By Keith Epps
Free Lance-Star
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — A previously undiscovered letter written by the man who killed Fredericksburg Police Officer Todd Bahr last year makes it clear that the gunman was expecting bloodshed that night.
Gregory Berryman, 47, ambushed Bahr and exchanged gunfire with three other officers on June 6 before shooting himself in the head, police said.
The shootout occurred at The Commons at Cowan Boulevard near police headquarters, where Berryman’s former girlfriend lived.
Berryman was upset because the woman had left him, according to police and the letter, and was trying to get at her that night when police intervened.
“To whom-ever, you can try and figure it out if you want!” Berryman wrote. “I had a solution and exicuted [sic] it!!”
City police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said the letter was found in the watch pocket of the pants Berryman was wearing that night. It had been overlooked during the collection of evidence that followed the shooting.
Bledsoe said a city detective found the letter May 7 after Berryman’s family requested his personal belongings. Money and a wallet were among the items given to the family.
The letter was on a single sheet of paper folded several times. The single-spaced handwriting, laced with expletives, filled both sides.
The letter started with the words, “To the media or whoever is concerned with the truth. Get it right this time, Natatia Bledsoe!” Bledsoe’s job includes handling media relations for the police department.
While it claims “lots of lies and bullsh-- has been told,” Berryman’s letter appears to reinforce what police said after the shooting: That he intended to kill his ex-girlfriend that night. Police believe he planned to leave the letter near the targeted victim after he shot her.
In the letter, Berryman repeatedly badmouthed the ex-girlfriend, with whom he had a 19-year relationship and two daughters. He said she lied about him and he raged about her relationships with two other men.
Berryman wrote that he was especially upset about his Sept. 7, 2007, arrest that followed an incident in the 1500 block of Airport Avenue in Fredericksburg.
A woman who lived there told police that Berryman came to the house looking for his former girlfriend, who used to live there. The woman claimed that Berryman forced her at gunpoint to walk with him while he searched the house for the ex-girlfriend, who is also her friend.
Berryman eventually served six months in jail on reduced charges of brandishing a firearm and carrying a concealed weapon.
Berryman wrote that the woman lied and that he simply went to visit the ex-girlfriend and his daughters. He said he had talked to the ex-girlfriend before coming, but wasn’t told that she’d moved out.
In the letter, Berryman hinted that he knew he’d be killed in the course of executing his plan.
In a threat to the woman who filed the Sept. 7, 2007, report, he wrote, “If there’s any way for me to come back in any life form, you [expletive] are on my list.”
Berryman also threatened Judge John Stevens and the lawyer who represented him, saying the public defender “shoved a plea agreement in my face” that he felt pressured to sign.
On June 6, according to police, Berryman had already been to the apartment complex with a gun when police were called.
He sped away after officers spotted him in a nearby parking lot and returned to the apartment complex, where other officers were waiting.
Officer Joe Young put the woman, her boyfriend and a child in a back bedroom of the second-floor apartment and told them to stay there.
He then took a young man who was on a “Ride Along” with him that night to a third-floor landing and made him lie down.
Finally, Young moved his cruiser a short distance away and left the door open and the radio blaring in an attempt to distract the suspect.
The suspect shot Bahr, who apparently never even saw the suspect. He then fired shots into Young’s empty cruiser and exchanged shots with Young and two Fredericksburg deputies, William Reyes and Steve Johnson.
It wasn’t until after the gunfire stopped that anyone realized that Bahr had been shot.
Copyright 2009 Free Lance-Star