NY cops probe fatal suburban beatings

[UPI]

EASTCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Police Friday were investigating
the brutal beating deaths of an eccentric elderly man, his home health
care aide and his dog in a quiet Westchester County town north of New
York City.
A friend of Archibald Harris, 80, discovered the gruesome crime
Thursday, when he opened the unlocked front door to Harris's ranch-style
home to find walls spattered with blood, said Eastchester police chief
David Speidell.
Police responding to the house at the end of a cul-de-sac in the
well-to-do town found Harris, who suffered from a degenerative muscle
disease, bludgeoned to death in one room, and the unidentified nurse in
another.
Speidell said there had been of spate of burglaries in the town, but
investigators found nothing missing from the home, and didn't believe
the killings were related.
Harris had a reputation as a local crank, and was facing sex
harassment and menacing charges from two former health care workers,
said Speidell.
``Mr. Harris was eccentric; eccentric is the word for it,'' said
Speidell. ``He wanted things done his way and he didn't want to veer any
which way was done by anybody else.... He was a difficult man. He was
not a big man, but he always had his cane.''
Speidell did not say if he believed the charges facing Harris, or his
reputation, were considered motives for the slayings.