The Crime Web News: June 2001

IVAN MILAT looked into the faces of two mothers yesterday and declared he was innocent of murdering their daughters.

It was an emotion-charged meeting in a packed Toronto, NSW, courtroom as Milat, with his arms and legs manacled and dressed in prison greens, strained to lean across the dock so he could face the women.

Beth Leen and Ann Robinson wiped tears from their eyes as Australia's worst serial killer denied he had been involved in the murders of their daughters Leanne Goodall, 20, and Amanda Robinson, 14, and a third, teenager Robyn Hickie.

"I could look at these people right in the eye and tell them I had absolutely nothing to do with your children going missing," an agitated Milat said directly to the families. "Whether you believe me or not all I can say is I feel sorry for them but I can't assist them."

State Coroner John Abernethy declined to issue a certificate under section 33AA which would have compelled him to answer whether he had killed any of the girls. "Were I to issue such a certificate to potential murderers I would be risking upsetting the very fabric of the criminal justice system," Mr Abernethy said.

Less than two hours earlier there had been a stunned silence as a frail and gaunt looking Milat, his thinning, greyish hair neatly combed, was led into the packed courtroom by four corrective service officers at 10.05am.

For more than an hour Milat calmly answered questions from barrister Patrick Saidi, counsel assisting the coroner, about his work at the Department of Main Roads, which had brought him to the Newcastle area in the 1970s.

The three missing women all vanished during a four-month period between December 1978 and April 1979.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,2157342^2^^nbv,00.html

States Trade Blame Over Sex Fiend Accused of Killing, Cooking Boy

Nancy Surprise of Dudley, Mass., left her 7-year-old son in the car one day while she ran into the post office. She returned to find a 280-pound man sitting on top of the boy.

But when the attacker was hauled into court, Surprise says, state prosecutors insisted the best way to handle the situation would be to make him go far away.

Prosecutors cut a deal in 1991 with the man, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah: no jail time, two years' probation, and a promise that Bar-Jonah move to Montana to live with his mother.

It's in Montana that Bar-Jonah stands accused of a horrifying crime: He is suspected of killing a little boy, butchering his remains and serving them in dishes cooked up for his Montana neighbors.

"I wanted him locked up," Surprise says now. "If I knew then what I know now, I would have been arguing a lot more and made a lot more noise" about the plea bargain. But, she adds, "What could we do?"

Investigators are wondering just that as they ponder how Bar-Jonah a child predator who had already been convicted of attempted murder and spent a decade in a mental hospital could have been allowed to go free.

LONDON (Reuters) - A public inquiry into a once respected British family doctor suspected of being the world's worst serial killer heard on its opening day Wednesday he had a history of drug abuse but had still been allowed to practice.

Caroline Swift, leading the inquiry's legal team, told the hearing that Harold Shipman, dubbed "Doctor Death," had been convicted in 1975 of forging prescriptions to feed his reliance on the painkiller pethidine, but authorities had ignored it.

Shipman was convicted in January last year of killing 15 of his elderly patients in Hyde near the northern city of Manchester by injecting them with overdoses of heroin.

Inquests have since added another 25 to the list of unlawful killings, and a report has linked him directly to 236 more suspicious deaths.

Chicago: A 31 year old man who duped some of his victims into coming to his home after they answered help wanted ads for a cleaner, has been charged with murdering six women and a 10 year old girl.

Police said Paul Frederick Runge who has been in custody on an unrelated charge confessed to the Chicago area sex attacke sbetween 1995 and 1997.

He admitted all seven killings and was linked by DNA to two of the crimes, the deaths of the child and her mother.

Runge was charged yesterday with first-degree murder, sexual assault and armed robbery in connection with the seven slayings and could be eligible for th e death penalty if convicted,

Police said his victims were bludgeoned to death or strangled. Some bodies were dismemebered in one case the home was set on fire with the victims inside.

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.

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

Authorities begin exhuming bodies in inquiry of Texas hospital deaths

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

Osaka killer wanted to murder kids of "elite and intelligent"

OSAKA A 37-year-old man has confessed to the killing spree Friday in Osaka Prefecture which left eight elementary school pupils dead and 15 others injured, investigative sources said Sunday.

"I thought I certainly will be sentenced to die if I kill many children of the elite and intelligent," Mamoru Takuma was quoted as saying. The man had earlier said he tried to kill himself on several occasions but was unable to do so. (Kyodo News)

BOSTON (AP) A lawsuit seeking the release of evidence in the Boston Strangler case will be heard in state court instead of federal court, a judge ruled Thursday.

The suit was filed in September by relatives of Albert DeSalvo, the man who claimed to be the Strangler but was never charged, and Mary Sullivan, believed to the Strangler's 13th and final victim.

The two families joined in the lawsuit seeking clothing, jewelry and biological materials found at the scene of Sullivan's murder.

Both families believe that DeSalvo was not the killer. They're hoping independent DNA testing on the evidence could rule out DeSalvo and help find the real killer.

NEW YORK (AP) Sophisticated equipment provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police helped identify fingerprints on trash bags that contained body parts of two men killed in the early 1990s.

The identification led American investigators to arrest Richard W. Rogers Jr., a nurse from Staten Island, in connection with the murders of Sudbury, Mass., computer sales executive Thomas Mulcahy, 58, found at a Woodland Township, N.J., rest stop in 1992, and Anthony Marrero, 44, found in Manchester Township, N.J., in 1993.

Fingerprints are notoriously difficult to lift off plastic surfaces. But with the help of the Vacuum Metal Disposition Chamber at the Ottawa labs of the Canadian Mounted Police, 29 clear prints were found on the trash bags, Newsday reported Thursday.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/151/region/Canadian_Mounties_help_crack_p:.shtml