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Serial Crime News - July 2001

Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times

Tuesday 31 July 2001

Chihuahua state officials have named a new special prosector to oversee the investigations of women's murders in Juárez.

Zulema Bolivar, who was in charge of the Chihuahua attorney general's Sexual Crimes Unit, will replace Suly Ponce Prieto, who served as the special prosecutor for nearly three years.

Chihuahua state Attorney General Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, who announced that change as part of a list of transfers Sunday, praised Ponce's work.

Canadian criminologist Candace Skrapec, who was asked to assist Ponce's staff in 1999, said that under Ponce the special prosecutor's division was developing modern techniques and incorporating specialized training in support of the investigations.

Ponce's new job will be coordinator of the state's public ministry offices in Juárez. Marina Aspeytia, who formerly held that post, will be coordinator of the state's public ministry offices assigned to the judicial system. Florina Isela Coronado Burciaga will assume the post formerly held by Bolivar, leadership of the sex-crimes unit.

The state attorney general also announced that retired Brig. Gen. Rosario Escalante Yocupicio will be general coordinator of the Chihuahua state judicial police.

The new appointments were made nearly halfway into Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez's six-year administration, which began in October 1998.

Several human-rights groups have demanded Ponce's resignation since the spring of 1999. She was appointed to the post November 1998. During her administration, two United Nations monitors came to Juárez at the urging of relatives of disappeared people and slain women.

More than 300 girls and women have been killed in Juárez since 1993. Theories on who killed the women include one or more serial killers, copycat killers, drug dealers and gangs.

Last week, three relatives of forensics expert Dr. Irma Rodriguez Galarza were gunned down execution-style. Rodriguez was assigned to the state attorney general's office, and worked on the murdered women's cases.

Authorities said the hit was aimed at a former Chihuahua state police chief who ran inside Rodriguez's family home to evade the attackers. The hitmen ended up killing Rodriguez's common-law husband and her 17-year-old daughter, while the former police official managed to escape.

As of Monday, no one had been arrested in those killings.

http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20010731-126471.shtml

Tuesday July 31 01:22 PM EDT

Cadaver Dogs Can't Locate Missing Woman

For now, Cowlitz County detectives are not going to expand their search for Susan Ault. The 39-year-old woman was last seen on June 24, arguing with suspected serial killer Michael Braae.

On Monday, investigators began a grid search of a mile-long area between the Toutle River bridges on Interstate 5 and Toutle Park after a man found a credit card belonging to Ault.

"From what I have learned from the other jurisdictions that have found victims of Michael Braae's, he has just dumped the body in a single location without any attempt to hide it or any of the effects with the body," Deputy Dave Bodine says.

The search in the Castle Rock area turned up more cards and her purse, but her body was not located.

The Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office says that it will suspend its search of the area if nothing new develops.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/6000/20010731/lo/872192_1.html

Sheriff warns suspect may be serial killer
Tuesday, 31 July 2001 15:21 (ET)

 KERRVILLE, Texas, July 31 (UPI) -- A Texas sheriff warned Tuesday that the suspect in a double homicide may be an "international serial killer" similar
to Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, the rail-riding Mexican who terrorized the United States two years ago.

 Capital murder charges have been filed against Juan Manuel Castanon, 22, of Guanajuato, Mexico, in connection with the beating death June 30 of
51-year-old Mary Margaret Delery and her 72-year-old mother Mary Griffin Delery in their rural home 60 miles west of Austin.

 "I feel Mr. Castanon is a brutal person who has no conscience or morals, and we could very well run into another Resendez-Ramierz due to the way this
crime was done," Kerr County Sheriff R.W. "Rusty" Hierholtzer said Tuesday.

 Hierholtzer and his investigators said that like Resendez-Ramierz, Castanon entered the United States illegally from Mexico to commit crimes,
then fled back to Guanajuato, where he is believed to be hiding now.

 Officials said they were going to use DNA evidence to try to connect Castanon to other crimes in Texas, and in Arkansas, where he is also
believed to have traveled, but Hierholtzer has no doubt what they'll find. 

 "It's my assumption that this was not the first time (that Castanon has committed a violent crime) and it will definitely not be the last," he said.

 The bodies of the two women were found in their blood-spattered bedroom by Mary Margaret's brother, William Delery. Investigators said they had been
beaten to death with a hammer, and both women were sexually assaulted after they were dead.

Texas Department of Public Safety investigators linked DNA from semen found  at the double-homicide scene with blood found in a burglary linked to
Castanon.

 Kerr County officials said they would work with the Texas attorney general to get Mexican officials to arrest and extradite Castanon, but said it was
unlikely because he was facing the death penalty if convicted in Texas. Mexico does not sanction the death penalty.

 "It makes it real difficult on law enforcement all around when you're dealing with people that do flee into Mexico," Hierholtzer said.

 Hierholtzer said Castanon wound up in rural Kerr County because he has relatives who are legal residents of the area. One of the relatives drove
Castonon back into Mexico after the slayings, according to the officials.

 The case is similar to that of Resendez-Ramierz, who entered the United States repeatedly and was charged with eight murders in Texas, Illinois, and
Kentucky. He surrendered in July1999 to Texas Rangers in El Paso and was later convicted of the murder of Dr. Claudia Benton in Houston.
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=207450

By Nicholas K. Geranios
The Associated Press

	Robert Yates

SPOKANE — The war room where detectives spent three years tracking serial killer Robert Yates Jr. is a tidy place.

Thousands of tips are catalogued in three-ring binders. A detailed account of Yates' many travels covers three walls. Gruesome pictures of his victims are stored in photo albums.

Even though Yates has pleaded guilty in Spokane to killing 13 people, the sterile office in the Spokane County Criminal Justice Building remains in use. Yates still faces trial for two killings in the Tacoma area.

Several Spokane County sheriff's officers are trying to fill in the gaps in Yates' timeline to get a full picture of his movements from January 1968 until his arrest in April 2000.

They share data with outside law-enforcement agencies investigating whether the 49-year-old married father of five is involved in unsolved murders in other places. They are also helping Pierce County officials prepare for Yates' murder trial in Tacoma next year.

"No one else has this information," said sheriff's Sgt. Cal Walker, a leader of the task force that caught Yates. "We are becoming a clearinghouse for Yates' movements."

The task force has also been conducting a public-relations battle with crime author Mark Fuhrman, whose latest book, "Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer," faults them for not catching Yates two years sooner.

Fuhrman, best-known as a cop involved in the O.J. Simpson murder case, contends the task force spent too much time building computer databases and chasing DNA samples, and too little time doing old-fashioned police work among the prostitutes who were Yates' victims.

"The end result speaks for itself," Walker countered, saying most serial killers are never caught.

The overwhelming physical evidence against Yates prompted him to plead guilty, Walker said. Under a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty in Spokane, Yates pleaded guilty in October to 13 murders and one attempted murder.

Ten of the victims were women in the Spokane area, killed from 1996 to 1998. In each of those cases, the women were involved with drugs or prostitution or both. All were shot in the head with pistols, and most had their heads covered with plastic grocery bags.

Yates also confessed to killing a man and a woman near Walla Walla in 1975, and to the 1988 murder of a woman whose body was found in Skagit County. He was sentenced to 408 years.

Now he faces murder charges in the deaths of two women in Pierce County and could face the death penalty at a trial to begin April 29.

As part of the rebuttal to Fuhrman, the task force recently let reporters into its office.

The nondescript room once had 14 desks for those who gathered evidence and directed the exhaustive search. A photo on the wall showed the task force dressed in Wild West garb, like a posse in pursuit of a desperado.

The 6,000 tips the task force received are all in the binders, along with the work done on each tip. Other binders hold analyses of plant and soil samples taken from bodies. Drawings of the interiors of Yates' vehicles, including the white Corvette that ultimately linked him to the killings, are posted on a wall.

There are 560 videotapes from police and private surveillance cameras that the task force seized at different times from key locations.

"All had to be gone through," Walker said.

Amazingly, Yates was not the subject of any tips, and he did not appear on any of the videotapes.

Here's how he was caught.

A friend of Jennifer Joseph's saw her getting into a white Corvette on Aug. 16, 1997. Joseph's body was found in rural Spokane County 10 days later. She was wearing a jacket that was missing a mother-of-pearl button.

A month later, police stopped Yates in the Corvette for speeding a few blocks from where Joseph was last seen. In November 1998, Yates was stopped in another car with a woman described as a known prostitute.

Yates sold the Corvette shortly after, but detectives tracked down the new owner in January 2000 and were given permission to remove carpet fibers.

Forensics scientists were able to match carpet fibers from the car to some found with Joseph's body. Detectives also found evidence of blood that probably came from Joseph and a mother-of-pearl button they believe came from her clothing.

Police revealed even before Yates was caught that they had DNA evidence that would positively identify the killer. They wouldn't say exactly where that DNA came from.

Many of the bodies contained semen, investigators found. Some of the sex acts occurred after the victim was dead, they said.

The only known survivor of an attack by Yates, Christine Smith, told officers that Yates shot her in the head only after he failed to become sexually aroused. Smith survived the wound, and Yates confessed to her attempted murder.

There are also indications that Yates kept the bodies of some of his victims for some time after he killed them. Officers aren't sure where Yates kept the bodies, although the task force remains interested in the whereabouts of a travel trailer he apparently had access to. That trailer has never been found.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134323829_yates30m.html

Friday, July 27, 2001

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPOKANE -- Confessed serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. liked smoking crack cocaine, according to two prostitutes who had long business relationships with the Spokane man.

Aloha Ingram, who had a year-long relationship with Yates, said he carried his own glass cocaine pipe.

"He wanted to try heroin," Ingram told The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Friday's edition. "I injected him with a small amount and he passed out. We had sex, but there wasn't much to it."

Her comments came in the 27th installment of a 31-part series the newspaper is running about the hunt for the serial killer.

It was the first indication that Yates, a National Guard helicopter pilot and married father of five, had a drug problem.

Ingram, who had a heroin habit, said Yates was among her least menacing customers. They had even discussed the widely publicized hunt for the killer targeting Spokane's prostitutes.

Yates told her he suspected the killer was a cop. He also expressed sympathy when Ingram said she feared her friend Melody Murfin was dead. Murfin's body was later dug up in Yates' yard.

Ingram, 44, was shocked last year when she saw Yates' picture on television as the man arrested for the serial killings. She wondered how she could have been such a poor judge of character. She also wondered why she had been spared.

Ingram said she "dated" Yates once or twice a month, and began to fall in love with him. He paid her $150 per night, was a good lover and talked openly about his life and job, she said.

"He wasn't kinky. He wasn't abusive. He wasn't real aggressive. He was just normal," she said. "Very passionate and very concerned about my satisfaction."

Another prostitute, who didn't want her name used, told the newspaper that she had about eight dates with Yates starting in 1999. She also thought he was harmless, although she was surprised that he wasn't secretive and didn't seem to care who saw them together.

