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Trial opens in slaying of couple

The man had the motive and opportunity to kill the pair, who sold him their truck, the prosector says.

By CANDACE RONDEAUX
Published July 23, 2005

TAMPA - Just before Thanksgiving two years ago, Karla Van Dusen was driving behind her husband, Richard, in his meticulously refurbished red 1971 Chevy Cheyenne truck. They were on their way to St. Petersburg to sell the Chevy to a man they'd just met.

It was the last trip they would ever take.

On Friday, prosecutors said William J. Deparvine, the St. Petersburg man who bought the truck, was the last to see the Tierra Verde couple alive before their bodies were found in November 2003. Charged with two counts of first-degree murder, Deparvine, 53, listened impassively as witnesses described the couple's last hours during the first day of his trial.

"The evidence will show that William Deparvine was the only person who had the motive and opportunity" to kill the Van Dusens, said Hillsborough prosecutor Jay Pruner. A convicted felon, Deparvine was arrested in January 2004, three months after the couple's bodies were found lying face down in a dirt driveway near Old Memorial Highway in northwest Hillsborough County.

He met Richard Van Dusen, 58, after responding to a classified ad in the St. Petersburg Times for the Chevy truck. Deparvine is accused of shooting Van Dusen and his 49-year-old wife in the head at close range.

The couple's Jeep was found parked in a lot about a mile away from where their bodies were found. Inside the car, investigators found a blood spattered interior, two cell phones and a woman's purse, its contents dumped on the floorboard. Outside, they found the identification card of Henry Sullivan, a man whom Assistant Public Defender John Skye tried Friday to implicate in the crime.

"He really has no particular alibi as to where he was that evening," Skye said of Sullivan.

[Last modified July 23, 2005, 00:52:10]