THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2009
NEWS
23
CRIME
Police kill South Carolina serial killer suspect
BY MEG KINNARD AND MITCH WEISS Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina serial killer who terrorized a small community was well-known to authorities as a bully, so intimidating that a scared elderly man once refused to testify against him and extortion charges were thrown out.
The criminal, Patrick Burris, had repeated run-ins with police for stealing and writing bad checks, and authorities said Tuesday they weren't surprised his crimes escalated. They said Burris, paroled in April after serving eight years in a North Carolina prison, should have never been released.
Burris, 41, shot five people to death in a 10-mile area of rural Gaffney in the span of six days last week. He was fatally shot Monday by officers investigating a burglar complaint at a home in Gastonia, N.C., 30 miles from where the killing
spree started. Ballistics from a gun found with Burris linked him to the South Carolina slayings.
Reggie Lloyd, Director of South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, holds a rap sheet on Patrick Tracy Burris during a conference outside the Cherokee County Law Enforcement Center, in Gaffney, S.C., July 6. Burris was shot dead by officers investigating a burglary 30 miles from where the killings started.
"He always had a violent streak," Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said. "He was very intimidating and very threatening from his appearance; He was at least 6-5 and 250 pounds. You didn't want to mess with him."
It's unclear why Burris began his killing spree. He was arrested more than 30 times in North Carolina alone. He also had convictions in Florida, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.
In 1996, Page arrested Burris for extortion. He was accused of forcing an elderly man to write a check and cash it at the bank. But the charges were dropped when the man refused to testify.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"He intimidated that man. He was scared. There was no way he was going to testify." Page said.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Reggie Lloyd, a former judge and federal prosecutor, said more should be done to keep habitual offenders like Burris behind bars.
"You didn't want to cross him," Pyrtle said. "He had that scowl."
"At some point, either prosecutors or judges did not believe that it warranted more time. Our entire system has really got to get serious about how we deal with these types of offenders," Lloyd said.
The Gaffney killings began when peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, was killed June 27. Four days later, 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her daughter, 50-year-old Gena Linder Parker, were found bound and shot in the woman's home. The next day, Stephen Tyler and his 15-year-old daughter Abby were found shot in their family's store.
A former FBI profiler said it would
Gaffney police chief Richard Turner said they were tracing the suspect's activities and trying to figure out if he had killed others.
be a tough question to answer.
"This guy has got victims ranging from 15 to 83, he's got males, he's got females," said Mark Safarik, who retired in 2007 as a senior profiler in the FBI's famed Behavioral Analysis
Unit. "I don't think that he had the motivation of a serial killer. How he got access to them and what the engagement was with these victims would go a long way to tell you what this dynamic is."
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