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DAPHNE HlTt.HINSON
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Part I: The Defendant's Case
After 12’/j days of testimony that reads like a script for an episode of "General Hospital," a Rappahannock jury deliberated less than three hours last Thursday before finding that Earl E. Holmes, Flint Hill orchardist who died of liver cancer in November, 1979, had executed a valid will a month prior to his death in which he left his entire $1.8 million dollar estate to his doctor, naval commander Peter Neilson.
The 76-year-old Marine Corps officer had no wife or children. His closest ralative was a sister, Ruth Holmes, three years older, also single and childless. Ruth Holmes died just three months after her brother and in her will directed her executrix and chief beneficiary, Betty Paleologos, her friend and care-taker for over 15 years, to challenge her brother’s bequest.
That long—and expensive—legal battle ended August 5 with the jury's rejection of arguments that Col. Holmes was mentally incapacitated when the will was executed or that Neilson had exercised undue influence in coercing the colonel to make the bequest in his favor or that fraud was involved in the actual signing of the document.
But the contest may not be over. David Konick, local attorney on the plaintiffs team of lawyers, announced this week that an appeal will be filed. “On behalf of all of us, none of us are in the least bit sorry about the outcome of the case because this is not the final outcome, just the end of round one. We are carrying out a dying lady’s last wish and we’re going to continue carrying out her last wish until there’s no place
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