That woman said that before sex, Yates would smoke crack in bed while she injected herself with heroin.

"Every time I dated him, he had me get him crack and he smoked it up," the woman said. "I shot him up with crank one time, too.

"I should've overamped him and killed him."

Both women wonder why they were not killed. They wonder if it was because they were able to sexually arouse him.

Ingram also recalled that she insisted that Yates use a condom.

"My remark was, `a piece of ass isn't worth dying for.' And he agreed," Ingram said. "Odd, isn't it?"

Yates, 49, was arrested as he drove to work in April 2000.

Under a deal to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty in October to 13 murders and one attempted murder. Ten of the victims were women in the Spokane area, killed from 1996-98. In each of those cases, the victims were involved with drugs or prostitution or both.

Yates also confessed to killing a man and a woman in the Walla Walla area in 1975, and to the 1988 murder of a woman whose body was found in Skagit County. He was sentenced to 408 years in prison.

Now he faces murder charges in the deaths of two women in Pierce County and could face the death penalty at a trial scheduled to begin next April 29.

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/32994_yates27ww.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1464000/1464990.stm

Saturday, July 28 12:28 AM SGT

Nigeria: 13-year-old girl arrested over 51 killings

A 13-year-old girl has been arrested in northeast Nigeria for ritual-linked killings of 51 people, including her father, police said Friday.

Jummai Hassan, a pupil at an army college, was arrested on July 17 in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State over the disappearance of a two-year-old boy, Ibro Joseph, Borno State Police Commissioner Bello Uba Ringim told a radio station monitored here.

The police chief said that under interrogation the girl had confessed to killing 50 other people.

"During investigations, she confessed to being a member of a cult based in Lagos and that she has killed 51 people, including her father, since she was initiated seven years ago," he said.

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/010728/world/afp/Nigeria__13-year-old_girl_arrested_over_51_killings.html

Judge Allows Robinson's New Attorney

Robinson hired 30-year-old Bob Thomas, who is a recent law-school graduate. In addition, the judge appointed an extra attorney as the prosecution had requested. Robinson is accused of killing three women in Kansas and three more in Missouri, KMBC reported.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/kmbc/20010727/lo/869615_1.html

Theory in Walsh murder grows fainter with years

Twenty years ago today, serial killer Ottis Toole abducted 6-year-old Adam Walsh from the Hollywood Mall, choked the life out of him, cut off his head with a bayonet and discarded the remains in marshland along Florida's Turnpike.

That is the theory. But there is no hard evidence to support it.

After two decades of investigation, the most famous child-abduction case in South Florida history remains unsolved.

The prospect that it will ever be solved has never looked so dim. The prime suspect is dead. The key evidence is lost. The 10,000-page police file raises more questions than it answers.

But father John Walsh thinks he knows the truth.

``I believe Ottis Toole killed Adam,'' Walsh told The Herald in an interview Thursday. ``I believe that Toole is in hell right now, and I believe that he died a horrible death in prison.''

The July 27, 1981, abduction and murder of Adam Walsh fueled an epic manhunt. The case netted hundreds of leads and dozens of suspects but not one arrest. Over two decades of investigation, the recurring character is Toole, a dim-witted Jacksonville drifter who confessed to the murder, then recanted, then died.

Here is an account of the Adam Walsh case, based on fresh interviews with many of the principal characters, two decades of news reports and investigative documents:

Revé Walsh said she left her Hollywood home with Adam the morning of July 27 to run some errands. Mother and son arrived at Sears around noon.

She left Adam at a video game and walked to the lamp department. She said she was gone five to 10 minutes. When she returned, Adam was gone.

Revé searched the aisles for Adam. She had him paged. Someone called the police. Officers told Revé the boy had probably wandered off.

A teenage security guard would later report she had thrown Adam out of the store along with several other children who were bickering.

FOCUS ON FAMILY, FRIENDS
Police clear those closest
to Adam, and case goes cold

The Walshes launched an unprecedented search.

Police first focused on those closest to Adam.

John and Revé Walsh passed lie-detector tests. John had an alibi: He was at work. Police cleared them.

Jim Campbell, a landscaper and family friend who had lived with the Walshes for two years, seemed a more likely culprit.

Campbell had a motive: He had just ended a secret affair with Revé. He had moved out two weeks before the boy disappeared. Police thought Campbell might have killed Adam to get even.

Campbell, contacted through his sister last week, didn't respond to an interview request.

On Aug. 10, two fishermen found Adam's head in a canal near Vero Beach.

The same day, Campbell passed a lie-detector test.

Investigators cleared Campbell. Although he had no solid alibi for the hour of Adam's abduction, he was in town a couple of hours later and for several days after. He probably wouldn't have had time to dispose of the boy's remains in Vero Beach.

``He had motive, but there was no other evidence,'' said George Terwilliger, a longtime Walsh family friend and sometime family attorney.

John Walsh and others would criticize the Hollywood police for hammering on Campbell while neglecting other leads. Other complaints: Detectives didn't invite the FBI to help out. They allowed Campbell, a suspect, to volunteer to answer phones at police headquarters.

Richard Witt, former chief of the Hollywood police, acknowledged the problems in an interview last week.

``Within the first few months of this case, it is really screwed up to the point where obtaining a conviction has been compromised,'' Witt said.

Witness reports from the mall produced one solid lead: Several people said a tall, muscular man had followed Adam out of the Sears store, pulled him into a blue van and sped off. Police searched hundreds of blue vans, to no avail.

The case went cold.

ANOTHER FALSE LEAD
Drifter points to ex-cellmate,
who says story was fabricated

It sparked back to life in November 1981, when a Broward County drifter told Hollywood police his former cellmate had confessed to the Adam Walsh murder.

John Terry said cellmate Edward James, arrested in an unrelated child abduction, bragged that he had abducted Adam and headed up the turnpike. The boy threatened to tell his parents and demanded money. James pulled over, cut off the boy's head with a knife and kicked it into a canal.

In an interview this week, James, now 70 and living in Avon Park, said he never met Terry. The story, he said, is pure bunk.

``They made a case out of something that wasn't even a case,'' James said. ``And I'm still paying for it.''

A neighbor told police James was missing from his home at the time Walsh disappeared and for weeks afterward. When James resurfaced, the neighbor said, he had reupholstered the front seat of his Plymouth Fury.

But a former employer said James was at work the day Walsh disappeared. Forensic tests in the car turned up nothing. Years later, James passed a voice-stress analysis test.

The case languished for two more years.

Then, on Oct. 21, 1983, news media around the country announced that police had found the murderer.

A CONFUSING CONFESSION
Suspect gives details of killing,
but lack of evidence blows case

On Oct. 10, a mass-murder suspect in Jacksonville told a detective he had killed a boy he found at a mall near Fort Lauderdale.

Hollywood police rushed to Duval County Jail to interview Ottis Elwood Toole.

Police said Toole told them he had killed Adam Walsh with help from his sometime partner, Henry Lee Lucas. The men abducted Adam in a white Cadillac, drove about an hour to an isolated dirt road and decapitated the boy, Toole said.

Police challenged Toole: Lucas was in jail at the time of the abduction. Toole revised his story: he had worked alone.

Toole led police to the Hollywood Mall, where he correctly identified the spot Adam had been ejected from the store; to a dirt access road near mile marker 126 on the turnpike, where he said he had buried the body; and to a canal near mile marker 130, where he correctly pointed out the place Adam's head had been discovered.

The medical examiner's report matched key elements of Toole's account: Adam had been face down when decapitated. His head was sheared off with three to five knife strokes.

``I think, and I've always thought this, that the evidence linking Ottis Toole to the murder of Adam Walsh is extremely compelling,'' said Witt, the former Hollywood police chief.

Investigators lifted bloodstained carpet from Toole's car. But without the DNA testing available today, there was no telling if the blood was Adam's.

Toole later recanted and denied any role in the murder. He confessed again, then recanted again.

There was ample reason to doubt Toole had anything to do with Adam Walsh's murder.

Speculation suggested a Jacksonville detective had tainted Toole's confession to sweeten a potential book deal. But Hollywood investigators found no proof.

In his purported confession, Toole couldn't correctly describe Adam's hair or clothes. And police couldn't find Adam's body where Toole said he left it.

``He's as pure as the driven snow,'' said Ron Hickman, one of the original detectives on the Walsh case, interviewed this week. ``I spent 100 hours with that individual. I'll tell you right now: He didn't do it.''

James Redwine, a Jacksonville man, contends Toole wasn't anywhere near Broward County on the day Adam disappeared. According to Redwine, Toole spent July 27, 1981, at his family's rooming house, where Toole lived.

``He was up here that day,'' Redwine said in an interview last week. ``Ain't no way he could have drove there or back . . . That's the truth. I ain't got a reason to lie.''

Hollywood police say the Redwines cannot prove Toole was there.

New witnesses surfaced after Toole's picture appeared in the news media, claiming they had seen him and his white Cadillac at or near the scene of the crime. Police discarded their earlier ``blue van'' theory.

Heidi Mayer, a Hollywood girl, said the picture looked like the gap-toothed man who had approached her at a Kmart around the time of Adam's abduction, pushing a shopping cart and offering, ``Let me take you for a ride in this basket.''

``I do remember the space in his mouth, between his teeth,'' mother Arlene Mayer said in an interview last week. ``He was standing there, just watching us.''

At least two witnesses claimed they had seen Adam Walsh in a white Cadillac.

One, a Hollywood man named William Mistler, said he had seen Toole at the mall with Adam. Under hypnosis, Mistler recalled details about the car, including a dent on the bumper that hadn't been reported in the news media.

But without physical evidence, Broward County prosecutors felt they had no case.

In May 1995, a series of articles in an Alabama newspaper posited a new theory: A family friend named Michael Monahan could have murdered Adam as a favor for buddy Jim Campbell, the spurned lover of Revé Walsh.

There was no evidence tying Monahan to the crime, just an odd coincidence: Three days after the Adam Walsh abduction, Monahan had slashed through a door with a machete in Oakland Park in a dispute over a skateboard.

Monahan, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time, said the allegations are nonsense.

``If you really do your homework, if you're serious about finding out the truth, you'll realize I have nothing to do with this case,'' Monahan said.

Police, prompted by the news reports, tested the machete from the skateboard incident. Results were inconclusive.

They questioned Monahan, who was on probation after a federal conviction for the extortion of a stockbroker who was later found murdered.

Monahan passed a lie-detector test. His girlfriend, Chris Fehlhaber, provided an alibi: Monahan was with her at the time of the abduction.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Evidence vanishes, suspect dies
-- but was there final revelation?

Sgt. Mark Smith, a Hollywood police detective assigned to the case in 1994, remained focused on Ottis Toole. He wanted to order DNA testing on the bloodstained carpeting from Toole's car.

