An intelligent loner who's thriving on terror he's brought to W.Va. capital

Sunday, August 24, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- He's intelligent, but he may not have done well in school, and he's mentally unbalanced.

Most people view him as a loner or a loser, and he lacks self-esteem.

At some point, he may have been, or wanted to be, a soldier or police officer, and he still yearns to meet the standards of that kind of fraternal organization.

He may not be a "he" at all, but a "they" -- one man to fire the small-caliber rifle that has killed three people outside three convenience stores here, and a partner to drive the getaway vehicle.

And like the pair of snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C., area last fall, whoever has been firing lethal gunshots in and around Charleston is thriving on the fear that has grown steadily in this capital city of 65,000 over the past two weeks.

That's the consensus of investigators and academics who've spent years studying serial killings and the people who carry them out. They're not involved with the Charleston shootings, but they're experienced with the process now being used by the task force of federal, state and local officers working to solve those cases.

"In some of these cases, there is nothing to go on [at first]. So you rely on historical profile, where there's a good possibility of these demographics existing, to help figure out who this person is," said Gregory S. Esslinger, a former FBI agent who helped to create profiles of Olympic bombing suspect Eric Rudolph and other murder and kidnapping suspects. He now works for Smith and Carson, a private firm that does security analysis and business intelligence investigations.

Profiles are not foolproof, and Esslinger and others cautioned that police should not become so wedded to finding someone whose characteristics fit a profile that they rule out other potential suspects.

But as a guide, a profile can be a helpful tool for officers who face the overwhelming task of combing a metropolitan community for a suspect or suspects who've already proven to be adept at disappearing after committing crimes.

"Snipers have been around for quite some time. But serial snipers are much newer, " said criminologist and former FBI agent Robert K. Ressler, who spent much of his 20-year career with the agency's Behavioral Sciences Unit, where he investigated serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. But they were not snipers.

"Realistically, the Washington, D.C., experience is a brand-new experience," said Ressler, who now runs Forensic Behavior Services, a training and consulting firm in Fredericksburg, Va. "You really have to consider the motivation of people."

The Charleston shootings began Aug. 10, when Gary Carrier Jr., 44, of South Charleston, was shot around 11 p.m. while he talked on a pay telephone outside a Go-Mart on Bigley Avenue on Charleston's urban West Side.

The next victim was Jeanie Patton, 31, of Campbells Creek, a rural village about 10 miles east of Charleston. She was fatally shot at 10:30 p.m. Aug. 14 while she pumped gas into her car outside a Speedway market near her home.

About 90 minutes later, Okey Meadows Jr., 26, also of Campbells Creek, was slain when he stopped to buy milk at a Go-Mart store in Cedar Grove, about 10 miles east of his home. All three were shot at stores on or near busy Route 60, not far from entrance ramps to Interstate 64. Police have found no links among the three.

Ballistics tests last week determined that all three people were killed with the same small-caliber rifle, but police won't disclose its caliber or make. They are looking for possible links among those attacks and another fatal shooting March 20 at a Kroger grocery in Kanawha City, across the Kanawha River from Charleston.

Investigating the shootings is a task force of local, state and federal officers, including Kenneth T. McCabe, special agent in charge of the FBI's Pittsburgh Division, and other FBI agents from Pittsburgh. Working with them are agents from the FBI and Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who investigated the sniper shootings that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area last year.

Officers from Montgomery County, Md., who worked on the Washington-area sniper cases also are advising the task force here.

Investigators in Charleston are seeking a white, heavyset man with dark, mullet-styled hair, long sideburns and a goatee. He was driving a black or dark-colored Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck with gold trim, an extended cab and tinted windows.

Late last week, investigators said they also want to interview a white man with skinny, very white legs who was seen at the Campbells Creek Speedway store before Patton was shot.

Kanawha County Sheriff David Turner and Chief Deputy Phil Morris said last week that they believed that the shootings of Patton and Meadows were linked to drug use and sales in Campbells Creek. By week's end, however, Charleston police Chief Jerry Pauley was distancing himself from that theory, saying the task force had uncovered no evidence to bolster that theory.

Charleston Mayor Danny Jones, a former Kanawha County sheriff, also scoffed last week at the drug-link hypothesis. Ressler and Esslinger said they, too, have doubts about it.

"Drug dealers just don't do snipings," Esslinger said. "You've got to pin it on something to make people sleep better. The randomness creates the terror in these situations."

They suspect the shooter is a mentally ill copycat who craves the kind of notoriety generated by the Washington sniper suspects, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

"David Berkowitz told me the most esteem he ever felt was when the New York papers published his letters. Infamy is attractive to people like this," Ressler said.

"Muhammad and Malvo were big losers, but the biggest losers in the world were getting headlines. Now you may have someone who's turned on to the media attention the original sniper case got."

The gunman probably isn't concerned about getting caught, said Scott Thornsley, an assistant professor of criminal justice who has taught a course about serial killers at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.

"Does he think he will eventually get caught? Probably. Does he care? Probably not," Thornsley said. "The future does not really matter anymore. [The killer doesn't] have anything to look forward to, whether it be because of a lost job, failed marriage or personal incident."

Ressler believes that more than one person is responsible in Charleston because of the precision and distance involved and the speed with which the gunman disappears. In each case, the victims were shot once in the head or neck with a small-caliber rifle fired from 30 to 70 yards away.

"It's too efficient. For one person who is alone, it would take very complicated maneuvers to fire the gun, put down the gun, get back in the driver's seat and go," he said. "One could be lying in the bed of a truck, dropping the gate and shooting, and the other takes off. You can't be just hanging out the window with a gun."

The shooter's lethal marksmanship points to a male suspect, Esslinger said, noting that shooting tends to attract more men than women. The gunman may use a tripod to steady his weapon and a scope or night-vision equipment to enhance his accuracy, suggesting that he might have a background in law enforcement or the military.

"These people also have a need to be accepted," prompting them to try to join a service branch or a police department, Esslinger said. "If they get rejected for some reason, that can set them off." Other traits common to serial killers: They may have had social problems in school and may have had abusive childhoods. They may have had bad relationships with people who resemble or act like the killers' victims.

In the Charleston cases, however, Ressler said the lack of links among the victims could signal a killer who had a grudge against just one of them but killed the other two to make him harder to identify.

To find serial-killing suspects, Esslinger and Ressler said, investigators must review and re-evaluate reports and files compiled by the first police on the scene of the shootings. Then they must pour into neighborhoods where the shootings occurred to interview everyone who lives, works or socializes there, a step that was under way last week in Charleston.

Investigators should also work with the media to keep the case before the public so that potential witnesses will know what police are looking for and will report suspicious activity that could point to a suspect or suspects. Such a tip from an alert motorist who'd spotted the car carrying Muhammad and Malvo led to their arrests last year.

"It's hard work and a break that usually make a case unfold. Police are never going to be at the scene of crime, but somebody will. That person has to know who and where to call," Esslinger said.

"There's got to be a little luck involved, where a person sees the right thing at the right time," he said. "But as an investigator, you can build that luck by keeping the investigative momentum going. The public has to be on your side."

Anyone with information about the shootings can call task force investigators at (304) 357-0169. Photos of the truck model being sought can be viewed at www.atf.gov.

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