Serial Killer

By day, he toiled as an auto mechanic at a Ford dealership and greeted neighbors around his Huntingdon Valley garden apartment like a regular guy who enjoyed tinkering with his red Kawasaki motorcycle. By night, police suspect that James Gunning, 28, a newlywed, led a secret, violent life. Gunning, authorities believe, was searching for just the right woman. A petite, blonde prostitute. And when he found her, authorities suspect the stocky, 5-foot-4 Gunning took a rope, wrapped it around her neck and tightly squeezed, watching her desperately gasp for breath.

Cool and detached, Steven Brian Pennell argued before the state Supreme Court yesterday that the convicted serial torture-killer should be executed. As soon as possible. The gruesome murders were cruel and outrageous, he said. At least one of the victims, Pennell pointed out to the five robed justices, surely felt "pain, fear, helplessness" as she was tortured to death. And the fact that the killer had at least four female victims meant "the perpetrator must have sensed a pleasure in these killings," he said.

It took a courtroom minute yesterday to end 15 months of limbo for Clyde A. Johnson 4th, a social worker wrongly accused of a shooting that investigators now say could be linked to confessed serial killer Juan Covington. Assistant District Attorney Christopher DiViny withdrew charges of attempted murder against Johnson. And at that moment, Johnson had his life back. "Wow," he said from his seat in the back of the courtroom. Johnson had been charged with firing five shots at close range at 33-year-old William Bryant on a quiet residential block in Logan on April 26, 2004.

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling yesterday put notorious Philadelphia serial killer Harrison "Marty" Graham in line for prompt execution. Graham, who lured seven women into his North Philadelphia apartment in 1987 and strangled them during sex, is facing six death sentences and one sentence of life in prison. At Graham's 1988 trial, Common Pleas Judge Robert A. Latrone sentenced him to serve the life term first, thereby sparing him from execution. But the state Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling that established a legal precedent, said that the death sentence must be carried out, that it cannot be delayed perpetually while Graham serves life behind bars.

On Saturday and Sunday, the Washington, D.C.,-area serial sniper slept. But it was no weekend of rest for more than 300 cops and federal agents and forensic experts amassed to muzzle a murderer. If his bloody history is a guide, they know a quiet weekend does not mean the killing is over. The sniper had stopped his killing spree the previous weekend as well, only to return last Monday to take aim at a 13-year-old boy as he stepped out of his aunt's car at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Md. Today, there are eight people dead, including respected Philadelphia businessman Ken Bridges, the sniper's most recent victim gunned down at a northern Virginia gas station on Friday.

Nathaniel White, 32, was accused last week in Goshen, N.Y., with an unusual crime for a black man: serial murder. White did not fit the profile of most serial killers. Most are white, most are loners. White was a gregarious sort, a smooth-talking man of color who charmed women he wooed by bringing them flowers and occasionally assisting them with menial chores. In some ways, he was pitiable. But his passive fantasies appear to have evolved into something that was hardly pathetic.

In the memories of those who loved them, Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry are forever 19, as they were that Memorial Day weekend, 1969. All that the college pals could have become was ended here 24 years ago by an evil intruder who brutalized and killed them in woods just off the Garden State Parkway. The slayings shocked a gentler era when most parents still believed their children were safe on holidays at the seashore. No one ever was arrested or charged. But the parents of Elizabeth Perry said in the days leading up to this year's holiday they are at peace because they believe their daughter was avenged when serial killer Ted Bundy was executed in Florida in January 1989.

If Andrew Cunanan is indeed the serial killer that authorities believe him to be, then these are the best of times for him. "This time is electric," said Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler who now works as a consultant. A killer would just be "reveling in all the attention. " The four killings previously attributed to Cunanan - especially that of millionaire Chicago businessman Lee Miglin in May, stabbed to death with a gardening saw - would have brought a serial killer some notoriety.

A 22-year-old Kensington man once diagnosed as a potential serial killer was sentenced yesterday to 60 months in jail after pleading guilty to planting a bomb outside City Hall. Darryl Milburne will be incarcerated at a federal prison with specialized psychiatric treatment and will then be on supervised probation for three years. The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d is near the top of federal sentencing guidelines, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Hogan Jr. Milburne was physically and sexually abused as a child by family members and is diagnosed with "dissociative disorders," Hogan said.

A man who fashioned himself after serial killer Harrison "Marty" Graham - and even said that he had helped Graham kill women - was held for trial yesterday in a killing and two rapes in North Philadelphia. Police said they could find no connection between Alexander Keaton and Marty Graham, who was convicted in 1988 of strangling seven women while having sex with them. At a preliminary hearing for Keaton in City Hall yesterday, a 40-year-old woman who said she knew Keaton from the neighborhood testified that on Nov. 18, he forced her into an abandoned crack house on Master Street, put a rope around her neck and raped her. She said he boasted to her that "Martin didn't kill all the girls," and said he had helped Graham "kill some of the girls.