Susan Cummings (TWP File Photo)

By Jennifer Ordonez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 5, 1998; Page B01

On a sunny Sunday morning in the kitchen of her stately brick manor house, Susan Cummings pointed her 9mm handgun at her polo-playing Argentine lover and pulled the trigger four times. Then she called 911 and softly told the dispatcher, "I need to report a shot man, and he's dead."

That much is not in dispute. But when Cummings goes on trial this week in Fauquier County on a charge of murdering Roberto Villegas, the jury will hear two vastly different versions of what led to that fatal moment last September.

The defense will paint the 35-year-old international arms heiress as a woman who acted out of a rational fear that her life was in danger as Villegas lunged at her with a knife. Defense witnesses will testify that Villegas was abusive, and Cummings's lawyers say they will raise a 1987 battery charge against him -- later dropped -- by a former girlfriend in Illinois.

Cummings had told authorities two weeks before the shooting that Villegas, 38, had threatened her. When she shot him, she acted "in defense of her castle," said her lawyer, Blair Howard. "In Virginia, if you are violently attacked in your own home and your life is in danger, you do not need to retreat."

But prosecutors will try to show Cummings to be a jealous lover and calculating murderer. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Kevin Casey said autopsy reports indicate Villegas was shot as he sat at the kitchen table. He said he will argue that Cummings only went to deputies before the shooting to set up her defense strategy. "I think the early involvement with the police was laying the groundwork" for what she knew she might do later, Casey said.

The case has cast an unwelcome spotlight on Fauquier, a rural county of 53,000 that is home to some of the country's wealthiest families, as well as farmers and middle-class commuters. Minor bar brawls, property damage and petty larceny usually fill the court docket, and until 1997, when an unprecedented five slayings were committed, it was unlikely for more than one homicide case a year to land on the desk of detectives.

According to friends, Cummings began dating Villegas after she joined the Great Meadows Polo Club in The Plains and began keeping a string of polo ponies at her estate.

Cummings, daughter of billionaire arms dealer Samuel Cummings, was raised in Switzerland and Monaco, and moved to the United States about 15 years ago. In December, Cummings received court permission to travel to Monaco to visit her severely ailing father, leaving the $2.3 million estate as collateral. Her father died last week at his home.

Villegas, born and raised in Argentina, traveled the U.S. polo circuit and in the off-season sometimes earned money doing farm work. Not long after Susan Cummings met him, she became his patron, supporting him financially. He played on her polo team and went home with her after the matches.

His friends say Villegas was good-natured and had an easy smile. Even when dealing with difficult horses on the field, he rarely let his frustrations get the best of him, said Richard Varge, the former president of the Great Meadow Polo Club. Though he could sometimes be recalcitrant and had a known aversion to monogamy, he and Cummings seemed happy and spent much of their time together, Varge said.

They dated for two years. Then, just before 9 a.m. on Sept. 7, the Fauquier sheriff's department received the call from Ashland Farm, the 350-acre estate just outside Warrenton that Cummings shares with her twin sister, Diana.

Susan Cummings, in her French-accented voice, told the dispatcher that Villegas "tried to kill me."

While on the phone, Susan tried to calm Diana. "Don't go in the kitchen . . . Roberto is dead," Susan warned her sister. "The cops are coming right away, Diana. . . . Sit down . . . sit down."

Howard, Cummings's attorney -- best known for his successful defense of Lorena Bobbitt, who sliced off her husband's penis -- maintains that Villegas was jealous and mentally abusive.

Asked whether Cummings had been physically assaulted by Villegas before that day, Howard declined to answer but said, "There is no question that he threatened her directly and in front of people. I think there was a lot of psychological abuse."

Other lawyers say Howard is counting on the fact that Virginia's laws on self-defense make that strategy one of the most effective ways to fight a murder charge. For example, two years ago, a Loudoun County jury acquitted Leesburg resident Robert G. Lorenz, who argued he acted to protect himself when he shot his drunk but unarmed neighbor on his porch.

"Everyone can relate to it, and when you have a man and a woman, [jurors] are going to have some sympathy for a woman dealing with aggression," said Leesburg defense attorney Alex Levay, who has tried murder cases in Fauquier.

Under Virginia law, Howard needs to prove that Cummings had a "reasonable apprehension of serious bodily harm," not that Villegas was about to kill her.

However, for the strategy to work, defense lawyers have to prove with "clear evidence" to the jury that self-defense was the motive. Usually that means putting their clients on the stand. "A jury is going to want to hear how upset and frightened she was," said Lorie O'Donnell, public defender for Fauquier and two other counties.

Howard would not say whether Cummings will testify.

Perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence, Howard said, is the statement Cummings filed with Fauquier deputies two weeks before the shooting.

In it, she described Villegas as "overpowering, short-fused and 'the crazy type.' " She wrote that she had tried to break up with him but that he "refuses to let go."

"In the last month he has [begun] to show signs of aggression," Cummings wrote. "His words are 'I will put a bullet in your head and hang you upside down to let the blood pour on your bed.' "

Casey, the assistant commonwealth's attorney, questions the motive for the statement. He said Cummings did not get a restraining order or put 'no trespassing' signs up at her farm as deputies advised her to do. Instead, she scheduled another meeting with deputies for Sept. 8, the day after Villegas was killed.

Casey said the physical evidence runs counter to the notion that Cummings acted in self-defense. Cummings said she shot Villegas as he came at her with the knife, using a gun she keeps loaded in her kitchen -- but Casey said that can't be true if the bullets hit Villegas at the kitchen table. In addition, he said, police found an empty holster and open boxes of ammunition in a upstairs bedroom.

In Casey's theory, Cummings was a jealous lover who wanted complete control over Villegas.

The day before the killing, the pair attended a polo match in Pittsburgh. Casey suggests the trouble came to a head when they quarreled over whether to take the horses to another match the following day, as Villegas wanted to do.

Staff writer Brooke A. Masters contributed to this report.