Suspect Arrested in 11-Year-Old Disappearance of Teacher

On a chilly Vermont morning more than 10 years ago, Francis W. Malinosky emptied his bank accounts in Burlington, put his two children on a bus to his former in-laws’ home and then disappeared.

At the time, he was a suspect in the mysterious disappearance of his former girlfriend, 32-year-old schoolteacher Judith Leo-Coneys. She has never been found and is presumed dead.

Malinosky, who also had been a teacher and school administrator in the Burlington area, never surfaced again either--until Thursday afternoon when FBI agents and Los Angeles police arrested him at a Woodland Hills motel.

Malinosky, 44, was using the name Michael Bryant and had apparently been living for at least two years in Los Angeles. He worked as a free-lance photographer and house painter, authorities said, and had $215,000 in cash with him when arrested. The money added one more mystery to the case.

Investigators believe the suspect had gone to Woodland Hills to check a mail drop. He was arrested on a warrant charging him with Leo-Coneys’ murder, though her body has not been found. He was being held Friday at the Parker Center jail awaiting extradition to Vermont.

“My belief in the Easter bunny has been reinforced,” Chittenden County State Atty. William H. Sorrell said in Burlington after announcing the arrest.

Malinosky’s arrest is the latest turn in one of the most perplexing mysteries in Vermont in recent years. It is a case that has long fascinated the residents of Burlington and surrounding communities, many of whom knew the suspect and victim through the local school system.

On Nov. 5, 1979, Leo-Coneys left a doctor’s office in Burlington and went to Malinosky’s house to retrieve some belongings. She had recently ended a two-year relationship with Malinosky, a widower, and two months earlier he had threatened her with a gun, according to an affidavit filed by investigators in Chittenden County court.

Malinosky, director of special education at the Burlington School Department, did not go to work that day, and later was questioned as a suspect in Leo-Coneys’ disappearance. According to the affidavit, investigators also found evidence linking him to the missing woman’s car, which was found in a junkyard outside Burlington.

But on Dec. 3, 1979, while the disappearance was still being investigated, Malinosky disappeared himself. His trail was cold until 1988 when Vermont State Police Detective Leo Blais learned Malinosky had applied for a driver’s license in Utah.

Blais then connected Malinosky with at least two aliases and began tracking him through mail drops, credit cards and visits to New York, Virginia and California. An arrest warrant was issued for Malinosky in February. Sorrell said the suspect was traced through a credit card to mail drops in Hollywood and Woodland Hills and Vermont investigators learned he was using a 1967 Volkswagen.

The car was spotted on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills on Thursday and Malinosky was trailed to a nearby motel where he was arrested at 3 p.m. Sorrell said investigators have learned that Malinosky lived in Los Angeles for at least two years but declined to say where. Authorities said they had no idea where Malinosky got the $215,000 found with him.

“That’s something we will be working on,” Sorrell said.