Lynchburg Murder by Knife: Linda Bailey Buffaloe

From the Lynchburg's Prosecutors office:

On August 22, 2005, Linda Bailey Buffaloe entered a plea of guilty to the charge of voluntary manslaughter and received the maximum statutory penalty of ten years in the penitentiary as part of a plea agreement with the Commonwealth.

The crime occurred in the early morning hours of October 4, 2004. Buffaloe and her live-in boyfriend, Gregory Campbell, both returned to their residence at 613 Wilton Avenue after a night of drinking and partying. Sometime around 2:00 that morning, the couple began arguing and fighting. Buffaloe awakened one of their other housemates, Milton Penn, shortly after 2:00 a.m. and told him to come check on Campbell. When Penn entered the couple’s bedroom, he found Campbell unconscious in the floor and bleeding from the chest. A short time later, Campbell was declared dead of a single stab wound to the chest.

A knife was recovered from the kitchen of the residence and DNA examination revealed Campbell’s blood on the blade and Buffaloe’s DNA profile on the handle. Despite this strong physical evidence against Buffaloe, she refused to tell police what happened in the bedroom, admitting only that Campbell was picking on her and she was afraid of going to jail if she said anything more. There were no witnesses to the incident. Police records indicated a lengthy history of violence between the couple.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorneys Jeff Bennett and Gretchen Hutt believed that the evidence strongly supported the crime of voluntary manslaughter. They offered the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for the maximum sentence of ten years and thereby avoid a possible murder conviction in front of a jury. Buffaloe accepted the agreement and entered her plea this morning in Lynchburg Circuit Court before Judge J. Leyburn Mosby.