August 11, 2006

Raymont Hopewell, accused of being a serial killer who preyed mostly on the elderly, appears ready to plead guilty today in Baltimore Circuit Court to five murders, four rapes and other crimes, defense and prosecution sources confirmed last night. The plea deal would allow Hopewell, 35, to avoid the death penalty. But it would aim to ensure he is never released from prison by convicting him of at least one count in every crime with which he is charged and sentencing him to one of the longest prison terms any city prosecutor can remember. If he accepts the deal, Hopewell would be sentenced in a hearing next month to four consecutive terms of life without parole and other prison time. He has been behind bars since his arrest in September. Assistant State's Attorney Matthew Fraling and defense attorney Richard C.B. Woods have worked out the detailed arrangement over the past few months. A hearing is scheduled today before Circuit Judge John M. Glynn, who is aware of the negotiations. Hopewell's plea comes at a crucial moment. He is scheduled for trial Sept. 14, and, by law, prosecutors must notify him at least 30 days in advance if they intend to seek the death penalty.

If today's deal falls apart, prosecutors still have time to do that. Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, unlike her counterparts in surrounding counties, rarely seeks the death penalty. However, at least four of the five murders with which Hopewell is charged are capital crimes because they were committed alongside another felony. It is unclear why Hopewell appears willing to plead guilty. Reached yesterday, neither Woods nor Fraling would comment. A court gag order is in place. A review of police documents shows that DNA evidence linking Hopewell to all five killings, three of which involved rape, and the rape of a woman who lived, appears strong. DNA also was recovered at the sites of the other two killings, according to police.

In addition, police documents show, Hopewell confessed to killing 82-year-old Carlton Crawford last summer, the sole known male victim, though he said it was an accident. He also told police he was at the scene of 78-year-old Lydia Wingfield's rape and killing last summer, though he said he did not commit those crimes The crime spree targeted older people - most of whom had some connection to him or his family. His victims would willingly let him in, and, once inside, he seemed to take his time, police documents show. It appears he used a knife to threaten residents.

Some victims were bound at the ankles and wrists, and some were sexually assaulted. Hopewell smoked cigarettes and drank beverages inside the homes. Sometimes he left with a television, other electronics or jewelry, the documents show. Police have said they investigated other deaths that seemed to fit Hopewell's pattern, but he has not been charged in any additional crimes since being indicted in January on the charges tied to today's expected guilty plea.

The first attack with which Hopewell is charged was on a woman he had met through her grandson. Constance Wills, 60, was bound and strangled in February 1999 in her Ellamont Avenue home in West Baltimore. She had been raped. Next came a woman who was friends with and a neighbor of Hopewell's mother.

Sarah Shannon, 88, was bound and strangled Nov. 30, 2002, in her bedroom at Greenhill Apartments on Violet Avenue. She, too, had been raped. More than two years later, a 78-year-old woman was found dead in her home on North Gilmore Street in Sandtown, two blocks from where Hopewell once lived. Sadie Mack's wrists had been bound with shoelaces. Police believe Hopewell strangled her May 27, 2005, with his bare hands.

On Aug. 21, police say Hopewell entered a Greenspring Avenue apartment, in the building where the mother of his children used to live. Hopewell is charged with beating to death Carlton Crawford, 82, who was deaf, and robbing a 31-year-old deaf man who interrupted the attack. Nine days later, Hopewell is said to have knocked on the door of an older woman on Mount Holly Street, a woman he'd known when he lived in that area as a child. Lydia Wingfield, 78, was raped and strangled Aug. 30 in her longtime home.

On Sept. 2, a 63-year-old woman was attacked at knifepoint in her West Baltimore home. Her hands were bound with green ribbons and a tailor's measuring tape. She was left alive. Less than a week later, on Sept. 8, a 55-year-old woman and 61-year-old man were threatened with a knife and attacked in their home on Spaulding Avenue.

