On New Year’s Day 1995, a party in a three-room carriage house apartment in Roanoke’s Old Southwest ended in a mass shooting that left five people dead, including 36-year-old Dale Jay Arnold and his girlfriend, 44-year-old Susan Lynne Hutchinson. Neighbors had reported loud music through the night; shortly after 4 a.m. on January 1 a 911 caller reported suspected gunshots and police found three men shot dead on the kitchen floor and two women shot in the living room.

Attention quickly turned to a next-door neighbor, 27-year-old Robert Michael May, who witnesses said was seen fleeing the scene. May was arrested the same day, confessed to the five killings and claimed the shooting began after an argument over whether the Navy or the Marines was tougher, alleging one man pulled a gun on him — a claim authorities disputed because no other weapon was found. May was charged with capital murder and later pleaded no contest; in August 1995 a Roanoke Circuit Judge sentenced him to five life terms plus 28 years with no possibility of parole.