I Found 3 stories on the murder case of Sue Wen Stottmeister ( an Asian American female resident in Maryland )
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Albert Walter Cook Jr., the 25-year-old Aspen Hill man accused of killing jogger Sue Wen Stottmeister in January, appeared alert and articulate at a June 6 bond hearing, the day after he was charged with first-degree murder. He identified himself and greeted District Court Judge Michael J. Algeo on a closed circuit television feed from the Montgomery County Detention Center in Rockville.
For four months police had sought someone who wore a size 16 Nike sport shoe and fit a footprint found near the site where the petite 48-year-old jogger was left to die in the cold on Jan. 24. Stottmeister was found barely alive in Aspen Hill Park, just a few blocks from where Cook lived with his mother in a house at the corner of Aspen Hill Road and Arctic Avenue. She died after being taken to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville. Neighborhood children, who played ball with Cook in the field behind his house, called him "Big Albert." Police say the 5-foot-5-inch, 230-pound man had "big feet."
Most afternoons you could see him standing near the telephone pole or tree at the edge of that field, neighbors said, and when the ice cream truck came by, he sprinted out to meet it like everyone else. This week as neighbors talk about Cook's arrest, police continue their investigation and prosecutors build their case, Cook remains without bond in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing June 29. If a formal indictment comes before that date, the hearing would be cancelled. Police also charged Cook with attempted first-degree rape after witnesses say he grabbed another Aspen Hill woman off the sidewalk June 4 and fought to pull her into his house. Passers-by and an undercover policeman heard the commotion and intervened. Cook was arrested a few doors down the street in a bathroom at the Frost Center. "We are absolutely certain we have the right person," Montgomery County Police spokesman Capt. Bill O'Toole said Tuesday. According to Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler, Cook confessed to killing Stottmeister "with incredible detail only the murderer would have known."
The neighbors react
All of this has left neighbors with mixed feelings of relief, anger and astonishment. Many criticized police -- who cast at least three dragnets through the neighborhood -- for overlooking Cook, a convicted sex offender. But for the attack on the second woman, some neighbors wondered if he ever would have been caught. Kelsey Goodman, president of the Rock Creek Citizens Association, said neighbors were relieved to hear of Cook's arrest, but immediately requested an open neighborhood meeting with police to air their concerns. O'Toole declined, saying it would be "too risky" to the investigation and to the court case to answer questions in a public forum. "We don't want to do an autopsy of the investigation," he said Tuesday. "Albert Cook's name never surfaced in all the time we went door to door," O'Toole said. No neighbors indicated to police that "it could have been the man on the corner," he said, despite repeated requests for information and efforts to keep the investigation in the public eye. The Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office confirmed last week that an assistant state's attorney resigned because he had received a tip in April identifying Cook as someone police should investigate, but did not pass along that information to his managers or police. Gansler's office would not elaborate, and other county officials would not comment. O'Toole said that within a week of the jogger's death, police had "forensic evidence" that would positively identify Stottmeister's assailant. He would not elaborate, but an autopsy ruled the cause of her death to be by multiple blunt force trauma, strangulation and exposure to the elements. Charging documents say she was sexually assaulted. Combined with the murder charge, that makes Cook eligible for the death penalty, Gansler said. Cook was convicted in 1996 of a fourth-degree sex offense after inappropriately touching a woman at a neighborhood shopping center, according to police. However, O'Toole said that a regional records search of possible suspects would have included tens of thousands of names. "No one had Albert Cook on the radar screen," O'Toole said. "People across the street said, 'We didn't even know anyone lived in that house.'"
Some neighbors have since questioned Cook's mental health.
His public defender, Harry Trainor of Upper Marlboro, said Tuesday that he has met with Cook and his family, but that it is too early to know the direction Cook's defense will take. "We certainly will have a mental health evaluation," he added. Neighbors have been featured on television and in print news reports calling Cook "crazy." "We're very relieved, but very upset. Let's face it, the guy is sick," said neighbor Tuva Karen "T.K." Welp. "You can count your blessings that our children were not put in danger," she said, pointing out that school buses pick up and drop off children and high-schoolers nearby. "It gives me goose bumps to think what could have happened." Cook has not been treated through the county's mental health programs as an adult, according to county officials. That does not mean that he may not have had private care, or had care as a juvenile. In any case, cautioned Mildred Holmes Williams, chief of the county's adult mental health services, a person's mental health cannot be determined without a professional assessment. There is no more propensity to violence for a person with mental illness than for someone without it, she said. "Linking violence and mental health is more myth than fact," she added. The only contact the Cook family had with county officials in recent years, county officials said, included two neighbors' complaints that the lawn was not cut.
