CASES AT `GROUND ZERO' - WOMAN'S KILLING INVESTIGATED WITH THOSE OF 2 GIRLS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Sunday, January 23, 1994
Author: By Kim Bell and Bill Bryan ; Of the Post-Dispatch Staff
A woman frantically called police when she saw on television the pink bedspread that had been found wrapped around Cassidy Senter's body.
After examining the bedspread and a multi-colored quilt, the woman gave police the name of someone she knew. Detectives investigating the slayings of Cassidy and Angie Housman were excited.
The tip led to a potential suspect who began to look better and better.
"We were pumped," said one detective. "Some of us really thought that we had the guy."
As happened so many times before in the frustrating investigation, police eventually dropped the man as a suspect, based on hair and saliva tests.
After more than six weeks, investigators still don't know who killed 10-year-old Cassidy or 9-year-old Angie Housman . Police don't even know if there was one killer, two killers - or more.
Detectives have interviewed hundreds of pedophiles and peeping Toms. They've questioned convicted murderers and rapists. They've even solved a string of burglaries, car thefts and assaults, thanks to leads developed during their inquiry. They've helped develop a profile of the killer.
But they haven't solved the cases - or even come close.
Theories abound. Just about every detective on the task force looking into the killings holds a different opinion. Some think it's a serial killer. Others believe the crimes were unrelated.
"It's gut-feeling kind of stuff," said one detective. "That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee. We have no proof, yet."
And if focusing on two child murders isn't tricky enough, the task force is investigating a third homicide.
More than a month before Angie's kidnapping, someone kidnapped Amy Bohn, 20, outside a Chesterfield restaurant and killed her. The bodies of both Bohn and Angie were dumped a short distance off rural roads. Bohn and Cassidy were both beaten on the head. Those and other similarities were strong enough to spark the task force's interest.
So each morning, about 45 detectives from St. Louis County, the city and the Major Case Squad huddle at the county's police academy in Wellston for a briefing. They then break into three teams: one for each victim.
Since they started work on Dec. 9, the day Cassidy's body was found, the flood of phone tips has slowed to a trickle. An FBI computer keeps track of the information and cross-references leads. Thousands have been exhausted. Local police do the legwork, while FBI lab experts sift through the crateload of evidence shipped to Washington.
"What we're doing now is going back and doing a ground zero homicide investigation from beginning to end, all over again," said Maj. Jerry Adams, commander of the task force.
"We're making sure there wasn't something missed."
A Great Lead Fizzles
On Oct. 4, Amy Bohn left her waitress job at KC Masterpiece Barbecue and Grill in Chesterfield. Co-workers last saw her walking to her car about 10:30 p.m.
The next day, a motorist found Bohn's body, partly clothed, in a wheat field just off County Road 272 in Montgomery County, about 13 miles north of Hermann, Mo. Electrical tape bound her face and hands. Someone had killed her with a blow to the head.
Bohn's car was found a few blocks from the restaurant, with the keys still in the ignition. Droplets of blood were found inside the vehicle. Her purse lay on a hill near the restaurant.
Police quickly speculated that Bohn had left with her killer or killers and that someone had moved her car after her death to make it appear as though she'd been kidnapped. The FBI is analyzing the electrical tape.
Once again, a potentially great lead developed.
"We got a big break when we identified a palm print lifted from her car," said an investigator. "The print was that of a co-worker, and we got our hopes up."
And, once again, those hopes evaporated.
During several hours of questioning, the man admitted he'd touched or leaned against her car but insisted he had no role in her death. Police have cleared him.
An `Extremely Violent' Death
On Nov. 18, Angie Housman hopped from her school bus at the corner of Wright Avenue and St. Gregory Lane in St. Ann. The bus stop was about a block from her parents' duplex.
A fourth-grader at Ritenour's Buder School, Angie walked up the street alone, carrying her blue-and-white book bag. She never made it home.
Nine days later, a hunter found the girl's body near a wooded ravine in the August A. Busch Wildlife Area in St. Charles County.
