A 31-year-old Northern Virginia woman was murdered as a result of a bizarre conspiracy between her husband and her ex-boyfriend, who collaborated to kill her after suspecting she’d become involved with a third man, police say.
The lovers’ dispute ended with Patricia Ann Adams dead, her estranged husband partially paralyzed by a stray bullet and her ex-boyfriend suffering a head injury from a failed suicide attempts, according to a police account.
On April 30, Roger Edward Davis, Adams’ husband, and ex-boyfriend Gary Willie were charged by Culpeper police with killing the mother of three, who worked as a cashier at a local Walmart.
| Death in a small town |
| Patricia Adams’ murder was the first homicide in the town of Culpeper in several years. The last homicide before Adams’ in the town about 16,000 people, was a murder-suicide in 2006, town spokesman Wally Bunker said. In February, a Culpeper town police officer shot and killed a woman. A special prosecutor was appointed to handle the investigation. |
“[That] is so ironic. … The husband and the ex-boyfriend,” the victim’s aunt, Ann Adams, told The Washington Examiner.
She added she did not believe her niece was dating a third person.
“She had a very big heart,” said Janice Adams, Patricia’s mother. “She was a good girl.”
Davis, 44, and Patricia Ann Adams were separated, and Adams had been dating Willie, 50. Authorities say that on Oct. 8, Willie and Davis drove to Adams’ apartment complex in Davis’ car. Witnesses told police the two men forced their way into her apartment, and within seconds several gunshots were heard.
Willie killed Adams with a single bullet to the head, police say. He then shot at a female friend of Adams’ who was visiting. A shot missed its intended victim and hit Davis in the chest, according to court documents. Willie then shot himself in the head.
Both Willie and Davis were hospitalized for several months. Davis is partially paralyzed from the incident, uses a wheelchair and was staying with relatives after he was released from the hospital. Willie had been staying at a nursing home because of the gunshot wound to his head, officials said.
Police say they believe, based on text messages on Adams’ phone, that her husband and ex-boyfriend were angry with her for becoming involved with a third man.
Part of the evidence in the case is a statement made by Willie in the spring when someone asked him why he was in the nursing home. “You know why,” Willie responded, according to the charging documents. “I shot that bitch and she deserved it.”
According to court documents, Adams had been beaten by Willie before the shooting. He assaulted her in her Culpeper apartment on Oct. 7, 2011 because she broke up with him, police say.
Both Willie and Davis had been calling and texting Adams since the night of Oct. 7, according to police documents. Willie had threatened to “get” Adams.
Ann Adams said her niece planned to get a restraining order against Willie, but “she never made it.”
More than six months elapsed between the killing of Patricia Ann Adams and the arrests. “It took a significant amount of time for the detectives assigned to the case to gather enough evidence to place charges against both men,” Culpeper Capt. Ricky Pinksaw said in a news release.
Willie was arrested at Central Virginia Regional Jail, where he was an inmate on an unrelated charge, officials said. A lawyer representing him declined to comment.
Davis was released on bail. When reached by phone, he said he was not going to comment on the case and said, “I’m not trying to remember what happened.”
Davis and Willie are charged with first-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, burglary, shooting in an occupied dwelling and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to warrants. Willie was also charged with aggravated malicious wounding in the shooting of Davis.
