Jail cell searched in slaying investigation

By JEFFREY SIMMONS/Staff

Looking for more evidence in the killing of a Wythe County woman, police last week went to the jail cell of a suspect in the crime.
According to a search warrant filed this week in Wythe County Circuit Court, police seized a legal pad, notebook paper and letters Oct. 2 from the Roanoke cell of 45-year-old Samuel Robert Conrad III of Max Meadows.
Conrad is one of two men charged with murder in the death of 55-year-old Iris Spencer Gregory. The Max Meadows woman’s badly decomposed body was found Sept. 7 inside her isolated trailer off Payne Town Road.
Linwood Lester Webster, 38, of Max Meadows was also charged in the crime.
According to the search warrant, police wanted to search Conrad’s cell after listening to jailhouse telephone conservations between Conrad and his wife, Lynn Conrad, Gregory’s sister.
“While listening to these phone conversations between Samuel Robert Conrad III and Lynn Conrad, this affiant heard them discussing the murder of Iris Gregory,” wrote Wythe County Sheriff’s Office Investigator W.N. Rowe. “On numerous occasions during these conversations, both Samuel Robert Conrad II and Lynn Conrad would stop each other from discussing specific details of the murder and refer to discussing it further through written communication.”
The search warrant doesn’t specify whether the seized letters were from Lynn Conrad, Samuel Conrad or both.
Initially jailed on a federal probation violation charge, Conrad was being held in an Abingdon jail before going to Roanoke.
He and Webster have been charged with first-degree murder in Gregory’s death, which an autopsy determined was caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
She had apparently been dead for up to a month before her body was found. Police haven’t speculated on a murder weapon.
As far as a motive, police have said that Gregory, Conrad’s sister-in-law, possibly owed the suspects money for work they had done on her trailer.
In 2003, Gregory took out an assault warrant on Conrad, but the charge was dismissed when the case went to court.
Preliminary hearing dates for both suspects have been set for Dec. 18 in Wythe County General District Court. The commonwealth’s attorney, though, said the hearings probably won’t happen until next year.
If a judge finds probable cause during the preliminary hearings, he’ll send the charges to a grand jury for consideration. If grand jurors indict the men, they’ll stand trial in Circuit Court.
Jeffrey Simmons can be reached at 228-6611 or .