2 Men Sought in Interstate Rampage : Crime: The Missouri ex-convicts are suspected in a series of killings and car thefts across 2,000 miles.

With a swagger in keeping with their bold prison tattoos and impressive arsenal of stolen guns, the men had evidently bragged to one of the young ladies of Blue Springs, Mo., that they were going to make a name for themselves.

And if celebrity is achieved by murder and plunder scattered across 2,000 miles from the South to the Pacific and perhaps into Nevada’s high desert, so they have:

The name they have made for themselves, authorities say, is “killers.”

The pair of Missouri ex-cons who met in a rehab program are being sought throughout the West after a bloody rampage from Missouri to Huntington Beach, shuttling from stolen car to stolen car, stealing guns and ammunition along the way. They are suspects in the murders of three people--all Samaritans who apparently tried to help them out.

Dennis Skillicorn, 34, a convicted murderer with “13 1/2”--the number of years he served in Missouri’s prisons--tattooed on one hand, and Alan Nicklasson, 22, whose adult record of assault is short but nasty, are also wanted for questioning in a fourth murder, a Missouri trucker hauling candy bars through Nevada.

And they signaled their brief presence in Southern California by shooting up a Huntington Harbour supermarket parking lot after a botched purse snatching.

They are armed and dangerous and agencies in four states and the FBI are seeking them--”somewhere in the western United States,” is about as specific as Kansas City, Mo., FBI spokesman Max Geiman can get. “We do know they had commented to people that they would like to go to California, Arizona, Mexico, Canada.

“These guys have nothing to lose,” said the Missouri detective watching their rakehell progress. “They’ve proven they have no problem with killing people. We’re fearful there will be other bodies.”

Authorities tracking the pair are frustrated and fearful:

Frustrated that the recent arrest

of two rampage-killing suspects in New Mexico has overshadowed this one in news reports and confused the public with their similarities.

“Both kind of started in Callaway County, Mo.,” Geiman said. The two men recently arrested in New Mexico began in Ohio “with an abduction, went to Callaway County and killed two. Ours abducted a man in Callaway County and killed him. Then both (pairs) went to the Southwest, ours to Arizona, theirs to Oklahoma and New Mexico, both traveling randomly, wantonly killing people. . . . (There are) so many similarities I think people got confused.”

And their fear is twofold.

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One, of course, is that these are exceedingly dangerous men: “People up and down the West Coast should know these are people to stay away from,” said Detective Steve Taylor of the Excelsior Springs, Mo., Police Department.

The other is that in asking the press to make the public aware and vigilant, officials walk a fine line not to fulfill the men’s wishes to create a name for themselves.

And an unhappy grace note, said Arizona investigator Eric Cooper: “If anything, people are gonna stop helping each other” because of tales like these. “That’s the sad part of all this.”

This account is assembled from various law enforcement officers who have dealt with the pair in one fashion or another:

Skillicorn, broomhandle-thin, missing some front teeth and the tip of his middle right finger, was paroled from prison nearly two years ago after serving 13 1/2 years of a 35-year murder sentence. He was finishing a four-month program in the Salvation Army’s adult rehab center in Kansas City, where he was “an exemplary man,” said Maj. Raymond Briggs, its administrator.

That was until the morning of Aug. 23, when the former roofer asked if he could leave, and departed almost at once in the company of Nicklasson, who had been in the program a few months earlier, Briggs said.

“The influence of the younger man was uncanny, just uncanny,” Briggs said.

A day later, Richard Drummond, 47, “a nice family man doing some work for AT & T,” Geiman said, was murdered--kidnaped from an access road along Interstate 70 near Kingdom City, Mo., after he stopped his new Dodge to help three men, the FBI says. Witnesses saw the men moving items from one car into the other. It was apparently around that time that 17-year-old Tim DeGraffenreid, who has since been taken into custody, joined the two suspects.

About the same time, a house nearby was broken into, and weapons and ammunition were taken--the first of at least seven guns that the two are thought to be carrying across the country, officials said, most of them handguns, at least one a semiautomatic.

Even as officials organized searches for Drummond, and later, his killers, authorities say the trio talked openly about the killings to some teen-agers and even allowed some to handle a weapon.

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By the time DeGraffenreid was in custody, Skillicorn and Nicklasson were believed to be on their way to the Southwest, and next surfaced Aug. 26, outside Kingman, Ariz., when Drummond’s Dodge got stuck in a dry wash, said Mohave County sheriff’s Investigator Eric Cooper.

A mile and a half or so away was the home of Joseph and Charlene Babcock.

Sheriff’s tracker Dale Lent figures that it was still dusk when the Missouri pair knocked on the Babcocks’ door.

Investigators surmised that Babcock drove them out to the stuck car in his 1989 metallic blue Dodge Ram Charger. “While helping them, they kill him. That’s sad,” Cooper said, “but it gets worse.”

With Babcock dead--and they left his wallet untouched--investigators believe the pair drove back to the house and knocked on the door again. They knocked Charlene Babcock to the floor, stood over her and shot her in the head. Then, after taking guns from a nearby house, they headed west in the Babcocks’ vehicle.

By Saturday evening, the pair apparently made it to Orange County. At 6:30 p.m., a woman shopping in the Hughes market in Huntington Harbour saw her purse snatched from the grocery cart by a man who looked like Skillicorn.

When she and another man chased him into the parking lot, a burst of gunfire erupted from a Dodge Ram Charger with Arizona license plates. The man resembling Skillicorn dropped the purse, leaped into the vehicle and fled.

But not until perhaps Aug. 31, when a man who fit Skillicorn’s description was seen around Battle Mountain, Nev., near Elko, does the trail resume.

That is the same place where Paul J. Hines, hauling candy bars west along Interstate 80, had stopped his 18-wheeler with Missouri plates. He was found shot to death the next day. A vehicle that looked like the Ram Charger was seen stopping near where the body was dumped, and then speeding away.

Nevada officials have not named the pair as suspects, but say they would like to talk to them.

And from that point, authorities say publicly only that the trail vanishes.

Times staff writer Judy Pasternak in Chicago contributed to this story.

Deadly Path

Here is the path allegedly taken by murder suspects Dennis Skillicorn and Alan Nicklasson, who apparently met in a drug rehab center in Kansas City and have told acquaintances they “wanted to make a name for themselves.”

1. Aug. 23: Skillicorn is released from drug rehab center, leaves with Nicklasson.

2. Aug. 25: Richard Drummond is reported missing by his wife. His body is later discovered in Lafayette County. Mo. Police believe he was kidnaped near Kingdom City, Mo., after he offered to help the suspects, who police suspect forced Drummond to drive to Lafayette County.

3. Aug. 27: Joseph and Charlene Babcock are found shot to death at their home about 40 miles east of Kingman, Arizona. Joseph Babcock’s body was found near the home next to a 1994 Dodge that had become stuck in a wash. The car belonged to Drummond. The couple’s vehicle had been stolen.

4. Aug. 27: A purse is stolen from a shopper at Huntington Harbor Mall grocery store. She and another shopper chased a man, who ran toward a vehicle with Arizona license plates. The suspect matched Nicklasson’s description. Three shots were fired from the vehicle.

5. Sept. 1: The body of Paul J. Hines, a truck driver, is found 25 miles east of Elko, Nev. Police suspect Skillicorn and Nicklasson in the crime. A man matching Skillicorn’s description was seen Aug. 31 at a truck stop at Battle Mountain, Nev., the same day Hines stopped there.