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Hammond man held in strangling
Police ID bodies of 3 missing teens; authorities call for registry of killers
By John Bebow and Carlos Sadovi
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 12, 2003
Indiana police charged a convicted murderer Thursday with strangling a missing teen found buried in the suspect's basement, as authorities called for a registry to warn the public when killers are released from prison.
David Maust, 49, who served two prison terms for killing young men and was also jailed in mental hospitals, will be arraigned Friday on charges he strangled a 16-year-old neighborhood boy whose body was found buried in the basement of Maust's rented home in Hammond.
The bodies of two other teens unearthed in the basement were identified Thursday as boys Maust befriended with money, alcohol and marijuana over the summer, authorities said. One is believed to have been strangled and the other beaten. No charges have yet been filed in their slayings.
In 1999, Maust was released from prison in Illinois after serving his sentence for the 1981 murder of an Elgin youth. He was on parole until June 2002 and moved to an apartment on Ash Avenue in Hammond about 15 months ago. Neither police nor his neighbors were aware of his criminal record until three youths were reported missing.
"I certainly think there needs to be more extensive measures taken to monitor this type of individual," Hammond Police Chief John Cory said in an interview after announcing the charges. "We all have families--my heart goes out to these families."
Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter agreed. "I'd like to see that, absolutely," he said.
The bodies of James Raganyi, 16, Michael Dennis, 13, and Nick James, 19, were identified through dental records Thursday afternoon, officials said.
Police said Maust gave a statement in which he said he strangled Raganyi with a rope at 11:45 p.m. Sept. 10 when the teen became sick after drinking beer and shots of liquor.
Lake County Coroner David Pastrick said he had "not ruled out suffocation and strangulation" as a cause of death for Raganyi and Dennis. James died of blunt force trauma to the skull and was killed shortly after he disappeared in early May, the coroner said.
Relatives of the slain teens said there should be some way to alert residents when a convicted murderer such as Maust moves into a neighborhood.
Besides the Illinois conviction, Maust was imprisoned in Texas for stabbing a young man and was discharged from the U.S. Army after being convicted of manslaughter for killing a 13-year-old German boy. Maust told officials he was sentenced to 4 years in a federal prison for the 1974 killing overseas.
"That first one who died in Germany, that should have been the end of it," said Don Smith, Raganyi's stepfather. "They should have shot him there."
Hammond police had been investigating Maust since shortly after Dennis and Raganyi left runaway notes and disappeared on Sept. 10, according to law-enforcement documents.
After 12-year-old Michael Gutierrez, a friend of Raganyi and Dennis, told police of drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana with Dennis at Maust's apartment, police charged Maust with contributing to the delinquency of a minor on Sept. 30, authorities said.
Blas Gutierrez, the boy's father, said he became suspicious in late summer when Raganyi, Dennis and his son started talking about "40-ouncers" of beer. The father said he lectured his son to stay away from booze and drugs and suspected that someone older was providing the boys with alcohol.
Blas Gutierrez said Michael Dennis was the first of the boys to befriend Maust, and the other two followed. The father said his son described Maust's apartment as "clean, tidied up" and visited there six or seven times.
As summer came to a close, the three boys started talking about running away, Gutierrez said. What may have saved his son was Michael Dennis' sister.
"He had a crush with her and may not have wanted to leave her behind," the father said. "I'm very grateful that Mikey is here today. I know it could have been him."
The elder Gutierrez said his son remains "startled" and "stunned."
"He's been through a lot in life already," the father said, adding that the boy's mother was murdered when he was a toddler.
Maust was sentenced to 5 years in prison in Texas in 1981 after being convicted of causing bodily injury to a child. He was extradited from Texas in 1982 to stand trial for the 1981 killing of Donald Jones, 15, in a quarry outside of Elgin. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 1994.
Court records said he was initially found unfit to stand trial and was sent to the Elgin Mental Health Center. After trying to escape, he was moved to the Chester Mental Health Center, which provides a higher level of security, records said.
Maust was said to have a history of suicide attempts and "homicidal activities," the psychiatrist told the court at a hearing on Aug. 21, 1986.
"The defendant has a very long and significant mental history ... currently he has a pathological preoccupation with death, mutilation, dying and other bizarre ideations," the psychiatrist wrote.
Maust spent two years in psychiatric units and 10 years in the Cook County Jail before he pleaded guilty. The judge in the case was required by law to give Maust credit for all 12 years he had been held when he was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 1994, said Richard Kling, a law professor with Chicago-Kent College of Law.
In 1981, state law called for murderers to get a day off their sentence for every day served, essentially cutting prison sentences in half. In all, Maust served 17 years for the Elgin killing. The law was changed in 1998 to require murderers to serve their entire sentence.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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