IN IN/IL - DAVID MAUST - young male victims, 1974-2003

David Maust pled guilty to three murders in Hammond Indiana today.
I'm wondering if he may be connected to others.

Article Text:

CROWN POINT, Ind. -- In a move to avoid the death penalty, a former Chicago man today admitted he killed three Hammond teens in 2003 and buried their bodies in freshly poured concrete in the basement of the apartment building where he was living.

David Maust, 51, also of Hammond, pleaded guilty in Lake County, Ind., Superior Court in a deal with prosecutors who will recommend he receive three separate life sentences when he is sentenced Dec. 16.

Mumbling single-word answers in a courtroom packed with the family of two of the slain boys, Maust showed no emotion as Superior Court Judge Clarence Murray asked if he understood the implications of his guilty plea.

As Murray formally read the names of the victims -- Nicholas James, James Raganyi and Michael Dennis – sobs from family members filled the courtroom.

"Are you pleading guilty to these charges because you are indeed guilty?" Murray asked.

"Yes, sir," Maust said, refusing to say anything more.

Maust was charged with killing James, 19, on May 2, 2003. Raganyi, 16, was slain four months later, Sept. 10, and Raganyi's friend Dennis, 13, the next day, Sept. 11. Police arrested Maust in December 2003 and found the three teens' remains entombed in concrete beneath the apartment building.

The suspect previously was convicted of the 1981 murder of 15-year-old Donald Jones in Chicago and sentenced to 17 years. He eventually was released from state prison even though, according to court papers, he asked not to be released.

In 1974, while Maust was serving with the U.S. Army in Germany, he was accused of murdering Jimmy McClister, 13. He was convicted in a court martial of a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter and served four years in the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.

Maust's defense attorney, Thomas Vanes, said his client never wanted to leave jail again, and was at peace spending the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

In the agreement with prosecutors, Vanes said, Maust asked that he be held in isolation in the Lake County Jail before his formal sentencing next month, and that his isolation continue after he is moved to a state prison. The lawyer said Maust feared for his life.

"This provides a clean ending for everyone, a final ending. There are no Hallmark moments, as your honor is aware, but this is about as close as we can get to that,'' Vanes said.

The lead prosecutor in the case, Peter Villarreal, said the families of the three victims had given their blessings to the plea deal. Had Maust been tried, convicted and sentenced to death, the families might not have seen closure to their grief for at least 20 years – until all formal appeals had been exhausted.

"It's in the best interest of the people of Indiana," Villareal said of the plea agreement. "It guarantees that he will never again walk in society. We are trying to protect society.''

Murray must formally approve the plea deal at the Dec. 16 hearing. At that time, family members will have a chance to speak about the impact the slayings had on them.

Most relatives today said they agreed to the plea only after they were promised Maust would never be set free. But one of them, Michael Dennis Sr., added he did not want Maust placed in isolation.

"I don't want him to be in segregation. In the general population, he'll get what he's got coming to him,'' said Dennis, 32.

Raganyi's sister Melody, who stood with her family outside the prosecutor's office, said, "I wish he understands the grief that he caused. He took my brother away from us. [James] will never know what he could have become."

As part of the agreement, Maust spent nearly six hours recounting the murders to Hammond Police Lt. Ron Johnson, who lead the investigation.

Johnson refused to say exactly what they discussed, but did say that the suspect admitted in detail the killing of the three Hammond teens as well as the Jones killing in Chicago and the McClister slaying in Germany.

Christena Harding, McClister's mother, in a telephone interview from her home in Florida, said today all she ever wanted from Maust was for him to admit he murdered her son. McClister would have turned 44 years old on Oct. 27. She said her biggest fear was that he would walk out of jail again.

"I think it's a wonderful thing," Harding said through tears. "Maybe God's finally listening to us. I never thought he would admit to it. I have peace of mind now."

I don't know the answer to your question, but it seems that there are discreptancies in media articles:

Maust has been in and out of mental institutions since an early age. In Illinois, a judge committed him in 1985 because he was unfit to stand trial on an earlier murder charge.
http://www.fresnobee.com/24hour/nation/story/2856090p-11518802c.html

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Additonal info on Maust is posted in the Crimes in the News section:
http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=866008#post866008

This is one of those cases where everyone thinks it is such a great thing that he got a life sentence for killing five children and then admitting that he did it. It makes me wonder, though. What if he had received the death penalty - and what if it had been carried out swiftly? It is easy to see how the death penalty would have been the perfect deterrant. He would not have killed the other boys. A person like this will not and cannot ever change or reform. They keep doing their evil deeds until they are finally stopped. The question is; How many people had to die before he was finally stopped?