Two days later, a 67-year-old woman, 80-year-old man and 76-year-old woman were threatened with a knife and attacked in their Fernhill Avenue home. Hopewell was arrested Sept. 20 and charged with the Crawford killing. Soon after, one of Wingfield's relatives was able to link Hopewell to her death. More connections were made through DNA database hits.

Raymont Hopewell, accused of being a serial killer who preyed mostly on the elderly, appears ready to plead guilty today in Baltimore Circuit Court to five murders, four rapes and other crimes, defense and prosecution sources confirmed last night.

The plea deal would allow Hopewell, 35, to avoid the death penalty. But it would aim to ensure he is never released from prison by convicting him of at least one count in every crime with which he is charged and sentencing him to one of the longest prison terms any city prosecutor can remember.

If he accepts the deal, Hopewell would be sentenced in a hearing next month to four consecutive terms of life without parole and other prison time. He has been behind bars since his arrest in September.

Assistant State's Attorney Matthew Fraling and defense attorney Richard C.B. Woods have worked out the detailed arrangement over the past few months. A hearing is scheduled today before Circuit Judge John M. Glynn, who is aware of the negotiations.

Hopewell's plea comes at a crucial moment. He is scheduled for trial Sept. 14, and, by law, prosecutors must notify him at least 30 days in advance if they intend to seek the death penalty. If today's deal falls apart, prosecutors still have time to do that.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, unlike her counterparts in surrounding counties, rarely seeks the death penalty. However, at least four of the five murders with which Hopewell is charged are capital crimes because they were committed alongside another felony.

It is unclear why Hopewell appears willing to plead guilty. Reached yesterday, neither Woods nor Fraling would comment. A court gag order is in place.

A review of police documents shows that DNA evidence linking Hopewell to all five killings, three of which involved rape, and the rape of a woman who lived, appears strong. DNA also was recovered at the sites of the other two killings, according to police.

In addition, police documents show, Hopewell confessed to killing 82-year-old Carlton Crawford last summer, the sole known male victim, though he said it was an accident. He also told police he was at the scene of 78-year-old Lydia Wingfield's rape and killing last summer, though he said he did not commit those crimes

The crime spree targeted older people - most of whom had some connection to him or his family.

His victims would willingly let him in, and, once inside, he seemed to take his time, police documents show. It appears he used a knife to threaten residents.

Some victims were bound at the ankles and wrists, and some were sexually assaulted. Hopewell smoked cigarettes and drank beverages inside the homes. Sometimes he left with a television, other electronics or jewelry, the documents show.

Police have said they investigated other deaths that seemed to fit Hopewell's pattern, but he has not been charged in any additional crimes since being indicted in January on the charges tied to today's expected guilty plea.

The first attack with which Hopewell is charged was on a woman he had met through her grandson.

Constance Wills, 60, was bound and strangled in February 1999 in her Ellamont Avenue home in West Baltimore. She had been raped.

Next came a woman who was friends with and a neighbor of Hopewell's mother.

Sarah Shannon, 88, was bound and strangled Nov. 30, 2002, in her bedroom at Greenhill Apartments on Violet Avenue. She, too, had been raped.

More than two years later, a 78-year-old woman was found dead in her home on North Gilmore Street in Sandtown, two blocks from where Hopewell once lived.

Sadie Mack's wrists had been bound with shoelaces. Police believe Hopewell strangled her May 27, 2005, with his bare hands.

On Aug. 21, police say Hopewell entered a Greenspring Avenue apartment, in the building where the mother of his children used to live.

Hopewell is charged with beating to death Carlton Crawford, 82, who was deaf, and robbing a 31-year-old deaf man who interrupted the attack.

Nine days later, Hopewell is said to have knocked on the door of an older woman on Mount Holly Street, a woman he'd known when he lived in that area as a child.

Lydia Wingfield, 78, was raped and strangled Aug. 30 in her longtime home.

On Sept. 2, a 63-year-old woman was attacked at knifepoint in her West Baltimore home. Her hands were bound with green ribbons and a tailor's measuring tape. She was left alive.

