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Friday, June 11, 1999

Serial killer may ride the rails of Texas
South-Central Texas town is terrorized by murders
By Pauline Arrillaga
Associated Press

Resendez-Ramirez

WEIMAR - In earlier times, the railway running through this town meant progress. The founder of the feed store, for example, made his fortune after jumping off a freight train to find work.
   Lately, though, the train whistle has become a sinister sound.
   In the past month, three people have been bludgeoned to death in their homes here, apparently by a killer who is riding the rails.
   The crimes were identical - a break-in in the dark, a beating, valuables missing. Behind the houses, yards away, lay railroad tracks.
   They were the first killings in these parts that even the old-timers can recall.
   "The train used to be a good sound," says Charles Herzik, who has lived all his 60 years in Weimar, a ranching community of 2,000 people 80 miles west of Houston. "Now it makes you feel scared."
   Herzik manages the M-G Farm Service Center, a general store offering everything from potting soil to shotguns. In the past few weeks, he has sold more firepower than during all of hunting season.
   "Everybody you talk to is scared," he says. "People have never seen anything like this."
   Investigators say at least two killings in the Houston area and one in Lexington, Ky., may be linked to those here. The victims were all beaten to death, and the crimes occurred near railroad tracks.
   This week law officers from Texas and Kentucky, along with the FBI and railroad officials, formed a task force to intensify the hunt for the man suspected in all six slayings: 39-year-old Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, a drifter from Mexico with a record of weapons and burglary charges.
   "We're looking for a fugitive that possibly does not have any set roots in one location," says Don Clark, head of the FBI's Houston office. "That's the biggest thing that we know right now, is that this person is probably in a constant transient status."
   Early slayings
   The suspect first was linked to the Dec. 17, 1998, slaying of Dr. Claudia Benton at her home in West University Place, a well-to-do community of professionals that is surrounded by the city of Houston. The 39-year-old physician had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and beaten.
   Police say Resendez-Ramirez's fingerprints were found inside her home, which is about 100 yards from the railroad tracks.
   DNA from the crime scene has been linked to evidence in the slayings of the Rev. Norman "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and his wife, Karen, 47, in the parsonage behind Weimar United Church of Christ. They were beaten to death with a sledgehammer and were found May 2 after they failed to show up for Sunday services. The railroad tracks run behind the garden where Karen Sirnic grew sunflowers and vegetables.
   The Sirnics' pickup truck and Claudia Benton's vehicle were later found abandoned in San Antonio.
   Latest incidents
   Then last Friday, only days after the yellow police tape had been removed from the Sirnics' home, 73-year-old Josephine Konvicka was found beaten to death in the tiny farmhouse where she had lived all her life. It is three miles from the parsonage and, again, only yards from the tracks.
   Police say Resendez-Ramirez's fingerprints were found inside.
   The next day, the body of 26-year-old Noemi Dominguez was found in her Houston home. She died of a blow to the head, and her car had been stolen. Resendez-Ramirez is considered the prime suspect.
   He also is being sought for questioning in the 1997 slaying of Christopher Maier, 21, a University of Kentucky student who was struck in the back of the head as he and his girlfriend took a shortcut along some tracks in Lexington on their way from one party to another.
   'Major-league fear'
   A $60,000 reward has been posted for information leading to Resendez-Ramirez's arrest.
   "It's a major-league fear out here," says Darius Brisco, . Konvicka's son-in-law. "I don't think you can buy a handgun out here. The reality is the ugliness of the big city has struck rural America."
   The freight railroads have stepped up security, watching for drifters hopping trains.
   The task force was in action Thursday, stopping and searching freight trains rolling through the town of Flatonia, about 75 miles east of San Antonio. Flatonia is a major intersection of east-west and north-south rails.
   Weimar Mayor Bennie Kosler, who used to brag about his community's hospitality, now urges townspeople to get home before dark, lock the doors and windows they used to leave open and turn on all their lights. His 19-year-old granddaughter has taken to sleeping in her parents' bedroom.
   "Weimar was always known as a nice little friendly town, where your neighbor knows more about you than you know about yourself. There weren't any robberies, there wasn't any crime," Kosler says. "This animal has taken that privilege away from us, and that was a very good feeling at one time."

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