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Man gets 2 life terms
He pleads guilty to killing his wife and a neighbor
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Published: August 28, 2008
YADKINVILLE
A Yadkin County man with a history of anxiety and paranoia pleaded guilty yesterday to shooting his sleeping wife to death last year, and then killing a neighbor as he slept.
Robert Lane Main, 51, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree burglary.
Judge Edgar B. Gregory of Yadkin Superior Court sentenced Main to two consecutive life sentences.
Main has been in custody since he was charged Dec. 4, 2007, with shooting his wife and his neighbor.
Authorities said that Main killed Linda Kathleen Main, 47, with a shotgun between 11 p.m. and midnight Dec. 3, 2007, at the couple's house at 1034 U.S. 601, just north of the Davie County line. Shortly afterward, he broke into the neighbor's house at 1032 U.S. 601. The neighbor, Mitchell Todd Stimpson, 40, was shot once as he lay sleeping on his couch, authorities said.
Relatives were asleep inside both houses. Stimpson's 13-year-old daughter heard officers responding to the Main home across the driveway and woke up. When she went to the living room, she found her father dead.
"The reasoning behind the plea agreement was there were some issues with regard to his mental-health background, in addition to the fact that at least one of the potential witnesses would have been the daughter," said Tom Horner, the district attorney.
"Obviously, we didn't want to put her and the families through the rigors of a capital trial.… They were willing to agree to the plea."
Robert Main had no criminal record and had been married for 30 years, said his attorney, Clark Fischer of Winston-Salem.
Relatives say that in the month or so before the shootings, Main had clearly been suffering from emotional and mental problems.
"He had gotten increasingly agitated and was less and less rational," Fischer said.
Main had been trying to get psychiatric help, but he didn't have any health insurance.
Family members said that he had been complaining of what seemed to be panic attacks. He would wake up in the middle of the night soaking wet in sweat, unable to breathe.
The weekend before the shootings, he had had a couple of episodes and went to Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital in Elkin, where he got prescriptions for antibiotics and Paxil, an antidepressant. He was already taking Xanax. Also that weekend, Main went to Hoots Memorial Hospital in Yadkinville.
After returning home, Main told family members that he was going to commit himself to a mental hospital.
Relatives said they called Hoots on Dec. 3, 2007, about having him hospitalized. Since Main did not have health insurance to cover the daily charges, the hospital referred him to a mental-health agency in Mocksville, but his wife had a doctor's appointment that day and ran out of time to take him in for an assessment that afternoon. Relatives said they planned to take him the next day.
"If we had gone to trial, our defense would have been a diminished capacity," Fischer said. "He was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and paranoia that affected his ability to premeditate."
A lot of questions remain unanswered. Authorities don't know whether Main was upset with his wife and Stimpson. In the past, Main and Stimpson were known to have had disputes over Main's chickens running loose.
Stimpson was a self-employed electrical contractor. His wife had died of cancer about two years earlier.
Robert Main was not employed but did do odd jobs for farmers. The Mains had raised their three children, as well as the wife's child from a previous marriage.
■ Sherry Youngquist can be reached in Mount Airy at 336-789-9338 or at syoungquist@wsjournal.com.
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