Maust's last words
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Friday, January 20, 2006 12:54 AM CST
David Maust knew when I saw him Tuesday that he was going to kill himself rather than go into the Indiana Department of Correction.I sure didn't know it. If I had seen any signs that he was suicidal, I'd have warned his attorney and the jail because, unlike Maust, I have no desire to have blood -- even the blood of a serial murderer -- on my hands.
Maust had called his lawyer, Tom Vanes, the week before and said he wanted to meet with me because of a column I'd written that he had liked. It was a column about Maust's brother Jeff, who lives in Kansas and who Maust believes is trying to exploit infamy for cash.So, on Tuesday afternoon, Vanes and I spent a couple of hours in the cream-colored interview room at the Lake County Jail. It's a large windowless cell with a pair of red buzzers on its walls to call a guard if the interview is over or if the inmate becomes troublesome.Maust sat on one side of the table, Vanes and I on the other. For about the first 45 minutes, he spoke only to his lawyer, although we'd shaken hands and he told me he enjoyed my column ("It was the best thing I've ever read on this case").He talked of murder with the emotion he might have used to describe how to open a can of soup. It was something he'd done, something he was not proud of, but something he had obviously come to terms with.And he talked of suicide, referring to last week's hanging in the Indiana State Prison of double-murderer Charles Roche Jr., of Hammond."You're not thinking of going that path?" Vanes asked. Mumbling slightly, Maust admitted he was, but he talked in vague terms of "some day," not letting either of us in on the fact that the night before, he'd penned a seven-page goodbye letter.In the letter, he speaks of the remorse he's already expressed to the families of the three Hammond teenagers he killed and entombed in concrete in the basement of his rented home in the 4900 block of Ash Avenue in 2003.He also speaks of his tortured relationship with his mother, who committed Maust at age 9 to the now-defunct Chicago State Hospital, which was ostensibly a mental ward but in reality was the strainer that was Chicago's unwanted kids' last stop before going down the drain.He was put there after his father left the family in 1963, and there have been various reasons given as to why. Maust has been told he was sent there because he reminded his mother of her ex-husband, or because there was not enough food in the house, or because he was incorrigible and had tried to burn his brother in his crib.But no one knows except Eva Maust (now Eva Reyes), his mother, who sticks to that last explanation despite evidence to the contrary. But it was clear to David Maust she never wanted him. In his suicide letter, he wonders why his mother just did not kill him "because she hated me all her life."In the Tuesday interview, as Maust thought of his pending transfer to the Department of Correction, he broke down and began to cry.Genuine? I wondered then, but I don't now."I wish my mother would come and get me," the 52-year-old man said. "But I know she won't. I wish she would come and take me home."Was he suggesting then that he was making one final wish, that Eva Reyes would come up to Indiana from where she now lives in Georgia and retrieve his body?In retrospect, maybe.Ironically, David Maust spoke of how much he despises his brother, whom he accused of trying to make money off the misery of him and his victims. He showed me a letter from the brother, who hoped to get his hands on a manuscript that Maust had written while in jail."That's all he cares about," Maust said.He looked with interest at an aerial photo Vanes had brought. It shows the pond in far northwest Cook County where Maust committed a murder in 1981 when he killed Donald Jones, of Chicago. He tapped a finger on the photo."Right there's where we walked through the trees -- there was a pallet there. It was still there when I went back in 2000," he said. "I sat the beer on the pallet, and I gave him about six beers. He said, 'I don't want to be raped,' and I said, 'Nobody's gonna rape you.' Then I hit him and he fell down, and I stabbed him in the stomach and threw him into the pond."He was still alive, he was up on one elbow. But then he fell down into the water, and I knew he was dead. I never held him under water like they said."Just like that, clear blue eyes emotionless.Maust said as he drove away that day, he saw a police car sitting by a set of railroad tracks a few hundred feet from where he had just murdered Jones.As he talked, he drummed his thin, almost artistic fingers on the tabletop despite the handcuffs. He tapped his shackled feet, the prison sandals rapping on the cement floor. But that was only when he talked of his mother.As we rose to leave, Maust pleaded, "Just five more minutes." It turned into 15 minutes. And as Vanes and I got up again, he begged, "Two more minutes, it's going to be the last time I see you."Separation anxiety. The kind you get when your mother leaves you institutionalized before your 10th birthday.Vanes assured Maust he would visit him in prison and offered to write down his address at the public defender's office. Maust waved him off, knowing that he would never be writing. He began handing Vanes his property, his thesaurus and dictionary, his red-backed Bible, manila envelopes filled with letters and photos.Looking back, it was the act of a man giving away all his possessions, knowing he would shortly no longer be needing them.He also waved off the notion that he had buried anyone in his former home in Oak Park, Ill., although he had admitted to police he had planned to murder his roommate, whom he had struck in the head with a pipe.Instead, he brought the man to a local hospital and even signed the emergency room admitting papers. The man survived, although he did not press charges.Maust admitted to police he had bought hundreds of pounds of concrete in Oak Park, plotting the murder and planning to entomb the victim in a closet in his apartment. When the murder attempt failed, he brought the bags of concrete with him when he moved to Hammond.There, he put the concrete to use, using 4,000 pounds of the substance to cover the bodies of three young neighborhood men whom he lured to his house and killed during the summer of 2003.After the interview concluded, Vanes said he would be in touch to see where Maust was sent and when. Maust nodded, then walked down the corridor back to his cell, chatting with his guard."Hey, how's it going?" he asked the jailer."OK, how about you?""OK."But it wasn't.The opinions are solely those of the writer. Mark Kiesling can be reached at markk@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-4170.
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