Police Kill Gunman to End Hostage Crisis

A mercurial killer with a child’s name was fatally shot Tuesday night by tactical officers after two hostages slipped out from the row house where he had fallen asleep in the evening hours of a wearying five-day siege.

Joseph “Joby” Palczynski, 31, was pronounced dead at the scene after he was shot by Baltimore County Police sharpshooters who burst into the barricaded apartment through a downstairs window.

Palczynski, who had been asleep on a couch in a family room, bolted up to defend himself but was fatally wounded before he could return fire, police said. A third hostage, a 12-year-old boy who had been asleep on the kitchen floor, was rescued unharmed, police said.

“Joseph Palczynski is dead,” intoned Baltimore County Police spokesman Bill Toohey. “He was shot by Baltimore County tactical officers shortly after 11 p.m.”

Palczynski, an emotionally troubled electrician accused of four slayings since March 7, became a feared presence in this blue-collar community after he eluded police during a weeklong manhunt through the dense backwoods marshlands east of Baltimore.

He surfaced in a violent flourish five days ago, taking the mother of his girlfriend and two others hostage and holding off scores of police officers for days.

The end to Palczynski’s rampage through this riverside town near Baltimore’s industrialized shipping terminal came quickly, police said. At 10:20 p.m., while an exhausted Palczynski lay sleeping, Lynn Whitehead, the mother of his ex-girlfriend, crawled out through an open window. Twenty minutes later, Toohey said, the woman’s husband, Andy McCord, also slipped out and reached police.

At 11 p.m., concerned about the safety of McCord’s son Bradley, who remained asleep inside the house, “police made a tactical entry through the window,” Toohey said. “They broke through the window, encountered Mr. Palczynski in the family room and shot him.”

Hostage dramas like the one that ended in Palczynski’s death Tuesday often have their origins in the messy sort of domestic flare-ups that squall in a broken home. But the siege in Dundalk was preceded by a murderous, tangled affair--four killings and a manhunt that led through dense woods and storm drains, stretching from Baltimore to Virginia, then back--that police insist is ample justification for the agonizing duration of their wait.

“Let’s not lose sight that this man killed four people,” Toohey said before Palczynski was shot. “He’s unpredictable and he’s violent.”

Dozens of neighbors in a 16-block area whose lives have been disrupted by the standoff were not in a forgiving mood. Many were furious at police for failing to protect the hostages from obvious threats. They were equally incredulous at public safety officials’ failure to keep Palczynski, an electrician with a long history of mental illness and institutionalization, off the streets.

“It boggles the mind that a boy this sick is able to move around at will with hundreds of police looking for him,” said Monica Roppel, 55, who lives not far from Bird River, in the tangled marshlands where Palczynski reportedly sought refuge for a week before the hostage drama began.

On Tuesday, as a frigid rain swept down, Roppel watched from the medical supply store where she works while police cruisers filed up the winding streets leading to the row house where Palczynski and his hostages waited. Since police cordoned off the streets she had nothing to do but stare at deserted houses.

“All we get are cops, reporters and sightseers,” she sighed. In recent days, when the sun was out, it “looked like a carnival,” she said. Retirees with video cameras poked through back streets. Residents ran the gantlet of police lines, desperate for groceries and a few minutes of freedom. The rain kept the sightseers away Tuesday, but “I still don’t have no business, hon,” she lamented.

A few blocks away, Robert and Michelle Haffler kept watching from their windows and listening on two-way radios. Some residents bought the devices last year in anticipation of trouble associated with the new millennium. The radios have paid off. Haffler and a dozen neighbors who stayed put during the standoff used the devices to warn one another when they saw police movements and heard gunshots. Haffler, a worker at a nearby spice factory, threaded through the neighborhood at night, eluding police to buy “smokes and milk” at stores outside what police call the “kill zone.”

More than 60 Baltimore County officers were on constant guard around the neighborhood, augmented by squads of detectives and sharpshooters and by tactical units on loan from Baltimore and the FBI. Despite their presence on nearly every corner, “if you know where you’re going,” Haffler said, laughing, “you can get by these guys.”

But Haffler had another concern when he scurried out. He lives just 100 yards from the apartment that confined Palczynski--well within range of the suspect’s guns. Three days ago, Palczynski grew irritated when police aimed high-intensity lamps at him. He shot out several of the lights. When an armored car drew too close, the fugitive shot out its heavy rubber tires.

On Monday afternoon, the Hafflers heard another shot--this time inside the house. Toohey said earlier Tuesday that police believed the shot wounded one of the hostages. But late Tuesday night, Toohey indicated that all three hostages emerged physical unscathed from their ordeal.

Not taking chances, police sent all three off for medical evaluation.

Palczynski vanished into the backwoods creeks of eastern Baltimore County on March 7 after police began hunting him as a suspect in the shooting deaths of three people who tried to prevent him from abducting his former girlfriend, Tracy Whitehead, from an apartment complex. Police accused Palczynski of murdering George and Gloria Shenk, a middle-age couple who took in Whitehead after she broke up with Palczynski, and a neighbor, David Meyers, who tried to intervene.

Palczynski was a long-troubled man who police and acquaintances say had a history of run-ins with the law and suffered from “bipolar disorder,” a volatile mental condition that causes those afflicted by it to veer from intense depression to giddy euphoria. He had been in and out of mental hospitals, friends say, and presaged this week’s siege in 1992, when he held off Idaho police at gunpoint for 16 hours after they tried to serve him with a Maryland warrant.

“He’s always been capable of popping off,” said one woman who knew Palczynski, “but for the last year, he’s had it mostly under control.” The woman said Palczynski found steady work as an electrician and “blew off steam” by lifting weights in a small house he shared with a friend in the woods near Bird River. He was undone, the woman said, “by love. He’s always tried to keep control, but something must’ve happened that made him snap.”

Police said he and Whitehead had a violent argument on March 3. Whitehead was left bleeding and Palczynski was arrested, then set free on bond, one of a mounting series of official miscues that neighbors say spiraled into murder. Four days later, he tried to abduct Whitehead but fled alone after allegedly slaying her three protectors.

Over the next week, Palczynski became a Baltimore fugitive legend, vanishing and surfacing with maddening ease. He allegedly shot and killed Jennifer McDonel, a passing motorist, on March 8 during an aborted carjacking. He traveled, apparently by train, to Virginia, where authorities said he stole guns and cash from a house, forcing the owner to drive him back to the Dundalk area before releasing the man unharmed.

Friday night, Whitehead’s mother, Lynn, returned to her Dundalk house after a week spent in protective custody. Toohey insists she had spurned officers’ protection to return home but added that police patrols regularly drove by the apartment that night, on alert for Palczynski.

They missed him. Some time that evening, the heavily armed fugitive burst into the home. Hundreds of police swarmed over the neighborhood, and negotiators tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a peaceful ending.