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Man charged in death

Construction workers have deadly fight, body ends up in trash container at Twi-Lite Motel

By CATHY DYSON

Date published: 5/3/2004

By CATHY DYSON

A fight between two out-of-state construction workers turned fatal Friday night, as one eventually ended up in a motel trash bin and the other in the local jail.

The body of Benjamin Carrigan, 23, of North Carolina was found Saturday morning in a trash bin beside the Twi-Lite Motel on the U.S. 1 Bypass. Autopsy results aren't complete, but police suspect he suffered some head trauma, city police spokesman Jim Shelhorse said yesterday.

The victim apparently took quite a beating, according to Jocko Parker and Tanya Davis, motel residents who also clean the facility's 19 rooms.

"I think his legs were broken, and his neck was broken, and all kinds of stuff like that," Parker said.

Early yesterday morning, city police charged James Jaspers, 33, of Michigan with first-degree murder. He was being held yesterday in the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

The slaying is the city's first homicide of 2004.

The victim and suspect probably met when they served time together in a North Carolina prison, Shelhorse said. He doesn't know if they were released at the same time, but said they had been doing construction work in the Fredericksburg area.

Carrigan was staying in Room 1 at the Twi-Lite. Other guests heard what they described as a loud, drunken brawl about 11:30 Friday night.

"But it was all over by midnight, which surprised me," said a woman from Washington, who asked not to be identified. She expected the "partying" in Room 1 to go on for hours.

Instead, all was quiet until about 8:50 Saturday morning. That's when Cornelius Baylor, 27, of Fredericksburg came by the motel. He had just finished his newspaper delivery route, and he backed his car up to the trash bin to throw out extra papers, like he does every morning.

He noticed a strong odor.

"I never smelled nothing like that," he said. "I thought it might be a dog in there--and then I saw a foot."

The body was on top of the trash heap with a piece of a table placed over it, he said. At first, Baylor thought it was a mannequin, then looked a second time to see if the man was breathing.

He went to the room where his girlfriend's family is staying.

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Date published: 5/3/2004