If there were possibly more, in any state or foreign country, then prosecutors need now to offer him a one time deal to give them up. If he doesn't, then they ought to go through every unsolved murder that might possibly have been his work, and try him again - but this time with the death penalty on the table.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Could he have been responsible for more deaths than is currently known?
I think it is highly possible, even probable given that his normal amount of time between murders seems to be only a few short months (3 or 4.)
In that they investigated some of his other places of residence it would seem that L.E. also thought it a distinct possibility that other bodies might be found.

I would have thought that L.E. would have found the links to other unsolved cases since it would have helped clear the books for them. So if other cases need to be linked to him one of my questions at the moment would be "What factors came together to keep cases from being considered to be his handiwork?"

docwho3 said:

Could he have been responsible for more deaths than is currently known?
I think it is highly possible, even probable given that his normal amount of time between murders seems to be only a few short months (3 or 4.)
In that they investigated some of his other places of residence it would seem that L.E. also thought it a distinct possibility that other bodies might be found.

I would have thought that L.E. would have found the links to other unsolved cases since it would have helped clear the books for them. So if other cases need to be linked to him one of my questions at the moment would be "What factors came together to keep cases from being considered to be his handiwork?"

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This kind of case is similar to that of Gerald Stano. What it comes down to is all a matter of Jurisdiction. The State which has him wants to clear up their own unsolved cases first, and so they might make a deal with the Accused to give up all of his victims in exchange for no Death Penalty.

That District Attorney does not have jurisdiction in other states, and therefor cannot make any binding "deals" concerning victims in other states, unless he has the full cooperation and agreement from each other state.

While the prosecuting state has the Accused/Criminal, they do not want to give him up to another state until they are done prosecuting him. And certainly the criminal is not going to volunteer any information unless it is to his benefit. His defense lawyer will advise him to keep quiet as well, and would move in court to keep his client from being sent to the other state or states for prosecution.

Richard said:

This kind of case is similar to that of Gerald Stano. What it comes down to is all a matter of Jurisdiction. The State which has him wants to clear up their own unsolved cases first, and so they might make a deal with the Accused to give up all of his victims in exchange for no Death Penalty.

That District Attorney does not have jurisdiction in other states, and therefor cannot make any binding "deals" concerning victims in other states, unless he has the full cooperation and agreement from each other state.

While the prosecuting state has the Accused/Criminal, they do not want to give him up to another state until they are done prosecuting him. And certainly the criminal is not going to volunteer any information unless it is to his benefit. His defense lawyer will advise him to keep quiet as well, and would move in court to keep his client from being sent to the other state or states for prosecution.

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Ted Bundy waited until all of his appeals were exhausted before he tried to make a deal with law enforcement - in exchange for telling who he killed and where the bodies were, he could buy himself more time before he was excuted. Law enforcement didn't take him up on that offer.

docwho3 said:

Could he have been responsible for more deaths than is currently known?
I think it is highly possible, even probable given that his normal amount of time between murders seems to be only a few short months (3 or 4.)
In that they investigated some of his other places of residence it would seem that L.E. also thought it a distinct possibility that other bodies might be found.

I would have thought that L.E. would have found the links to other unsolved cases since it would have helped clear the books for them. So if other cases need to be linked to him one of my questions at the moment would be "What factors came together to keep cases from being considered to be his handiwork?"

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One article stated that he lived in Oak Park for a while, but that all missing persons were accounted for.

When northwest Indiana authorities went hunting for victims of serial killer David Maust, a visual search of his Hammond basement turned up nothing.

A cadaver-sniffing dog showed some interest in a corner of the basement but didn't make a definitive hit.

Only when investigators drilled holes into the concrete and "coffin flies" flew out did they know for sure that bodies were buried there. Ground-penetrating radar confirmed abnormalities. The concrete was removed, unsealing the decomposing bodies of three teenage males from their tombs.

snip:
Oak Park Police did a visual inspection of the garden apartment after the grisly Hammond discovery in late 2003. The inspection left them satisfied that no bodies were there.

But a Chicago Sun-Times investigation is prompting Indiana authorities to question whether there needs to be a more extensive search of what's beneath the floor of Maust's former Oak Park apartment.

The Sun-Times has learned:

*Maust poured a new concrete floor and tiled his Oak Park apartment in the months before he moved to Indiana, according to two neighbors -- one of whom was quoted in an Oak Park Police report.

*One neighbor smelled foul odors lingering outside Maust's apartment.

*A trail of blood started at Maust's door and ended at a broken window in the building's front door after two unidentified teenagers visited him.