Authorities have kept secret how Angie died. They refuse to divulge details, even to her parents, except to say that her death was "extremely violent." Police say disclosing such information might prompt a rash of time-consuming bogus confessions.
On the day Angie was buried, police in north St. Louis County were into the second day of their search for a another girl reported missing - Cassidy Senter. Someone abducted Cassidy on Dec. 1 as she walked to a friend's home to string Christmas lights.
Cassidy's personal alarm, a yellow device the size of a transistor radio, was found sounding shrilly in a neighbor's yard. Cassidy, a fifth-grader at Hazelwood's Garrett Elementary School, had been taught to trigger the alarm if trouble loomed.
On Dec. 9, two teen-age boys found Cassidy's body wrapped in the bedspread and quilt in a St. Louis alley. She had been beaten severely on the head.
Police formed the task force that day.
Questioning Suspects
The similarities were striking. Angie and Cassidy were about the same age and height. Both vanished about the same time of day, within a block of their homes. In each case, no one had seen a thing.
As usually happens when a child is murdered, police focused first on family members and friends. They dug into the backgrounds of the girls' families, examining the drowning of a relative of Angie's and a suspicious fire that destroyed a home where Cassidy once lived.
"We brought in a guy who we think set the fire, but he's no killer," said a detective.
Immediately after the discovery of Angie's body, police questioned a man who had been convicted in a highly publicized abduction-murder more than 20 years ago. He offered an alibi as well as hair and blood samples.
Later, when Cassidy's body was found, the same man appeared at the task force office. "I knew you'd be looking for me," he said, volunteering to take a lie detector test.
For a time, investigators set their sights on Gary H. Stufflebean, an auditor who lives in Texas. He resembled a composite sketch of a man seen trying to abduct a girl in early November in Maryland Heights. Stufflebean has been charged with kidnapping but cleared in the murders.
Other suspects bobbed to the surface, one of them from St. Ann, Angie's hometown. He had served time in prison for raping a teen-age girl and binding her with tape. His former cellmate is a South County car dealer, thus fitting part of the FBI theory that the killer may have had access to several vehicles.
Investigators even located a former police officer convicted about three years ago of attempted kidnapping at Chesterfield mall. In that crime, police found a bag of lollipops, duct tape, two handguns and handcuffs in his car. The man is now on parole and living in Texas.
Investigators wound up scratching him off their list.
How Many Killers?
Some investigators believe that two men were needed to grab a girl, force her into a vehicle and drive off without drawing attention.
Others think different people killed all three; still others are convinced that the same man or men killed Angie and Cassidy, and that Bohn's case is unrelated.
When the focus was only on Angie and Cassidy, the FBI posed a question to investigators: What were the chances that two people with no connection to each other could abduct and kill two girls in a community this size?
"They felt the greatest likelihood is that it is one person, but this is not an exact science," an officer said.
So is a serial killer at work?
"Historically, statistics would show you that, generally, you wouldn't have three or four people around in one metropolitan area at the same time doing the same thing," Adams said. "But then again, that's not to say that it hasn't happened."
Police are even taking a close look at Lewis S. Lent Jr., a janitor from Massachusetts suspected in a number of abductions and killings on the East Coast. He's among several suspected serial killers across the country that task force members are investigating.
"We have to keep ourselves abreast of what's going on, if there's a possibility that that person may have traveled through here and spent maybe two months and picked up and left," Adams said.
Investigators aren't wed to one particular scenario. They don't want to risk "tunnel vision."
"I would imagine if you talked to 10 different people, experienced investigators, and asked them `How do you read this?' at least five or six would have a different opinion," said Adams.
"These are difficult cases to work on."
Meanwhile, some relatives remain optimistic. Jon Bone, Angie's stepgrandfather is convinced that police will catch the killer.
"I've got faith," he said. "There were a couple times I got my hopes up. I thought they had him."
So did the police. Caption: MAP, GRAPHIC