Former DA Castor recalls ‘evil’ two-time killer

By Carl Hessler Jr. - The Times Herald

Saturday, May 30, 2009

COURTHOUSE — Former prosecutor Bruce L. Castor Jr. saw true “evil” when he faced twice-convicted killer Thomas W. Hawkins Jr. in court.

“He is the most calculating, evil criminal that I have encountered in 23 years in law enforcement,” said Castor, who worked as a Montgomery County prosecutor from 1985 to 2008. “I would characterize Hawkins as the most evil man I ever encountered in all that time, including some really notorious and heinous killers in the county’s history.”

District attorney from 1999 to 2008, Castor prosecuted and won death sentences against Hawkins two times for the 1989 West Pottsgrove murder of 14-year-old Andrea Thomas, who was Hawkins’ niece.

Castor, of Lower Salford, also tried to link Hawkins to the May 22, 1989, disappearance of Dawn Marie Mozino, a 23-year-old learning disabled Radnor woman with whom Hawkins once worked. In 1994, Castor tried to use the death penalty as leverage to get Hawkins to give up information about Mozino’s disappearance.

“And he has steadfastly refused to do so,” Castor, now a county commissioner, said recently as he reflected on Hawkins and the 20-year anniversary of Mozino’s disappearance.

“Over time, I became convinced that Hawkins was responsible for her disappearance and probably her murder, and I wanted to be able to bring some peace of mind to the Mozino family and I’m disappointed I was unable to,” Castor said. “The most disappointing aspect of the Hawkins series of investigations and prosecutions is that we did not bring in the disappearance of Dawn Mozino.”

Even though he’s no longer a prosecutor, nothing nags at Castor more than unsolved cases. He will never forget Mozino’s disappearance and the link he tried to make to the “evil” man he came to know so well.

“Even with all the successes, the ones you remember are the ones that you failed and this is one of them. Every time I hear Dawn Mozino’s name, my mind immediately flashes to a photograph of her wearing her Special Olympics medals, with her curly hair, smiling, that was in all the papers,” Castor recalled.

“It’s one of those cases that if they ever did get a lead, if they could ever find her body and tie it to Hawkins, and if the district attorney wanted me to I would come back and prosecute it myself because I think Hawkins is a very dangerous, evil man and I want the Mozino family to have the peace of mind of knowing what happened to Dawn,” Castor added.

Hawkins, now 45, has been convicted of two murders in his lifetime.

In 1981, Hawkins, then 16, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the 1980 strangulation death of Karen Stubbs, 15, of Reading. Stubbs was murdered in a dormitory of a private school in Douglass (Berks), strangled, sexually assaulted and stabbed in the neck with a paint scraper. Hawkins served five years of a six- to 15-year sentence before being paroled in 1986.

Thomas was killed three years later.

Thomas’ body was discovered on June 4, 1989, in a bed on the second floor of the 455 Old Reading Pike home of her grandparents, Elmira and Thomas Hawkins Sr., who are Hawkins’ parents. Detectives said the girl was sexually assaulted, strangled with a cord and stabbed in the neck and back with a fork.

Hawkins initially was convicted of killing Thomas and sentenced to die after an August 1990 trial. However, the state Supreme Court overturned that conviction on a technicality and ordered a retrial.

Castor retried Hawkins in 1994, again resulting in a first-degree murder conviction and a death sentence.

“He’s very intelligent. Hawkins tests as a very intelligent man, would have had the whole world open to him had he decided not to be a criminal,” said Castor.

“He engaged in a very elaborate killing in Berks and cover-up there. Then, in our case, it was exceedingly methodical the way he covered up his crime, began to try to create alibis for himself and set the crime scene up to look like a burglary,” Castor recalled. “He went to great lengths to cover his tracks in order to be able to engage a second time in a killing of a young girl.”

Testimony revealed Hawkins was a collector of detective magazines and that he highlighted passages detailing murder techniques.

Hawkins, who is now on death row at the state prison in Graterford, also was named a suspect in Mozino’s disappearance but has not been charged in connection with the incident. Mozino disappeared about two weeks before Andrea Thomas was found murdered.

Hawkins once worked with Mozino at Paoli Hospital and had asked for Mozino’s help in getting a job at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Testimony previously revealed Mozino was last seen alive with Hawkins at a bus stop in Lower Merion on the day she disappeared.

“It is highly improbable that it’s an accident that the last person seen with Dawn was Hawkins, who two weeks later would murder Andrea Thomas,” Castor said.

During the 1994 trial, Castor offered Hawkins a deal - reveal anything he knew about the Mozino case and avoid the death penalty for Thomas’ killing.  Hawkins rejected the offer.

In 2002, when a governor signed Hawkins’ death warrant, Castor again publicly urged Hawkins to divulge information about Mozino to move himself off death row.

“When the governor signed the death warrant I thought that was an opportunity. I have long thought that the only time Hawkins will divulge the necessary information is when he’s about to actually get executed,” Castor said.

Hawkins later won a stay of his execution when he filed notice of his federal appeals.

SEX: M RACE: B TYPE: T MOTIVE: PC-nonspecific

MO: Rape-slayer of girlfriend (1980) and other women (1989).

DISPOSITION: Six to 15 years as juvenile, 1980; condemned, 1990.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers