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- SLAIN JERSEY TEEN BEATEN BEYOND RECOGNITION: COPS
BY VIRGINIA BREEN , CORKY SIEMASZKO NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, February 17, 1998, 12:00 AM
A 15-year-old New Jersey girl whose body was found Sunday was beaten to death with such fury that her skull was fractured and her face disfigured, a prosecutor said yesterday. Katrina Suhan's mother was forced to identify her by a mark on her ankle, said Middlesex County Prosecutor Robert Gluck. Katrina, missing since early Saturday, was bludgeoned with a blunt object "that we have not been able to identify," he said. The teen was found fully clothed in a wooded area, and "there does not appear to have been any sexual assault," said Gluck. Police don't have a suspect and are stumped for a motive, he added. As the slain girl's relatives crowded into her parents' South Amboy, N.
J., home, Katrina's anguished father, Paul, told reporters, "I know she's in heaven. My daughter's at peace now.
" Her great-uncle from Brooklyn vowed revenge. "I've hunted animals, and I will hunt this bastard myself," said Fred Romano, 74. "She was a darling girl.
" Katrina spent Friday evening skating with a friend, Kathy Skrzyniarz, 15, at the Roller Magic Rink in their hometown, Gluck said. Rink manager Ken White said that nothing out of the ordinary occurred, and the girls left shortly after midnight. Kathy walked Katrina part of the way home, Gluck said. "Katrina then said, 'It's halfway already. It's all right,' " Kathy told the Newark Star-Ledger. "So we talked for a couple of minutes and then I went back home.
" Katrina never made it. At 12:30 a.
m. Saturday, her mother, Loretta, grew worried and called police, Gluck said. Two ninth-graders from South Amboy Middle School saw Katrina at 12:30 a.
m. outside St. Mary's High School, said South Amboy Police Chief James Holovaco. "It didn't cause them concern that she was alone," he said. Paul Suhan, who was in Atlantic City at the time, told police he thought Katrina had arranged for a lift home. After the girl disappeared, police used dogs to search the well-lit route she normally would have taken home. On Sunday, Katrina's mom called a psychic in a vain attempt to get a clue about her daughter's whereabouts, according to published reports. At 9 a.
m. Sunday, a 31-year-old Rahway man stumbled across the body and called police. Gluck declined to identify the man but said he was not a suspect. The Suhans were told around 9 p.
m. Sunday that their daughter was found dead 3 miles from her house behind the Amboy National Bank in Old Bridge. Last night, the girl's parents broke the tragic news to her brother Shaun, 19, stationed in Korea with the Army. A $15,000 reward has been offered for information leading to Katrina's killer. Police are urging tipsters to call Detective William Cheeseman at (732) 721-0111.
The New York Times
Arrest Is Made in the Killing Of a South Amboy Schoolgirl
Published: February 19, 1998
A man described by the police as a transient was arrested last night in the bludgeoning death of a 15-year-old New Jersey schoolgirl.
Acting on a phone tip, investigators took the man, Thomahl S. Cook, 24, into custody Monday evening on an outstanding trespassing warrant. After two days of interrogation, Mr. Cook, whose last known address was a rooming house in Somerville, N.J., provided some details of the murder, the police said.
The schoolgirl, Katrina Suhan, a freshman at South Amboy High School, was found on Sunday evening in a ravine near a wooded area in Old Bridge, N.J., about 3 miles from her home in South Amboy. She had disappeared early Saturday morning while walking home from a roller rink.
At a news conference last night, the Middlesex County Prosecutor, Robert W. Gluck, said that Mr. Cook beat the teen-ager with a 2 by 4, rocks and his fists behind the Galaxy Diner along Route 9, where her body was found.
Mr. Gluck refused to say whether Mr. Cook had confessed to the murder.
According to investigators, Katrina was repeatedly struck in the head and face. Autopsy results showed that she had not been sexually assaulted, but Mr. Gluck said that she may have been fighting off a sexual assault.
''With the bludgeoning, it's hard to determine which wounds may be defensive,'' Mr. Gluck said.
Mr. Cook has been charged with murder and will be arraigned sometime today at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, said John T. O'Leary, the Mayor of South Amboy.
The authorities said that Mr. Cook was something of a fixture at the Rollermagic Rink. Though he was a man a little too old for the teenagers who spent their weekends at the rink, the authorities said, the youths were friendly with him. Katrina's friends told the police that she had at least an acquaintance with the unemployed laborer. And Mr. Gluck said that Mr. Cook was seen near the skating rink on Friday night.
Mr. Gluck said he could not provide a motive for the crime, or an explanation of how Mr. Cook carried the girl along Route 9, across the Garden State Parkway and into the grassy ravine three miles from the rink without the aid of a car and without being seen.
The authorities are not ruling out the possibility of an accomplice and are also awaiting the results of forensic tests that could place other people at the scene of the crime. Those results are expected in a few weeks.
Mayor O'Leary said that the tip that led to Mr. Cook's arrest was called to the Somerville police on Monday by someone who was familiar with Mr. Cook and his movements. That person's identity is unknown. Mr. Cook was taken on Monday evening to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in New Brunswick, where he is still being held.
''We are outraged that someone could come into our community and pluck a 15-year-old girl off the street and murder her,'' Mr. O'Leary said last night. ''We're not accustomed to that, to living in fear, and I'm not entirely sure that we are ever going to get over this.''
The arrest brought some sense of relief to local people who describe their community, located just south of Staten Island across the Raritan River, as a calm and uneventful place where people have come to live to escape big city crime, and the nagging fear that goes with it.
Still, one neighbor said, such horrors are probably never forgotten. ''Nothing like this ever happens around here,'' said Stephen Sciallo, who lives in the same apartment complex as the Suhans. ''Everybody is worried for their kids.''
Photo: Thomahl S. Cook, 24, has been arrested in Katrina Suhan's death. (Associated Press)
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1983 - 1998 (15 years)