Slain Marine’s mom: No one would listen
While mother was waiting weeks for news about her daughter, suspect threw parties at home where body was buried
By Mary McCarty and Margo Rutledge Kissell
Staff Writers
Sunday, January 20, 2008
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — As far as Wanda and Richard Alander could tell, their next-door neighbors were a “perfectly normal family,” a Marine couple in a Marine town with a nice house and an 18-month-old daughter who “just doted on her daddy.”
The Alanders attached no significance to the fact that Cesar Laurean had recently borrowed a shovel from Richard. “He borrowed a rake before,” he said. Nor did Wanda think much of it when Christina Laurean told her they were repainting the interior of their house.
On Christmas Eve, the Laureans lit a bonfire in their backyard. The next day, the cars lined up on the street as they entertained friends and fellow Marines. They welcomed friends to their home again on New Year’s Day.
Life on Meadow Trail continued to appear normal right up until the morning of Jan. 11, when police crews descended on the house just before the world learned that a pregnant Maria Lauterbach was killed and buried in Laurean’s backyard fire pit, and that he was gone.
The night before, the Alanders saw their next-door neighbors sitting on their front porch. She didn’t think much of it at the time, but Wanda said she noticed Cesar kept walking into the backyard.
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http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/01/20/ddn012008maria.html
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Marine’s rape claim failed to raise red flags
Mother says slain lance corporal wanted to be sent to Iraq rather than be around alleged attacker
By Mary McCarty and Margo Rutledge Kissell
Staff Writers
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Mary Lauterbach was strolling out of Wal-Mart on May 10 when her cell phone rang. Maria again. Her oldest daughter, “strong as a bobcat,” had seemed lonely and vulnerable since being stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. It was, after all, the first time away from home for the 20-year-old Marine lance corporal from Vandalia. She called three or four times a day — so often that Mary found herself guiltily screening her calls.
Maria gasped out the words between sobs: “Mom, I was attacked.”
She didn’t reveal the name of her attacker, only that he was Hispanic, a married man with a child. She said the two Marines had been assigned to night duty together when the man locked all the doors and raped her.
“Maria, when did that happen?” her mother asked.
“April 10.”
“You realize you’ve lost all your evidence now?”
Then her mother got even more stern with her daughter: “Maria, you have to know you cannot make any false statements because that is one of the worst things you could possibly do. You could ruin somebody’s career, and you won’t be doing yourself any favors either when they find out.”
Mary Lauterbach had a solid reason for these words of motherly caution. While assigned to Marine Occupation Specialties School at Camp Lejeune in the fall of 2006, Maria told a disturbing lie to some of her fellow Marines, claiming her father had accidentally killed her 6-year-old brother by throwing a lamp at him. Lauterbach was placed in counseling after her mother assured authorities that Maria’s actual brother, nearly 9 at the time, was alive and well.
Now, Mary Lauterbach told her daughter, it was imperative to tell the truth about the rape allegations. “Maria, if this is true, you have to report it, to protect all the other female Marines there,” she said.
(snip)
http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/01/20/ddn012008mariainside.html
thanks for this link http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4155874&page=1
excerpts;
******...initial autopsy results on Lauterbach’s burned body, found buried in a North Carolina field, indicate that Lauterbach was eight-months pregnant with a baby girl, the official said.
Earlier reports from Lauterbach’s hometown in Ohio had said the unborn baby was a boy, to be named Gabriel Joseph.
She had told her family she believed her unborn child was a boy based on an early sonogram. Officials say a second autopsy will be conducted by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.******
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I trust they can prove unequivocally - that the bodies are those of Maria and her baby - which is tragic enough - just please spare the families more torture.