Less than a week later, on Sept. 8, a 55-year-old woman and 61-year-old man were threatened with a knife and attacked in their home on Spaulding Avenue. Two days later, a 67-year-old woman, 80-year-old man and 76-year-old woman were threatened with a knife and attacked in their Fernhill Avenue home.

Hopewell was arrested Sept. 20 and charged with the Crawford killing. Soon after, one of Wingfield's relatives was able to link Hopewell to her death. More connections were made through DNA database hits.

Prosecutors cannot publicly discuss details on drifter accused of killing 5 A man charged with killing five mostly elderly people since 1999 was ordered held without bail yesterday while, hours later, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge issued a ruling prohibiting prosecutors from making public comments in the high-profile case. Richard Woods, the public defender for Raymont Hopewell, said a gag order was necessary to preserve his client's right to an impartial city jury. The case has generated intense media attention because of the age of the victims and the nature of the crimes.

Hopewell is accused of killing a woman in 1999, another woman in 2002 and two women and a man this year. He also is charged with raping another woman and invading two homes. All of the victims lived on the city's west and northwest sides. Yesterday's motion by the public defender targeted specific comments by Maj. Richard Fahlteich, commander of the Police Department's homicide unit. In an address to reporters Monday, Fahlteich said detectives "have absolutely, positively indisputable evidence that [Hopewell] is the sole suspect."

Woods wrote in his motion that the city state's attorney's office has a responsibility to prevent comments that "taint the jury pool." But so far, the gag order applies only to the state's attorney's office. To prevent police officials from making public comments about the case, the public defender's office would have to file another motion that specifically names the department. Woods declined to comment yesterday.

The gag order, issued by Judge John M. Glynn, came hours after Hopewell appeared in court for a bail hearing. Correctional officers escorted the suspect, wearing a bright-yellow jumpsuit and shackled in chains, into a small courtroom at the Central Booking and Intake Center, where a judge ordered him held without bail on charges involving three of the killings and the rape.

Hopewell, 34, did not say a word during the hearing, which began shortly after 11 a.m. and lasted about five minutes. His public defender at the hearing, Natalie Finegar, did not protest his no-bail status before District Judge Charlotte M. Cooksey. Assistant State's Attorney David Chiu told the judge that Hopewell posed "a continuing and extreme risk to public safety."

Hopewell was the sole defendant ushered into the Central Booking courtroom, where suspects are usually escorted in groups of 10 or more for bail hearings. He was the first defendant to have a bail review yesterday, and correctional officers seated him in the last row, away from reporters, who were told to sit at the front of the courtroom. Hopewell has a history of arrests for burglary, theft, drug possession and other charges.

He was found guilty on a drug-dealing charge last year and given an 18-month sentence. He walked away from a halfway house in Southwest Baltimore where he had been ordered to stay, and state corrections officials issued a warrant for his arrest. But authorities never caught up with him again until his arrest Sept. 21, when he was charged in the death of Carlton Crawford, 82, who had been found beaten and strangled in a Northwest Baltimore apartment complex one month before.

Police said that they then linked the suspect with DNA to the slaying of Lydia R. Wingfield, 78, who was killed Aug. 30, and charged him with that killing last week. Hopewell had been held without bail for those two slayings when police filed a rape charge and three additional charges of murder this week. The rape of a 63-year-old woman occurred Sept. 2. The other victims he is accused of killing are Constance Wills, 60, in 1999; Sarah Shannon, 88, in 2002; and Sadie L. Mack, 78, in May. Authorities said they are continuing to investigate other cases for possible connections to Hopewell. Hopewell's first trial date is scheduled for Feb. 24, according to the city state's attorney's office.

