Just as Gallaudet University Began to Heal, a Second Homicide

Benjamin Varner died in silence--a promising student whose final moments went unheard in a dormitory filled with the hearing disabled.

Despite logistical hurdles facing homicide detectives Monday as they investigated the stabbing of Varner at Gallaudet University last weekend--the second homicide committed in the same dormitory in the last four months--the crime has galvanized the college like a clarion call.

Many of Gallaudet’s 2,000 hearing-disabled students crammed into a college auditorium to pay tribute to the 19-year-old Varner--and to get updates on the Metropolitan D.C. Police probe that had reported scant progress on the third day after his body was discovered.

“Is there a murderer on the loose? . . . Are there two killers?” asked 21-year-old student Jason Lamberton, a Fremont, Calif., native, as he signed furiously after the meeting. “We all want to know.”

Life on the 99-acre campus in northeast Washington had just been returning to normal after the unsolved September killing of Eric Plunkett, 19, who was found beaten to death in his first-floor room in Cogswell Hall. The proximity of the two homicides in the freshman dormitory has left many students wondering whether the cases are linked. And they fear that the assailant--or assailants--may be one, or more, of their own.

“The idea that it could be someone we know is so frightening,” senior Rebecca Goldenbaum said.

There were reports late Monday that a knife and bloody clothing had been found by detectives in a dumpster near Cogswell, the brick dorm where Varner had lived alone in a fourth-floor room. Police declined to detail the evidence found so far, saying they did not want to lose control of their investigation.

“We have taken in a number of items,” said police spokesman Sgt. Joe C. Gentile. “I will neither confirm nor deny any information about a knife or any bloody clothing that might have been found.”

Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey acknowledged that, while more than 100 students and school staff had been interviewed so far, the difficulties of investigating the death of a deaf student were imposing. Police were being helped by sign language interpreters provided by Gallaudet, but interrogations were proceeding at a painfully slow pace, Ramsey said.

“There’s no need to rush,” he insisted. But Ramsey conceded that “it’s been difficult to conduct those interviews in a timely fashion. . . . It’s slowed us down.”

Varner’s body was discovered at 4:15 a.m. Saturday, after a fire alarm was pulled in the dormitory and more than 150 students were rousted by flashing yellow lights and dorm advisors rushing room to room. Ramsey said Monday that investigators were unsure whether the alarm was intentionally pulled--or whether it had any connection to the slaying.

Varner’s father, Willie Varner--who arrived in Washington over the weekend from the family’s home in San Antonio--said that his son had talked about moving out of Cogswell, complaining about frequent false alarms at all hours of the day and night.

“He said that the fire alarms kept going off,” the father said. “He talked about moving off campus.”

University officials confirmed the frequency of false alarms at Cogswell but said they had not identified any culprits.

Varner said his son had talked with him several times about Plunkett’s killing, most recently at Christmas. Varner did not detail his son’s suspicions about that slaying, but he did say: “I think it’s someone associated with that particular dorm.”

The dorm will be closed for the rest of the semester, university officials said, because few students are willing to stay there.

Fellow students said Benjamin Varner was quiet and studious, telling friends that he was fascinated by governmental affairs. “He was always asking questions,” said Karlin Hummel, 21, a student from Austin, Texas. “He was always reading things in the school rule book and asking about its interpretations.” Said Lamberton: “People say he wanted to be president or a U.S. senator. He was really interested in government.”

Several Gallaudet students said Monday that both young men who were slain were among a group of 15 freshmen who lived on Cogswell’s first floor. After Plunkett’s death, the other students all moved up to the fourth floor because they feared the killer might return.

Gentile also declined to comment on reports that Varner had been called as a witness in a continuing District of Columbia grand jury probe into Plunkett’s death. Ramsey cautioned that “so far, we don’t have any evidence that would link” the two slayings.

Days after Plunkett’s death, a former student was arrested as a suspect in the case, then quickly released. Gentile declined to say whether that person was being looked at again in regard to Varner’s homicide. Nor would he discuss reports that the grand jury probe into Plunkett’s death had zeroed in on a suspect.

Police as yet have no suspects or motives in Varner’s killing. Gentile said investigators were interested in talking to some friends of the slain youth who live in northeast Washington, outside the campus. “We’re asking for them to come forward,” Gentile said.

Created by an act of Congress and the signature of President Lincoln, 144-year-old Gallaudet college sprawls out in a manicured campus protected by a high black wrought iron gate. Outside are freeways, a neighborhood of old warehouses and a warren of blighted housing projects--an area that has often been a magnet for street crime, students and university officials say.

The school has concentrated on protecting its students--limiting street access to two manned gates and allowing only students with authorized entry cards into campus housing. Freshmen living at Cogswell could only enter the dormitory with an electronically coded card, and they are constantly urged to look out for each other and report suspicious outsiders, officials said.

But even after Plunkett’s killing, students said, they could bring visitors in easily--as long as their own cards allowed them access. Visitors were not required to sign in, a security lapse that Gallaudet spokeswoman Mercy Coogan said will likely be tightened in the wake of Varner’s death.

College officials said detectives were scanning the logs to see which students used their cards to enter the dorm over the weekend. “Every time a student uses the card, it leaves an electronic trail,” one official said.

Choking up as he talked about his son, Willie Varner said Benjamin “wasn’t afraid to come back to school” after Plunkett’s death. “He got over it, just like we did.”

Varner and his wife, Denise, had been planning to fly to Washington and tour the city with Benjamin on spring break.

Instead, he said, voice cracking, “I’m going to take my boy home.”