S. Laguna Man Called Target in Murder Spree

An Indiana ex-convict, accused of leading two others in a cross-country murder spree that left at least four of his prison pen pals dead, planned to kill another correspondent--a Pennsylvania college professor with whom he had been staying in Laguna Beach, police said Tuesday.

“It’s very frightening,” said Peter G. Jones, an English teacher on sabbatical from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University. “I see myself as very lucky because the police told me I was their next victim.”

Keith Eugene Goodman, 30, and two alleged accomplices from Goodman’s hometown of Anderson, Ind., were arrested Sunday in connection with the brutal slayings of three homosexual men in Mississippi and another in New York. All of the victims exchanged letters with Goodman while he was imprisoned in Indiana for the burglary and sexual assault of an 80-year-old woman.

Goodman, Jon Christopher Mead, 22, and Mead’s girlfriend, Tracy Lynn Holland, 21, were seized in two separate SWAT team raids Sunday after Orange County law enforcement agencies were told by authorities in the East that the suspects were believed headed to San Clemente. In addition to the Mississippi and New York murders, Tennessee authorities are investigating the three in connection with the slaying of a biology professor there in October.

The victims were identified as Harold D. Williams, 60, who was fatally shot and stabbed on or about Dec. 17 in his upstate Windsor, N.Y., home; R.C. Vaughn, 49, and his roommate, Richard Ray Thomas, 29, shot in their Fulton, Miss., home on Jan. 7, and Tommy Lee Mayhall, who lived 10 miles away from Vaughn and Thomas and was also killed on Jan. 7.

Tennessee authorities said that when Goodman was arrested at Jones’ house, tucked in the hills of affluent South Laguna, they found several credit cards belonging to 41-year-old Robert S. Sibert, who was killed Oct. 21 by a single shot to the head at his home in the suburban Memphis town of Goodlettsville. One of six weapons in Goodman’s possession, investigators said, matches the description of a .380-caliber, semiautomatic pistol used in Sibert’s murder.

Although the three could face the death penalty in Mississippi for the slayings there, they are expected to be extradited to New York--which does not have a capital punishment law--to face charges in the Williams slaying. However, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Dagostino said that prosectors may decide today if they will first attempt to press local charges against the suspects.

“They (New York authorities) developed a case, they started it--no one knew anything about it until they stepped in,” San Clemente Police Sgt. Richard E. Downing said.

Broome County (N.Y.) Dist. Atty. Gerald Mollen said he expects Goodman and Mead to be charged with murdering Williams. Holland is not currently accused of murder there, but authorities in Mississippi have included her name on a murder warrant in connection with the three killings in that state. New York prosecutors, however, expect to seek her extradition on charges of criminal possession of stolen property--the red station wagon that suspects allegedly used to drive from Indiana to New York.

The slain men in Mississippi and New York were among an estimated 20 to 25 pen pals with whom Goodman corresponded while in prison in Indiana, officials say. Goodman, along with his accused accomplices, was staying with Jones in South Laguna because he also had been a pen pal. Goodman was arrested by a SWAT team and Laguna Beach police shortly after he emerged from a downstairs shower--”He still had shaving cream on his face when they whisked him away,” Jones recounted Tuesday.

“If we had not arrested Goodman,” Downing said, “I do believe (Jones) would have been the next victim.” Downing added that Jones said he was unaware of Goodman’s alleged involvement in the murder spree.

Other than their correspondence with Goodman, and, in all but Sibert’s case, their homosexuality, the victims had different life styles, according to friends and relatives.

In New York, neighbors of Williams described him as a loner who moved from Pennsylvania to Windsor, a town of 1,500 about five miles from the Pennsylvania border, in the 1950s after divorcing his wife of 12 years. He retired after working 20 years for Kroehler Manufacturing Co., a furniture-maker in nearby Binghamton.

In Mississippi, Mayhall and Vaughn were described by friends and relatives as respected men in Itawamba County, an area of 15,000 residents in a remote corner of the state, bordering on Tennessee and Alabama.

Mayhall, a third-generation county resident, was the sixth of seven children and “kept by himself most of the time,” said his niece, Faye Bowling, 22.

“He loved flowers,” Bowling said. “He had a greenhouse and raised banana trees, tulips, roses and just about any flower you can think of. He lived in a mobile home in the woods and liked to take walks there.”

Eddie Holder, owner of a construction firm where Mayhall worked part-time before his death, said he found Mayhall’s body sprawled on the floor of his mobile home in a pool of blood, clad in a bathrobe.

“He was a good person,” Holder said. “He always helped the elderly ladies who lived near him. He was well thought of by everybody. He never did mention much about his personal life.”

Vaughn, also a lifetime resident of Itawamba County, was “a very quiet person” who once taught junior high school and most recently worked at a Wal-Mart store in Fulton, according to his sister, Johnnie Mae Cowley, of Smithville, Miss.

“He didn’t drink, smoke or cuss,” Cowley said. “All the people he knew respected him and liked him.”

Community residents interviewed Tuesday said they knew little about the third Mississippi victim, Richard Ray Thomas. Barry Burleson, managing editor of the Itawamba County Times, said Thomas and Vaughn reportedly lived together for about two years.

