Update: Picture of the Suspects…
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA – On Monday evening, November 12, 2007, Charlottesville Police Detectives arrested 22 year old William Douglas Gentry, Jr. and 18 year old Michael Stuart Pritchett, both residing at 539 Caroline Street in Charlottesville, in connection with the homicide of 26 year old, Jayne Warren McGowan. Ms. McGowan was found dead in her home on Friday, November 9, 2007, with a gun shot wound to the head. Investigators have been working around the clock to piece together the circumstances that led to her death.Late yesterday afternoon, investigators received information that led them to Gentry and Pritchett. Probable cause developed over the course of the evening which led to their arrest. “On the day before her parents have to bury their daughter Jayne, I hope that this news will allow them to say goodbye with better closure and end this terrible chapter in their lives,†says Chief Timothy Longo. “I want to take this opportunity to thank our dedicated staff who worked tirelessly for the past several days and to the public, for without their concern and assistance we wouldn’t have been able to announce these arrests.†Investigators have since recovered two handguns which they believe were used in the commission of this crime. A search for additional evidence in the case is underway. Gentry and Pritchett have both been charged with Capital Murder and are being held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional jail.
Related posts:
- Jayne McGowan Murderer Pleads Guilty Moments Before Trial
- Jayne McGowan Murder Suspect Confesses
- Rest in Peace Jayne McGowan
Those f##kwitted murder-robbery perps were my NEIGHBORS. I’m going to go deadbolt all my doors and draw the shades now… Nice work by CPD.
did you know them? I saw something somewhere (i think the daily p) that said the house McGowan moved into was a suspected drug house by neighbors prior to her moving in….I was thinking maybe one of the former dealers/users left something there.
good.
mintyfresh, that’s kind of scary. yikes.
Somebody I work with lives right around the corner from the house on St. Clair and reported that cars slowing down around the house were frequently noted before JM moved in.
For a minute I was freaked out as a former student of mine who lived in Belmont shared the same name as the older suspect, but the one locked up is a good bit younger.
At the risk of opening a can of worms, am I the only one just a little bit relieved that these two are not black?
At the very least, the whole ugly drama that’s about to play out will not be rife with racial undercurrents, like so much else in C-ville.
I recognize both of these guys. They hang (hung!) out with the ex-con in my neighborhood whom we suspect of running a “drug house”. I’m glad to see they’ve been busted. I feel quite sure that they are responsible for lots of other (more minor) crimes too.
I’m pretty sure I once caught Gentry in the act of robbing my car one fine Saturday morning around 3:00am. That is, I’m pretty sure it was Gentry. I got a pretty decent look at him when I cut on the floodlights, and as he ran away at top speed down our street, then turned around and ran the opposite direction when he realized it was a dead end. Heh. Called the cops at the time, but by the time they showed up he’d already headed up the Rivanna Trail with a good head start. Fortunately I caught him early enough that he hadn’t had time to actually steal anything. Not that there was much to steal.
Have to give the CPD props then too, though… they showed up within 5 minutes of my call.
Dave, hate to say I had the exact same thought you did.
josh….was the “drug house” the one that McGowan moved into?
i dont know longo at all, but his quote was very fitting and poignant. kudos to the CPD. they definitely rose to the occasion. i am very impressed.
crud buster – i live across the street and we did suspect the house McGowan was renting to be a “drug house” in the past. it’s super secluded, and you wouldn’t know it was there unless you walked the street regularly or knew the inhabitants/had business there. i think the landlord had actually kicked the last, very shady tenants out, then rented to Jayne. i wonder if this is a terrible case of wrong place, wrong time . . . were those low-lifes looking for someone else and Jayne got in the way? ugh it makes me sick to think about.
I have heard that part of town has alot of crystal meth production. I wonder if a Cville crackdown is coming our way…
indie dork: I completely agree. I’m pretty sure I’ve said before that I’ve worked closely with the CPD before, and I’ve received great support and customer service.
On another note: this is horrible. I don’t have words.
that part of town, unless i am completely mistaken, does NOT have a lot of crystal meth production, or drug use in general. It’s sort of on the border between middle class and upper middle class and is mostly families. Belmont would be much more dangerous than the area where this happened.