Survivor describes struggle for her life

Intruder told woman: 'I'm here to kill you and your husband' Amelia Gertrude Tabron remembers vividly the words spoken by the man who showed up at her Northwest Baltimore doorstep Sept. 10. "I'm here to kill you and your husband," Tabron, 76, recalled yesterday, sitting in the dining room of the Fernhill Avenue house she has called home for more than three decades. "He opened the door and those were the first words out of his mouth," she said slowly, her speech affected by two recent strokes. "I'll never forget that." They survived -- Amelia Tabron and her husband, Thomas, 80, who suffers from dementia -- enduring a brief struggle in which a butcher knife sliced her left hand.

At least five others -- elderly women and a man, vulnerable, much like them -- did not survive attacks. Raymont Hopewell, 34, has been charged with killing five people ages 60 to 88, some of whom he knew from the various neighborhoods in which he lived. He has a bail hearing scheduled for today. Two of the slayings occurred in 1999 and 2002, but other crimes were more recent -- three killings and two home invasions between May and September -- a chilling trail of beatings and strangulations in the city's west and northwest. "We are very, very grateful that there weren't more victims out there," said Maj. Richard Fahlteich, commander of the homicide unit. But, Fahlteich added, investigators will continue to examine evidence from other cases for possible links.

Yesterday, police added another crime to the list. They charged Hopewell with the Sept. 2 rape of a 63-year-old woman who was attacked at knifepoint in the basement of her West Baltimore home, her hands later tied behind her back with green ribbon and measuring tape. Before the attack, court documents say, the man stood in the woman's kitchen and drank three Diet Cokes and a bottle of apple juice. He left with the woman's television set. Tabron, a devout Baptist, said: "I was one of the blessed ones that made it. It was the grace of God. He was protecting us."

Hopewell didn't know the Tabrons. At least three of the people he is charged with attacking he had apparently known or seen years before. Those people ended up dead. Lydia Wingfield, a 78-year-old woman who police believe was killed by Hopewell on Aug. 30, has a son who recalls growing up with Hopewell in a West Baltimore neighborhood, riding bikes and playing hide-and-seek together.

The suspect told Wingfield he knew her son when he confronted her in the house, court documents say. Neighbors, friends Sarah Shannon, 88, lived across the hall from Hopewell's mother in a Northwest Baltimore apartment building, and family members say the man visited his mother often. And relatives of 60-year-old Constance Wills, who police say was killed in 1999, said Hopewell attended their family gatherings and played with the victim's grandson. "It was sad to know that it was someone we knew," Wills' granddaughter, Lolita Horton, said yesterday. "What caused him to do that? I want know why." The killings began -- as far as police know -- in February 1999. Wills and her relatives had known Hopewell for years. Her family even has a photo of Hopewell, taken during a birthday party. When Wills was killed -- she was found lying on a bed of a second-floor bedroom, dead from asphyxiation -- relatives said they suspected that the killer was someone who knew her.

Police charging documents say that DNA evidence led detectives to their suspect. Hopewell had lived with one of Wills' daughters for a period of several months. But she kicked him out him out when he ran up a phone bill, according to Cecelia Smith, another of Wills' daughters. It has been about a decade since the two families last met. "We called him our cousin," Smith said yesterday, recalling the tight bond she once had with her mother's killer. "He was at my mother's alleged house for birthdays and holidays. It's hard because you wouldn't think that someone you trust with your family would hurt you like that."

Three years after Wills was killed, on Nov. 30, 2002, police found Sarah Shannon strangled in a bedroom at a Northwest Baltimore apartment building. Hopewell's mother -- Carlita Bayton -- lived across the hall from Shannon at the time, and residents at the building said they remember seeing Hopewell hanging around. A careful woman Hopewell never lived there, though he listed the address as a residence at one point. Shannon, who stood 6 feet tall, was careful about her own security, residents of the apartment building said yesterday.

