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Dewey K. ''Frankie'' Venable

By AMY JETER, The Virginian-Pilot
© June 3, 2004

On a night in January, notorious child rapist Richard A. Ausley was found beaten and strangled on the floor of his prison cell.

The 64-year-old man had been locked up for much of the past four decades for sexually assaulting several teenagers in South Hampton Roads. He tossed one boy in a ditch and abandoned another in a wooden box.

Now, a man who himself was a childhood victim of sexual abuse is accused of killing Ausley.

Dewey K. “Frankie” Venable, 24, had vowed in a letter to his grandmother that he would not let himself be raped in prison. He also had told family members that he had been disciplined for attacking inmates who were sex offenders.

“He had asked not to be stuck in a cell with a child molester, flat out, plain and simple,” his aunt, Patricia Nelson, said in an interview.

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Venable has told his family that he did not commit the crime.

Department of Corrections officials would not talk about the pending criminal case or about information from inmate files. In an e-mail response to The Virginian-Pilot, department spokesman Larry Traylor wrote that there are no policies specifically governing cell assignments for sex offenders or inmates who are known victims of molestation.

“The fact that an inmate is a convicted sex offender may or may not impact the decision regarding who he lives with,” Traylor wrote. “Cell assignment decisions are handled on a case-by-case basis.”

Told of Venable’s case, one Board of Corrections member, W. Randy Wright, said the inmate’s prison history should be investigated and that the system should consider a policy change. Wright, who also is a member of the Norfolk City Council, plays no role in assigning inmates to cells.

“You don’t want to put an explosive situation into a cell block if it’s avoidable,” he said. “If he, in fact, made that request known, then somebody should have taken heed of it.”

Richard Ausley once told officials he did not want to die in prison. Last year, his impending release helped prompt legislators to create a new law allowing the state to continue holding “sexually violent predators” after they have completed their prison terms.

Ausley was never held under that law. Instead, in August, a Portsmouth judge sentenced him to five more years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sodomizing another teenager in 1972.

The conviction made it necessary to upgrade his security level, according to the Department of Corrections. In November, Ausley was moved from Brunswick Correctional Center, where a high percentage of inmates are sex offenders, to Sussex I State Prison in Waverly.

Ausley had been housed with a cellmate at Brunswick, Traylor said, and he also had a cellmate the whole time he was at Sussex I. Traylor would not provide further information about the cellmates. He was sharing his cell with one inmate on the night he died, according to the Department of Corrections. The department has not named the cellmate.

A Sussex County grand jury indictment, dated May 4, charges Venable with murder in Ausley’s death. His arraignment is scheduled for August, when he is expected to plead not guilty.

If convicted, Venable could face the death penalty because the crime took place in prison.

Frankie Venable was convicted in 2001 of carjacking, robbery and related charges in Virginia Beach and was sentenced to serve an 18-year term. He was sent to Red Onion State Prison in Wise County in April 2002 and transferred to Sussex I that July.

Traylor said the inmate would be unavailable for media interviews because he is being held in a “segregation” status, away from the prison’s general population.

Venable was molested at least once in the mid-1980s, when he was between the ages of 4 and 7, according to records in Norfolk Circuit Court.

In 1988, Dennis L. Sewell pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual battery for attacks on Venable and another child, court records show. Sewell received a suspended 20-year prison sentence and 10 years of probation.

He was the live-in boyfriend of Venable’s mother, according to Patricia Nelson, the aunt.

Nelson said the abuse had come up during Venable’s trial in Virginia Beach. She said it bothered her nephew that Sewell did not go to jail, and his hostility toward child molesters grew when he went to prison.

Venable told her that “he had gotten violent, threw urine at one, spat on another.” He told her that prison officials isolated him from other inmates as punishment.

He said he repeatedly told guards that he did not want to live with a child molester, Nelson said. It was unclear if he made a formal request.

Nelson, 38, lives in Gloucester and works in the real-estate industry. Her claims could not be verified through lawyers, prison officials or public records.

Venable’s attorney, R. Clinton Clary Jr., declined to comment for this report, saying he was not yet familiar with the details of the case.

Lyndia Person Ramsey, the Sussex County commonwealth’s attorney, could not be reached for comment.

Traylor said Venable’s record with the Department of Corrections, including his disciplinary history, is not public information. He would not say whether prison officials knew that Venable had been a victim of sexual abuse.

Prison officials could learn such information from court records, a counselor or the inmate, Traylor said. If known, that information would be noted in the inmate’s file and may be considered when assigning a cell.

Formal requests by inmates also are considered by counselors and administrators when assigning cells, Traylor said. Informal comments to corrections officers may or may not be taken into account, he said.

In Massachusetts earlier this year, reforms were recommended after the prison murder of a former priest and convicted pedophile, John J. Geoghan, by an inmate who said he was sexually abused as a boy.

An administrative inquiry recommended changes in several areas, including doing a better job of detecting inmate disciplinary patterns and making sure that staff is educated about a prisoner’s past.

There have been 14 homicides in the Virginia prison system since 1990, according to the Department of Corrections. Ausley’s death was the first since 2002.

Staff writer Jon Frank and news researchers Ann Kinken Johnson and Kim Kent contributed to this report. Reach Amy Jeter at 446-2793 or amy.jeter@pilotonline.com

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