a single sock that may have once belonged to Winter Hodges. The sister gave it all to the sheriff, who promptly shipped it all to Vinton.

Meanwhile, the police continued to learn more about the Hodges family's last hours. A neighbor had seen Bramblett, Teresa, and the two girls in the family's backyard, sitting in Bramblett's white pickup truck, Sunday afternoon.

A forest ranger had encountered the quartet fishing in a creek near the Blue Ridge Parkway later that same day; in fact, he'd sociably asked Teresa whether they were fishing or drowning worms. Drowning worms, she'd answered. At about 4:30, two hours sooner than planned, Teresa called the mother of one of her daughter's classmates from a payphone to discuss the next morning's carpooling. There was a lot of static on the line, and Teresa asked her to call back; she didn't explain why she was using a payphone. The next connection was better, and it was decided that Teresa would do the driving the next morning.

In 1992, around the time that Blaine had been accused of embezzling, Bramblett had begun keeping a diary using a Panasonic microcassette tape-recorder. It accompanied him everywhere, and he made notes continuously: while driving in traffic, walking his dog, speaking on the telephone. As police began listening to the stream-of-consciousness ramblings on the recording tapes sent them by the Indiana sheriff, two themes emerged. First, Bramblett was acutely suspicious of Hodges, believing that Blaine had joined a police conspiracy to entrap him in sexual misconduct with a child order to mitigate the severity of his punishment for embezzling. Second, he believed Winter Hodges was the 'bait.' On Thursday, September 8th, police searched the dumpster located behind the silk-screening shop where Bramblett sometimes worked. Rummaging through the trash they found additional recording tapes, notes written by Bramblett about the Hodges family, and an illustration with four stick-figures; two of the figures were large, and two were small. One of the large figures, and both of the small figures, had arrows pointing at the head. Vinton police executed a search warrant the next day at a storage locker Bramblett rented in Vinton, seizing assorted photographs and nine additional tapes.

Though newspaper coverage of the crime was intense, police were tight-lipped about the progress of the investigation. The first the public learned of Earl Bramblett was on October 14th, when the Roanoke Times reported that he had written the newspaper a letter denying involvement in the murders, and published excerpts from the letter. The search warrants, he wrote, had been obtained on the basis of lies. "They did not misquote me or misunderstand what I said. They totally fabricated the whole story of when I was in the Vinton Police Department." Referring to the search warrant executed at his motel room September 1st, Bramblett wrote "I saw the handwriting on the wall then. ... They had already showed me they intended to violate the law and the truth in this matter."

The Vinton police promptly acknowledged that Bramblett was under investigation. Noting that the close relationship between the Hodges and Bramblett had spanned more than a decade, Chief Foutz added "If he's not involved, I would certainly think he would want to come forward and clear his name, and help find the person or persons responsible." That remark drew an irate letter to the newspaper; didn't Foutz know, the writer wondered, that it was up to him to find the killer and prove he'd found the killer in court, instead of sitting around in his office waiting for people to walk in and prove their innocence?

The investigators continued their work, sending crime-scene evidence and the gun recovered from Bramblett's motel room to the FBI laboratory in Washingon, D.C., and keeping tabs on his whereabouts. That job quickly grew complicated because Bramblett, evidently deciding that his career prospects had dimmed by identification as the primary suspect in a quadruple homicide, decided to leave the state. Shortly after the Roanoke Times published his letter, he moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina.

At first he lived in a rescue mission and worked out of a labor hall; he eventually found work in a sign-painting shop and moved into a house, sharing it with another single man with a history, like Bramblett, of frequent scrapes with the law. The roommate would later tell police that living with him had been a strange experience, saying that Bramblett slept with a machete next to his bed, would prop exterior doors closed with a big stick, and that he occasionally spoke of two men who were coming to kill them. One night when they'd been drinking he had said "I did something bad in Roanoke but I can't tell you about it."

Though living under suspicion of murder, Bramblett began building a life in his new hometown. He acquired a three-legged dog from a local animal shelter, and named him Lucky; the two would stroll about the neighborhood together, amiably stopping to socialize with neighbors. They'd visit a neighborhood convenience store almost every day, where Bramblett would purchase beef jerky for the dog and a twelve-pack of cheap beer for himself. He started a vegetable garden, setting tomatoes on a window ledge to ripen. He bought a nearby house for his sons, and began fixing it up. On July 30, 1996, twenty-three months after the fire, Bramblett's peaceful, low-profile new life came to an abrupt end. On that day a Roanoke County grand jury indicted Bramblett on one count of capital murder, three counts of first-degree murder, and other counts related to arson and misuse of a firearm. Within minutes a waiting, multi-jurisdictional team of police officers with drawn-guns burst into the shop where Bramblett worked and made the arrest.