*A young man filed a report with Oak Park Police in 2001 saying Maust tried to kill him in the apartment, striking him with a pipe on the back of the head after a night of drinking -- similar to the way Maust killed his first Hammond victim.

*Although Maust denies he killed anyone else, Indiana authorities suspect he may have other victims.

Lake County (Ind.) Prosecutor Bernard Carter said "it's alarming to me" to learn Oak Park did not go beyond a visual search.

snip:
But Oak Park Police officials said their inspection of Maust's apartment turned up no signs of foul play.

Oak Park Deputy Police Chief Robert Scianna said he was with detectives who toured Maust's apartment in Oak Park and that he left believing there was no need to bring in dogs or search equipment.

"We searched from ceiling to floor," Scianna said. "Obviously, with the concrete floor in there, we got the maintenance guy. We looked at everything. Nobody dug up anything in the apartment, but we did search the common areas, the laundry room and storage lockers looking for fresh cement. We didn't find anything."

Scianna said officers checked for reports of missing people in Oak Park but found nothing. Police also talked to neighbors, he said.

Police had a cadaver dog standing by if anything appeared out of the ordinary, but officers found no reason to use the dog, Scianna said.

"So that was the end of it," he said. "We gave it a pretty thorough, four- or five-hour look and nothing came up. . . . It wasn't some schlock attempt to look around."

Scianna said Indiana authorities can come to Oak Park to look for themselves if they don't think the search was sufficient.

"If they're interested in reviewing the premises, we'd be glad to facilitate that. But we're satisfied with the job we did searching it. I can understand their concern, but it's not like we didn't do anything. . . . If they want to come over, we'll help," he said.

snip:
Anthony Majzer, a 29-year-old former Gaylord gang member, said Maust tried to kill him in the tiny Oak Park apartment.

"Me and him had a lot in common, like our family history," Majzer said in a phone interview from jail. "I was adopted. He said he was abandoned by his mother."

When they were freed from prison, Majzer and Maust hung out and drank together. Maust once asked him about disposing of bodies, Majzer said.

"He asked me, 'You used to be a gang-banger. What did you do when you killed somebody?' I said we'd cover them in paint so the smell would not get out, and we'd bury them."

That's exactly what Maust did with at least one of his Hammond victims before covering him in concrete, authorities said.

Although they didn't socialize, Shields noticed changes to Maust's apartment -- first the addition of a wall and then floor work, which he remembers immigrant workers helping Maust complete.

"They broke up the floor," Shields said. "Then he [Maust] put tile down."

Soon afterward, Maust moved to Hammond, Shields said.

Once news of the Hammond killings broke in December 2003 and Maust's picture was all over television and newspapers, Shields called Oak Park Police and told them of his observations. Shields said the person who took his call "was very cavalier" and told him to call Hammond with the information.

An Oak Park Police report obtained by the Sun-Times shows the department did respond to a call from another neighbor, Anthony Taglia, who reported seeing Maust "pouring a new concrete floor" in early 2003.

Officers interviewed a janitor who could not recall concrete work being done to the basement floor in or around Maust's apartment. The janitor told police that hot water heating coils run through the basement floor. Officers reported that the basement floor tile appeared "old and undisturbed."

The officers obtained permission to search Maust's former apartment. The building owner, Angela DiMaso, told them the "apartment floor was tiled before Maust moved out," the police report said. A relative of DiMaso told the Sun-Times that Maust pulled up the carpet before the floor was tiled.

The officers inspected Maust's former apartment and found the floor was covered with 1-square-foot ceramic tiles and a bathroom was covered by 1-square-inch tiles. The tiles, however, appeared to be of "original installation by the color and condition of the grout," the report said.

"Based on the visual examination of the basement floor at 425 S. Kenilworth and information supplied by the building owner, it is the [officer's] opinion that the concrete floor is intact and undisturbed and there are no outward signs to indicate any foul play or criminal acts have occurred at that location," said the Dec. 12, 2003, report.

DiMaso's relative also says bodies could not have been buried under the Oak Park floor because of the hot-water coils beneath the surface.

Still, Shields said he saw other things that -- in hindsight -- make him suspicious of Maust's activities in the Oak Park apartment.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-maust05.html

The owner of an Oak Park apartment building where a confessed serial killer once lived disputed published reports this week that questioned how thoroughly police in 2003 investigated the possibility that human remains were hidden on the property.

"I'd like to know where" Maust replaced the floor, DiMaso said. "It wasn't in that building."

DiMaso said she paid a contractor in 2002 to remove carpeting from two basement apartments--including Maust's--and to replace it with tile. DiMaso said she had the apartments repainted at the same time.

Miller said he does not intend to ask Oak Park police to revisit their inspection of the apartment building.

