It was a cross-country crime rampage that began in rural Ohio one week ago with a stolen car, a missing woman and two male suspects. One was an ex-convict fresh out of prison, a man found guilty both of theft and of once biting his own baby so hard that he drew blood. The other was a gangly, troubled 16-year-old described as "a follower," not a violent criminal, by his hometown police chief.
The rampage turned murderous three times over in Missouri and Oklahoma, where the victims' cars were stolen after automobiles taken in previous crimes were abandoned. And it ended this morning, after a nationwide manhunt, with arrests in a dusty culvert at the edge of the mountains around Santa Fe.
But even after serving Federal warrants to 22-year-old Lewis E. Gilbert 2d and Eric A. Elliott, 16, the authorities in Ohio and F.B.I. officials remained puzzled over one peculiar psychological element, uncertain whether the teen-ager had been a willing accomplice, a terrified hostage or something in between.
These authorities said their first priority today was to try to find the missing Ohio woman, 79-year-old Ruth Lucille Loader, who, if still alive, might be able to shed some light on Eric Elliott's motivations. Asleep in a Ditch
The two men were apprehended as they lay in a ditch outside Santa Fe about 9:40 A.M., said Chief John Denko of the New Mexico state police.
Although they had two rifles, a shotgun and a handgun with them, "nothing bad happened" at the arrest scene, said Chief Denko, apparently because the two were taken by surprise as they slept. The police had received two telephone tips about suspicious people in the area.
The suspects were taken to Albuquerque and late this afternoon were charged before a United States magistrate, Lorenzo Garcia, with flight from prosecution. The authorities indicated that the two suspects would soon be extradited to Ohio.
Mr. Gilbert was released from state prison in Ohio on Aug. 15 after serving 11 months of an 18-month sentence for stealing a boat and breaking and entering. Although he had also been convicted of child endangering for a November 1992 incident in which he shook and bit his 3 1/2-month-old son, he was not assigned additional time and received "good time" credit for his behavior in prison, reducing his sentence for the other crimes, said Joe Andrews, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
When he left prison, the 6-foot-4-inch Mr. Gilbert returned almost immediately to Newcomerstown, Ohio, the home of his estranged wife and a place where he was well known to the local authorities.
"With the dealings we've had with him in the past, I consider him a violent person," said the Newcomerstown Police Chief, James Friel. But that was not true of Mr. Elliott, the teen-ager with whom Mr. Gilbert apparently crossed paths shortly after his release.
"Eric seemed like a clean-cut kid," recalled Chief Friel, who said the teen-ager had been working recently as a clerk in the local grocery. "But Eric is the type of individual I would classify as a follower." 'A Typical Teen'
That tendency apparently led Mr. Elliott to be involved in a break-in at the Cy Young Lanes, a local bowling alley, in late July. That brush with the law was his first. About $30 in change from vending machines and some liquor were taken, the owner, Leman Clark, said today in a telephone interview.
"I thought he was a typical teen," Mr. Clark said, recalling his impressions of Mr. Elliott before the break-in. "I didn't think he was a bad kid."
Chief Friel said Eric had been frightened almost to tears by his arrest and pending trial. "He was worried about it constantly, calling the officer to find out what was going on," Chief Friel said. "I don't know if meeting Gilbert pushed him over the edge or what."
Last week Mr. Elliott was spotted with Mr. Gilbert in a 1989 Buick Skylark belonging to the 79-year-old Mrs. Loader, who had been at her farmhouse in Port Washington, Ohio, a few miles from Newcomerstown, recovering from cancer surgery. She is still missing, and the authorities say they fear she was killed for her car.
The Skylark automobile turned up last Thursday more than 600 miles away in Fulton, Mo., stuck in the mud. A few miles from where it was abandoned, the authorities found the bodies of 86-year-old William Brewer and his wife, Flossie, 76, in their home. They had been robbed, and each had been shot three times in the head. Searching for Motive
And their car, a 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass, was missing. On Sunday, it turned up, also abandoned, on the shore of Lake Stanley Draper, near Oklahoma City. A few hundred feet away, the police found the body of Roxie Ruddel, 37, a security guard at the lake marina. She had been shot to death, and her 1991 Dodge pickup truck was missing. In New Mexico this morning, the state police said, they found an abandoned Dodge truck with Oklahoma license plates a few miles from the culvert where Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Elliott were apprehended, although the authorities have not positively identified it as the one belonging to Ms. Ruddel.
Now the authorities are trying to piece together the crimes, search for a motive. In no case, the authorities said, did the assailants make off with more than $40 in cash.
Officials are also trying to figure out just how willing and active a role Mr. Elliott may have played. His father, Robert, of Cleveland, insisted in recent days that Mr. Elliott was not prone to violence and must have been coerced somehow by Mr. Gilbert.
"Maybe he is in fear to where he thinks he has to go along with what is happening," the father told The Daily Oklahoman over the weekend. "The more I hear reports on this fellow he's supposed to be with, the more concerned I get."
An F.B.I. special agent in Cleveland, Robert Hawk, said, "I'm unaware of any hostage situation, but that's something that will be looked at by us and local authorities."
The intrigue over the case was also compounded by the fact that it appeared to offer eerie overtones of life imitating the movies. As the pair and made their way west, they became the object of widespread news reports, and their violent, seemingly pointless mission was compared to the one depicted in "Natural Born Killers," the recently released Oliver Stone film about the murderous escapades of two deranged lovers.
Still, despite the similarities, the police cautioned today that no evidence had turned up that either suspect had been motivated by the movie or had even seen it.
In Newcomerstown, a rural community of about 12,000 people in south central Ohio, homicide has simply not been a fact of life. "I can't remember when they had a murder down there," said the Tuscarawas County Sheriff, Harold McKimmie. "I've been in office 12 years, and we've never had a murder there in that section of the county."
Source: New York Times
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