Was Spc. Megan Lynn Touma Murdered by Zodiac Copycat?

June 30, 2008

The case officially began on Saturday, June 21, 2008 when a maintenance man at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott, located in the 5000 block of Morganton Road in Fayetteville, North Carolina complained to an assistant manager about a foul odor emanating from the vicinity of Room 143.  When the assistant manager investigated, a "Do Not Disturb" sign hanging on the room's door was observed.  It was approximately 11:25 a.m., and since the registered guest's checkout time of noon was fast approaching after a more than week-long stay, the assistant manager entered the room.  There was no longer any doubt about where the foul odor was coming from.  The body of a young woman, whose demise was not immediately known, was found in the bathtub of the motel room.

According to a Fayetteville police affidavit for a search warrant, the room was registered to Spc. Megan Lynn Touma, 23, an Army dental specialist who was being reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, located a few miles slightly northwest of Fayetteville, from the U.S. Army Dental Clinic in Bamberg, Germany.  She had arrived in Fayetteville on Thursday, June 12, and had checked into the motel a short time later after turning down Army accommodations.  She was last seen on that same day at Fort Bragg at a day's end formation.

Although the police affidavit mentioned that the bed in the room had been pushed a small distance from the wall, according to the Fayetteville Observer, and that the nightstand and lamp next to it were awry, there was no mention of a struggle having occurred there.  Keys belonging to a 2008 Trailblazer that had been rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car were found lying on top of the dresser.  Aside from what was contained in the public information document, including the fact that the cops were looking for items such as weapons, articles of clothing, cellular telephone, digital camera, computer, and so forth, the police played it close to the vest and were not releasing additional information at that time.  They had also instructed motel employees not to talk to the press.

According to Fort Bragg officials, Touma apparently was divorced, but information about her former husband was not released.  It was possible, said an official, that she may have been recently engaged to be married again, but no substantiation of that possibility was released.  Maj. Angela Funaro, public affairs officer for the base's 18th Airborne Corps, told reporters that Touma was born in Seoul, South Korea, but had also resided in Cold Spring, Kentucky.  She had joined the Army in 2003.  Shortly after joining, she had been stationed at Fort Drum, New York, until being sent to Germany in 2005.

By the time that she arrived at Fort Bragg, she was 7 months pregnant.

It appeared that Touma had been dead approximately two days by the time her body was found, and the condition that her body was in due to decomposition made it difficult to immediately determine how she had died.

"I just want to express, on behalf of the entire U.S. Army, our deepest, heartfelt sympathies to the family and loved ones of Spc. Megan Touma," Funaro said.  "We are saddened by her tragic death and the death of her unborn baby…by all accounts, she performed honorably…we want to convey the pride we feel in the job Spc. Megan Touma was doing serving our country."

Among the awards and decorations that Touma had been awarded during her Army career were the Army Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Army Service Ribbon.

At first it seemed like a typical homicide investigation—until a smudged envelope containing a letter confessing to Touma's murder and promising that there would be more to come, arrived at...

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Megan Lynn Touma photo credit: NCwanted.com

Vlado Tanevski-The Hunter Who Became the Hunted

June 24, 2008

In a very strange and bizarre case out of the Balkans, Vlado Tanevski, 56, a married father of two and a respected crime reporter/journalist from Macedonia, was arrested late on Friday, June 20, 2008 at his home in Kicevo after police recovered material evidence that tied the veteran crime writer to homicides that he had investigated and subsequently written about.  Additional evidence related to the cases being investigated was discovered inside his car, and DNA testing determined the presence of his sperm on at least two of his alleged victims.  The police also found a large collection of pornographic material at his home, as well as weapons.

According to a number of European published reports, the murders that Tanevski is accused of committing and then writing about were committed between 2003 and 2008.  His alleged victims were all elderly women between the ages of 56 and 79, and Tanevski resided in the name neighborhood as the victims.  Tanevski has been accused of the rape, torture, and strangulation deaths of the four women.  Police have alleged that he used telephone cable to strangle the women, after which he purportedly wrapped their mutilated bodies in plastic bags after cutting them into pieces and discarding them at several waste disposal locations on the outskirts of this western Macedonian city.  Following each of the murders, Tanevski went to each victim's home and interviewed family members for his written reports, which his editors said "were rich in details."

"He came to my house to get a statement and took (with him) a picture of my sister," said a relative of one of the victims.

No one, at first, including the investigators and prosecutors with whom he kept in close contact, suspected that Tanevski might have been the killer.

"All the victims were found naked, strangled, wrapped with phone cables," said a police spokesperson.  "The women were sexually and physically abused.  For example, the last victim, a 65-year-old female, was found with 13 deep wounds on her skull and multiple rib fractures."

Traces of Tanevski's sperm were found on the bodies of Zhivana Temelkovska, 65, the latest victim who was killed in May 2008, and that of Mitra Siljanovska, 61, who was killed in 2004.  Two people were convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2005 for Siljanovska's murder, and Tanevski—yes, you guessed it—covered their trial and wrote stories about it for his newspaper.  Due to the evidence in that case and Tanevski's arrest for Siljanovska's murder, authorities have indicated that the case will receive an appropriate judicial review to look at the likelihood that two innocent people may have been convicted for a crime that they didn't commit.

Tanevski is also being investigated for the murder of...

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Former Police Sergeant Jeff Pelo Rape Trial Update

June 23, 2008

Former Bloomington, Illinois police sergeant Jeff Pelo, 43, was convicted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 of raping four women and stalking another.  All-in-all, Pelo was found guilty on 35 counts from the various cases in which he'd been charged, including 25 counts of aggravated sexual assault.  Two charges were dropped during the course of the lengthy trial.  Pelo cried when the verdict was read, and his wife ran out of the courtroom in an emotional outburst.  Although she later apologized and said that she feels badly for the victims in this case, Pelo's wife nonetheless stood behind her husband and again professed his innocence and insisted that the authorities had arrested and convicted "the wrong man."

Defense attorney Michael Rosenblat also professed his belief in his client's innocence, and indicated that he would likely appeal.  He said that he might argue that the judge should not have allowed jurors to view the violent pornography, some of which showed unwilling sexual encounters at gunpoint, found on Pelo's home computer. The type of pornography preferred by Pelo was irrelevant, Rosenblat said.  Rosenblat indicated that another point of appeal could lie in the fact that the defense was not allowed to place an expert witness on the stand to provide testimony regarding the reliability of eyewitness identification.

Three of the victims had chosen Pelo's image out of a photo lineup.  Rosenblat had argued, however, that there were discrepancies in the victims' descriptions of their attacker, and that the descriptions had varied widely.  Rosenblat said that the reason the descriptions varied widely was because the attacks had been committed by different people. One woman said that her attacker had been in his early twenties.

One victim testified that she had been...

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