No gag order ... at this time
At Cook's bond hearing last week, Chief Public Defender Paul DeWolf asked the judge to impose a gag order on the case. He complained about Gansler's comments to reporters at a June 5 news conference with police, investigators and prosecutors. DeWolf said Gansler was in "blatant violation" of the Maryland rules of professional conduct when he talked about Cook's arrest and confession. Gansler, who views gag orders as unconstitutional, said he wanted to give as much information as possible to alleviate community fears. He also said that all of the information was in the police charging documents, a public record. Algeo did not order the gag request, saying it was outside of the scope of the bond hearing.
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The Good Samaritan who chased the suspect in the Sue Wen Stottmeister case last week probably will not receive any of the $28,000 in reward money, police officials say. Eugene Martin was one of the passersby who on June 4 came to the rescue of an Aspen Hill woman being attacked by Albert W. Cook Jr., the 25-year-old who has been charged with first-degree murder in Stottmeister's Jan. 24 death. Martin first checked on the woman and, after ensuring she was all right, chased Cook, directing police to the suspect who was found hiding in a restroom in the nearby Frost Center, said Harry Stone Jr., Martin's attorney. "His swift action curtailed any escalation of [Cook's] reign of terror," Stone said. Stone said his client feels he deserves part of the reward, now slated to go to Stottmeister's family. Martin was initially told that he was in line for the reward, but was later told that his actions did not constitute a tip that led to Cook's arrest, Stone said. Perhaps information such as "you know, my neighbor is cutting up human bodies" amounts to a tip, Stone said sarcastically. "He feels it's unfair cutting him out." However, Martin did not show up for an appointment with Stone on Monday and Stone said he did not know if his client will press a claim for the reward. Stone said it also would be unfair if the reward goes to the person who informed a prosecutor seven weeks ago that Cook might be a suspect in the Stottmeister case. The prosecutor did not relay that crucial information to police and was forced to resign June 6 from the Montgomery County State's Attorney's office for his "lapse in judgment." Officer Derek Baliles, a police spokesman, said Crime Solvers, the independent nonprofit group that gives out rewards, pays for tips to its crime line that lead to an arrest, not for heroic actions. "The things Mr. Martin did are things that the department is going to recognize in another manner later on, but Crime Solvers does not give cash awards to people acting in that manner," Baliles said. "We were hoping that somebody would call up ... and tell us that there's this guy named Al, and he lives at this address, and he's got really big feet, and he's really weird." Baliles said the unnamed tipster to the State's Attorney's Office is not pressing for the reward money, but technically would not be in line to receive it because the information did not lead to an arrest and was not made to Crime Solvers. Baliles said, however, that no decisions have been made. What will be done with the reward money is being considered by investigators and the Crime Solvers board, which meets monthly. The situation is complicated further because there are three rewards: $1,000 put up by Crime Solvers, about $17,000 from the Norbeck Montessori School in Aspen Hill where Stottmeister worked, and about $10,000 raised by Rockville High School. The Montessori School has intended to give the money to the Stottmeister family, and the Rockville High School money would go to a scholarship for her children, Baliles said. Stone is also representing Martin in a lawsuit he filed in December against the Wal-Mart store in Germantown and a security guard. Martin claims he wrenched his back when a security guard accosted him in the store's parking lot and demanded to see Martin's receipt for a bicycle he had just bought at the store, Stone said. Martin is seeking compensation for pain and suffering, he said. Staff Writer Effie Bathen contributed to this report. ==========
A man who lives in the Aspen Hill neighborhood where a jogger was killed this year was charged with her death yesterday after he was seen assaulting another woman outside his home Monday afternoon and was chased by three witnesses, Montgomery County police said. Albert Walter Cook Jr., 25, of the 4900 block of Aspen Hill Road, was charged with first-degree murder in the Jan. 24 death of Sue Wen Stottmeister, a preschool teacher, and attempted first-degree rape in the Monday assault. He is being held without bond pending a hearing today. Authorities said detectives investigating the Monday attack focused on Cook as a possible suspect in Stottmeister's death because of the proximity of the two attacks and Cook's large feet -- Stottmeister's killer left behind a size 15 or 16 shoe print. Capt. Barney Forsythe, head of the major crimes division, said that after Cook was charged with the Monday assault, he gave police a detailed account of Stottmeister's slaying. The death of Stottmeister, a mother of two teenagers, generated much concern and attention across the Washington region because she was attacked during the day and on a path that is used by many joggers and dog walkers. After her death, residents began patrolling the area's paths and other joggers learned self-defense techniques.
