A Rappahannock jury put a price tag on a

A Rappahannock jury put a price tag on a human life last Friday. The tag reads $1,000. That is the fine 12 men and women levied on Ted Gregory for the slaying of Howard LaBove on August 20, 1980. On that night, Gregory trailed his estranged wife from a Middleburg restaurant to a cottage on an isolated farm outside the horse country town. He parked his pick-up truck a quarter of a mile away, removed his boots, took the loaded pistol from the glove compartment and started toward the house of the man who was reportedly his best friend in Middleburg. He managed to get by the nextdoor farmhouse without disturbing the residents and reach the cottage without alerting LaBove’s dog.

Listening at a dark window, he heard the unmistakable sounds of love making, according to the defense attorney. Gregory snuck around the cottage to the living room door, crossed the living room to one bedroom, kicked open the bedroom door and flicked on the light to see his wife in bed with another man.

Gregory shouted “I’m going to kill you.!” Fill in the blank with either “bitch" or “both”. Testimony was contradictory on whether the threat was to his estranged wife or to her lover.

But there’s no question about the aftermath of the shots fired by Gregory that night. LaBove was left dead.

Defense attorneys argued “not guilty by virtue of irrisistible impule,” Virginia’s version of a temporary insanity plea, and tried to put Mo Gregory’s morals on trial. .“Ted Gregory, I submit, is one of the finest people you’ll ever meet,” Jeffrey Rice told the jury in closing arguments. “The only thing that Ted Gregory ever did wrong was to marry Monique. And Monique, I submit, is not one of the finest people you’ll ever meet. ”

Even the prosecutors joined the attack, acknowledging that she had behaved badly chiding the defense team for insinuating that they approved of her actions, putting distance between the commonwealth and its star witness.

But despite their misgivings about