02-02-2011, 08:56 AM
this is truly bizarre. drug dealers don't kill like this, and garden-variety burglars don't usually kill at all. a burglary thinking the parents were away? OK, maybe, but it seems the killer(s) knocked on door. i don't see how one person could have overpowered the 2 victims and done this.
and there is a contradiction here, the mom says a friend on phone heard her son answer the door and say "who are you?" then later it is stated they knew killer(s). there should be prints or even DNA on duct tape.
Toledo Blade:
Johnny S. Clarke was talking to a friend on his cell phone when he was startled by what he saw at the door, according to police tapes.
"This girl says she was on the phone with my son and his girlfriend, and he was supposed to go pick her up," his mother, Maytee Vasquez-Clarke, said in her first call to 911 at 1:21 a.m. Monday. "He was telling her he was going out the door, and all she heard was the phone drop and heard my son saying in the background, 'Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing here?'... Oh my God, ma'am, I'm so afraid something happened bad. Oh my God."
Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke was told the phone went dead. Hours later, her son and his girlfriend were found slain in her parents' Springfield Township home.
In a series of 911 calls released by the Lucas County Sheriff's Office Tuesday, Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke frantically told the dispatcher she was so worried her heart was beating out of her chest.
Early Monday morning, her husband had met sheriff's deputies at the home where their 21-year-old son had been staying with his girlfriend, Lisa Straub, 20. Not long afterward, Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke arrived at the house with her cousin.
"I kept telling [the deputies], 'Please kick the door in.' I had a horrible gut-wrenching feeling," she told The Blade Tuesday. "My son isn't answering the phone. These kids could be dead in the house. They could need medical help. They said they didn't hear anything and they didn't see forcible entry."
While deputies twice came to the Longacre Lane house and left, Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said that once the deputies left that second time, her husband, John P. Clarke, and cousin walked around to the back of the house where Mr. Clarke boosted her cousin up to peer in a window.
Through a blind, she could see the bodies on the floor.
"I saw her dart toward the truck. She was running and saying, 'Oh my God, call the cops. Call 911. Call the rescue squad, and I knew," Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said.
Her husband ran around the house, kicked in the front door, and found the two on the floor near the kitchen. Both had their hands bound with tape. Plastic bags were fastened around their necks with tape.
"He ran in and sees her, then sees my son, and then he rips open the bag to give him CPR, but his face is already cold," a tearful Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said. "He turns to her, rips her bag open and he sees a puddle of blood next to her on her face."
"I feel like this is a nightmare and I just need to wake up and give him a kiss and talk to him," Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said. "I can't stand life. His little brothers cry for him constantly. My 7-year-old writes letters to him in heaven. My 15-year-old won't come out of his room."
Lucas County Coroner James Patrick said autopsies performed Tuesday showed that both Ms. Straub and Mr. Clarke died from asphyxiation. They had injuries to their necks but no other significant marks, he said.
They were found with their hands bound with duct tape and plastic bags over their heads, he confirmed.
Both deaths are being investigated as homicides, and no suspects were in custody Tuesday.
Dr. Patrick said his office could not pinpoint a time of death, although it appears both died within six hours of being found.
Sheriff's Detective Cathy Stooksbury said Tuesday that the deputies who responded to the Straub home did what they legally could do.
"Everyone was walking around the house. Everyone was looking in, trying to get them to answer the door," Detective Stooksbury said. "There was no probable cause to kick that door in. There was no probable cause to believe there was something wrong inside that home."
Just a mother's intuition.
In Mrs. Vaquez-Clarke's second call to 911 at 2:07 a.m., she said she was driving to the Straub home with her cousin. Deputies had been to the house and found nothing, she said, and she wanted answers.
"I want to know where my son is," she tells the dispatcher. "I want to know where my son and his girlfriend are."
At 3:50 a.m., after deputies have left the property a second time, Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke dials 911 a third time, hysterically demanding that police return.
"My son is in the basement, tied up in the house. I just saw him through the window," she screams. "The police was … out here earlier and did absolutely nothing."
Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said Tuesday that she did not look in the window or go in the house. Deputies found the bodies on the first floor, not the basement.
"I want to die right now," she said. "I wish I would've been killed instead of my son. This is so bad. How do you murder two kids? My son was in barber school. His girlfriend was in nursing school. They were good kids."
Detective Stooksbury said the young woman who last spoke to Mr. Clarke on his cell phone talked to him about 11 p.m. and she believes he and Miss Straub likely died between 11 p.m. and 3:50 a.m., when Mr. Clarke's father discovered their bodies.
She said the friend who was expecting Mr. Clarke and Miss Straub to pick her up that night tried repeatedly to reach them by phone and text message, but could not get either of them. She went to the house, rang the doorbell repeatedly, but got no answer. A friend of hers eventually called Mr. Clarke's mother, who then called 911.
Tuesday, investigators spent the day interviewing "family, friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of acquaintances," Detective Stooksbury said. Ms. Straub's parents, Jeffery and Mary Beth Straub, were out of the country on a Caribbean cruise at the time of the murders but were expected back by Wednesday, weather depending.
Mrs. Vasquez-Clarke said she believes her son knew their attackers because he let them in the house. She said she's upset that deputies did not find him and Ms. Straub when she first called 911, but now she's just hoping they find their killers.
"Justice needs to be served. These people need to get capital murder for premeditated murder and get the death penalty. That's what I want," she said. "This wasn't random. This was premeditated and planned. They knew them."
me:there should be prints or even DNA on duct tape