Man in motel clerk's disappearance linked to another case in '91
Jason...@virgin.net
Man in motel clerk's disappearance linked to another case in '91
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 1999 Houston Chronicle
SHENANDOAH -- The suspect in the disappearance of an 18-year-old motel
clerk here was the target of an FBI manhunt in 1991 after abducting a
Fort Worth woman, an FBI spokesman said Friday.
Agents began searching for William Ray Mathews of Conroe eight years ago
after he was accused of abducting Janie Burrows, then 45, from a dry
cleaners and taking her to St. Louis, Mo., said John Gulley, spokesman
for the FBI's St. Louis office.
Mathews, 38, is in the Montgomery County Jail and charged with
kidnapping 21-year-old Traci Vickery of Huntsville. She was taken at
gunpoint in February from the mobile-home sales office where she worked
on Interstate 45 near Willis, authorities say.
Mathews, who has twice been declared insane and escaped five times from
a mental institution, became a suspect in the Jan. 17 disappearance of
Wanda May Pitts after investigators noticed similarities between that
case and the Vickery kidnapping.
Pitts vanished from what was then the Lodge Motel, where she worked on
Interstate 45 in Shenandoah, about 25 miles south of where Vickery was
kidnapped. Witnesses described a long-haired man they saw at the motel
who resembled Mathews.
Mathews abducted Burrows after his March 20, 1991, escape from the
Colorado State Mental Institution, where he had been committed after
being ruled not guilty by reason of insanity on an aggravated robbery
charge, a spokeswoman for the facility said.
Burrows told investigators she was working at a dry cleaners in Fort
Worth on the morning of March 25, 1991, when a man entered and asked to
use the telephone. He then forced her into her car at gunpoint and drove
her to a motel near St. Louis, Mo., she said.
Burrows said she escaped by locking the door after the man left the
motel room the next morning. She called police, but her abductor had
fled in her car by the time FBI agents arrived.
Mathews was arrested that day in Illinois by a police officer from
Fairview Heights, about 10 miles east of St. Louis, while fleeing in a
stolen pickup truck from the scene of a robbery, police said. They said
he had entered an office where a woman worked alone, locked her in a
bathroom and taken her purse and keys.
Danny Price, assistant Tarrant County district attorney, said Mathews
was charged with aggravated kidnapping in the Burrows abduction, but the
charge was dismissed. Records do not explain the dismissal, but Fort
Worth police Lt. Rick Clark said it likely was because Mathews was
declared insane in the Illinois case.
An Illinois judge ruled him not guilty by reason of insanity on charges
of burglary, robbery and auto theft. Mathews was returned to the
Colorado mental institution but escaped again last Dec. 2.
Pitts disappeared the following month, and Vickery was abducted in
February. Vickery escaped by leaping from a pickup truck and suffered
minor injuries, police said.
Mathews is scheduled for trial Jan. 18 on aggravated kidnapping charges
in the Vickery case. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five
years to life in prison and a $10,000 fine.
State District Judge Mike Mayes has ordered a psychiatric evaluation to
determine whether Mathews is competent to stand trial.
Pitts was last seen at the Lodge Motel in January sometime between 5:04
p.m. -- when a male guest checked in -- and 5:30 p.m., when the same man
returned to the lobby and could not find anyone, police said.
Police reported that Pitts had been seen in the lobby talking with a man
who asked about prices but did not check in. About $150 was missing from
the cash register, investigators said.
Pitts' personal possessions were still in the room where she lived, and
her pager and about $80 cash were found in the lobby, officers said.
Shenandoah Police Chief John Chancellor asked that anyone with
information about the case call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-392-STOP. Crime
Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information.