Cold-Blooded Killer
Last year, Virginia executed nine people. Three had been sent to death row by Prince William County Prosecutor Paul Ebert. As long as Ebert stalks the courtroom, there'll be plenty more to take their place.
Cover Story
It should have been the perfect hit, the easiest job in the world, even for a no-luck loser like Tony Mackall. In and out. No mess, no problems, nobody gets hurt.
He'd been coming to the gas station regularly for nearly a month, ever since he started working for a local drywall contractor. It sat on a county road overlooking the Occoquan River in Prince William County, Va. He knew the routine: the husband managing the station, the wife in the cashier's booth out at the gas pumps, a couple of little girls running around the place. Service with a smile and all the old-fashioned hooey of a country store plopped down next to Interstate 95 in outer suburbia. Just the kind of place no longer found in his native southeast D.C. Wide open.
The drywall crew often stopped by the station after doing jobs around the Washington area. One day, Mackall got out of the van and walked over to the cashier's booth. He was just a little squirt, really, barely 5-foot-7 and a scraggly 140 pounds in his dusty boots. He bought a pack of Salem cigarettes and climbed back into the van. "Those people would be very easy to rip off," he announced.
The boss was furious. He'd tried to give Mackall a break, hiring him from a work-release program out of a D.C. halfway house. The 23-year-old had been in and out of reformatories since he was 8. Nothing violent, though—he just couldn't keep his hands off other people's stuff. So the boss had taken a chance on him.... Continued 
Issue of Mar. 20 - 26, 1998
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