But the evidence had vanished, signed out of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab years earlier by someone with the initial J.G.

Smith found the detective, who said he didn't remember signing out the evidence.

Toole's car, too, was gone.

The evidence debacle became public with the release of the Adam Walsh case file in 1996.

``They had made incredible mistakes,'' Walsh said this week. ``It was beyond incompetence. It was almost malfeasance, because they were covering their asses. How do you lose an entire car?''

Smith and John Walsh held out one last hope: A deathbed confession from Toole, serving five life sentences at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.

Smith asked to be alerted if Toole, suffering from cirrhosis and possibly AIDS, was near death.

But prison officials lost track of the request. Toole died on Sept. 15, 1996, before Smith could talk to him one last time.

A short while later, a niece of Ottis Toole contacted America's Most Wanted, the television program hosted by Walsh. She said Ottis had made a deathbed confession -- to her.

``Uncle Ottis, are you the one that killed Adam Walsh?'' she asked him, according to John Walsh.

``Yeah,'' he replied. ``I killed the little boy. And I always felt kinda bad about it, too.''

http://www.miami.com/herald/partners/yahoo/digdocs/050902.htm

Iran Says It Arrests Suspect Over Serial Killings

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's police chief said on Wednesday a 39-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the slayings of 16 women all found choked to death with their headscarves in and around the holy city of Mashhad.

Brigadier-General Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on state television that the suspect, a married man with three children, had been arrested in the northeastern city after a two-day operation.

The bodies of the 19 victims, convicted prostitutes or drug addicts, were discovered in the past year. Qalibaf said three of the murders were believed to have been carried out by other killers.

He said arrests had been made in connection with the three other murders.

The killings were dubbed the ``spider murders'' because the killer used headscarves to entangle and suffocate the women as a spider uses a web to trap its victims.

The Iranian authorities have come under mounting pressure to solve the murders, which occurred in and around Mashhad, the site of a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine.

Qalibaf said the suspect, who was a builder, was believed to have acted alone and not part of any organized group, as some press reports had suggested.

Authorities in Mashhad had been rounding up 500 prostitutes because they were considered potential targets.

A special police squad was sent to Mashhad from the capital Tehran in April to help the local authorities. The police had promised before the discovery of the last two bodies that they would come up with results soon.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010725/wl/crime_iran_murders_dc_1.html

Women Warned Of 'Cowboy Killer'

Investigators are confident that Michael Braae  who is wanted in connection with the murders, rapes and assaults on six women, including a murder in Clackamas County, Ore., will soon be found.

Police are warning women that a killer is on the loose.

Braae reportedly goes by the nickname "Cowboy," plays guitar and allegedly picks up women in country-western bars. He was seen at a tavern in Grays River, Wash., on June 24 fighting with Susan Ault. Ault has not been seen since.

Clackamas County sheriff's deputies told KOIN 6 News that plenty of people are calling in with tips.

One woman says that a man calling himself "cowboy" approached her in a downtown Portland bar. When they were talking about their ages, he pulled out an Oregon ID bearing the name Van Leuven -- which police say it one of Braae's aliases.

Detectives have followed several false leads, including searching for Braae in Randle, Wash., Wednesday afternoon.

The investigation is centered in Lacey, Wash., but officers have responded to sightings in several Washington towns, including Randle, Yakima and Rimrock.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/6000/20010719/lo/862403_1.html

Stories about Jeffrey Dahmer upset, confuse some readers

Stories about Jeffrey Dahmer on the front page of last Sunday's Akron Beacon Journal confused some readers, and editors quickly realized they had failed to provide enough context for the presentation.

In the center of the July 15 edition were two photos of serial killer Dahmer, one of which showed him being led from a Summit County courtroom in May 1992.

``A legacy of pain'' read the main headline. There were two stories, one by the Associated Press recounting the impact of Dahmer's killing spree on the city of Milwaukee, where he was arrested.

A second story, written by Beacon Journal reporter Keith McKnight, explored Dahmer's childhood in Bath Township and his first killing, at his home in 1978. Inside the paper, local columnist David Giffels wrote of the impact on those who went to school with a young Dahmer.

``Sensationalism,'' ``slow news day,'' ``old news,'' ``in poor taste,'' ``sleazy'' and ``despicable'' were some of the reactions from readers, who began calling Sunday afternoon.

Giffels, who said he often gauges the newspaper's impact by how his wife reads the paper, was surprised when she wondered aloud about the presentation of the story.

Today, July 22, is the 10th anniversary of Dahmer's arrest in Milwaukee.

The anniversary of that arrest was the impetus for the series of stories, but that point wasn't made until four paragraphs into the main story.

``A decade ago this summer, police burst into Dahmer's rancid, gore-filled apartment, ending a killing spree that still stains this blue-collar city's memory,'' read the AP story, datelined Milwaukee.

Newspapers often report such ``anniversary'' stories, and readers sometimes demand them.

Major news events in our lives like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and the Oklahoma City bombing are just a few of the major events that news organizations come back to at regular intervals.

Sometimes readers want a yearly reminder of the milestones in their lives.

Military veterans are quick to complain if a Dec. 7 edition fails to prominently mark the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Locally, May 4 does not pass without a reminder of the killings at Kent State University in 1970.

Such was the newsroom's intent with Jeffrey Dahmer, named in 1999 by Newsweek magazine and NBC as one of the worst villains of the 20th century. He was listed after Adolf Hitler.

Some readers saw nothing but exploitation in the stories.

``The Akron Beacon Journal, staunch bastion of a free `can't we get Jeffrey Dahmer on page 1 one more time' press in America,'' read an e-mail from a Fairlawn reader. `` Shame on you. See you soon at the supermarket checkout.''

Others pointed out that it was Sunday, and after returning from church, they were looking for stories that were more uplifting and ``less nauseating'' than the Dahmer package.

Managing Editor Thom Fladung fielded some of the complaints.

In a response to e-mail writers, Fladung explained the newspaper's thinking.

A 10-year look back on the Dahmer case was important, he said, for many reasons. ``How does a person like this grow up among us? Should his problems have been recognized earlier and perhaps lives saved? How, after the crime spree began, was it allowed to continue? What does it say about how we value the people among us who are missing? . . . And what about the impact on the many whose lives Dahmer touched? What is it like to be a member of that Revere class of '78?''

Fladung also said he believes ``that history sometimes provides a new perspective and the ability to shed some light on an issue after some of the heat has dissipated.''

Editor Jan Leach acknowledged that the newspaper failed to make it clear that the Dahmer package was a 10-year look back.

``We recognize it's not easy to read about Jeffrey Dahmer,'' she said. ``We recognize we failed to signal to readers the context of this important story, and for that, we apologize.''

http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/docs/002217.htm

T he horrors wrought by Jeffrey Dahmer still haunt the city where the killer's secret life was revealed

MILWAUKEE: Jeffrey Dahmer still haunts LaTaryn Williams.

She dreads passing the litter-filled lot where the serial killer's apartment building once stood.

``When I walk past, I look up and get an eerie feeling, especially on rainy days. There's a presence there,'' said Williams, 22, who lives two doors away. ``I remember them bringing out the freezer with the body parts. Never forget it. Never.''

A decade ago this summer, police burst into Dahmer's rancid, gore-filled apartment, ending a killing spree that still stains this blue-collar city's memory.

``Jeffrey Dahmer and Milwaukee are synonymous with each other,'' said Ron Holmes, who teaches a serial murder course at the University of Louisville.

Dahmer, who grew up in Bath Township, confessed to killing 16 young men, mostly blacks, in Milwaukee and one in Summit County.

Steven Hicks, 18, of Coventry Township, became Dahmer's first victim when he was beaten to death in 1978.

Dahmer was living alone on West Bath Road when he picked up Hicks, who was hitchhiking to a rock concert, drove home and killed him.

Dahmer told police he had sex with victims' corpses, hacked them apart and cannibalized them to satisfy his fantasies.

``I knew he was a sick puppy,'' said Dahmer's defense attorney, Gerald Boyle. ``This is a guy since the age of 14 who thought about this morning, noon and night. He had all these years to plan how to pull it off. And he was terrific at it.''

So good, in fact, police caught him only by accident. Tracy Edwards, Dahmer's would-be 18th victim, escaped when he wasn't looking. A handcuff still dangling from his wrist, he led police to Dahmer's apartment the night of July 22, 1991.

What they found horrified a nation.

Human torsos were soaking in acid. The refrigerator contained severed heads. Two hearts Dahmer planned to eat later were in a freezer. A closet held decomposing body parts. Skulls were scattered in a filing cabinet drawer.

Dahmer said eating parts of his victims made him feel like they were a permanent part of him. He said he wanted to have the person under his complete control.

Dahmer was convicted of 15 homicides in Wisconsin and sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences. Another inmate beat him to death in prison in 1994.

Although Dahmer is gone, he remains as much a part of Milwaukee's image as its breweries.

``When I first traveled people said `you're from the beer city.' Then it became `you're from the place where they eat people. Dahmer's place.' I still hear it,'' said Jeannetta Robinson, a social worker who counseled mothers of two of Dahmer's victims.

Dahmer biographies pop up on cable television. Video stores rent tapes of his trial. People still leave flowers for his victims near the vacant lot where the Oxford Apartments stood.

Immortal villain

``He's among the immortal horribles,'' said Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, who prosecuted Dahmer.

Dahmer is part of the city's folklore, particularly in its gay community, where he hunted his victims.

Jerry Johnson, editor of the now defunct Wisconsin Light gay newspaper, said he's planning a Dahmer chapter in a gay history book he's writing. He included Dahmer clippings in a display at the city's Pridefest in June, against the advice of many in the gay community. Dahmer can't be ignored, Johnson said.

``Milwaukee's always going to be black-clouded because of it,'' he said.

Dahmer stalked his victims in gay bars, preying on outcasts no one would miss. Despite the disappearances, police did not know a serial killer was operating in Milwaukee, FBI profiler Neil Purtell said.

Tensions between police and minorities who long felt authorities ignored them escalated after Dahmer's arrest, especially when community leaders learned police had returned one of Dahmer's victims, Konerak Sinthansophome, 14, to the serial killer.

Officers found the naked, bleeding boy wandering in the street after he escaped the apartment. Dahmer strode up and persuaded them they were having a lovers' quarrel.

He killed Sinthansophome minutes later. He killed four others before Edwards escaped.

Two officers were fired and one was placed on a year's probation.

The fired officers were later reinstated, but the incident cut a deep rift between minorities and police. Because of Dahmer, gay leaders now help police develop diversity training, said Stephanie Hume, a Lesbian Alliance of Metro Milwaukee board member in 1991.

For the families of Dahmer's victims, peace may never come.