"They know their job," he said. "They know what they are doing."

Still, a Hammond police source said Oak Park police should at least have used ground-penetrating radar to search for bodies in the basement apartment. Though the source said that Indiana authorities do not have any evidence to indicate that Maust buried any bodies in Oak Park, using the radar would "ease our mind."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0512070237dec07,1,7430567.story?coll=chi-news-hed

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_us/basement_bodies;_ylt=AjmlVuf4wjiuXq2Z02Okerms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

A man sentenced to life in prison for murdering three teens and burying their bodies in a basement died Friday, a day after he was found hanging from a twisted bed sheet in his jail cell, a hospital spokesman said.
Maust pleaded last fall to killing Michael Dennis, 13, James Raganyi, 16, and Nicholas James, 19, whose bodies were found buried in his basement, and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the chance for parole in exchange for the state withdrawing all death penalty requests.

He had also served time in an Illinois prison for the 1981 murder of a 15-year-old boy before being released in 1999, and he was convicted of manslaughter while serving in the Army for the killing of a teenager in Germany.

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http://www.thetimesonline.com/site_pages/012006maustletter.pdf
This is the actual copy of Maust's suicide note. I will admit that he seems remorseful, and wanted to die.

rayray said:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_us/basement_bodies;_ylt=AjmlVuf4wjiuXq2Z02Okerms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

http://www.thetimesonline.com/site_pages/012006maustletter.pdf
This is the actual copy of Maust's suicide note. I will admit that he seems remorseful, and wanted to die.

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Yes his suicide note is remorseful and full of self insight at the pain he caused.
He also seems intelligent. Why did he not apply any of that in life? He obviously had a conscience,why did it not stop him before he committed 5 murders?
I will never understand.

http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/local/article_a1d525a6-bb1a-11e0-800e-001cc4c03286.html

Scarred for Life: Part one of a series

In 2001, a serial killer tried to murder Anthony Majzer. He survived, but the attack left a mark — on his body and soul.

By ANNE JUNGEN ajungen@lacrossetribune.com
Posted: Sunday, July 31, 2011 12:00 am

Very interesting well written article.

The creature:

Maust has been suspected or charged for five murders. Four of them have been committed within the United States, one of which occurred in the early 1980s, and three others happened in Hammond, Indiana, where he was caught after the remains of the victims' bodies were found under concrete in a residential basement. While he was in the United States Army, he killed at least one person in Germany. He had been considered mentally unfit to stand trial on multiple occasions.

An official biography about his life and crimes, Blood Stained: When No One Comes Looking, written by Dory Maust was released January 6, 2009.
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Maust[/ame]

Scarred for Life: Part 2 of a series

August 01, 2011 12:00 am
By ANNE JUNGEN

Anthony Majzer's scalp was split open and blood dripped into his eyes. He tucked himself into a ball and begged. Hold up. Hold up. We're friends," he told David Maust. "I was pleading for my life. I've never been beat that bad in my life."

He watched his attacker snap from "psycho mode" and back to reality.

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Scarred for life: Part 3

August 02, 2011 12:15 am
By ANNE JUNGEN

Serial killer David Maust confessed in his diary to trying to kill Anthony Majzer.

“It’s true that I only met Anthony because I lied to him and told him I had lots of money from selling drugs. I was hoping in time I could turn that lie into a truth as we became better friends, but Anthony wanted me to support him while he lived in Wisconsin,” David wrote. “So that Saturday night, or should I say late afternoon, I tried to get him drunk, and then I beat his head in with a pipe.”

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David Maust's murder victims

May 26, 1974 - Jimmy McClister, 13, beaten to death in Frankfurt, Germany

1974-77 - incarcerated

Aug 9, 1981 - Donald Jones, 15, stabbed to death, Elgin, IL

1982-1999 - incarcerated

May 2, 2003 - Nicholas James, 19, a co-worker, beaten to death, Hammond, IN. Body buried in basement.

Sept 10-11, 2003 - James Raganyi, 16, and Michael Dennis, 13, choked to death in his apartment. Bodies buried in the basement.

http://lacrossetribune.com/david-ma...cle_2ba4e7cc-bbf6-11e0-bedf-001cc4c03286.html


http://lacrossetribune.com/special-...pdf_765057a4-ba2d-11e0-adfd-001cc4c03286.html


http://lacrossetribune.com/special-...pdf_e388bfa6-ba2c-11e0-9498-001cc4c03286.html

David Edward Maust​

BIRTH 5 Apr 1954, Connellsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, USA
DEATH 20 Jan 2006 (aged 51), Crown Point, Lake County, Indiana, USA

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