As authorities from New York and Mississippi arrived in Orange County Tuesday to sort out the suspects’ alleged crimes and work out the details of extradition, investigators began piecing together the extensive criminal record of Goodman, whom they described as the ringleader of the group.

According to parole records, Goodman was released from the Indiana state prison farm on Dec. 12, 1988, after serving 10 years of a 23-year sentence for a November, 1979, robbery and rape of an 80-year-old woman. It was during that sentence that Goodman began writing to pen pals across the nation, many but not all of whom were gay.

“Goodman was a con artist,” said Itawamba County (Miss.) Sheriff’s Deputy Terry Jones. “He operated through gay men. He would become their pen pal and he would try to get them to send him money and gifts. He was using them.”

Senior Investigator Richard J. Kadien of the New York State Police, who was in Orange County along with four colleagues seeking Goodman’s extradition in the Williams murder, said that Goodman used a common inmate scam by seeking sympathy--and subsequently, money--from people who advertised for pen pals in local publications.

“The story I heard was certainly that he had been very deprived,” said college professor Jones, recalling his letters from Goodman. “He said he had never known who his father was. He had never gotten along with his mother and hadn’t seen her since he was 16.

“He said the other night, in fact, that the only person who had ever loved him was his grandmother and she died about a year ago. I don’t even know if that was true,” Jones added.

Kadien said similar heart-rending accounts apparently induced Williams, the New York victim, to pay a $500 phone bill that he had accumulated by taking collect calls from Goodman, and send the inmate as much as $300 over the course of their correspondence.

Goodman was arrested again on Jan. 22, 1989, about a month after his release from the state prison, near his home in Anderson, Ind.--about 35 miles northeast of Indianapolis--for drunk driving, reckless driving and assault. He pleaded guilty to the charges and served seven months in the Madison County Jail, records show.

It was during his incarceration there that Goodman met Mead, who was being held on burglary charges. Mead, after being released on bond, introduced Goodman to his girlfriend, Tracy Holland, who has no known police record, officials said. The three then set off on a crime spree, law enforcement officials said.

“He (Goodman) would probably dominate the others,” said Sgt. Randy Simmons of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department in Anderson. “In my knowledge of him, he would be more apt to do something crazy than the others.”

Mead’s brother, Robert M. Mead of Muncie, Ind., said that Anderson police contacted his family after his brother was released on bond to warn them about Goodman. “They wanted us to get my brother away from this guy,” Robert Mead said.

He added that in phone calls from the county jail, Goodman and Christopher Mead asked to hear heavy metal music. “I’d hold the phone up to the speaker and Goodman would be screaming like he was getting pumped up,” Robert Mead said. “He also yelled at other inmates. He was really psychotic.”

Mead said that while his brother had been arrested several times for burglary, he did not seem violent. “Maybe he would go in and commit burglary, but personally, to me, murder is way beyond his capability,” the brother said.

Staff writers James Gomez, David Reyes, Tammerlin Drummond and Wendy Paulson contributed to this report.

A CLOSE CALL?--The host of the murder suspects counts his blessings. A16

Path of the Murder Suspects

In a cross-country crime spree, suspects Keith Eugene Goodman, Jon Christopher Mead and Tracy Lynn Holland allegedly preyed on Goodman’s prison pen pals, some of whom were homosexuals. Police say they have linked some or all of the suspects to five murders, including that of Robert Sibert in Goodlettesville, Tenn. last Oct. 21. Using motel receipts, telephone records, tips and crime reports, investigators tracked the suspects to South Laguna, where they were arrested last weekend:

1. On Dec. 14, the suspects leave Anderson, Ind., allegedly in a stolen station wagon. 2. They head for Pittsburgh to find college Prof. Peter G. Jones, but Jones is on sabbatical leave in South Laguna. 3. The suspects go to Windsor, N.Y., where pen pal Harold Williams is killed-stabbed once and shot four times. State police investigators John M. Skinner and Richard J. Kadien begin Pursuit. 4. In Cleveland, the suspects try to find another of Goodman’s prison pen pals, but cannot. 5. They return to Anderson for Christmas. At the request of New York investigators, local police persuade Goodman to come in for questioning. But when a local investigator asks Goodman if he knew Williams, the suspect runs out of the police station. 6. The suspects go to Linton, Ind., where they spend a day or so, with New York investigators on their trail. 7. The suspects travel to Illinois and spend another day or two. They proceed to Paducah, Ky., and stay until Jan. 5, when they are apparently thrown out of a motel for being rowdy. 8. The suspects go to Fulton, Miss., where R.C. Vaughn and Richard Ray Thomas are killed on Jan. 7. Lee Mayhall, who lived 10 miles away, is also killed. 9. They head west to the Oklahoma City area. 10. They travel to Albuquerque, N.M., where they stay until Jan. 10 or 11. 11. At about midnight, last Friday, the suspects arrive in South Laguna to stay with Jones. They are arrested Sunday.

Source: New York STate Police investigators John M. Skinner and Richard J. Kadien.