The serial killer still chases Carolyn Smith. He killed her brother Eddie in June 1990, stuffing his remains in the garbage. Nine years later, her other brother Ernest was stabbed to death, his body found posed to resemble how Dahmer arranged some of his victims.

Since then, Smith, 46, has struggled with depression. She's on medication and seeing three psychiatrists, but they don't help, she said. She's afraid to leave her apartment alone.

``When somebody cuts your brother's head off and then says `Hmm. I don't know what to do with it. I'll put it in the closet for three days' How do you live with that?''

Smith supports herself with disability payments. She's still angry at Dahmer's father, Lionel, and his stepmother, Shari -- who live in Seville -- whom she said promised the families profits from Lionel's book.

Dahmer's father and stepmother declined an interview request. His mother, Joyce ``Rocky'' Flint, died last year.

Trying to forget

Tom Jacobsen, an attorney for eight of the victims' families, tried to sell Dahmer's belongings, including knives and the refrigerator he used to store body parts, in a public auction to benefit victims' families in 1996.

But a business group led by Joseph Zilber, a Milwaukee real estate magnate, spared the city another stint in the national spotlight when it bought all the items for $407,225 and destroyed them.

Marquette University, a private Catholic college about two miles from Dahmer's apartment, bought the building for nearly $500,000 in 1992 and razed it, hoping to destroy the memories.

Today, the lot still stands empty in a neighborhood of boarded-up windows and street-corner drug deals. No developer is interested.

Hume, of the Lesbian Alliance, said nothing will erase Jeffrey Dahmer's presence.

``I don't think it's something that will ever be 100 percent gone, even though the man is dead now. Unfortunately, it will always be part of our history.''

http://www.ohio.com/ohionews/docs/005410.htm

A prom, a seance - and a victim

Jeff pulled out the chair for me to sit down and then he disappeared. ... . Jeff told me he was hungry and left and went to a McDonald's and ate four or five cheeseburgs. I think he did because there were McDonald's wrappers all over the floor of his car.' -- Bridget Geiger, Jeffrey Dahmer's senior prom date.

Once he graduated, the kid who sat at the nerd table in the cafeteria and ran around Revere High School's hallways drinking and making noises like a sheep was mostly alone.

He was a friend, some say, but they also acknowledge that they really didn't socialize with him after school hours.

He wasn't a loner, but he was always alone,' said Mike Kukral, another class of 78 graduate.

Maybe the last time he had any type of friendship was when he was in high school, but he didn't have any close friends that I was aware of.'

He didn't date and he didn't go to parties.

In fact, he was teased and ridiculed by a number of his classmates.

Some told Dahmer jokes,' and by all accounts he appeared to want nothing to do with girls.

When he summoned the courage to arrange a date for the obligatory senior prom, he managed to get a 16-year-old girl who was a friend of a friend, but he was so timid about the prospect that he had to have the friend ask her.

Unlike most of the boys who wore tuxedos, Dahmer showed up without a jacket and was dressed in brown slacks and a vest topped off with a peculiar-looking long-stringed bow tie.

According to his date, Bridget Geiger, Dahmer was extremely nervous about the function and was terrified at the notion that she might try to kiss him.

When he gave her a corsage, he was afraid of sticking her, so Geiger's mother ended up pinning the flowers on her daughter in Dahmer's behalf.

When they posed for a prom photo in her front yard, he was holding his boutonniere in his right hand.

He didn't say two words to me the whole night,' Geiger said.

But worse yet, when they arrived at the affair, he seated her at a table, then left.

He returned about two hours later as Geiger was leaving with a girlfriend and her date.

Jeff told me he was hungry and left and went to a McDonald's and ate four or five cheeseburgs,' she said. I think he did because there were McDonald's wrappers all over the floor of his car.'

Dahmer and his date left early.

A few weeks later, shortly after his June 4 graduation, Dahmer threw a party at his Bath Road home -- a rare departure from what those who knew him said was the norm.

He included his prom date on the list of those invited.

But again, it didn't turn out to be quite what Geiger expected.

There were five people, including Dahmer.

There was no music.

There was no food.

Dahmer had decided to use the occasion to contact someone from the spirit world -- someone who had lived in the house before his family moved there.

Somebody had cooked up this idea of a seance,' Geiger said. They all sat around a low round table in the den.

Geiger said Dahmer told her that the house was haunted and that an evil ghost sometimes appeared and talked to him when he was alone, telling him ' to do things that scare me.'

She said she thought Dahmer was simply telling her stories to scare her, but when they turned the lights off and the candle flared and sputtered at the table, she knew she had had enough.

She left and hasn't laid eyes on Dahmer since.

All things considered, though, she said that there were stranger kids than Dahmer in school and that he was actually a good kid who got a bad shake out of his high school years.

Nevertheless, she is haunted by the question of whether the seance was held before or after June 18, 1978.

For it was on that evening, two weeks to the DAY, after he graduated from high school, that Dahmer's dark side came to the surface.

By his own account 13 years later, he picked up a teen-ager on Cleveland- Massillon Road in Bath Township and brought him the short distance to the West Bath Road residence.

He was home alone, he told detectives, and he didn't want to be alone.

So he and the hitchhiker had a few beers.

There was no indication that the hitchhiker was a homosexual and Dahmer said he did not try to have sex with him.

But when the hitchhiker decided it was time to go, Dahmer insisted that he stay.

In fact, he killed him.

If the account is accurate, 18-year-old Steven M. Hicks of Coventry Township was the first of many lives Dahmer took in a sensational killing rampage that has stunned the nation and prompted inquiries from around the world.

But if Hicks was the first of at least 17 human beings he slaughtered, Dahmer went at it with a gusto that belied his inexperience.

According to a confession made recently to Bath Township police and Summit County sheriff's detectives, Dahmer said he smashed the hitchhiker in the back of the head with a barbell, used the barbell to strangle him, then dragged his body into an unexcavated space under the house. There he cut the body into pieces with a knife and stashed the remains in garbage bags.

The bags were apparently kept in the house until the body parts began to decompose. So, he told authorities, he stripped the flesh from the bones and used a sledgehammer to smash them into fragments no larger than a hand.

He then stood atop a rock outcropping at the edge of the woods near the rear of the home and scattered the pieces off the cliff.

He said he burned Hicks' wallet, then threw Hicks' necklace and the knife he used to dismember him off the West Bath Road bridge into the Cuyahoga River.

Authorities who combed the Bath Township property for traces of Hicks' remains said Dahmer had been so thorough at his grisly task that he had even smashed teeth.

On July 24, 1978, about five weeks after Steven Hicks was slain, the divorce of Lionel and Joyce Dahmer became final.

But the quarreling didn't stop with that.

It went on and on.

That September, the father went back to the divorce court and insisted that the mother be cited for contempt because she had left the state with their 12- year-old son, David, without permission, despite a court order that was to prohibit her from doing so.

The father, who had long since taken up residence in a motel, testified that once the divorce papers were signed, he walked up the driveway of the Bath Road home to give his former wife a support check, and she came out and said You got everything,' and started hitting me on the chest.'

Mrs. Dahmer's attorney, on the other hand, told the court that the husband had launched one of the most harassing kind of conducts imaginable ... to the point where he, once again, was just about intent upon driving Mrs. Dahmer back to the psychiatrist.'

The custody battle continued, but it was obvious the tug of war was over David, not Jeffrey.

Lionel Dahmer agreed to buy out his former wife's interest in their Bath Road home, and Mrs. Dahmer was awarded custody of their 12-year-old son.

But according to Joseph G. Miller, the wife's attorney, Lionel continued to harass the youngster in the summer of 1978 to change his mind and live with his father and he started on a course of conduct in which he told his boy he was going to prove to him his mother was unfit. ... .'

Joyce Dahmer had decided to return to Wisconsin and despite a court order saying she couldn't leave with David without permission of the father and the court, she and David packed their belongings and left.

A few years later, David apparently changed his mind and custody was awarded to the father.

In the meantime, Jeffrey watched.

Lionel Dahmer painted the following picture for the court: She took him (David) to Wisconsin on about August 24, leaving my 18-year-old son in the house alone, instructing him not to tell me or anyone else what she had done.'

Lionel Dahmer's second wife, Shari, later claimed the predicament had a powerful impact on Jeffrey -- he was home alone with no money, no food and a broken refrigerator.

Jeffrey's mother -- Joyce Flint, now a case manager in the Central Valley AIDS Team in Fresno, Calif., has been in seclusion since Dahmer became a household word last month.

Her privacy is really critical to her and she just needs to be by herself,' an attorney-spokeswoman said. The only thing she has to say to anybody is that she loves her son and ... she just wants to be left alone.'

In the contempt hearing, the referee said nothing could be done by the court to prohibit a parent from leaving the state if the parent chose to do so.

That hearing was held Sept. 24, 1978, but the outcome had little relevance to Jeffrey Dahmer.

He was in Columbus on the campus of Ohio State University.

Drunk.

Drinking was what he was most remembered for at Ohio State.

His roommate, Michael Prochaska of Cleveland, told the Ohio State Lantern that Dahmer had a serious drinking problem and used to take bottles to class with him and came back drunk.'

Prochaska could not recall Dahmer getting any mail or having any friends.

But he did leave one other mark.

Campus police questioned him as the only suspect in the theft of a watch, a radio and $120 that were taken from another room in the Morrill Tower dormitory.

Dahmer lasted only one quarter there. His father recalled that his son's room was lined with bottles of booze.

We could see it was fruitless,' he told the Milwaukee Sentinel, so they turned to the military, thinking perhaps he could be straightened out by the service.'

On Christmas Eve of that year, Lionel Dahmer married his second wife, Shari Virginia Jordan.

And five days later, Jeffrey Dahmer enlisted in the Army.

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/d4.htm

So many dead, so few answers

It looks like he found her again after many years, and you know, he was probably feeling at least on the inside that he was in danger of losing her again. ... . By creating this major crisis, you know, he thought she will now have to maintain some connection. No way is his face going to be blocked out from the picture ... but, again, at a very heavy price to society and to himself.' -- Dr. Ashok Bedi, clinical director of the Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital.

By his father's account, Jeffrey Dahmer was in his new apartment only one DAY, before he was in trouble again.

On Sept. 26, 1988, Dahmer took a 13-year-old Laotian boy home with him to North 24th Street in Milwaukee after offering him $50 to pose for some pictures.

According to reports, the boy told police he drank part of a cup of coffee Dahmer gave him after Dahmer poured some liquid into it.

Records say Dahmer fondled the boy and asked him to look sexier' for the photo, but the boy escaped and was hospitalized, feeling woozy.

Finally, it would seem, Jeffrey Dahmer had done something to make society notice him and stop him.

But it didn't turn out that way.

He was arrested and convicted of second-degree sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes.

On May 24, 1989, Milwaukee Circuit Judge William Gardner placed Dahmer on five years' probation on the condition that he serve one year on work release at the House of Correction and get treatment for his alcoholism.

