Investigators say Mesa, a 20-year-old from Guam, confessed to killing both victims during robberies and that he targeted them because they lived alone and were weak. Police found a pair of blood-stained Nike cross-trainers in Mesa’s dorm room that they say matched shoe prints left near Varner’s body. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Mesa used Plunkett’s debit card and was caught on videotape cashing a check for $650 that he wrote to himself from Varner’s checkbook. Mesa’s court-appointed attorney, who declines to say how his client will plead, decries the release of so much detail. “This young boy in a man’s body is being tried in public by the police,” he says.
Gallaudet is not letting down its guard. The school is adding more surveillance cameras and coded access cards for each wing of every dorm. And administrators say they will install panic buttons in dorm rooms that will flash brightly and call campus security. The panic lights will be the equivalent of a cry for help on the deaf campus–an inventive precaution, perhaps a few months too late.
