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IA Cops: "White Knuckle Ride" Catching Killer of Seven

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Ken [NY]

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Sep 1, 2001, 12:36:05 PM9/1/01

IA Cops: "White Knuckle Ride" Catching Killer of Seven

Sioux City, Iowa - 9/1/2001

The fear that enveloped Sioux City after the bodies of a woman, her
five children and a businessman were found Thursday evening ended
Friday with the arrest of a 23-year-old man.

The community now must wait while investigators try to unravel the
reasons behind the deaths - Iowa's second-worst mass killing of the
past 100 years.

Adam Matthew Moss, a lifelong Sioux City resident with a history of
minor arrests, was apprehended just before noon without a struggle
after eluding 50 police officers since Thursday night. Police said he
would be charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, which
carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison if he is found guilty.

The manhunt, which started with the discovery of the seven bodies,
kept neighbors on edge and children locked inside their schools.

The victims were identified as:

* Leticia Aguilar, 31, who supported her children on her wages from
Smurfit-Stone Container Co., a cardboard-box manufacturing company.

* Aguilar's five children: Claudia, 12; Zach, 11; Larry, 9, and Lisa,
almost 7, all with the last name Saldana, and Michael Aguilar, 6.

* Ronald Earl Fish, 58, president of Ben Fish & Sons, a Sioux City
tire and auto service station.

The victims, all found at their homes, are believed to have been
killed Tuesday and Wednesday. Authorities would not say how they died.
Autopsy results were slowed, officials said, because the bodies of
Aguilar and her children had decomposed.

The murder scenes were so gruesome that Sioux City police Chief Joe
Frisbie lost his composure briefly when he announced Moss' capture at
midday Friday. He said he is glad that most of his officers did not
view the carnage.

"This is one of the most heinous and brutal homicides I've ever
witnessed," said Frisbie, who investigated the city's last mass
killing, a triple murder 26 years ago in the city's Morningside
neighborhood.

Police said Moss stands as the only link between Aguilar and Fish, who
apparently did not know each other. Moss is not the father of any of
Aguilar's children, Frisbie said, but he was her boyfriend.

That still leaves unanswered the question of motive. Frisbie would not
speculate on why Moss allegedly killed the seven. The police chief
said he had been advised not to by Woodbury County Attorney Tom
Mullin.

"When you start talking about the death of five innocent children, I
can't give you any rationale for this at all," Frisbie said. "I think
it lacks reason. What can you say about something like that?"

The murder scenes were discovered within minutes of each other
Thursday evening, but the neighborhoods and the people killed could
not be more different.

Leticia Aguilar was a single mother who raised her children in a
rented, two-story white house at 311 West St., a neighborhood filled
with narrow roads and older homes in various states of disrepair.
Neighbors said the children, who loved going to church, played outside
on skateboards and bicycles on the overgrown, fenced-in lawn.

Fish lived alone at 3815 Sylvian Way, in northwest Sioux City's
affluent country club neighborhood. He was the heir to the tire
business started by his grandfather, Ben, and passed on to him by his
father, Louis.

Aguilar and her five children probably were slain sometime Tuesday,
Frisbie said, the same day Sioux City school officials said that they
noticed the children were absent. Fish probably was killed Wednesday,
the chief said.

Frisbie said investigators believe they have recovered the murder
weapon, but he would not describe the weapon nor say whether the same
instrument was used to kill all seven victims. He referred to
traumatic wounds, the kind that might be caused in a beating, and at
one point said: "You don't need a gun to cause a lot of damage."

The bodies of the mother and her children were identified by Leticia
Aguilar's sister, Frisbie said.

Investigators withheld their theories on the cause of death until
forensic pathologists have finished the autopsies, which began Friday
morning. Chief Deputy State Medical Examiner Dennis Kline and Woodbury
County Medical Examiner Tom Carroll worked through the day performing
the autopsies.

A truant officer from the Sioux City school district visited Aguilar's
West Street home Tuesday and saw a sign pasted to the door that said
"on vacation," school officials said.

"We were getting concerned, just because of the students not being
here," said Michael Rogers, principal of West Middle School.

The note on the door allayed that concern, he said. Those worries
turned to grief - then fear - with the discovery of the bodies
Thursday evening. At Everett Elementary School, near the Aguilar home,
officials locked the building Friday morning, posted monitors at the
door and would not allow students to play outside at recess. Grief
counselors were dispatched to area schools.

Frisbie said Moss and Aguilar met last year working the 3-to-11 p.m.
shift at the Smurfit-Stone plant on the west side of Sioux City.

Myrtle Cress, 89, Aguilar's next-door neighbor, said Moss had been
living with Aguilar for a couple of months. She said Moss recently
helped her fix her telephone when it stopped working and told her that
if she needed anything to let him know.

Donna Stabile, the children's baby sitter, said she did not know Moss
well.

"He was always polite," Stabile said. "The kids liked him. She liked
him. But I had my suspicions. He was a nice enough guy, but I didn't
see them together a lot."

Another of Aguilar's neighbors, Perri Harper, said Moss had gone to
the woman across the street and asked for keys to the house a few days
ago, saying he had been locked out.

Stabile found the bodies of Agui- lar and her children Thursday
afternoon.

She said she had a key to Aguilar's back door and went to check on the
family after the children failed to show up. "When I walked in, the
first thing I noticed was that their 32-inch TV was missing," Stabile
said.

Then she went upstairs.

"I saw two kids lying face down, and there was a lot of blood," she
said. "I could barely see them because the place was such a mess."

She said she could not bring herself to look further and called
police.

An employee found Fish dead in the doorway of his home Thursday
evening when he went to look for Fish, who had failed to show up for
work that day.

Frisbie said police have "documented evidence" that Moss and Fish had
known each other for at least five years. He would not elaborate on
what he described as a personal relationship they had.

Police found Fish's car and suspected Moss was the link between the
two. Moss was allegedly sighted several times during the night
Thursday on the city's near-west side.

A hotel guest saw a man in a black Monte Carlo at the Economy Inn but
thought nothing of it until police knocked on her door and told her
they were looking for the man she had seen.

Police said Moss was spotted on foot within several blocks of Agui-
lar's house and the schools the children attended about 7:30 a.m.
Friday. Police arrested him shortly before noon at a storage building
on West Seventh Street after staking out the alley between a tavern
and a small factory about four blocks from Fish's business.

Moss did not resist when he was taken into custody, authorities said.

About 50 of Sioux City's 125 police officers were scouring west-side
neighborhoods for Moss. At one point, a frustrated Frisbie reported:
"It seems like we've been about a half-hour behind him all night."

Police earlier had issued a warrant charging Moss with the theft of
Fish's car. Moss was scheduled to appear in court on that charge at 10
a.m. today.

"Obviously we've been in the midst of a very dangerous situation,"
Frisbie said. "There has been a fear for our wives and our families.

"I feel extremely relieved we have this person in custody. There's no
doubt in my mind he's the right guy," the chief said with tears in his
eyes. "It's been a white-knuckle ride all night."

DES MOINES REGISTER
Photo: The fear that enveloped Sioux City after the bodies of a woman,
her five children and a businessman were found Thursday evening ended
Friday with the arrest of a 23-year-old man.