Police told residents there was no sign of forced entry. "She wouldn't have let anyone into her apartment," said Bertha Gray, 82, a close friend of Shannon's who lived on the same floor. "We couldn't understand how someone got in there." For three more years, Hopewell continued to float around Baltimore. He was convicted on a drug-dealing charge and began serving an 18-month sentence in July last year. A month later, he walked away from a halfway house in Southwest Baltimore, where he had been placed to serve his time. A Division of Correction spokeswoman said yesterday that a "retake" warrant was issued for Hopewell's arrest, but authorities didn't catch up with him.

Hopewell's mother died on Dec. 26, 2004, after suffering an intracranial hemorrhage, according to the state medical examiner's office. On May 27 this year, Sadie L. Mack, a 78-year-old great-grandmother and widow who lived alone in the Sandtown neighborhood, was found strangled in her bedroom, with her hands bound.

Three months later, on Aug. 21, Carlton Crawford was found beaten and strangled on the floor of a room in the Louis W. Foxwell Memorial Apartments for the handicapped in Northwest Baltimore. The 82-year-old man, who was hard of hearing, was the sole male fatality linked to the case; court documents say his attacker locked the door to the room. Court documents say that another man was attacked in the complex the same day and that the victim fought back. Hopewell had been on the apartment building's list of people barred from entering the complex, due to an unspecified incident, court documents show.

Crawford once lived two blocks away from another victim, Mack, in the 1980s, according to property records. Police say they haven't found evidence that Hopewell knew Mack before her killing. Nine days after Crawford's slaying, Lydia R. Wingfield was found dead in her home in the 2700 block of Mount Holly St. She had been strangled. A son says he remembers growing up and playing with Hopewell, who went by the nickname "Money."

Police say the attacks continued into September, until investigators were able to link the man to Crawford's death. Hopewell was arrested Sept. 21 and charged in that killing. Last week, he was charged in Wingfield's slaying, followed by charges this week for the killings of Wills, Shannon and Mack. But authorities believe he carried out more attacks in September before he was arrested.

In addition to the Sept. 2 rape, for which he was charged yesterday, Hopewell also faces charges stemming from two home invasions that occurred Sept. 9 and Sept. 10. Knife attack Police have charged him with breaking into a Spaulding Avenue home about 11 p.m. Sept. 9 by cutting a screen in a rear kitchen window. Police said the attacker knocked down a 55-year-old woman, cut her right hand with a knife and demanded $150. He also cut the hand of her companion, a 61-year-old man, before fleeing when he realized the woman had called police, according to court documents.

Tabron was attacked a day later. But the victim said Hopewell had visited three days earlier, Sept. 7. He knocked on the door and was let in by her husband as she prepared for a Labor Day cookout. When she walked into the living room, she saw her husband sitting his usual chair and a stranger sitting in across from him on their couch. "I said, 'Can I help you?'" she recalled. "He said, 'I know your husband. I'm here for dinner.' ... he seemed very nice." About 10 minutes later, she said, her niece came downstairs and asked who the man was. "I said I don't know and she told him to leave," said Tabron. A police report quotes the niece saying, "Get the hell out!" Police said the man returned Sept. 10.

The Tabrons were home alone, and Tabron said she answered a doorbell. The man said the woman's niece had dropped her credit card, and then he forced the door open and uttered the words that froze her in fear. "He said he was going to kill me and my husband," she said. "I said, 'Why are you doing this?' He said he wanted money. I said, 'You want money. I'll give you what you want.'" The man pulled a long butcher knife from a bag, Tabron said. She tried to grab it but he snatched it back, slicing her left hand from the thumb and across the span of her palm. Blood dripped on her carpet. She fell over, or he pushed her -- she can't remember which.

The man scuffled with her husband, who suffered minor cuts on his face and hand, according to the police report. He took some money from Tabron's purse, which was sitting on the dining room table. Her niece then returned and called police after another struggle. Amelia Tabron has since suffered from two strokes and kidney failure that kept her hospitalized for three weeks. "Now, my nerves," she said, pausing, "They're shocked. I'm dealing with ... I'm jittery. My nerves are very bad."

Drifter charged in 5 city killings