Bramblett returned to Virginia to face trial without protest, waiving extradition. Unable to afford a lawyer, the court provided him a defense team consisting of two local lawyers and a private investigator. Further, the court appointed a psychologist to serve as Bramblett's mental health expert for sentencing, if required.

Upon interviewing Bramblett, the psychologist found him incompetent to stand trial and recommended that "someone else perform an evaluation." The defense filed a motion seeking a competency evaluation in January, 1997, and the court subsequently appointed a second psychologist, and then a third, to evaluate him. Both of those psychologists found Bramblett competent to understand the charges and the proceedings, and to assist in his defense. Accordingly, though the psychologists unanimously diagnosed Bramblett as evidencing a persecutory type delusional disorder, the trial judge ruled during a May, 1997 hearing that Bramblett was competent to stand trial.

It began October 14th, more than three years after the fire, fourteen and one-half months after the arrest in South Carolina. Because investigators had been unusually close-mouthed, the public knew next to nothing about the case against Bramblett; now, they would learn that the case was nearly 100 per cent circumstantial, that it had been built by the tedious accretion of hundreds and then thousands of discrete, unique facts. This is not particularly unusual. Though any one fact in such cases might be whistled-away with a shrug and the question "So what?", a well-prepared and organized case, like an arcade-game attack by marauding aliens, will inevitably wear down even a strong defense. But Bramblett's lawyers would advance the theory that the murders were a drug hit and, after more than 14 months of gestation, weren't ready to deliver.

Jury selection required four days. Ultimately, 68 persons were interviewed, the prosecutors asking each if he or she would be able to impose the death sentence. By Friday the court had a panel of 12 jurors and four alternates, and opening arguments were scheduled to begin the following Monday. On that same Friday, Bramblett's attorneys appeared before a federal judge seeking an order requiring that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service release records that might support their theory that the family had been murdered as vengeance against Teresa's brother Michael, the sometime DEA-informant. The judge promised to rule on Monday. The prosecutor set forth his case that morning with a statement that lasted approximately 45 minutes. He promised the jurors that they would hear proof of Bramblett's guilt in his own words, by listening to his oral diary. They would learn that he was sexually obsessed with Winter. They would hear him disparage Blaine repeatedly, sometimes crudely, and they would hear him say that Blaine deserved to die. But that wasn't all, the prosecutor promised; the jurors would see physical evidence that unambiguously linked Bramblett directly to the crime scene. The defense attorneys were much briefer, saying that the police had rushed to judgement, "put blinders on," and ignored evidence.

Then began the testimony.

* Teresa's father told the court that, just days before the murders, he had advised Teresa to take away Bramblett's keys to their home. He said, further, that he was going to send someone to change the house locks the very day of the fire. One of Teresa's girlfriends testified that she, too, had encouraged her to take away Bramblett's keys and change the locks, adding "I know that she was afraid." The rules of evidence prevented them from repeating what Teresa had said, however. The Roanoke Times has reported that friends of the Hodges say that Bramblett had expressed an intention to move into the Hodges home while Blaine was in prison.
* A forest ranger told the court of his encounter with Teresa and Anah while Bramblett and Winter fished some distance away. She had said nothing to indicate anything amiss.
* The mother with whom Teresa car-pooled their children told of the strange phone-call from a convenience store instead of the Hodges home.
* Bramblett's one-time roommate told of his remark that he'd done "something bad" in Virginia. His ex-wife told the court of the phone call the Monday afternoon of the fire, when Bramblett had said it would be blamed on him.
* Blaine's brother testified that Bramblett had expressed an interest in serial killers several weeks before the fire, going so far as to give him books about the subject to read. Later, he followed-up and inquired whether he'd read them.
* The sightings of Bramblett's distinctive white truck with the black tailgate on the morning of the fire were recounted.
* A postal inspector involved in the investigation of the embezzlement case against Blaine told of receiving a strange phone call from Bramblett in 1993. He said that Blaine had asked him to help concoct a cover-up, but that he'd refused. He thought the investigator should know, in case anything happened to him. He added that he was speaking on a phone installed by Hodges and his brother-in-law Michael Fulcher, and that it was probably bugged. On one occasion, following a phone call with the investigator, Bramblett told his tape recorder that he probably wouldn't live through the night.
* Neighbors told of Bramblett warning them to stay away from the Hodges family, because they were all going to be murdered by "the drug cartel."
* A forensic scientist testified that firing-pin marks found on a cartridge in Bramblett's truck exactly matched those of the gun used to kill Blaine, Winter, and Anah.
* An FBI metallurgist testified that the chemical composition of the bullets found in Bramblett's possession was identical to the chemical composition of the bullets used in the crime.
* A DNA expert testified that a pubic hair found on the bed between Winter and Anah belonged to Bramblett.
And on it went, for almost two weeks, damning fact after damning fact. Occasionally, the prosecutors would play a snippet of Bramblett's oral diary in order to buttress the testimony given the jury. Near the end they let the tapes speak for themselves, leading the jury on a tour of the helpful family friend's splintered mind.
* "Blaine is trying to buy his ass out of jail by using his daughter as some kind of sexual enticement toward me."
* "She's trying to sexually excite me, and that's exactly what she's trying to do. She has been instructed to do that. Blaine is on some kind of espionage expedition. He's keeping espionage on me."
* "I'm going to make a little recording here and say a few things that I want to put down here for posterity. Because, I'm beginning to realize what a back-stabbing, cheap mother------ I got for a friend. He's trying to set me up."
* "Now, if you think I'm paranoid, listen to this. I'm standing in my kitchen. I know I'm silhouetted in the window from the street side. It would take a rifle to hit me from there. I don't think they would go for that shot. I think they would climb up on the roof and come around on my window and I think Blaine Hodges would be behind it and be doing it. Might do it himself."
* Winter is a "...devious, manipulative, super-intelligent little girl who is sexually sophisticated."
* Speaking of Winter's supposed Mata Hari-like role as a temptress, Bramblett says "...and she's doing a good job of it."
* "I have to admit that it's exciting and it's interesting that a beautiful little girl is just making eyes at me all the time. ... There is just no way I can go back over to that place. And they're going to keep inviting me, because that's their program."

