Serial killer executed; Kentucky Betan among his victims

[mikemccoy1852]

The State of Texas Tuesday night executed a train-hopping serial killer who was linked to at least 15 murders near railroad tracks around the country, including a Brother of Kentucky Beta in 1997.

Christopher Maier, 21, a University of Kentucky student and 1997 initiate of Kentucky Beta, was killed as he and his girlfriend, Holly Dunn (now Pendleton), took a shortcut along the railroad tracks from one party to another Aug. 29, 1997, near the college campus in Lexington. (My memory is that Christopher was his first of the 15 known victims.)

Maier was killed with a 50-pound rock. His girlfriend, raped and left for dead, survived the attack and testified against Angel Maturino Resendiz, 46, the Mexican drifter known as the "Railroad Killer."

Dunn Pendleton survived, despite being raped, beaten and stabbed.

The following text is taken from Wednesday’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

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...Holly Dunn, who lived in fear for two years until Resendiz was captured, did not attend yesterday's execution. Instead, the University of Kentucky graduate spent the day surrounded by family and friends in her hometown in Indiana.

"I have to say that I guess it will be a relief when he's not in the world anymore," Dunn said in a written statement. "But I'll live with the emotional trauma whether he's in the world or not."

It was August 1997, two days after classes had started at the University of Kentucky, when Dunn and Chris Maier got bored and left a party. They walked to the railroad tracks between Waller Avenue and Rosemont Garden to watch the trains, Dunn has said. She is now married and goes by the last name Dunn-Pendleton.

Dunn, then a 20-year-old junior, had known Maier, a senior from North Canton, Ohio, for three months. They had just started dating.

They sat and talked near the tracks for some time, occasionally staring at the stars on the clear, cool night. When they got up to return to the party, they were confronted by Resendiz, who had been watching them from behind an electrical box.

They thought they were being robbed. They begged him for mercy, offering him credit cards, ATM cards and car keys. Resendiz refused and ordered them to get down on their hands and knees. They complied.

Resendiz gagged the young students and bound them, tying their feet and hands. Then he began his assault, pounding Maier with a rock until he fell silent.

Resendiz raped Dunn and stabbed her in the neck. Then he picked up a railroad tie and beat her in the head until she fell unconsciousness.

After he thought he killed her, he fled. But eventually Dunn got up -- covered with blood -- and walked to a nearby house.

Matching DNA

Lexington police Lt. James Curless was the homicide detective on call the night Dunn opened up a screen door to a house on Edison Drive -- a short street parallel to the tracks -- and stumbled into the residence of fellow UK student Chad Goetz, who called 911.

Curless went to the scene of the murder first, called for additional officers, and then went to the UK Hospital to interview Dunn.

Dunn had a broken jaw, a broken eye socket and four cuts on her face. She spent five days in the University of Kentucky Hospital, and couldn't attend Maier's funeral.

"She was able to communicate and give me a description of the suspect and tell me what happened," Curless said.

Dunn described the man as Hispanic with rimmed glasses. Curless said a rape kit was administered, and police collected significant DNA evidence.

Police scattered across Lexington, looking for information about the attack and collecting DNA samples from Hispanic males they arrested or who fit the description provided by Dunn.

The attack touched a nerve in the city. At that time Lexington was seeing an influx of migrant workers, as well as an increase in homicides involving Hispanics, said Police Capt. Mark Barnard.

"It was the fear of the unknown," he said.

College students, who frequently hung out near the tracks to watch trains or used the tracks as shortcuts to nearby streets, stayed away.

"I think because Christopher Maier was so well liked and so well respected by his colleagues, peers and everyone he knew, they thought if that could happen to him, it could happen to anyone," Barnard said.

Barnard said the Hispanic community provided police with lots of information and assisted in the investigation.

Linked to 8 murders

But nearly two years passed before the DNA recovered from Dunn was linked to DNA recovered from murder victims in Texas. Resendiz was identified as a suspect, and he turned himself in to authorities in July 1999.

Since then, in addition to the Lexington killing, he has been linked to eight murders in Texas, two each in Illinois and Florida, one in California and one in Georgia from 1986 through June 1999, according to reports from The Associated Press. Most were near railroad tracks.

Dunn, who returned to UK three months after her August attack and graduated with a bachelor's degree in finance in 2000, said she was afraid until Resendiz was found and arrested.

He confessed to more than a dozen killings, including Maier's. In Texas, he was convicted of killing Claudia Benton, a researcher at the Texas Medical Center, who was stabbed, beaten with a statue and raped in her Houston home. He was sentenced to death in that case.

But Dunn -- who testified against Resendiz in the Benton murder trial -- said she could not bring herself to watch her attacker take his last breath.

Resendiz was the 13th inmate executed this year in Texas.

"The scars will never completely go away, but I have learned to live past the trauma and I have focused my energy towards helping others," Dunn said in her statement.

Today, Dunn regularly speaks to audiences about her experience. On June 20, she went to Washington and received a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service. She won the award for developing Holly's House, a child and adult advocacy center for victims of violent crimes in Evansville, Ind.

She said she is trying not to think about the execution because it brings old feelings to the surface. She declined to comment further.

Resendiz was executed after exhausting numerous appeals. His lawyers said he was delusional and thought he was half-angel and half-man, and that he would rise again three days after his death, according to The Associated Press.

Resendiz mumbled a prayer, saying "Lord, forgive me. Lord, forgive me," as he waited for the execution to proceed. He acknowledged the presence of relatives watching through a nearby window, and then turned and looked toward the relatives of victims in another room.

In his final statement, he asked for forgiveness. Resendiz, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:05 p.m. CDT.

He was never prosecuted in Kentucky for killing Maier and attacking Dunn.

Because Texas was the first to capture Resendiz, prosecutors from all over the nation who were investigating crimes linked to him traveled to Texas to help bring a case against him there.

Fayette County Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson said that was the quickest way to get Resendiz behind bars.

"There are crimes for which the death penalty is appropriate, and this is one guy who has earned it," Larson said yesterday.

Today, Maier's murder case will be officially closed for Lexington police, but Barnard said that brings little comfort.

"Here's the thing: Even when we take the evil out of this world, there are still the lasting memories that it has left," Barnard said. "These are victims and families that will have to suffer for the evil he has done for the rest of their lives.

"A lot of times we forget about the families, about the victims. We forget about the people these acts have affected ... and how one man has changed so much for them."

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Resendiz was executed for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton 71/2 years ago.

She was killed during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.

Resendiz was quoted in some news accounts as saying "I deserve what I am getting" before he was executed Tuesday night in Huntsville, Tex.

May our thoughts today be with all the victims, but especially Christopher Maier and his Brothers of Kentucky Beta.

Fraternally,

Mike...