Post by Scumhunter on Mar 10, 2016 16:03:42 GMT -5
Baltimore Police Continue Manhunt For Student's Killer
Christopher Elser, a 20 year-old junior at Johns Hopkins University, was a second-generation Hopkins student; his father, a successful horse trainer, also graduated from the prestigious Baltimore University. By all accounts, Chris was one of the most popular students at Johns Hopkins: smart, driven, a good athlete, and a fiercely loyal friend. On the night of April 17, 2004, Ryan Hanley -- one of Chris' fraternity brothers at Sigma Alpha Epsilon -- asked Chris to swap rooms for a night. A big party was being held at the frat house, and Hanley had an important exam that he needed to study for.
Chris agreed to sleep in Ryan's room at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and to let Ryan sleep in Chris' room off-campus. As it turned out, that seemingly harmless arrangement would have tragic consequences for Chris, and devastating consequences for his friends and family members.
Never Regained Consciousness
The party, which was attended by about 300 people, ended around 3 a.m. Chris apparently went to sleep in Hanley's room around 1 a.m. At around 5 a.m., Chris was awakened by a man armed with a knife. There was a struggle and Chris was stabbed in the chest and left arm. He staggered next door to Brian Kimsella's room, told Kimsella "I fought, I tried," identified his attacker as a "black man," and then collapsed. Kimsella applied pressure with a tourniquet to Chris' wounds, and paramedics rushed Chris to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The next day, before ever regaining consciousness, Christopher Elser was pronounced dead.
Searching For The Man In The Video
The primary homicide detective, Detective Vernon Parker, soon established that the motive was robbery, and that the man who killed Chris came in through a back door at the frat house and walked into the first room he found.
Despite the fact that Johns Hopkins University and the Elser family were offering a fifty-thousand dollar reward, the case was generating few leads at first. Then, about ten days after the murder, Baltimore police found a surveillance video from a camera outside the Hopkins Hillel Center. The video showed a man looking into buildings and pulling on locked doors just a few feet from Chris' frat house, and just a few minutes before Chris was killed.
The video was broadcast on Baltimore television stations, and one solid lead came in: a woman claimed that the man in the video was her husband. Police found the man, but, after questioning him for several hours, Det. Parker determined that he was not the right guy. Since then, the case has gone cold, but Det. Parker remains hopeful that some day soon he will be able to identify the man in the video and make an arrest in the case.
web.archive.org/web/20090923210053/http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=48504
Thoughts? This was a web-exclusive case on America's Most Wanted's old website. According to brief 2014 article, the case is still unsolved: articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-09-22/news/bal-crime-scene-murder-of-christopher-elser-20140921_1_crime-scene-matt-jablow-christopher-elser-fraternity
Admin Note #1: Based on crime location, our advice for anyone with information on the killer of Christopher Elser would be to contact Metro Crime Stoppers of Maryland: metrocrimestoppers.org/
Admin Note #2: If you have any news-related updates on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form