I find the hypothesis that the perps were looking for someone else, or something, and Jane got in the way, to be plausible. The thing is, why would they have had guns? And why use them?
um, yeah. CB has it right – this is a few blocks from a house on locust that recently sold for just under $2 billion. our ‘hood is really really quiet – lots of young families, some really great old houses that sell for big bucks, mixed in with more moderate options, some (few, i think) rental properties. i have never, ever felt unsafe. well, not until this went down.
my guess is these guys went to the house carrying, ready to, at least, intimidate whoever was there if they didn’t get what they wanted. why they chose to use kill poor Jayne i can’t fathom.
oh sorry – house on locust went for just under 2 mil – not 2 bil . . prices so out of my range i get them confused – apologies
Drugs are a cash business, and dealers don’t take plastic, checks or sell on credit. If its true that prior tenants were selling, they probably went there to rob THEM. Why they would end up killing her is beyond me, I guess its the unthinking that do the unthinkable. These were reaaaal smart guys to dump the car about a block from their house…
Time to warm up ‘ol sparky (actually the nickname for Florida’s electric chair… not sure if our’s has one)
Actually probably a good thing that there were two of them, its rained just enough the last few days that I’m sure they left footprints where they dropped the car off, and unless they both wear the same shoe in the same size, they’ll be able to tell who was driving. If there’s gunshot residue on the steering wheel, then they know who pulled the trigger fairly conclusively (much better scenario than each saying the other did it) They can cut a ‘life without parole’ deal with the idiot accomplice (I’m guessing the guy on the right based on body language) to secure his testimony against the shooter, much better than having to rely on evidence alone. Putting idiot #2 on the stand and having him point to Idiot #1 and say “yes, I saw him shoot her” is probably going to guarantee that the shooter gets his 60,000 volts. Maybe there’s enough evidence to fry ‘em both… we’ll see.
Oh, and I’m not relieved that they’re white, I’d be just a little relieved if they were from out of town, but black or white we had these guys living in our backyard, scary.
Belmont would be much more dangerous than the area…
Oh hold up. You *know* i gotsta reprezent.
You know, when I first bought a house here like 8 years ago, everybody at my work was all “oh my gawd, y’all aint gonna live there!” “hope you like the sounds of gunshots at night” and on and on… I felt like I was moving to crenshaw or bayview or some such shit. But I been down in the ‘mont a while now and I have had way more positive neighborly experiences than negative. Its not even close. Sure there was the drunken homeless interior decorator, and the juvenile b&e, but other than that I have never felt unsafe. Quite the opposite, in fact. We all wave, chat, help out… Its like Seasame Street compared to where I’m from. Sure we have our fringe elements, but hell, so wasn’t Oscar the Grouch. Meth labs? Off Park Street? Try some trailers out it DangGump Gap or some other remote moonshining blue ridge crease, maybe, but…
We’s good folks here in the Be’Mo… we mostly just want to be left alone to pursue our idiosychracies and whatnot.
/sorry for the threadjack, kthxby.
glad you took advantage of that opportunity. I’ll try and throw you another softball some time, since that was so fuckin funny (and so appropriate, too, in the context of a recently murdered woman).
Now I feel like an ass. I shoulda considered the thread I was jackin. I mean no disrespect at all to this poor woman or her family. Seriously, i just get carried away. Sigh.
crud buster: No, we’re about a half a mile from there. Different house altogether, though it seems to be the same sorta crowd.
b-yo, I’ve been a huge jackass many a time. no worries, know you didn’t intend anything by it.
I’m the last in the world to call out anything p.c. or any of this pseudo racist crap which serves as an excuse to not self-actualize in this country of ours (shout out to Bill Cosby) but if this was Shaniqua Johnson of the 500 block of wherever who may have been a pillar of society and devoted her energies to rescuing small ferrets and children of the corn, this wouldn’t have received it’s own thread on any site. Corruption and greed is rampant in every society where money does flow and addiction crosses all racial boundaries. I’m smoking the pipe right now. Hold on a minute..I’m back.
We live in Oz here people. Murder is rare. Random murder is even more rare. In general. There is a reason why most of these random acts of non-kindness happen in college towns. On college and school campuses. Think real hard.