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MAN KILLS WOMAN HE MISTOOK FOR FUGITIVE
Hysteria Grows During Massive National Manhunt
June 25, 1999
By Valerie Kalfrin
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (APBNews.com) -- Fear of a fugitive serial killing suspect led a man to shoot and kill a woman at his doorstep this week, as investigators continue answering reports of false sightings, authorities said today.
David Charles Booher, 33, fired four rounds from a semiautomatic handgun through the front door of his Rear S. Spanish Street home on Wednesday because he feared the person pounding and kicking on the door was the alleged rail-riding killer Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, police said.
But the person at Booher's door, who did not respond when he asked who was there, was really a neighbor, Debra Ann Poch, 44, who police said was intoxicated and thought she was entering her own house. She died of a gunshot wound to the head, police Sgt. Carl Kinnison said.
Local prosecutors will determine next week whether to file charges against Booher, who under Missouri law can use deadly force to protect himself if he reasonably believed someone was trying to break into his home, Kinnison said.
Residents near rail lines fearful
Resendez-Ramirez, a 39-year-old drifter, is linked to eight killings in three states, including two in Gorham, Ill., across the Mississippi River from this city of 8,000, authorities said.
However, fear of Resendez-Ramirez "certainly factors into this particular case," especially along Spanish Street, which lies two blocks from a rail line, he said.
"[Resendez-Ramirez] has been spotted in several communities in the area," Kinnison told APBNews.com today. "Last night just south of here, there was a person seen jumping off a train around 11. It's not too uncommon for this area because there's a switching area here, but all of a sudden, because of [Resendez-Ramirez], people think it's him."
Focusing on Kentucky
Seven officers searched a wooded area for hours to find the train-jumper, only to come up empty handed, he noted.
In Kentucky, where the FBI and other members of a multi-agency task force say they have their most conclusive sightings to date, agents and police continue to scour railroad tracks and homeless shelters.
Al Tribble, an FBI spokesman at the manhunt's command center in Houston, said that agents were making sure Resendez-Ramirez hadn't left the area.
Lexington, Ky., police Sgt. Ron Compton said that people who saw the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive in Louisville last Friday told investigators that he was coming to Lexington to do migrant work -- although whether he's still headed there is anyone's guess.
'Methodical and savvy'
"Our information is he's still as likely to be here as he is anywhere else," Compton said today. "We're taking every precaution we can, but as far as his travel habits go, there's no rhyme or reason to it. ... It would be hard for me to believe that he does not know he's wanted at this point."
Seventy-five law enforcement officials from three dozen agencies met in Lexington Thursday to coordinate their efforts, Compton said. But no one is underestimating Resendez-Ramirez, who investigators say taught English, algebra and geometry to other Mexicans he worked with at a Kentucky farm in 1996.
"He is much more educated than the typical stereotype anyone might have of a migrant worker," Compton said.
Tribble agreed. "The guy's not dumb. The sheer cunning and the way he's killed ... he's methodical and savvy."
Back jumping freight trains
Jackson County Sheriff William Kilquist, who has linked Resendez-Ramirez to the Gorham slayings of George Morber Sr., 80, and his daughter, Carolyn Frederick, 52, on June 14, believes Resendez-Ramirez has taken to the rails again.
"He has a lot of experience out there doing what he's doing, riding the rails. This guy is not your typical fleeing felon," he said. "He's been around quite a while, you can't take anything necessarily for granted that we would on some other person."
To concentrate the manhunt in one location, investigators say, would be foolish.
"It's all over the United States, we're not going to put all our eggs in one basket. ... This guy could be just about anywhere," Kilquist said.
Suspect in eight homicides
Resendez-Ramirez's first known victim, University of Kentucky student Christopher Maier, 21, was struck in the head with a rock near railroad tracks in Lexington while he was walking with his girlfriend in August 1997. Police say the suspect also raped his girlfriend and left her for dead, though she survived the assault.
The career criminal's fingerprints and other forensic evidence have since tied him to five other brutal killings in Texas and the two in Illinois, authorities said. Each of these victims lived near a rail line and died during a nighttime burglary when their killer shot them or bludgeoned them with whatever he could find, police say.
They are:
Morber, shot in the head with a shotgun and his daughter, Frederick, clubbed to death with the weapon in their Gorham mobile trailer on June 14. Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Claudia Benton, 39, who was raped, stabbed and repeatedly beaten in her West University Place, Texas, house on Dec. 17, 1998. The Rev. Norman J. "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and his wife, Karen, 47, of Weimar, Texas, beaten to death with a sledgehammer from their garage on May 2. Fayette County, Texas, resident Josephine Kovnicka, 73, bludgeoned to death in her farmhouse on June 4. Houston schoolteacher Noemi Dominguez, 26, found clubbed to death in her apartment on June 5.
On Thursday, FBI officials in Houston set up a toll-free number, (800) 889-8161, for tips and sightings around the country. It has received 500 calls since Thursday, Tribble said.
Valerie Kalfrin is an APBNews.com staff writer