Dr. Emery Lane, the former president of Community Health Trust, a organization offering support to the Louisville GLBT community and Louisville residents in need of information about HIV/AIDS, was found beaten to death in his home this week.

Gene Raymond Miller and Bennett Shaw Bilbrey have been arrested and charged with Lane’s murder, along with burglary, robbery, and possession (Bilbrey) charges. Miller was a friend of Lane’s who is named as a beneficiary in Lane’s will.

The Courier-Journal reported this additional information on Bilbrey yesterday:

One of the men arrested in the slaying of a retired Louisville doctor had been convicted in the 1980s of the high-profile abduction of a Louisville woman found shot in a wooded area of Oldham County.

Bennett Shaw Bilbrey, 42, was convicted in 1983 of kidnapping, first-degree robbery and complicity to first-degree assault after pleading guilty to the charges in Oldham County.

The charges stem from a May 1982 case in which a Jefferson County woman, Nancy Williamson, was abducted, then shot and left in a wooded area known as Sleepy Hollow. She had bullet wounds in her head and chest when she was found alive four days after her abduction.

During his sentencing hearing in the Williamson case, Bilbrey, who was 19 at the time, said he and a then-15-year-old girl forced Williamson at gunpoint to drive to the secluded area. He said then that they forced Williamson out of the car and then the girl shot Williamson.

Bilbrey was sentenced to 20 years in the case and was paroled in April 1993, said Lisa Lamb, a spokeswoman for Kentucky Corrections. Three months later his parole was revoked and he served out the remainder of his sentence and was released in July 1995.

You can find Maria on MySpace here and read her current call for essays on femme identity here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.