5 Teens’ Violent Deaths Send Shivers of Fear Through Maryland Town

The fear can be traced to a desolate dirt road on the outskirts of this town of about 200 people on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

A 19-year-old man pulled his 1972 Chevy Chevelle off that road, pointed a shotgun at his head and, in a moment that soon would haunt Goldsboro, ended his life one day last November.

Since then, townspeople have grieved at the funerals of four other teen-agers who died violently. Two of those also apparently committed suicide, and two died in a car crash. All five teens happened to be friends.

Three other area teen-agers have tried, but failed, to kill themselves during the last two months.

The inevitable question--why are the youths dying?--has been met by rampant rumors of something so frightening that, some authorities say, parents have become hysterical.

Parents wonder if a satanic cult has come to roost here in small-town America, preyed upon the youth and spurred the deaths.

About 250 people ignored rain and wind on a recent night to gather in a Caroline County school auditorium to discover if the stories linking the deaths to the occult are true.

The fear in the room became palpable as prosecutor Christian J. Jensen described an investigation into the deaths. His office and the sheriff’s department, along with Maryland and Delaware state police, are working together on the investigation.

In mid-January, authorities found an abandoned house, tucked away in a remote area of this rural county, with satanic symbols such as “666” and pentagrams spray-painted on the walls, Jensen said.

But they found nothing connecting the house to the three teens who committed suicide, nor did they find any candles, animal sacrifices or other signs of occult rituals, Jensen said.

Investigators have found lists of names of teens who are supposed to die--lists that have fed the fear and grief of some area high school students. But the different lists appear to be the handiwork of students who want to scare other teens, rather than evidence of any suicide pact, Jensen told the crowd.

But some parents believe something far more sinister is at work.

“There’s a strong force behind these kids that is causing them to kill themselves,” one woman said. Several parents nodded. They, too, had heard tales of occult practices, involving Ouija boards and “heavy metal” rock music, by local teens.

A few days later a substitute teacher at North Caroline High School handed another instructor a piece of paper on which a boy had scribbled “666” and “Satan is lord.” As he walked to his car afterward, the substitute teacher, a burly man, said: “It scares me to see this happening.”

Before the deaths, folks say, nothing much ever happened in Goldsboro, home of a general store, hardware store and a one-room town hall. Farmers work the flat fields nearby while other residents commute to jobs in larger towns, such as Denton, Md., and Dover, Del.

It’s a place where friendships forged in childhood last a lifetime, said a Goldsboro resident transplanted from Maryland’s urban Western Shore.

It’s also a place of boredom for a few teens, who kill time by hanging out in parking lots or at a rough-and-tumble pool hall across the Delaware state line.

“There’s nothing here in town for teen-agers to do,” said Mary Jane Harris, who lost her only daughter in a car accident Nov. 26. “You see a lot of them riding up one street and down another and going into one house and another.”

The teens spend so much time together that one friend’s heartaches--and certainly his death--would deeply affect the others, some say.

So the news that John T. Kirby, 19, had killed himself on the dirt road outside Goldsboro Nov. 14 undoubtedly cut deep within his circle of friends. Kirby, known as “J. T.,” was a laid-off deckhand who lived with his parents in neighboring Queen Annes County.

His grieving friends learned of two other deaths 12 days later. On Nov. 26, Harris’ daughter, Lisa, and Dawn Bilbrough, both 14, borrowed a red Nissan pickup truck, sped down State Highway 287 and ran off the road east of Goldsboro.

Dawn and Lisa, a member of Students Against Drunk Driving and the North Caroline High School color guard, died after the truck hit a stand of trees. Several wreaths and crosses mark the spot now, including a red-rimmed one that says “Mom.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, the girls did not intend to die that night, nor did someone force them off the road, Jensen said.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Norman D. Lee Jr., 17, of Goldsboro, went to bed, aimed a .22-caliber rifle at his head and pulled the trigger.

Paul Pinder, 18, served as a pallbearer at Lee’s funeral, as he had done for Kirby and Dawn. On Jan. 12, Pinder turned a gun on himself, ending his life in his bedroom.

School and health department counselors have continued to meet with the teens most troubled by the deaths.

Meanwhile, investigators have called in an expert on the occult. The Rev. Michael G. Rokos, an Episcopal priest from Baltimore and president of Cult Awareness Network, said that he did not know yet if the Goldsboro suicides could be linked to the occult.

The suicides do show a “domino effect,” in which a grieving teen finds it easier to end his own life after the suicide of a friend or acquaintance, Rokos said. “It’s a perverse kind of peer pressure.”

Unlike adult suicides, he said, teen-agers may kill themselves without premeditation, especially because adolescent culture and heavy metal rock music trivialize death.

The suicides point to an immense, tragic void in some children’s lives, others say.

“Every day that I live, I outlive somebody 15 years old,” said Goldsboro Police Chief Bruce G. Feris. “What does a person have if they don’t have something to live for?”