Arrest Prevented Slaying in Laguna, Police Assert

An Indiana ex-convict arrested as a suspect in a cross-country killing spree in which at least two of his prison pen pals were murdered planned to kill the man with whom he was staying in Laguna Beach, who was also a pen pal, police said today.

Keith Eugene Goodman, 30, and two associates from Goodman’s hometown of Anderson, Ind., were arrested Sunday after Orange County police agencies were alerted by authorities in the East that the trio was headed to San Clemente.

Goodman, Christopher Mead, 22, and Tracy Lynn Holland, 21, are all suspected in the Jan. 7 murders of three men near Fulton, Miss., and the killing of an upstate New York man on Dec. 17, police said. Tennessee police are investigating the suspects’ possible connection to an October murder.

All the victims were homosexual, and at least two corresponded with Goodman while he was serving a 10-year sentence in Indiana state prison for a number of burglary-related crimes, police said. Goodman was paroled in December, 1988. Indiana authorities said Goodman subsequently met Mead and Holland, and was considered the leader of their group.

Today, San Clemente Police Sgt. Richard E. Downing said the Laguna Beach man with whom Goodman was staying also had corresponded with Goodman in prison and was not aware of his involvement in any crimes.

“If we had not arrested Goodman, I do believe the man would have been the next victim,” Downing said, declining to elaborate further.

Downing also declined to reveal the name of the Laguna Beach man.

All three suspects, meanwhile, were charged in San Clemente with possession of stolen property at the time of their arrests and were being held today without bond in the San Clemente City Jail. Downing said that police investigators from New York and Mississippi will seek extradition of the suspects.

If the suspects refuse to waive extradition, Downing said, San Clemente will press its stolen property case. When Mead and Holland were arrested, they were allegedly in possession of a stolen car and four stolen guns. Police allege that when Goodman was arrested, he had two stolen guns. The guns and car were stolen in a spate of Anderson, Ind.-area burglaries last month, detectives there said today.

Goodman said San Clemente police will coordinate ballistics testing of the firearms to determine if they were used in any of the murders. Police also will examine a station wagon that was stolen in Indiana.