Stottmeister is one of six Montgomery women whose deaths in the last two years had been unsolved > despite intensive investigation, prompting county police to form a special task force recently to review the cases. Police said they do not have evidence linking Cook to any of the other women's deaths, but they said they are trying to determine whether he is linked to other sexual assaults. Cook had not previously come to their attention, though he had a sex offense conviction and had lived in the home with his mother for years. Two neighbors said in interviews that they had never seen Cook and that they thought his home was vacant. Forsythe said that officers knocked on the door of Cook's home twice during a canvass of the neighborhood after Stottmeister's attack but that no one answered the door.
Although Cook was convicted in 1996 of a fourth-degree sex offense after an incident at a nearby shopping center, Forsythe said, police had been concentrating on possible suspects who had more extensive criminal records. He said that Cook did not know Stottmeister and that she appeared to be a random victim. Police also said that Cook did not know the victim of Monday's assault but that he told them he had been watching her for several days. Stottmeister's family did not return phone messages yesterday. Police charging documents filed yesterday in Montgomery County District Court state that Cook told investigators about the sexual assault that Stottmeister endured in the attack, details that had never been released publicly.
At dawn yesterday, investigators took Cook to the place where Stottmeister was attacked, and he provided more details about the slaying, authorities said. "This was a deep, detailed, long, lengthy confession as if he had just committed the crime 10 minutes ago," said State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler. "It was very gratifying, and we have a strong sense of closure."
Police said Cook also told them that he threw away a large pair of Nike Air Max Uptempo shoes after he heard that police were looking for anyone wearing such sneakers. (ed. comment by Sw - remember the sneakers they found in the park in July 2001?) The shoes were found in bushes a half-mile from where Stottmeister was found a day after the police announcement. Stottmeister, 48, of the 13700 block of Drake Drive, was found semiconscious, lying in the snow about 50 feet off the popular hiker-biker trail and about a quarter-mile from the trail's entrance at Oriental Street and Dowlais Drive in the Aspen Hill area of Rockville. The medical examiner ruled that her death was caused by multiple blunt-force trauma, strangulation and hypothermia, according to charging documents.
Cook was sentenced to one year of probation for a fourth-degree sex offense in February 1996. The judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation and counseling, which authorities said are standard in sexual offense cases.
According to charging documents, Cook had touched a woman in the genital area when he was in front of the Twinbrook Shopping Center on Veirs Mill Road. The woman told police that Cook laughed as he walked away. In October 1996, Cook was charged with assault, but the case was later dropped. Charging documents stated that he and his mother had an argument and that he hit her several times with a pot. ed. nice guy Two of Cook's relatives declined to comment yesterday. On Monday, Cook jumped from behind the thick honeysuckle bushes in front of his home and grabbed a woman by her hair as she walked by about4:45 p.m., police said. He dragged her partly through the doorway and later told police that he had intended to rape her, according to charging documents.
Three men, including an off-duty police officer, saw the attack and ran to help, police said. Officers later found Cook in a bathroom of the nearby Frost Education Center. The 49-year-old victim lived on the same street as Cook, but her husband said in an interview that they had never seen Cook before. She had just gotten off the bus and was carrying groceries when she was attacked, he said. Homicide detectives spent several hours early yesterday searching Cook's home.
Elizabeth Martins, a friend and neighbor of Stottmeister's, said she was relieved that someone had been arrested, but wondered why no one in the neighborhood had pointed him out earlier. "It was surprising that he was there all along, all these months," she said. "She's missed every day," Martins said in reference to Stottmeister, "but at least justice will be served, hopefully. We need it." Staff researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.
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