Amy Lou Buckingham, a 38-year-old White/Caucasian woman from Tunnelton, West Virginia, was killed outside her home on April 16, 2015. Buckingham was a homemaker and mother of three who had lived much of her life in the Tunnelton area. On the night she died, her father, her son, and her sister were at the residence when John Wayne “Boo” Strawser Jr., a former boyfriend, arrived. Buckingham and Strawser had ended their relationship sometime between December 2014 and April 2015, and Buckingham had begun seeing another man.
According to evidence later presented in court, Strawser entered the house but quickly went back outside. Buckingham followed him into the driveway, where the two began arguing near his vehicle. Her relatives inside the home heard the confrontation followed by a single gunshot. When they went outside, they found Buckingham mortally wounded in the driveway and saw Strawser leaving in a dark-colored Subaru.
Although none of the relatives actually witnessed the trigger being pulled, Buckingham’s sister immediately called 911 and reported that Strawser had shot her.
The medical evidence established that Buckingham had been struck by a single close-range gunshot. The bullet pierced her breastbone and passed through her body, and she died at the scene. The physician who performed the autopsy determined that the weapon was more powerful than a small-caliber firearm but was not a high-powered rifle. Investigators later used gunshot-residue testing and other evidence in an effort to determine what firearm had been used.
Police responding to the shooting soon located Strawser in his vehicle and attempted to stop him. When officers tried to get him out of the vehicle, he accelerated away, beginning a pursuit that ended when he crashed in a field. Strawser was not immediately taken into custody there. The following day, while police were executing a search warrant at his residence, Strawser returned and surrendered. Investigators noted that his clothing was wet and that he was covered with pine needles. During a voluntary statement to police, he denied killing Buckingham.
The investigation produced evidence prosecutors later argued connected Strawser to the killing. A search of his cellphone, conducted pursuant to a warrant months after his arrest, revealed hostile text messages he had sent Buckingham on the day she was shot. Those messages concerned her relationship with a new boyfriend. Investigators also found photographs of pistols on the phone, including a. 44-caliber Rossi Ranch handgun. At Strawser’s residence, police recovered a 9mm pistol and a fired. 44 Magnum cartridge.
A neighbor subsequently helped police locate a. 44-caliber Rossi Ranch handgun hidden in a swampy area roughly a quarter-mile from Strawser’s home. The neighbor told investigators that he and Strawser had previously used that location to hide items. A West Virginia State Police firearms examiner determined that the recovered. 44 Magnum cartridge had been fired from that particular handgun. Testing of the gun and comparison with gunshot residue on Buckingham’s sweater indicated that, if the Rossi was the weapon used to kill her, it had been fired from less than approximately seven feet away. The weapon could not be conclusively identified as the murder weapon, but prosecutors used its location, the matching cartridge, the cellphone photographs, and the close-range test results as circumstantial evidence against Strawser.
Strawser was initially charged with first-degree murder and held without bond. In October 2015, a Preston County grand jury returned a three-count indictment accusing him of first-degree murder, fleeing in a vehicle with reckless indifference, and fleeing in a vehicle causing injury to a law-enforcement officer. The charge involving injury to an officer was dismissed before trial, leaving the murder and reckless-fleeing counts for the jury to consider.
Strawser maintained that he had not shot Buckingham. His defense emphasized that no one had actually seen the shooting take place. A neighbor testified that after hearing the gunshot he heard Buckingham’s father say words suggesting that more than one person might have been involved. Strawser himself did not testify. Prosecutors, however, argued that the circumstances left little doubt about who was responsible: Strawser had contacted Buckingham before arriving, the two were alone outside arguing beside his vehicle, her relatives heard the gunshot, and they immediately saw Strawser driving away. The State also pointed to the hostile messages concerning Buckingham’s new relationship as evidence of motive and to the firearm evidence as additional corroboration.
The case went to trial in Preston County in August 2016. After hearing the testimony and examining the circumstantial and forensic evidence, the jury found Strawser guilty of first-degree murder. The jury declined to recommend mercy, a decision that made him ineligible for eventual parole on the murder conviction. He was also convicted of fleeing in a vehicle with reckless indifference. On October 11, 2016, the circuit court sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for Buckingham’s murder, followed by a consecutive term of one to five years for the fleeing conviction.
Strawser challenged the verdict and sought either a judgment of acquittal or a new trial. Among his arguments were claims that publicity surrounding the case prevented a fair trial, that evidence taken from his cellphone should have been suppressed because an officer initially looked at the phone’s SIM card without a warrant, and that evidence concerning the recovered. 44-caliber handgun should not have been admitted. The trial court rejected those arguments. Although authorities acknowledged that the initial warrantless examination of the phone was unconstitutional, the court ruled that evidence later obtained under a valid warrant was admissible because the warrant was supported by information independent of the earlier search.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals reviewed Strawser’s case and, on November 17, 2017, affirmed the lower court’s ruling. The court concluded that the evidence, considered together, was sufficient for a rational jury to find Strawser guilty beyond a reasonable doubt even though there had been no eyewitness to the shooting itself. His conviction for Buckingham’s murder and his sentence of life without parole therefore remained in place.
The investigation into Buckingham’s death ultimately had consequences beyond the Tunnelton case. After Strawser was charged with killing her, information surfaced that led Pennsylvania investigators to examine him in connection with the January 2014 highway killing of Timothy Davison. Evidence developed in the investigations included a. 44-caliber Rossi Ranch Hand recovered near Strawser’s West Virginia residence. Strawser was later separately convicted in Pennsylvania for Davison’s murder. Buckingham’s killing, however, remained the case that first placed Strawser in custody and resulted in his West Virginia life-without-parole sentence.
