VA. COP'S '84 SUICIDE REOPENED AS HOMICIDE PROBE

THE shots rang out in Gates County, North Carolina. It was March 1984. Three shots, then a fourth. For most of the past three decades, investigators believed the dead man lying face down in the creek had killed himself. He was Portsmouth, VA police officer Garland L. Joyner. Investigation revealed Joyner had killed imself over bad debts and had even pumped up his life insurance policies--tell tale signs of a suicide.
Resident Keith Mundie told the Virginian-Pilot: "The buttons from his shirt were laying on the bridge. His wallet, his cards, all of the paperwork from his wallet,
it was all floating in the creek. His wallet was out there, too. That won't no suicide."
And now, after all these years, apparently cops agree and have reopened the case as a homicide investigation. All cops are saying is that there are new leads. The dead policeman--by all accounts an excellent officer--told his wife Lillie he had been working on "something big." She never believed her husband had killed himself. She hired a private investigator - Billy Franklin from Virginia Beach - to report to the insurance company that carried the life insurance policies on her husband.
Franklin said at the time: "I've seen dog-biting cases that were worked better than this one.
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