The prosecution finished its case with testimony from a career criminal that had shared a cell with Bramblett while awaiting trial. He told the court that Bramblett had told him he was "addicted to young girls." He claimed, further, that Bramblett had confessed to the murders.

Arguing that the murders were a drug-hit, the defense led off with the newspaper carrier that had seen the burgundy Toyota with New Jersey license plates moving about the neighborhood the morning of the fire. The next witness was a jailed, one-time girlfriend of Michael Fulcher who claimed to have twice smoked crack cocaine with the Hodges in their home. The defense then played a recording of testimony given in another case by a DEA agent, which verified that Teresa's brother Michael had cooperated with the agency as a sometime pilot and regular informant. The intention of the defense was to buttress it's argument that the family could have been killed in retaliation for Fulcher's activities. They then played a snippet from Blamblett's strange diary, a conversation with Teresa he had secretly recorded. Bramblett speaks first, referring to "games" that Hodges and Fulcher are playing

"Like DEA and whatever it was. I don't know why he would do stuff like that. He told me a couple of things he was involved with. You're putting your life on the line, you messing with people like that. ... I mean, people come in there and wipe your whole family out."

"Yeah, I know. That's what my sister kept saying. My sister, she kept telling me that. She said 'Don't you think any more of your kids than that?' I guess that comes from liking to live on the dangerous side."

"... The first thought that comes to my mind was the jeopardy he was putting his family in."

"He didn't think of that. Who did he think of first? Himself. Or apparently he couldn't help himself."

Bramblett declined to take the stand in his own defense.

In closing arguments, the prosecutors pounded away: the truck seen speeding away from the fire, his truck seen at the scene a few hour later, the inexplicable behavior with the police and refusal to assist in the effort to find his friends' killer, the bizarre diary, the bullets, the DNA. The defense countered by reminding the jury of that strange, suggestive conversation with Teresa, the mysterious Toyota, and the prosecutions implausible timeline. If Blaine was already dead, they wondered, if his corpse was filling the house with a stench . . . why didn't the family know it? Why didn't Teresa tell the ranger that she and her daughters were in danger? Why didn't she exploit that phone call at the convenience store to seek help?

The jury returned a conviction on every count in just over two hours, and the court began to consider the appropriate penalty.

Returning to the theme of Bramblett's obsession with Winter and seeking to demonstrate that he would be a danger to society in the future if allowed to live, prosecutors brought in several women who had contacted them following the murder; all of them claimed that Bramblett had plied them with alcohol and drugs in exchange for sex when they were pre- or young-teenagers. The defense responded with a parade of family members to tell the story of Bramblett's dismal childhood: alcoholic parents, fifteen moves before he reached high school, a life-long history of paranoia, the boy who had to hunt down his mother in saloons in order to get money for food.

The jury was unmoved, levying the death penalty after only 70 minutes of deliberation. He now awaits execution on Virginia's death row.

His lawyers immediately filed an appeal. Further, Virginia statutes require Supreme Court review of the record of every death penalty. The appeal and review were combined into a single cause, and the court's decision was rendered on February 26, 1999. The decision found no grounds for reversal of the conviction or application of the death penalty.