Nov 18, 2004 10:00 pm US/Central
Military Injustice: Part 2
(CBS 2)
CHICAGO
Did the U.S. military fail to stop a suspected serial killer? CBS 2 investigative reporter Dave Savini looks at the story of a young boy who made friends with the wrong soldier, an Army private who is suspected of being a child killer.
"He was a rascal, oh God, was he a rascal,” said Chris Harding, describing her 13-year-old son, Jimmy. “He had bright red hair and anytime I would see a kid with red hair that looked like him I started to cry."
The nightmares Harding has about her Jimmy are never ending.
"I had a dream that Jimmy was in the woods calling out to me mommy, mommy I'm hurt, and I woke up screaming," she said.
You may not be familiar with Jimmy's disappearance, but you've most likely heard of the last person to see Jimmy alive -- a former U.S. Army private named David Edward Maust.
Police say Maust is a serial killer who murders young boys and then buries them. The native Chicagoan is currently charged in the 2003 murders of three Hammond, Indiana teens.
It's the 30th anniversary of Jimmy’s death, but the pain is still fresh for Harding. She cries for a son she loved and vents hatred for Maust.
"If I had a say today, I wish him dead, nothing but dead," Harding said.
She believes the U.S. military might have been able to stop Maust from what he did to her son and others.
"The military court system is terrible," Harding said.
The year was 1974. Maust was a private in the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. Chris and her son, Jimmy, also lived on base. One day Maust stole a moped and took Jimmy for a ride.
Harding reads from what police say is Maust's diary: "It says here I hit Jimmy in the face maybe 30 times.”
"When I started hitting him I could not stop,” the diary says.
It is a chilling 87-page account of his brutal attacks on young men made public by authorities after the Hammond killings. According to the diary, Jimmy was his first kill.
"And after about 10 feet, Jimmy died in my arms," the diary says.
He details how he murdered Jimmy and buried him: "So I closed his eyes and I laid him by some railroad track, and I put leaves over to hide his body and then I left the woods."
Jimmy's mom, now living in Florida, says her son should have been Maust's final victim had the military court system done its job.
“The sentence he got was ridiculous," Harding said.
Maust received a four-year sentence on a manslaughter charge because he claimed Jimmy's death was an accident.
"If it was an accident like Maust claimed, why would he bury him in the dirt and not tell anybody?" Harding said.
This wasn't Mausts first run in with military police. Records uncovered by our CBS 2 investigation show prior to Jimmy's death, Maust was accused of threatening to kill another young boy and allegedly beat him with a pool cue stick. But the military police never arrested Maust.
"To me it's not justifiable," Harding said.
Maust's diary details other attacks on teens while he was in the Army. The choking of one boy with a rope and stabbing of another, and how military police questioned him once but let him go with a warning.
"I feel sorry for the people who went to the military to get justice and didn't get the justice they wanted," Harding said.
She believes had Maust been arrested on these other offenses, or at least given a longer sentence for murdering Jimmy, other boys would still be alive, like 13-year-old Chicagoan Donald Jones, who was killed by Maust seven years after Jimmy's death.
Last year’s Hammond murders of 13-year-old Michael Dennis, 16-year-old James Raganyi, and 19-year-old Nick James, who were found buried in concrete under Maust's home would never have happened.
"Your never going to forget it as long as you live,” Harding said.
According to the Maust diary, after he heard he was only getting four years for killing Jimmy, he wrote: "I almost cried when I got four years, but I knew I should have gotten a lot of years in prison."
Jimmy's mother wishes civilian prosecutors, and not the military, tried the case. A Department of Defense spokesman says cases are handled differently today.
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