Maust attempts death
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Friday, January 20, 2006 1:19 AM CST
CROWN POINT | As serial killer David Maust lay in critical condition at St. Anthony Medical Center on Thursday, questions arose about who had the legal right to disconnect him from life support.Maust tried to commit suicide Thursday.
Just after 4 a.m., Lake County Jail guards found Maust, 51, hanging by a bed sheet he had braided into a rope. Minutes before, guards had told Maust to pack his things for the trip to the Department of Correction to begin serving three consecutive life sentences without parole.Maust had been convicted of killing Michael Dennis, 13, James Raganyi, 16, and Nicholas James, 19, all of Hammond.In a note found in his cell, Maust expressed remorse for killing the teens, who were found buried in the basement of his Ash Avenue home in December 2003.And, as he has before, Maust longed for the mother who left him at a mental institution when he was 9.Eva Reyes, who now lives in Macon, Ga., told The Times she hasn't spoken to her son in years. She said Thursday no one from the medical center talked to her, and when she tried to call them, "They didn't seem to know anything."Jeffrey Maust, David's brother, said he understood his brother was suffering from a broken neck and was brain dead. He didn't want his mother to have to make a decision about ending life support."I'd rather do that," said Jeffrey Maust, from Kansas City. "I've called, but they said they can't talk to me because they can't verify I'm who I say I am."In a jail interview, David Maust said his younger brother -- who has been trying to hawk a book about their life and who at one time worked with a Hammond entrepreneur on a movie -- doesn't know a thing about him.Calls to David Maust's father, George Edward Maust, in Fredericksburg, Va., weren't returned.Maust's public defender, Thomas Vanes, said he didn't think Maust named a medical power of attorney, so in the event he can't speak for himself, decisions fall to his next of kin -- his mother or father.Raganyi's mother, Lynn Smith, said whatever happens to Maust, it wouldn't bring back her son."It makes no difference to me what happens to him," Smith said.Her daughter, Melanie Raganyi Reyes, 27, who is no relation to Eva Reyes, said Maust took the coward's way out."Hopefully, he's lying in that hospital bed suffering," she said. "He's not crazy. He planned everything. And if he thinks he's going to go to heaven, he should remember that God doesn't like ugly."In addition to the Hammond killings, Maust had confessed to attacking many and killing two others -- James McClister, 13, in 1974 while Maust was in the Army stationed in Germany, and Donald Jones, 15, of Chicago, in 1981.Upon hearing of Maust's hanging, the mother of a teen he attacked in Galveston, Texas, in 1981, said she hated Maust for a long time. Now living in Louisiana, Bettye Anderson said when she realized she couldn't live with the hate, she forgave Maust."I hope he has peace," Anderson said.In his suicide note, Maust wrote that after Hammond police visited him on Sept. 19, 2003, to question him about the three missing teens, he left town."I wasn't running to keep from being punished because I always knew I should be destroyed and killed like they sometimes do to a wild animal that escapes from confinement," Maust wrote.He was looking for a place to commit suicide and yet "wanted to see some more of the beautiful scenery in America before I died because God did an excellent job in creating the country we live in."On that trip, Maust decided to mail a letter to his victims' parents to let them know where to find their bodies, which were buried in the basement of his rented Hammond home on Ash Avenue.But he changed his mind. "I had to go back and face up to what I did because the magnitude in (sic) the pain of what I caused was enormous and those families who cared and loved their sons so very much would need some answers," he wrote.Vanes, who brokered the deal that allowed Maust to avoid trial by pleading guilty to three murders and being sentenced to three life sentences without parole, saw Maust on Tuesday.During that visit, Maust made veiled references to taking his own life, references he's made before. Maust also gave Vanes many of his personal items because he didn't want to take them to prison, Vanes said."Under the circumstances, no one knew him better than me, and I saw no hint (of suicide). If I had, I certainly would have said something," Vanes said. "I think he was determined to die on his own terms. And if he couldn't get the death penalty, this was his second choice."
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