Accomplice

There was a moment, one of the last of her life, when Teresa Lynn McLeod may have begun to understand who really wanted her dead.Russell Raymond Brill, staging a robbery of McLeod and her fiance, Robert Dwayne Harris, pointed a gun and prepared to kill McLeod as Harris had hired him to do, Brill's girlfriend testified yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court. But McLeod began to cry, and said: "What about my son?"Lisa Petty testified yesterday that Brill told her he said to Harris: " 'I can't do this.

A Baltimore man accused of serving as the getaway driver during an armed robbery at an Ellicott City department store pleaded guilty to an accessory charge in Howard Circuit Court yesterday.Earl Henry Gray Jr., 51, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and two years' probation after pleading guilty to a charge of accessory after the fact before Judge Dennis Sweeney.Police said Gray drove his son, Warren Thomas Gray, and another unidentified man to the Caldor department store in the 9200 block of Baltimore National Pike on Dec. 22, 1992.

Anne Arundel County police have found the man they believe killed a gas station attendant in a botched robbery in 1993, but the suspect is dead.Police say Antoine Xavier Taylor, 21, of the 4500 block of Benning Road in Washington died last year in a shootout with an acquaintance near Landover Mall.His accomplice in the Dec. 17, 1993, slaying of Bruce William Maddox remains at large. Mr. Maddox, 58, was shot to death by one of two men who walked into an Exxon gas station where he worked in the first block of Defense Highway in Annapolis.

A Suitland man pleaded guilty yesterday in Howard County Circuit Court to three armed robberies and related handgun offenses committed during an alleged 2 1/2 -month crime spree in Maryland and northern Virginia.Terrance Maith, 21, entered his plea before Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr., who set sentencing for Jan. 30. Maith pleaded guilty last week to two related counts of armed robbery in Anne Arundel Circuit Court and is scheduled to be sentenced there Jan. 19.Assistant State's Attorney Mary V. Murphy said that under the plea agreement, prosecutors are asking the judge to impose a 25-year sentence, including a 10-year mandatory term for the gun offenses.

Six years after a New York man was sent to prison for murdering a Maryland state trooper, the victim's widow and law enforcement agencies are fighting a once-secret plea bargain they say will let his killer's accomplice off the hook.Today, a Howard County circuit judge will hear arguments that some hope will lead to the voiding of that plea agreement and send Francisco Rodriguez, 27, to prison for the rest of his life.Rodriguez, who admitted participating in the 1990 murder of state police Cpl. Theodore Wolf, could be released from federal prison in 2003, prosecutors say, after finishing a sentence on an unrelated drug conviction.

The suspected robber shot to death in Annapolis Mall by an off-duty police officer Friday has been identified as Raymond Wagstaff, 42, of the 2900 block of Westwood Ave. in Baltimore, county police said yesterday.Police are expected to release today a sketch of the woman thought to be an accomplice in the robbery of the Kay Jewelers store.Wagstaff died at 9: 45 p.m. at Anne Arundel Medical Center. Police would not say how many times he had been shot.John Hipps, the off-duty Prince George's County police officer who shot him, has been placed on administrative leave pending a review of the shooting, a Prince George's police spokesman said.

Under current Maryland law, only the person who pulls the trigger in the murder of a police officer can be sentenced to death.But if the governor, the state police and the families of two slain troopers have their way, accomplices also will die."When somebody murders a police officer, they're not just killing a person, they're spitting on our system of law and order," Ginni Wolf, the widow of a state trooper who was slain in 1990, told legislators yesterday.Wolf wants the General Assembly to pass a bill that would allow Maryland's courts to give death sentences to those convicted of conspiring in, or proved to have prior knowledge of, a plan to slay a police officer.

A 41-year-old Annapolis man watched and did nothing last April as his accomplice strangled a 74-year-old retired nurse, then helped ransack the woman's house, rifling through drawers in search of cash to buy drugs, an Anne Arundel Circuit Court jury was told yesterday.James Calvert McGee of the 200 block of Victor Parkway refused to help when Katherine Hunt Ryon pleaded for her life as his accomplice smashed her head with a vase and choked her from behind as she sat in a dining room chair, said the deputy state's attorney, William D. Roessler.

Carroll County State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes was appointed yesterday to review a controversial plea bargain negotiated with the accomplice of a man who murdered a Maryland state trooper.The plea agreement -- sealed by prosecutors six years ago and released in August -- gives Francisco Rodriguez, 27, a 15-year sentence for participating in the 1990 shooting of Cpl. Theodore Wolf.The agreement was made to ensure Rodriguez's testimony against his accomplice, Eric Tirado, who pulled the trigger and was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of first-degree murder in 1991.

Howard County police were seeking an accomplice in last week's robbery and shooting of a teen-ager on a Harper's Choice footpath yesterday, two days after one suspect in the case turned himself in.Police were trying to quell fears of violence in the normally quiet village, the scene of that shooting Sept. 20 and another just over 24 hours later, both within blocks of the village center.Authorities have scheduled a public meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Swansfield Neighborhood Center on Cedar Lane to discuss residents' concerns.