On March 1, 1990, Dahmer's father wrote the judge, imploring him to please do what you can to maximize and define the treatment that was mandated,' because in all the time that had elapsed, there was no coordination between the various government agencies and Dahmer had received no treatment.

Lionel Dahmer noted that after Jeffrey's previous conviction, the treatment he received was from a psychologist who had no experience in treating alcoholism.

Based upon this and several conversations with Jeff's prior generic caseload parole officers, I have tremendous reservations regarding Jeff's chances when he hits the streets.

Every incident, including the most recent conviction for sex offense, has been associated with and initiated by alcohol in Jeff's case.

I sincerely hope that you might intervene in some way to help my son, who I love very much and for whom I want a better life.'

He concluded prophetically: This may be our last chance to institute something lasting.'

On the following day, March 2, 1990, the judge let Jeffrey Dahmer out of jail.

Whether he had received and read his father's plea is not clear.

But by then, it was too late for some.

Dahmer already had butchered and discarded the remains of at least five human beings.

Indeed, six months after he was arrested for fondling the Laotian boy and two months before he was sent to jail for doing it, he went back to his grandmother's house with 24-year-old restaurant manager Anthony Sears. He drugged Sears, strangled him, decapitated him, cut his body into pieces, and boiled his head until he could extract the skull.

It appeared to be a trophy, of sorts, which he painted gray and kept.

Two months after his release from jail, he killed again.

This time it was 33-year-old Raymond Lamont Smith, also known as Ricky Beeks.

He was the father of a 10-year-old girl, but frequently went for long periods without connecting with his family.

He was last seen on May 29, 1990, the same DAY, Dahmer reported to his parole officer and complained that he didn't like the new apartment he had rented on North 25th Street.

He had been ripped off there over the weekend, he said, and had lost his watch, $300 and all of his clothes.

The officer noted in the log that Dahmer usually has a neat appearance, but was unkempt and unshaven today.'

His parole log goes on for page after page to chronicle Dahmer's last months of freedom.

It appears to be the desperate time of a tormented man who was sexually confused because he was attracted to men rather than women, yet professed to detest homosexuals.

He reportedly developed a hatred for blacks, yet moved into one of the highly segregated black neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

The parole officer noted that he was a constant complainer who expected others to solve his problems.

According to the log, he spent all of his spare time alone, was always tired, had no friends, had constant alcohol problems, never had enough money, frequently was injured and was at one point sued by a hospital for not paying his bills.

The officer remarked that Dahmer refuses to look at anything positive in his life.'

The only bright spot in the log came on March 25, 1991, when the officer wrote: Dahmer was happy. His mother called him after having no contact with her for five years. Dahmer said conversation went well. She knows he is gay and has no problem accepting it. Dahmer said they will maintain their contact. Mother lives in California.'

Shortly thereafter, the killings became more frequent.

On April 7, he killed 19-year-old Errol Lindsey.

On May 17, Dahmer told his parole officer he had been questioned by Milwaukee police about another man who had been found strangled in the apartment complex, but he knew nothing about it, and they went away.

On May 24, he killed 31-year-old Anthony Hughes.

Then on May 26, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone disappeared on his way to soccer practice.

Ironically, he was the younger brother of the Laotian boy whom Dahmer molested three years before.

On the following day, Dahmer reported to his parole officer; it's recorded in the log.

Continues to complain about everything,' the log says. Stated grandmother ill and he has gone there every DAY, to help her out.'

That evening, the DAY, after after Konerak Sinthasomphone disappeared, Milwaukee police were summoned to North 25th Street by Dahmer's neighbors.

Konerak Sinthasomphone had escaped and was outside Dahmer's apartment, naked, bleeding from the buttocks and apparently drugged.

Dahmer, however, did not appear to be panicked by the confrontation.

He chatted with police, convincing them that the child was an adult and that they were homosexual lovers having a spat.

They accompanied Dahmer back to his apartment, where there were photos of victims -- some dead -- scattered on the floor, and a strong odor, according to the Milwaukee Journal. Dahmer later said the body of Hughes was in the bedroom while police were there.

Incredibly, police officers bought the story of the homosexual spat and returned the boy to Dahmer.

Dahmer killed him immediately after police left and cut him into pieces, according to the Journal report.

The tiny, one-bedroom apartment had become a human slaughterhouse.

Dahmer froze some body parts, boiled some, melted others down with chemicals, and apparently discarded other portions in trash bags.

Neighbors began to complain about the putrid odor coming from his apartment, and wondered about wrestling noises and the occasional whine of an electric saw.

Some noted that he cursed loudly when he appeared to be alone.

It seemed he was cursing himself.

He always used the back entrance of the building.

But the truth was that he was not always alone.

He had company on June 30, July 6, July 15 and July 19.

And on each night, to make sure his visitors didn't leave him home alone, he killed them.

Finally, at 11:25 p.m. July 22, an hysterical 32-year-old man with handcuffs dangling from his left wrist ran into the streets of Milwaukee and drew the attention of the world.

In an interview with the Beacon Journal, Tracy Edwards detailed the terror of what he said was a five-hour ordeal in which he begged Dahmer for his life.

He said Dahmer tried to get him to disrobe for photographs and repeatedly threatened him.

He told me that he was going to kill me and eat my heart out,' Edwards said.

Edwards, who said he is the father of six, insisted he is not a homosexual but was lured to the apartment for drinks through an intricate setup arranged by Dahmer. Edwards thought others would join them there for a party.

Edwards said the apartment was neat except for containers of chemicals and electrical power tools in the living room.

The bedroom, which he saw later, was more unkempt and the bed had what appeared to be a huge dried bloodstain.

Dahmer claimed the bad smell' in the apartment was a sewer problem.

It was only after having a couple of beers and deciding that it was time to go that his problems began, Edwards said.

Within seconds he felt the cold steel of handcuffs around his wrist and a knife at his chest.

Had he not managed finally to overpower Dahmer and escape to summon police, Edwards said, he had no doubt he would be dead.

Thus far, Dahmer's secret has been poured out in repulsive confessions that revealed the killing and dismemberment of 17 men, starting in Bath Township with 18-year-old Steven Hicks two weeks after Dahmer's graduation as one of Revere High School's supposedly most forgettable students.

Not only did he commit the gruesome killings, he said, but he also had sex with some of the corpses and saved some favorite parts in the freezer so he could later eat them.

If true, the experts say, such actions are consistent with perversion in which sexual gratification is gained from corpses, including eating them.

But there's more to the story than what we know yet -- or so says Ronald M. Holmes of the University of Louisville, a criminologist and an expert in serial killers.

There's no way, he said, that Dahmer killed in 1978, then not again until the mid-1980s.

Somewhere along the way, he's killed between there,' Holmes said. It just takes too long. ... . I'm not saying 17 or 20 of them, but I'm saying probably at least four or five or six in there someplace.'

According to Holmes, serial killers follow certain time patterns, reducing the amount of time between each killing.

As for Dahmer's apparent switch from white to black victims, Holmes said the only significance is availability.

When he lives in a black neighborhood, he kills black victims.

As for homosexuality, Dr. Ashok Bedi, clinical director of the Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital, says it plays a very, very minor part of the equation' because homosexuality is a normal, healthy choice that some people make and deal with just as adaptively or maladaptively as people who make heterosexual choices.'

Without having examined Dahmer, Bedi said, it seems apparent that he really has a lot of confusion between sexuality and aggression,' which Bedi said are the two basic instincts of life forces. ... People who are so regressed have very little capacity to distinguish between the two ... so when they are feeling sexual toward someone, they will show it by aggression ... and that would include mutilating your victims, eating them, making love to their dead body.'

But Bedi said he was particularly struck by the killing spree that followed the call to Dahmer by his mother in March.

She reconnected with him after five years and then after that, he went into a sort of major escalation of his problems. ... Obviously, there was something major unresolved at that level. ... . He lost control of whatever little, tenuous control he had ... and went into this frenzy almost asking to be caught.

I think the big fear this fellow has is one of abandonment. ... .

If you are rejected by the parent of the opposite sex, it is very devastating, and I think it looks like he found her again after many years and, you know, he was probably feeling at least on the inside that he was in danger of losing her again.

By creating this major crisis, you know, he thought she will now have to maintain some connection. No way is his face going to be blocked out from the picture ... but again at a very heavy price to society and to himself.'

But that's just a theory -- another theory based on probablys.

Nobody really knows the reason for Dahmer's secret.

Nobody really knows why he became a monster -- if that is what he is.

And nobody ever will. Probably.

His classmates, though, keep remembering that high school yearbook picture in which his face was blocked out and they can't help but wonder whether it was more than just his special kind of craziness.'

Last year, John Backderf and a couple of other members of Revere High School's Class of 78 had a little get-together in Cleveland and the youngster who made them laugh by bleating like a sheep came to mind.

We were talking and remembering names from school,' Backderf said. The name of Dahmer came up and someone said: He's probably a mass murderer.'

We all laughed.'

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/d5.htm

Pastor says Dahmer found peace

That conclusion comes from Roy Ratcliff, a Church of Christ pastor who was Dahmer's only regular visitor after he stepped forward earlier this year following Dahmer's letter to an Oklahoma prison minister that `I need and want to be baptized.`

`My work with Jeff was to help him meet his Maker,` Ratcliff said last week. `I think I did a pretty good job. I think he was as prepared as he could be to die.`

Dahmer, 34, who admitted murdering and sometimes cannibalizing 17 men and boys in a killing spree that began in Summit County in 1978, was beaten to death Monday -- apparently by a fellow inmate -- at the Columbia Correctional Institution here.

Ratcliff, who was Dahmer's last outside visitor, said that when he learned of Dahmer's death on his car radio Monday morning, he felt both anger and grief at the loss of a man he called a close friend.

For the last seven months, Rat-cliff, 47, had driven 40 miles north from his Madison church to the prison near the town of Portage. He had never been in a prison before. Every Wednesday, he met with Dahmer at a table in a small room. Their conversations usually lasted an hour and centered on redemption, forgiveness and guilt.

At first, the minister believed Dahmer's attraction to God may have been a prison conversion: a lonely and desperate man seeking solace and forgiveness from the only place he could find it.

Clearly he didn't find it in himself -- or anyone else.

'Outrageous' crimes

Even among a prison population that included vicious killers, Dahmer was regarded as an oddity. The grotesque nature of his crimes was `so outrageous as to offend other criminals. They could not accept that,` said George B. Palermo, a psychiatrist for the prosecution whose testimony persuaded a jury in 1992 that Dahmer was sane.

`It was a different kind of crime -- a crime, I would say, against nature,` Palermo said last week.

Dahmer was kept isolated in an 8-by-10-foot, windowless cell during his first year in prison, as much as 23 hours of every day, but later was allowed to mix with other prisoners in the special management unit. That unit houses prisoners with adjustment and mental difficulties. Even there, though, he was kept in protective custody, which limited his exposure to other inmates to a few hours a day.

