Not just a number
Carl "Lee" Stroop used to help out around the Roanke house of Marvin Coon. Stroop made some extra money. Coon made a friend. Ed Bindas didn't even know Stroop. But he had heard how Stroop and four others were gunned down in an Old Southwest Roanoke carriage house early New Year's Day. Then he read about Stroop's burial at the city cemetery at Coyner Springs, his grave bearing only a number.

"I thought it's sad, here's an individual who left this world and on one paid him any mind." Bindas said.

Coon already had deciced to remember his friend by placing a headstone at his grave. A caretaker at the cemetery put Coon and Bindas in touch with each other.

The men paid a total of $78.38 for a simple cement plaque bearing Stroop's name, the year of birth and the date of his death. Within three week, the stone should be in place.
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The Roanoke Times - January 17, 1995
Diane Struzzi - Staff Writer

His friends knew him only as Lee, a hulk of a man with a bushy beard that made him look a bit like Grizzly Adams.
(January 1, 1995)
Carl Leonard Stroop was 42 when he was gunned down with four of his friends as they celebrated the new year in an Old Southwest Roanoke apartment.
Eleven days after he was killed, Stroop's body was removed from the morgue. Naked, he was zipped into a heavy plastic bag, placed in a wood - frame casket and laid in a pauper's grave at the city cemetery Thursday.

His family in Ohio didn't claim his body. They didn't want to discuss his life.

Now Stroop is known as number 1224. A small metal plaque marks his burial site.

A few feet away lies one of his slain friends, Susan Hutchison, buried earlier in the week. The flowers from her funeral were the only flash of color against the mud. Her family couldn't afford to pay for the funeral, but they did attend. They plan to mark her grave with a headstone.

Stroop, Hutchison, Cynthia LaPrade, Daniel Mason and Dale Arnold; Their lives were sparse and simple, hardened by alchol and mended through their friendship with one another.

"They weren't just a bunch of drunks" said a friend, Jim Barren. "Even when they drand, they didn't go downtown and bother anyone."

When they were shot down early January 1, the friends were partying at the carriage hous apartment of Hutchison, 44, and Arnold, 36. It is believed they invited neighbor Robert May to join them. He is the man suspected of killing them, supposedly during an argument. Police have not disclosed what sparked the fight.

The five victims did not regularly socialized with May, say friends and family, most of whom heard of the 27 year old man for the first time on the day of the slayings.

But it wasn't unlike the friends to ask others to party with them. That's just the type of people they were, Barren said.

"They'd do anything in the world for you," he said. "I know six people that Dale took in, including myself when I lost my job."

Hutchison and Arnold had been dating for two years. They were introduced to each other by Hutchison's 21 year old son, Kelly Robson. Friends called them Susie and Duck.

Arnold worked part time as a painter. Hutchison liked to spend time watching her favorite soap operas and cooking her specialties, like fried chicken.

"Her life in general was hard until she met Duck." Robson says of his mother. "Until she met Duck. she couldn't find happiness."

Hutchison struggled to overcome her alcoholism, which she had done, Robson said. She had survived several abusive relationships.

Hardship and alcohol appeared to draw these five people to one another. But they were about more then that, say family and friends.

Mason, 47, had left behind his family in Waynesboro, a brief career in the Navy and a steady job at a manufacturing company. He came to Roanoke nine years ago after his divoce.

He never returned to Waynesboro until his family brought his body back to be buried in his ex - wife's cemetery plot.

"He didn't want us to see him the way he was," said his mother, Ethel Mason.

But his family never forgot him. His 22 year old son, Eric, remembers his father's talent for woodwork, his love of old hot rods and his rebellious nature.

"He used to get after me to get a haircut, then he goes and grows his hair long." Eric Mason said. "But he was my father, and I respected him for what he told me not to do."

Thanksgiving 1993 was the last time father and son saw each other.

"He wanted me to keep his secrecy for some reason," Eric Mason said. "We understand he had a problem. We tried to cope with it. When he wasn't around alchol, he was the most loving father anyone could ever want."

Mason met LaPrade, who also battled alcoholism, when he arrived in Roanoke. They dated, then broke up. Mason took to Roanoke's streets, where he met Stroop. The two became inseparable, like brothers, firends say.

Recently, when Mason and LaPrade reunited, the three decided to rent an apartment on Mountain Aveune. It had only one bedroom, but was spacious compared to their friends carriage house.

It was at their apartment that friends gathered to root for their favorite football teams on Sundays. It was there that family and friends gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Last Christmas, Mason chopped down a cedar tree for the festivities. It was placed in Stroop's corner of the room, where a Rebel flag hung prominently above his belongings.

"Lee" Stroop was the last of the five victims to be laid to rest. His funeral at the city graveyard at Coyner Springs cost $255.

Jim Barren was the only person who attended the ceremony.


"Let's hope these people are not forgotten - May they rest in peace."