D.C. Man Given 24 Years in Activist's Death

Mayor's Aide Was Stabbed at Home in March by a Neighbor High on Crack

There were no answers yesterday in Courtroom 317. Not for the family of Wanda Alston. And not for the man who murdered her.

There was only punishment, a 24-year prison term for a man who cannot explain why he killed his neighbor, his "friend," a civil rights activist who was the mayor's liaison to gays and lesbians.

Alston, 45, was stabbed to death March 16 in her Northeast Washington home, attacked after she opened her door to William Martin Parrott Jr., who was bingeing on crack and apparently desperate for money to buy more.

In a fight for her life, Alston struggled, but she was stabbed again and again and eventually succumbed, left to die by her drug-addled neighbor, who took off with her car and her credit cards.

The slaying, in the 3800 block of East Capitol Street NE, was the talk of the city, from the streets of Alston's neighborhood to the cafes of Dupont Circle to the corridors of the Wilson Building downtown. About 1,000 people attended her memorial service.

Arrested the day after the killing, Parrott, 38, did not try to conceal what he had done, though the fog of his high had left his recollection incomplete, he told investigators. Parrott, out of work since losing his job at the D.C. medical examiner's office, had never been in trouble with the law. Barely a month after the slaying, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, admitting the killing but unable to explain it.

It was that plea that brought him before D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin yesterday to learn his fate and to face a courtroom full of people, his wife among them, devastated by what he had done.

Many of them, no doubt, would have had something to say. But it was left to those closest to Alston to speak yesterday in Superior Court. They were sad and angry.

"You killed my best friend, and as far as I'm concerned, it should be a life for a life," Veronica Wilson said. "Unfortunately, our judicial system does not allow that."

The proceedings brought many in the courtroom to tears.

"Wanda was a petite person, and I look at Mr. Parrott and I see that he is a huge man," Alston's oldest sister, Orelia LaVerne Lewis, said. "My sister did not have a chance in a fistfight, much less a knife. She did not have a chance to run to call for help, to do anything. She just had to take the stab wounds one at a time."

Across the aisle, in the first row, Alston's 83-year-old mother, Arabelle Alston, sobbed, white tissues pressed against her eyes.