And all the while, Dahmer brooded over his past.

Despite a steady stream of hate mail, Ratcliff said, Dahmer tried to put the past out of his mind.

He spent most of his time in his cell, studying the Bible, books about nature and art, and even comic books. He listened to tapes of Gregorian chant, Bach and the sounds of humpback whales. He didn't watch television programs of which he was the subject. He was learning to play chess.

He also received pornographic magazines, he told Ratcliff, which Dahmer said disturbed him and preyed on his weaknesses.

LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

When Lionel Dahmer of Medina County's Granger Township published his account of his son's childhood this spring, Jeffrey Dahmer appeared on a national television program to talk about it.

A woman in Virginia and a man from Oklahoma saw the program and both sent letters to the prison, encouraging Dahmer to get involved in Bible study.

Dahmer not only expressed immediate interest, but filled out the Bible study tests and returned them to both of his correspondents.

But in an April 1 letter to Curtis Booth of Crescent, Okla., Dahmer said he needed some outside help in his quest to become a Christian.

`I have now taken the complete course. But I still have one problem,` he wrote. `This prison does not have a baptismal tank and ... the prison chaplain is not sure if he can find someone to bring a tank in and baptize me.

`This has me very concerned,` Dahmer wrote. `Would you be willing to help find someone to baptize me? I've taken all the other steps. Now I need and want to be baptized.`

He underlined need, Booth said.

The Oklahoman responded to Dahmer's request by contacting the prison and phoning a Milwaukee minister, who he said `wasn't any too enthused` about such a mission.

Ultimately, Booth found Ratcliff, whom Booth described as anxious to help.

Ratcliff baptized Dahmer in May in a prison whirlpool.

According to Ratcliff, Dahmer was nervous and frightened during their first meeting -- apparently fearful that Ratcliff would judge him unworthy of baptism.

God is forgiving, Ratcliff explained. He recalled biblical accounts of the crucifixion of Christ in which Jesus granted forgiveness to criminals in their hour of need -- as He did with the thieves on Calvary.

While he knew Dahmer was a notorious killer, Ratcliff said he wasn't aware of the extent of Dahmer's crimes.

Only when Dahmer began talking about the Bible in the context of what had happened in his life did Ratcliff discover the scope of Dahmer's story.

`He would tell me details of what he had done as though I was supposed to know all about them,` Ratcliff said. `There were times when I would just nod my head and pretend I knew what he was talking about.`

Sometimes after their meetings, while Dahmer would go to his cell to read about Christianity, Ratcliff would go the library to read about Dahmer.

A CHANGING VIEWPOINT

When they met, the first few minutes were reserved for small talk and pleasantries. Dahmer often would talk about his parents or discuss the latest legal wrangling. Dahmer seemed apologetic that he could offer so little news of his day-to-day life. Big news would come when the monotony would break: a flu shot, a haircut, etc.

Most of the remaining time was reserved for studying the Bible. Dahmer's questions were insightful and thoughtful, Ratcliff said. It was clear he had expended great time and effort studying.

It was through his Bible studies that Dahmer came to grips with his crimes. Dahmer told the minister that no one would ever know the depth of guilt and remorse he felt.

Dahmer thought that he should be put to death for his crimes. But Ratcliff explained that the Bible urges Christians to follow earthly laws. Wisconsin has no death penalty, so the best you can do is be the best Christian you can be, Ratcliff told the frustrated Dahmer.

` 'There's nothing more I can give,' ` Ratcliff quoted Dahmer as saying.

`They've taken away everything else he had,` Ratcliff said. `The only thing he had left to give was his life, and the state will not take that. So, there was frustration.`

Dahmer confessed early on that he had thought about suicide, but told Ratcliff he lacked whatever it took to end his own life.

By July, when an inmate tried to slash Dahmer's throat in the chapel, Dahmer told Ratcliff he was glad he survived the attack. His life had taken on a new direction and new meaning, thanks to his relationship with God. He had no fear. He wanted to live now, to move out among the prison's general population.

Finally, in November, Dahmer got his wish: He was assigned to a cleaning crew, where he earned 24 cents an hour.

Three weeks later, he was dead, beaten to death while cleaning a bathroom in the prison gym.

In what was to be his final meeting with Roy Ratcliff, Dahmer handed him a card.

In Dahmer's own handwriting, the Thanksgiving message read:

`Thank you for your friendship and for taking the time and effort to help me understand God's work. God bless you and your family. Sincerely, Jeff Dahmer.` CAPTION: (Color) Roy Ratcliff says he was unaware of the full extent of Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes when he began ministering to the multiple  murderer.

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/d6.htm

Posted at 3:57 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 14, 2001

Chronology of Dahmer Case

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/dchronology.htm

Published Sunday, July 15, 2001, in the Akron Beacon Journal.

Clues go unnoticed in Bath Twp. youth

http://www.ohio.com/all/newsdocs/009254.htm

Posted at 4:10 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 14, 2001

Key players in Dahmer case: Where are they now?

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/dplayers.htm

Posted at 4:10 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 14, 2001

Famous quotes from Dahmer case

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/dquotes.htm

Posted at 4:10 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 14, 2001

http://www.ohio.com/specials/2001/dahmer/docs/dvictims.htm

Accused serial killer indicted on murder, arson charges

July 21, 2001 http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-metro21.html

Accused serial killer Paul Runge was indicted Friday by a Cook County grand jury. Besides the six felony murder and rape charges, Runge now also faces aggravated arson charges stemming from his alleged attempt to burn the bodies of three of his Cook County victims, said Chief Criminal Prosecutor Bernie Murray. The formal four-count indictment will be presented at an Aug. 9 hearing, when Runge is expected to make a plea. Runge, 31, is charged with murdering six women and an 11-year-old girl in a killing spree between 1995 and 1997. Defense attorneys Friday asked that Runge be moved from DuPage County Jail to Cook County Jail, because the bulk of the cases are being handled in Cook County. Cook County Criminal Court Judge Nicholas Ford said a decision on where to house Runge would be made Aug. 9.

Hospital seeks identities of two patients

Mount Sinai Hospital is asking for help in identifying two men brought to the emergency room on different days last month. One man, ''Ralph Doe,'' was brought to the hospital June 10 with head trauma, probably from a beating. He's believed to be in his 40s, and is 5 feet 10 inches and 164 pounds with a heart tattoo on the left side of his chest. He sometimes responds to ''Alex.'' The other man, ''Juan Doe,'' was admitted with a head injury from a June 23 traffic accident at Kedzie and 24th. He is about 40, 5 feet 7 inches and 211 pounds. He has a beard. Neither man's fingerprints were on file with police agencies or match a Chicago police missing person report.

In the last few months, DNA tests have linked Mosley to the rapes and murders of five women and two girls. The families of the victims, prosecutors and detectives hope that Mosley will be found competent so that criminal charges can be filed against him. Mosley's competency has not been evaluated since 1990 because he has been detained on the grounds that he is a danger to himself and others.

Mosley was known in his neighborhood as “the Rape Man.” He is a suspect in numerous rapes and murders in and around northwest Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been linked by DNA tests to the murders of Emma Cook, 54; Teresa Giles, 22; Sonja Marion, 13; Vetta Turner, 34; Shandra Whitehead, 8; Terry Jean Cummings, 21, and Naomi Gamble, 15.

Some of the murders were wrongly blamed on two other men, Frank Lee Smith, 52, who died of cancer on Death Row last year before he was exonerated by DNA testing, and Jerry Frank Townsend, 49, who was released from prison last month.

DNA test results are pending in the murders of Susan Boyton, 21; Arnette Tukes, 19; Gloria Irving, 16; Geraldine Barfield, 35, and Santrail Lowe, 24. And some other cases have been re-opened for investigation including the murders of two women in Lakeland that occurred while Mosley was visiting family there in 1979.

According to court records, Mosley is mentally retarded, with an IQ of about 51 and was forced out of school when he was 13 and still in the third grade.

The psychologists, Trudy Block-Garfield and Amy Swan, must travel to Chattahoochee, near the Georgia and Alabama state lines, because of the difficulties officials had in getting Mosley moved, according to court documents.

Because Mosley is not currently charged with any crime, he cannot be moved to the Broward County Jail for the evaluations.

Mosley had been housed at a facility near Gainesville for several years but he had to be moved to the more secure facility in May after safety concerns arose about his presence in Gainesville.

Mosley had been living at the unit quietly for years and was even allowed to go on supervised visits to a local store, according to court documents. But community concerns were raised by media coverage of the case and because law enforcement officials in the region found out that an arrest warrant had been issued for Mosley for the homicide of Marion.

A July 13 memo written by Mary Sanders, of the Broward courts mental health unit, said Mosley could not be sent to a state psychiatric hospital in Miami because he is retarded.

“I checked out having him [Mosley] returned to Gainesville for a week because it has secure areas but they will not take him back even for a short time,” Sanders wrote.

She concluded there was no choice but to have the psychologists go to Chattachoochee at a cost of about $2,400. Broward Circuit Judge Joyce Julian agreed during a brief court hearing on Friday.

One of Mosley's attorneys, assistant public defender Bill Laswell, said he is eager to get Mosley evaluated so that decisions can be made about what will happen next. If Mosley is found incompetent, he will likely be kept committed in state care. But if he is found competent, Laswell said the case will “probably move in to some massive, massive litigation.”

Some detectives have suggested that Mosley is competent to stand trial and is just faking mental health problems to avoid possible convictions. But Laswell sarcastically dismissed such suggestions.

“He's got to be the cleverest retarded SOB,” he said. “How could this guy out-fox BSO's forensics and the Fort Lauderdale Police Department's investigative techniques?”

Boston Strangler's Brother Provides DNA

Family Withholds Sample For Murder Evidence

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., 7:27 p.m. EDT July 19, 2001 -- The Boston Strangler's brother had blood drawn publicly Thursday in an attempt to prove that Albert DeSalvo was not the notorious killer.

"I honestly swear on a stack of bibles, that there is no way on the world that he was the Boston Strangler," Richard DeSalvo said.

For nearly four decades, Richard DeSalvo has endured the burden of sharing the name of the man known as the Boston Strangler. He has long maintained that Albert DeSalvo was not the infamous killer of 13 women in the '60s.

At a news conference Thursday, a doctor took blood samples from Richard DeSalvo's finger. Then the doctor used a cotton swab in his mouth. Richard DeSalvo's DNA may be compared to semen samples found on Mary Sullivan, the Strangler's last victim.

Reilly's office has the evidence and Richard DeSalvo's attorney said that the family wants to make a trade.

"We are hopeful today that Tom Reilly, or his representative, will appear with a semen sample," Richard DeSalvo's attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp said. "He isn't here yet, but we are not yet giving up hope."

