Jailed serial killer attempts suicide

January 20, 2006

BY FRANK MAIN AND STEVE PATTERSON Staff Reporters

Serial killer David Maust clung to life Thursday night after trying to hang himself in a Lake County, Ind., jail cell -- where authorities found a suicide note in which he apologized for killing three boys in Hammond, one Chicago boy and one boy in Germany.

"My mother has been hoping for my death since I was a child and it was hard at times to understand why she just didn't drown me in the bathtub when she was giving me a bath because she hated me all her life," Maust said in the seven-page note.

David Pastrick, the coroner in Lake County, said Maust remained on a ventilator late Thursday. Pastrick said his office was contacted at 4:30 p.m. by the Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donation Network.

"We told them, 'Yes, we are honoring the wishes of the family for organ donation,' " he said.

Maust pleaded guilty last year to the 2003 killings of teenagers Michael Dennis, Nicholas James and James Raganyi. Their bodies were entombed in concrete in his Hammond basement. He was sentenced last month to life in prison.

Maust also was convicted in the killing of Jimmy McClister, a teenager, in Germany in 1974 when Maust was a U.S. Army private. And he was convicted of killing Chicago teen Donald Jones in Elgin in 1981.

Cop's toughest case

In his note, Maust described driving 600 miles from Indiana to find a place to kill himself after he murdered the three teenagers in Indiana. He said he stayed at a motel where he intended to write a letter to his victims' families telling them where their sons were "and what I did to them." But Maust said he decided to return to Indiana to "face up to what I did."

But Maust did not turn himself in. Hammond Police Lt. Ron Johnson interviewed Maust after Raganyi's mother called to say her son was hanging out with a 49-year-old man before he ran away.

"The first time I talked to him, he smirked," Johnson said. "Up to then, I thought I was dealing with runaways. I went home and told my wife, 'Something's wrong.' " A search of Maust's basement using a cadaver dog and radar located the bodies.

Johnson, who retired soon after Maust was sentenced, said the case was the toughest he handled in his 33 years on the Hammond Police Department. "I could not sleep good," he said. "I got close to the families and it really tore me up seeing their suffering."

Was preparing for transfer

Johnson interviewed Maust in jail three times since he was sentenced, with a 61/2-hour session last Thursday. Johnson said Maust denied killing anyone else, but Johnson wasn't sure he believed him.

Johnson said he asked Maust about Anthony Majzer, who in a recent interview with the Chicago Sun-Times claimed Maust got him drunk and beat him in the back of the head with a pipe in Maust's Oak Park apartment in 2002 before he moved to Hammond. Majzer escaped. Maust "swore there were no bodies in Oak Park," Johnson said. "Then I asked, 'What were you going to do with Anthony's body if he died?' He said he was going to build up a false cement base in his closet or bedroom -- 16 inches high, 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, and put the body there."

Nicholas James was buried the same way in Maust's Hammond basement, Johnson said.

Maust, 51, was alone in his jail cell Thursday but not on a suicide watch, Lake County sheriff's spokesman Mike Higgins said. At 3 a.m., a correctional officer passed his cell and saw Maust sleeping on his bunk in his tan jail outfit.

At 3:50 a.m., officers told Maust over a speaker that he was being transferred to the custody of the Indiana Department of Corrections and must start packing. At 3:55 a.m., an officer yelled down the hallway, asking if Maust was packing and someone yelled "yes," Higgins said.

"Ten minutes later the same officer came to check and see how he was doing and found him hung by the bed sheet," which was torn and braided, Higgins said. At 6 a.m. Thursday, Maust was to travel to Indianapolis, where he would have been booked, given an inmate number and assigned to a prison.

"There was nothing at his trial or from the psychiatrists to indicate he was suicidal," Higgins said.

A farewell letter from Maust arrived Thursday afternoon at the Merrillville, Ind., law office of Thomas Vanes, Maust's defense attorney.

"That was a tough read," said Vanes, who had visited Maust on Tuesday to see him one last time before he was shipped off to prison.

Solitary confinement denied

Maust handed Vanes his Bible, other books and photographs, along with instructions on giving them to relatives. "He knew he was going to the DOC, he knew he was going to be shipped out," Vanes said. "In retrospect . . . "

Still, Vanes said he saw nothing Tuesday to indicate Maust had any imminent plans to kill himself.

Maust had asked to be placed in solitary confinement with the Indiana Department of Corrections, but was denied. In his suicide note, he referred to "the money the taxpayers will save" with his death, adding that he hoped the money would go to homeless children. He apologized to the families of his victims and asked God to "please let me come home."

"Dying is not my first choice but it's the right thing to do," Maust wrote.

Lynn Smith, mother of Raganyi, said she wasn't sure Maust was really remorseful. "The main thing is that he is not out there to hurt anyone else," said Smith.

Maust's brother, Jeffrey, called the suicide attempt "heartbreaking."

"I could accept him being executed better," Jeffrey Maust said.