RICHMOND, Va. -- Twenty-six years before he murdered his estranged girlfriend and their one-year-old child in Chesterfield -- then killed two other people in a high-speed crash while running from police - Stafford Shaw was tried for murdering his pregnant 17-year-old girlfriend.
He allegedly stuffed her body in the trunk of her own car and then set it on fire in Richmond's East End.
It's a murder that continues to haunt the Richmond prosecutor who tried the 1989 case and was stunned when it ended in acquittal.
He knew what Shaw could do.
"We knew there were going to be problems," said Richmond Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Learned Barry. "And it took a while. But he showed what he was made of and that's what's happened here today."
The previous murder occurred on May 3, 1989.
Stafford Shaw was 20 at the time. When his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tonette Snead, became pregnant he urged her to have an abortion, according to court testimony at the time.
"The whole entire family was involved in the situation," Barry said. "And when she chose to keep the child, he became angry, arranged for a meeting with her . . . And she never came back from the meeting."
The prosecution also had a witness who saw Shaw arguing with Snead and pulling on her near where the car was burned.
"Unfortunately, in those days, a fire pretty much destroyed whatever evidence we had at the scene," Barry said. (There have been advances in forensic science since then.)
Stafford Shaw's close friend, who was reportedly with him that night, testified he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. That man's mother also testified about Shaw's alibi.
Based on that evidence, he was acquitted.
There's no question, Barry said, that those who testified for Stafford Shaw in that old case are the reason that he's not in prison right now.
Did Morgan Rogers, the latest murdered girlfriend, know about her boyfriend's past?
That old case doesn't pop up in a simple Google search. WTVR CBS 6 found information about his checkered past with a newspaper database search.
And a longtime friend who worked with Rogers said she told of how stunned she was when Shaw attacked her in a domestic assault earlier this year.
The friend said Rogers told her she had no idea Shaw was capable of that kind of violence.
But the family of Tonette Snead knew, according to reports about the trial.
So did prosecutor Barry.
"It's very sad," he said.