Reilly did not show up, but he did release a statement.

"If they are interested in a professional investigation seeking the truth, they will give us a sample so that we can continue with DNA testing. Today's public spectacle did nothing to further those aims," Reilly said.

Video of Richard DeSalvo and Boston Strangler files

By Paula McMahon
and Ardy Friedberg Staff Writers
Posted July 17 2001

It has been more than 3 1/2 months since a judge ordered that suspected serial killer Eddie Lee Mosley be evaluated to see whether he is competent to stand trial.

But court officials have had problems finding independent psychologists to assess Mosley's condition, which has caused a delay in moving forward with the cases.

Mosley, 54, has been linked by DNA tests to the violent rapes and murders of two girls and five women in and around northwest Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s and 1980s. He is also a suspect in several other slayings.

The families of some of the victims say they are upset by the delays.

"It's frustrating," said Rosemary Grant, the daughter of Emma Cook, whose body was found on Christmas Eve in 1983.

"It just looks like it's on the back burner," Grant said. "I hope they don't let him get away with it again."

Broward Circuit Judge Joyce Julian ordered the evaluation in March after DNA test results linked the crimes to Mosley. On Friday, the judge will conduct a hearing to try to resolve the difficulties in finding experts to evaluate Mosley.

Mosley has been involuntarily committed to a secure psychiatric center since 1988 when he was found incompetent to stand trial on charges that he murdered Cook, 54, and another woman, Teresa Giles, 22. His competency has not been evaluated since 1990, prosecutor Chuck Morton said.

The evaluation process got held up partly because Mosley had to be moved from the Seguin unit near Gainesville to the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee near Tallahassee. He was moved because of security concerns when the number of potential charges against him began to mount.

The original two murder charges against Mosley had to be dropped because he remained incompetent to stand trial for more than two years.

Fort Lauderdale police have had an outstanding murder warrant for Mosley since December in the 1979 murder of 13-year-old Sonja Marion. But prosecutors have held off filing charges against Mosley until it is determined whether he is competent to stand trial because they would have to dismiss the charges if he were found incompetent.

DNA tests have linked Mosley to the murders of Cook, Giles, Marion, Vetta Turner, 34; Shandra Whitehead, 8; Terry Jean Cummings, 21, and Naomi Gamble, 15. Some of those murders were wrongly blamed on two other men, Frank Lee Smith, 52, who died of cancer on Death Row last year before he was exonerated by DNA testing, and Jerry Frank Townsend, 49, who was released from prison last month.

DNA test results are pending in the murders of Susan Boyton, 21; Arnette Tukes, 19; Gloria Irving, 16; Geraldine Barfield, 35, and Santrail Lowe, 24. There is not enough evidence to test in other cases in which he is a suspect.

DeSalvo families refuse to turn over DNA to AG's office

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/199/region/DeSalvo_families_refuse_to_tur:.shtml

Prosecutors to seek death penalty against Stayner

Armstrong sentenced in prostitute slayings

July 4, 2001

By DAVID ENDERS
Associated Press

Accused serial killer and former Navy sailor John Eric Armstrong was sentenced Tuesday to 31 years to life in prison for killing three prostitutes.

He already has received life sentences without parole in two other prostitute slayings.

Armstrong's lawyer, Ira Harris of Detroit, said his client reacted to Tuesday's sentencing "stoically."

"He knows what he's facing," Harris said.

Armstrong pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the deaths of the three women. In exchange for the pleas, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of intent to do great bodily harm and reduce charges of assault with intent to murder charges to charges of intent to do great bodily harm, said Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth Walker.

Armstrong pleaded guilty to one of those charges and no contest to the other, receiving the maximum penalty of 57 months to 10 years in jail for each.

Investigators say Armstrong told them he hates prostitutes. Police in Detroit said he would cruise the streets, pick up prostitutes and strangle them after having sex.

Armstrong, who was a sailor on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz from 1993 to 1998, claims to have killed women in other cities and abroad, but FBI investigators haven't been able to link any unsolved slayings to him.

Armstrong is married and has two young children.

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001, 14:14 GMT 15:14 UK

Iranian 'serial killer' strikes again

A woman's body has been found wrapped in a black cloth in the Iranian city of Mashhad, where 15 other women have been murdered in similar circumstances over the past year.

The authorities say the woman was strangled to death and her body left wrapped in a chador on a street.

The other 15 victims, who were aged between 27 and 50, were also killed with their scarves - all had convictions for drug addiction or prostitution.

A special team of investigators has been sent from Tehran to help local police with their investigation.

Snowtown accused confesses to murders

By Penelope Debelle in Adelaide

One of the four accused in South Australia's bodies-in-barrels murder case was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday after a dramatic courtroom confession.

Speaking through tears, James Vlassakis, 21, stood up in the South Australian Supreme Court and admitted to four of the 10 murders.

At the surprise arraignment brought on at his request to allow him to plead guilty, Vlassakis - one of four South Australian men charged in relation to Australia's worst known serial killing - was immediately sentenced by Justice Brian Martin.

However, a decision on a non-parole period was delayed until July 20 to allow sentencing submissions to be made.

Vlassakis's counsel, Ms Rosemary Davey, who stood at his side as the charges were read out, told the court Vlassakis agreed these were horrendous crimes but there were submissions in relation to him that should be put before the court.

If a non-parole period is set, significant remissions could be expected because of the guilty plea which will save the State millions of dollars in legal costs.

The court was told a fifth charge against Vlassakis for the murder of Gavin Porter, 31, would be withdrawn next week.

Clean-shaven and dressed in an open-neck white shirt and blue jeans, Vlassakis swallowed nervously then murmured a guilty plea as he was jointly charged with the murder between late August and early September 1998, of Troy Youde, 21, his half-brother.

As the second charge was read of the murder, with others, of Frederick Brooks in September, 1998, Vlassakis began to cry, then pleaded guilty. He then stood quietly, swallowing back more tears as he pleaded guilty to his part in the murder of Gary O'Dwyer between October and November, 1998, and of his step- brother, David Johnson, the last victim killed at Snowtown between May 8 and May 13 two years ago.

The bodies of Mr Youde, Mr Brooks, Mr O'Dwyer, Mr Johnson and Mr Porter were among the remains of eight people found rotting and dismembered inside six large plastic barrels in May 1999 in the disused Snowtown bank.

The confession came six months into a committal hearing in the Adelaide Magistrates Court in which Vlassakis was taken to have pleaded not guilty after he declined to enter a plea against five charges of murder.

The prosecution's case will now focus on the remaining three accused, who are charged jointly with 10 murders. They are Robert Joseph Wagner, 28, of Elizabeth Grove; John Justin Bunting, 34, of Craigmore; and Mark Ray Haydon, 42, of Smithfield Plains.

Justice Martin warned the media the guilty plea by Vlassakis had no relevance to the charges relating to the other three.

Vlassakis left the court in the back of a car, a blanket over his head, flanked by heavy police security.

Authorities begin exhuming bodies in inquiry of Texas hospital deaths

The Associated Press

FORT WORTH, Texas (June 11, 2001 12:11 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Authorities on Monday began exhuming the bodies of 10 former patients who may have been fatally drugged at a north Texas hospital.

The body of J.T. Nichols, who died Jan. 11 at Nocona General Hospital, was exhumed at a Fort Worth cemetery.

Authorities are trying to determine whether two dozen hospital patients were lethally dosed with Mivacron, which is normally used to temporarily stop breathing during insertion of breathing tubes.

The 10 bodies being exhumed initially are those deemed to be the best candidates for autopsies, Montague County District Attorney Tim Cole said.

Several vials of the drug were reported missing from the hospital in late January. Hospital officials then noticed that deaths had doubled in December and January, all on the same shift.

No one has been arrested, but authorities are focused on one suspect they say likely acted alone.

http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/v-text/story/24610p-450441c.html

Published Wednesday, June 13, 2001

Photos focus of Stayner hearing

By Brian Melley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MARIPOSA -- Only a few feet from where Yosemite killer Cary Stayner sits in court in ankle chains, there are vivid reminders of the three tourists he's accused of killing.

Photos taken during their February 1999 visit to the national park show teen-agers Silvina Pelosso and Juli Sund, arms wrapped around each other, with a wispy waterfall plunging from the granite cliffs in the background.

Another shows Sund and her mother, Carole, smiling while sitting on unmade beds in the room the three shared at Cedar Lodge, where Stayner lived and worked as a handyman outside the park.

In any other setting they'd be happy snapshots from a memorable vacation. Instead, they're being used to identify the women who disappeared, using the very photos they took on their adventure as evidence in the preliminary hearing against Stayner.

As the hearing continued Tuesday in Mariposa Superior Court to determine if there's enough evidence against Stayner to proceed to trial on murder charges, those photos stood in bleak contrast to ones taken by investigators when the bodies of the three were found a month after they vanished.

A hunting guide testified that he found the torched once-red rental car March 19, 1999, while scouting for deer in a forest near Long Barn, a tiny community in the Sierra Nevada.

In one set of photos, the car was scorched gun-metal gray and the charred remains of Carole Sund, 42, and Pelosso, 16, in the trunk were indistinguishable. Skull fragments were the only body parts barely recognizable. Forensic scientists had to identify the bodies.

A week later, following a crudely drawn map of Lake Don Pedro that arrived anonymously at an FBI office three weeks earlier, agents located the naked body of Juli Sund, 15, covered in brush off a trail near the reservoir.

FBI agent Christopher Hopkins testified that Stayner later led investigators to the site and pointed out where he had tossed a roll of duct tape and the knife he used to slash Juli's throat.

Francis Carrington, the father of Carole Sund and grandfather of Juli, said outside court that it was difficult to hear Hopkins testify about discovering the bodies and hear them referred to as "Body No. 1" and "Body No. 2." And it was difficult to imagine what had happened to the people he loved.

"To visualize doing the things he did," Carrington said. "A serial killer must get pleasure out of the things they do. I don't get it."

An FBI fingerprint expert testified he matched Stayner's thumbprint to one on the envelope in which the map was sent with the cryptic inscription, "We have fun with this one."

Stayner, 39, already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in federal court to murdering Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong, admitted sending the letter during his confession to killing the women, according to an investigator's affidavit.

In other testimony, cab driver Jenny Horvath told how she was dispatched to Sierra Village and picked up Stayner on Feb. 16, 1999, for the long and winding drive back to Yosemite Village -- a ride that stood out because of the $125 fare and Stayner's behavior.

The testimony was compelling in light of what wasn't said: At the time, Stayner was returning from his night of killing, according to a summary of his confession included in court records.

For most of the two-hour ride, Stayner kept conversation flowing when he wasn't snoozing in the back of her cab.

But Horvath became anxious when Stayner argued with a park employee about paying the $35 entrance fee for commercial vehicles at the gate to the park. And she further thought it abnormal when he offered to point out where he had seen Bigfoot.

