Reuters
Jonathan P. Luna, who was last
seen alive leaving a garage.
Posted on 12/06/2003 7:08:36 AM PST by Pharmboy
Reuters
Jonathan P. Luna, who was last
seen alive leaving a garage.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — Jonathan P. Luna, a federal prosecutor in Baltimore whose body was found in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, was stabbed 36 times and may have been tortured before he was thrown into a creek to drown, officials said on Friday.
Mr. Luna's body was discovered near the town of Ephrata, south of Reading, Pa., on Thursday morning, hours before he was scheduled to appear in court in Baltimore, 70 miles away, in the case of a rap artist and his associate accused of running a violent heroin ring.
Though investigators have interviewed the two men in the heroin case, they said Mr. Luna, a 38-year-old assistant United States attorney, prosecuted an array of violent criminals who might have wanted vengeance. The investigators have begun poring through those case files in search of clues.
But the officials have also not ruled out other motives. "This could be case-related; it could be totally unrelated," an investigator said.
Barry Walp, the coroner for Lancaster County, where Ephrata is located, said in an interview on Friday that the autopsy revealed that Mr. Luna died as a result of both freshwater drowning and stab wounds.
Dr. Walp described the small wounds as "prick marks" that may have been inflicted to exert psychological pressure, rather than actual injury. He said he was uncertain whether the pricks were an effort "to get information from him, or whether it was a preliminary way of killing him." He added that there were no signs of a struggle.
"He was alive when he was put in the water, and he drowned," Dr. Walp said. He added that if Mr. Luna had not been moved to the creek, he would probably have bled to death. But the coroner is listing both the stab wounds and the drowning as causes of death.
The shock of Mr. Luna's killing has sent investigators scrambling from Baltimore to the Amish country of southeast Pennsylvania to retrace the final, murky hours of his life in search of a motive for his death.
Mr. Luna, who was married and had two young sons, was in court on Wednesday for the third day of trial in the heroin case. But he and defense lawyers reached a plea bargain late in the day with the two defendants, Deon Smith, a rap artist, and Walter O. Poindexter, his business associate.
Investigators have established that Mr. Luna went to his home near Baltimore after work and then returned to his office about 8:40 p.m. to write up the papers on the plea deal, a law enforcement official said. Mr. Luna left the office about 11:40 p.m., the last known sighting, the official said.
"We just have the vehicle leaving the garage," the official said.
The car was found near Mr. Luna's body.
Investigators are hoping that a picture of the prosecutor released Friday to news agencies and posted on the F.B.I.'s Web site will generate tips from witnesses who might have seen him after he left the garage.
Judge Andre M. Davis of Federal District Court, who presided at four of Mr. Luna's cases in Baltimore and considered himself a mentor to the younger man, said Mr. Luna handled a large number of cases involving violent criminals.
During the past two years, Mr. Luna won convictions or guilty pleas in cases involving the leader of a bank robbery ring and a man who tried to burn six Mexican immigrants out of their home. He also led the prosecution of a Navy physicist accused of trying to use the Internet to seduce a teenage girl. That case ended in a mistrial.
But Judge Davis said other federal prosecutors in Baltimore have handled cases with equally dangerous criminals. "These tend to be offenders who have a lot to lose from any kind of conviction," he said.
Friends, judges and former professors remembered Mr. Luna as a buoyant, gently ebullient presence, a rising star whose ambition never grated, a sharp intelligence who never threw sharp elbows.
"Some people have people skills," said Louis Bilionis, a professor who taught Mr. Luna at the University of North Carolina law school. "But what he had was much different. He had a great way with people. He was attentive, not only to what you were saying, but to what you were feeling."
Born in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, Mr. Luna attended Fordham University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in communications in 1988. He attended law school in Chapel Hill, N.C., later that year. But after one semester, he returned to New York to attend to his father, who was seriously ill, friends said.
After a year away, Mr. Luna went back to North Carolina, was elected president of the third-year students and graduated with the class of 1992. The experience showed Mr. Luna's ability to win friends quickly, said Judge William L. Osteen of Federal District Court in North Carolina, who hired Mr. Luna as a clerk in 1992.
"I really hoped he would someday run for office," Judge Osteen said. "He would have been an outstanding elected official. I tried to nudge him in that direction."
While clerking for Judge Osteen, Mr. Luna met his future wife, Angela, then a medical student at North Carolina, friends said.
In 1994, Mr. Luna went to work in the general counsel's office of the Federal Trade Commission, giving legal advice to regulators around the country. But he often talked about returning to New York to be near his beloved Yankees and become a prosecutor, said Bruce G. Freedman, an assistant general counsel who supervised Mr. Luna at the commission.
"He was devoted to the Bronx," Mr. Freedman said.
Indeed, in a letter to The New York Times in 1991 regarding a series of articles about the Bronx titled "Life at the Bottom," Mr. Luna complained that "decent hard-working people" like his parents had been overlooked.
"Perhaps it is time to look for what is good about places like the South Bronx," he wrote.
In 1997, Mr. Luna and his wife moved to Brooklyn, and he took a job in a unit of the Kings County district attorney's office that covered Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Red Hook. Two years later, he moved to the United States attorney's office in Baltimore.
Though Mr. Luna was considered an aggressive prosecutor, Judge Davis said he was "enormously aware of the power of a federal prosecutor." Mr. Luna, who was black, was also uncomfortable with the rigidity of sentencing rules that required stiffer penalties for possession of crack cocaine than powder cocaine, a rule some critics say is unfair to blacks, Judge Davis said.
Yet if Mr. Luna was keenly aware of race issues, he was never strident about them, friends said. Kevin Bringewatt, a clerk with Mr. Luna under Judge Osteen, recalled being stared at when the two men walked into a restaurant in rural North Carolina. Mr. Luna just smiled, said Mr. Bringewatt, who is white.
"He kidded me about not having noticed it," Mr. Bringewatt said. "He had friends of all races, of all walks of life. He and I came from extraordinarily different places. No one would have guessed that we would have crossed paths and been good friends. But we were."
Both believe in surrender to their anti-social ways, and both seem to be a "Religion of Peace" for the Urbanites!
Cane we all now agree that Cities are anathema to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as set forth in the Declaration of Independence? Even the Barons of Commerce do not LIVE in the inner cities (Except NY...don't ask me why ANYONE lives in Manhattan, and I have close friends that live on Central Park West in a double condo/apt!)!
These Blue Zone death-camps must be left by all who would see America grow...let the savages enjoy their city living!
I personally like being able to live free, and see the Milky Way on a clear night!
That is what I thought to. Black prosecutor handles case against black rap "artist" - "artist" camp sends message. My own uninformed opinion of course (to keep the lawyers here happy).
I wonder what that means.
IMO, this plea bargain agreement does don't immune Mr. Smith and Mr. Poindexter (and their associates) from suspicion. They were still going to be serving quite a stretch of time. Exacting revenge while making an example is SOP for scumbags who believe the law does not apply to them.
Say a prayer for Mr. Luna's family. We just lost one of the good guys.
I don't know the exact numbers so I'll just pull them out of a hat. Something like 99% of crimes committed against American-Africans are committed by their fellow American-Africans.
Funny what gets Jesse's and Al's undies in a bundle.
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