Serial killer Ross left trail of victims before Connecticut
By SUSAN HAIGH
Associated Press Writer
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Dzung Ngoc Tu was a 25-year-old graduate student at Cornell University back in May of 1981, studying agricultural economics, when her life was cut short at the hands of classmate Michael Ross, a budding serial killer.
Ross, who eventually admitted raping and murdering Tu, was never prosecuted in the case.
Nearly 24 years later, Ross awaits a death sentence for the murder and rapes of four young women in eastern Connecticut. But he also has admitted killing four other young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. Tu was his first known victim.
If the U.S. Supreme Court lifts a stay of execution, his would be the first execution in New England since 1960.
Ross left a trail of victims in New York, North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio before he started killing in eastern Connecticut. Some he raped. Others he attacked and attempted to kill. Besides Tu, he raped and strangled another young woman in New York, 16-year-old Paula Perrera.
The brutal attacks began in Ross' senior year at Cornell and continued in the months following his 1981 graduation when he worked in the agriculture industry. It wasn't until years later that authorities learned that Ross was responsible for the terror.
Tu's body was found in a gorge on the upstate New York campus, days after she was reported missing on May 14, 1981. Michael Malchik, a Connecticut state police investigator at the time, said Cornell authorities initially thought the student may have committed suicide.
Cornell police never linked Ross to the woman's murder, or to a rape and a spate of attempted rapes in 1981, until Malchik arrived in 1987 -- three years after Ross' arrest.
Lan Manh Tu, Dzung Tu's older brother, said he always suspected foul play. He described Dzung Tu as ``a brilliant student'' who spoke Vietnamese, German, French, and eventually English after she moved with her family to Bethesda, Md., from Vietnam at age 13 in 1969.
Dzung Tu, who graduated from Vassar College with a degree in economics, had also worked for the National Institutes of Health helping children with terminal cancer, her brother said.
Ross was not considered a suspect in Perrera's death until years after her 1982 disappearance. Barbara Emery, Perrera's childhood friend, said many people initially suspected Perrera had run away. But after her body was discovered, there was speculation that a family member or boyfriend may have killed her.
Emery said when she first heard of the murders in Connecticut, she began to think Ross may have been her friend's killer.
``I started finding things out that they were really killed the same way,'' Emery said. ``Along the way, I found stuff out.''
Ross picked up Perrera hitchhiking on March 2, 1982. Perrera often hitchhiked in Orange County, N.Y. Perrera, a bubbly girl with a troubled family life, thought of it as an adventure.
``She said, 'I don't get into cars with anyone who looks crazy,''' Emery recalled.
It was not until 2001 that Ross was convicted in Perrera's rape and murder.
``Basically, it doesn't close the case for the family,'' prosecutor John Geidel said in 2001. ``It's something they'll live with for the rest of their lives.''
Before Perrera's killing, Ross served less than six months in jail and several months of psychological counseling for an assault in Ohio. On April 26, 1982, he attacked a 26-year-old, pregnant, off-duty police officer in Licking County, Ohio. Ross knocked on the woman's door and said his car had broken down. She managed to fend him off.
Ross is also known to have attacked a woman pushing a baby carriage in Rolesville, N.C., on Aug. 25, 1981. After threatening to kill the baby, Ross raped and attempted to strangle the woman, leaving her for dead in a soybean field. She survived.
According to news reports, Ross was charged with attempted murder, sexual assault and kidnapping but was never tried.
Shortly afterward, on Sept. 28, 1981, Ross dragged a 15-year-old girl in La Salle City, Ill. into the woods. He gagged her with a sock and wrapped a belt around her neck before being discovered by police. Ross paid a $500 fine and served probation.
Although those crimes aren't sending Ross to Connecticut's death chamber, family members and friends of his out-of-state victims are still keeping a close watch on Ross' possible execution.
``We want him dead,'' Lan Tu said. ``It's a simple answer. As soon as possible.''