"I just thought that it was strange because he seems like a normal guy," Horvath said.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/california/stories/yosem_20010613.htm

 In his own words, handyman tells how he killed

BRIAN MELLEY, Associated Press Writer

(06-13) 13:47 PDT MARIPOSA, Calif. (AP) --

Cary Stayner had planned to kill for months before he acted spontaneously on his fantasy and targeted three Yosemite National Park tourists staying at the motel where he worked.

Stayner blocked his ears and wept Wednesday as his taped confession was played at his preliminary hearing in Mariposa Superior Court.

After hearing the confession and two other days of evidence, judge Thomas Hastings found there was enough evidence to warrant a trial on murder charges. Stayner will be arraigned July 16 and a trial date will be set then.

In the meantime, prosecutors will determine whether to seek the death penalty in the case.

In his own words, Stayner told how he methodically killed Carole Sund, how he wrapped a rope around her neck, sat on her back and "just nonchalantly strangled her to death."

He did the same to Silvina Pelosso on Feb. 15, 1999, and said he slashed Juli Sund's throat the next morning after repeatedly sexually assaulting her.

"I had no feeling, like I was performing a task," he said about killing Carole Sund. "Her hands turned purple and blue and I kind of realized that was it."

Stayner, 39, already is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in federal court to murdering Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong. That case was held in federal court because she was killed in a national park.

If convicted of the deaths of the three women tourists, Stayner could face a death sentence.

Stayner said he had no intention of killing the three until he saw them through the window in their room at the rustic motel where he worked outside the park as a maintenance man.

In the previous three months, however, he had begun to contemplate killing his girlfriend and her two daughters. He described the woman as a "slob" and said he fantasized about sexually assaulting her girls and then burning the house down.

But he said his plans were thwarted because a caretaker lived upstairs from the family and they had been nice to him, making it harder to want to kill them.

The instinct to kill was very much alive, however, and Stayner said he "researched" other guests at the lodge whom he might kill during Valentine's weekend 1999.

As he walked past room 509, he saw the girls lying in bed and Carole Sund reading a book. There was no man in the picture, and Stayner believed he had found "easy prey."

At that time of year the lodge is not busy, and there would be no one in adjacent rooms to hear them scream.

Stayner said he pretended to return a master key to the front office that he had taken to get pool cleaning supplies. Then he went to his room above the lodge office, donned camouflage pants, a black, hooded sweatshirt and grabbed a backpack that contained a gun, a knife, clothesline and black duct tape.

He knocked on the door to room 509 and said he had to check on a leak in the bathroom. Carole Sund initially refused to let him in the room, but relented when he said he would get the manager.

When he emerged from the bathroom, he pulled a gun. The girls, he said, were unfazed, merely looking up from wathing a videotape of "Jerry Maguire."

"The mother's eyes got real big," he said.

He made the three lie on the floor, bound their hands behind their back with duct tape, gagged their mouths and then took the girls in the bathroom while he strangled Carole Sund.

"It felt like I was in control for the first time in my life," Stayner said.

He then went about stripping the girls, and attempted to sexually assault them. Pelosso was sobbing so he took her in the bathroom and strangled her and then continued to molest Juli Sund.

"Can you imagine a 15-year-old, how terrified she must have been, how terrified for hours?" Juli's grandmother, Carole Carrington, said outside court.

Stayner's efforts for sexual gratification, however, were marred by impotence, a malady that left him frustrated but not angry, he told investigators.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/06/13/state1646EDT7900.DTL&type=news 

Stayner trial fixes on murder scenes

By MICHAEL G. MOONEY
BEE STAFF WRITER
(Published: Wednesday, June 13, 2001)

   MARIPOSA -- The gentle breeze Tuesday seemed to revive a weary Francis Carrington as he strode out of the old white pine courthouse atop the hill known as Bullion Street.

   But Carrington halted after only a few paces to face a wall of insistent television cameras.

   Moments earlier, Superior Court Judge Thomas C. Hastings called the midafternoon break in the hearing that will determine whether there is enough evidence to put Cary Anthony Stayner on trial in the February 1999 murders of three Yosemite sightseers: Carole Sund, 42, of Eureka; her daughter, Julie, 15; and family friend Silvina Pelosso, a 16-year-old student from Argentina.

   Squinting in the still-warm sun, Carrington tried to explain what it is like to sit in the same room with the person accused of murdering his daughter and granddaughter, while an FBI specialist clinically recounts finding their bodies.

   Carrington said he understood the need for lawyers and FBI agents to use dispassionate language in the courtroom to describe the crime scenes and the murders and the horrible wounds that were inflicted upon his family and young friend. What he cannot understand is why someone would do such a thing.

   "It's extremely difficult to visualize anyone doing the things he (Stayner) did," Carrington said. "A serial killer must get pleasure out of this. (But) I can't understand why. I can't understand him or would I ever attempt to."

   Prosecutor Michael Canozeri, a deputy attorney general and one of three co-prosecutors, began introducing crime-scene evidence -- photographs and other items -- after the lunch recess. He started out by referring to Silvina and Carole Sund as victims 1 and 2.

   Later, he and defense attorney Marcia Morrissey reached an agreement to call the victims by their names.

   Witnesses, mostly law enforcement professionals, described the conditions of the bodies and other evidence, using the most clinical of terms.

   Special Agent Christopher Hopkins from the FBI's Sacramento office was among the law enforcement officers who, in mid-March 1999, discovered the charred remains of Carole Sund and Silvina in the trunk of the car they had rented for their Yosemite excursion. He was on hand a week later when officers recovered Julie Sund's body near Don Pedro Reservoir.

   The FBI had briefed Francis Carrington and his wife, Carole, shortly after the discoveries. That did little to ease their pain, however, when they had to live through it again Tuesday afternoon.

   They wrapped their arms around one another and other family members and friends, including Jose and Raquel Pelosso, Silvina's parents. Leslie Armstrong, the mother of Stayner murder victim Joie Armstrong, sat next to Francis Carrington and dabbed tears from her eyes before reaching across him to grab Carole Carrington's hand.

   Francis Carrington hunched forward and dropped his head.

   Just a few feet away, seated at the old, wooden defense table, Stayner also lowered his head.

   The Carringtons and other family members could not see him, though, because of a large post and a wood stove that split the courtroom down the middle.

   Why, a reporter would ask Carrington outside the courthouse, would he and his family endure such a painful display.

   "We owe it to my daughter and granddaughter and Silvina to be here," he said without hesitation. "I know we don't have to be here, but this is two years and three months since this happened and we're still a long way from a trial. We owe it to our families to see this all the way through."

   Stayner's family is not attending the preliminary hearing, at his request.

   Tuesday's other witnesses included Tuolumne County cab driver Jenny Horvath, who said she gave Stayner a ride on Feb. 16, 1999. She testified that dispatch sent her to pick him up that morning in Sierra Village, on Highway 108 east of Twain Harte.

   Horvath said Stayner gave her $125 in cash for the two-hour ride to Yosemite Village. When they got to the Yosemite National Park entrance gate, Horvath said, Stayner balked at paying the $35 fee -- which is what a cab must pay to enter the park.

   Also testifying was Michelle Harrison, the park service employee who argued with Stayner over the fee at the Big Oak Flat entrance station.

   Until then, Horvath said, the ride had been uneventful, with Stayner dozing off from time to time on the two-hour trip.

   Horvath said she never connected the cab ride to the sightseer slayings, explaining that the news media was focusing on suspects who did not resemble Stayner.

   Horvath did not contact authorities about the cab ride until July 25, after the Armstrong murder.

   As she left the witness stand, Horvath made eye contact with Leslie Armstrong, and said "sorry" as she walked past the visitors gallery.

   Another witness was James Powers, the Long Barn-area man who discovered the burned Pontiac rental car in a wooded area off Highway 108 about 21/2 miles from Sierra Village.

   Special Agent Anthony Alston, in charge of the FBI's Modesto office, interviewed Stayner on March 3, 1999, but did not arrest the one-time handyman from the Cedar Lodge in El Portal near Yosemite.

   Barely three weeks later, Stayner allegedly mailed a cryptic note to the FBI in Modesto, including a crude map of how to find Julie's body.

   Stayner, however, did not surface as a suspect in the Yosemite slayings until after he was picked up for questioning in the July 1999 decapitation murder of Armstrong, a Yosemite naturalist. Stayner pleaded guilty in federal court to that murder, and is serving a life sentence.

   After Stayner was picked up for that crime, he reportedly confessed to killing the Sunds and Silvina, as well as Armstrong.

   Jacob Holmes, an FBI specialist from Washington, D.C., said he found two prints on the note and map received at the FBI's Modesto office in March 1999: a thumb print from Stayner around the stamp, and a print from Alston on the map.

http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,274297,00.html

FBI Statements Lowered Vigilance About Yosemite Murder Suspect, Witness Says

June 13 — A taxi driver who picked up confessed murderer Cary Stayner near the site where two of his suspected victims were found testified the alleged serial killer was a bit strange during the two hours she had him in her car, but she didn't think much of it.

 last seen alive near Yosemite National Park in February 1999, but they had not yet been reported missing.

She testified in Mariposa, Calif., Superior Court on Tuesday that she told her husband about the "strange" two-hour drive with Stayner, but never called police after the women were reported missing.

Horvath said a statement from an FBI special agent that the investigation into the disappearance was focused on people already in custody on sexual abuse charges had made her less concerned than she might have been.

The testimony came in the second day of a hearing on whether there is enough evidence to put Stayner on trial for the murders of Carole Sund, 42, her 15-year-old daughter Juli, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a family friend visiting from Argentina.

Stayner is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in federal court to the murder of Joie Armstrong, aYosemite park naturalist who he beheaded in March after the three tourists went missing.

Prosecutors say Stayner also confessed to killing the Sunds and Pelosso, and they reportedly planned to play tapes of that confession in court today.

Bigfoot Tales

Stayner paid Horvath $125 to drive him from the area where a month later authorities would find the bodies of Carole Sund and Pelosso in the trunk of Sund's burned rental car. Along the way he talked about several encounters he said he had with the mythical mountain monster known as Bigfoot.

The testimony provided at least one explanation for slain naturalist's mother. "It's something I've always thought about, why didn't she call the police to say I had a weird thing happen to me about that time," Leslie Armstrong said after the hearing.

Horvath testified that it was because she had heard a statement from FBI special agent that investigators believed that the culprit in the disappearances was already in custody and that Yosemite was safe.

Prosecutors and the FBI refused to talk about Horvath's testimony or any details of the Armstrong case.

Day two of the preliminary hearing was dramatic and emotional. When forensics experts talked about the "grotesque" condition of the victims, several people began to cry.

Stayner was among those who was visibly upset, repeatedly putting his face in his hands during two hours of testimony.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/yosemite_murders010613.html