In December 2003 police in Hammond, Indiana, broke through a slab of freshly poured concrete in the basement of a rundown apartment house and recovered the bodies of three young people who had been missing for months: Nicholas James, 19, James Raganyi, 16, and Michael Dennis, 13. The upstairs tenant, David Edward Maust, was 49. He had already been convicted of killing two teenage boys, one in Germany while he was a soldier and one in Illinois, and of stabbing a child in Texas, and he had been free since an Illinois prison released him in 1999. Nearly two years later he pleaded guilty to all three Hammond murders. A few weeks after he was sentenced to life without parole, he hanged himself in his cell, leaving a note in which he admitted to five killings.
Little has been reported about where and how Maust grew up. An Associated Press profile at his sentencing in December 2005 said he had been in and out of mental institutions from an early age. His estranged mother, then 71, told the Associated Press in December 2003 that a prison psychiatrist had once told her his brain might have been damaged by forceps at his birth. She said that in 1979, after her husband died, Maust had wanted to come and live with her in Chicago and she had refused because she did not feel safe with him. She had not spoken to him, she said, since visiting him in prison in the middle of the 1980s.
Maust served in the U.S. Army. While he was stationed in Germany in 1974, he killed a teenage boy. The Associated Press reported in 2003 that he was convicted of killing a boy in Germany while he was in the Army and served more than three years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Its 2006 report on his death described the conviction as one for manslaughter, for killing a teenager in Germany. The boy's name, his exact age and the circumstances of his death were not reported.
In 1981 Maust killed a 15-year-old boy at an abandoned quarry near Elgin, Illinois, northwest of Chicago. Associated Press reports in 2003, citing court records, said the boy was drowned. The boy's name was not reported.
By the time Illinois charged him with that killing, Maust was serving a five-year sentence in Texas for stabbing a child, a conviction the Associated Press described as one for bodily injury to a child. In Illinois he was held in mental institutions for two years before he was found fit to stand trial, according to the Associated Press. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was released in 1999.
Phil Bettiker, a former Cook County sheriff's investigator who had worked on the 1981 case, told the Associated Press in December 2003 that he would have liked to see Maust put away for longer for that killing. "I think he's gone this time," he added.
By 2003 Maust lived in a second-floor apartment in a two-story house just north of downtown Hammond, in the northwest corner of Indiana. The Associated Press described the area as a neighborhood of crowded, run-down houses where city officials had dealt with gang activity and had put up high-powered streetlights. Neighbors called him "Crazy Dave." When he was arraigned in December 2003 he had $2 in a checking account, no car and no income, according to court information reported by the Associated Press. Residents told reporters he had approached other teenagers in the neighborhood and offered them alcohol and drugs.
Nicholas James, called Nick in early reports, was 19. He was last seen in May 2003. He was not reported missing until about two weeks before the bodies were found, according to the Associated Press. The coroner later found that he had died of blunt force injuries.
James Raganyi was 16 and Michael Dennis was 13. They were friends. A friend of theirs told detectives that in August 2003 the two boys had visited Maust's apartment and that he had given them money, beer and marijuana. They were last seen on September 10, 2003, at a home near Maust's.
The police were already aware of Maust. On October 2, 2003, he was arrested on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, accused of giving marijuana and beer to Michael Dennis and to a 12-year-old boy. He was released on a $300 bond and later pleaded innocent to that charge, the Associated Press reported.
After his arrest in December, Hammond Police Chief John Cory said Maust had confessed to strangling James Raganyi on September 10 while the two were drinking together. The coroner said strangulation or suffocation was the suspected cause of death for both Raganyi and Dennis.
In November 2003, according to an Associated Press account based on a police affidavit, detectives searched the house and found a fresh concrete pad in the basement, about eight feet by five feet and 12 inches thick. On a Friday in early December, they drilled holes through it. "We drilled holes in the freshly poured concrete," said Sergeant Christopher Matonovich, the police spokesman.
Maust was in police custody from Tuesday, December 9, 2003. That day officers working with a jackhammer and hand tools reached two bodies under the slab, and the third was removed on Wednesday. They hung tarps between the house and the one next door and covered a first-floor window with newspaper while they worked. Ground-penetrating radar was used around the building, and a cadaver dog found no further remains. "We feel we dug up what we could and there are no more bodies in the basement," Matonovich said. The search ended on Thursday.
Lake County Coroner David Pastrick identified the three. On Thursday, December 11, Maust was charged with murder in the death of James Raganyi. Cory would not say whether Maust had talked about the deaths of Michael Dennis and Nicholas James, or whether anyone else might have been involved. Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter also declined several questions about the case.
On Friday, December 12, 2003, Maust appeared in court in Crown Point, the Lake County seat, and pleaded not guilty to the murder of James Raganyi. He asked to represent himself, and a hearing on that request was set for the following week. Reporters noted that he looked around the courtroom and appeared to smirk as he was led out. He was held without bond in the Lake County Jail.
James Raganyi's mother and stepfather learned on the Thursday after the search that his body had been found. His mother said she was speaking to reporters to warn other parents and children. His stepfather urged residents to report anything suspicious and said of Maust: "I don't know what he is but I know he ain't human."
Maust's own mother spoke to the Associated Press the following Sunday. She said she was relieved he was in jail and that only the death penalty would stop him from committing more crimes. She and her youngest son agreed that he should be executed if convicted. "I love David, but yes that would be the right thing to do for him," she said. She feared he had killed others since his release from prison. "If he's been out since '99 like they say, there's more someplace," she said. She also blamed the judges who had let him go, saying they should be charged with the murders too. She had learned of his arrest from television news, she said, and had known it was him even before his picture was shown.
Prosecutors sought the death penalty. In the fall of 2005 Maust pleaded guilty to murdering Michael Dennis, James Raganyi and Nicholas James. In exchange, the state withdrew its requests for a death sentence. In December 2005 he was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Maust remained in the Lake County Jail after sentencing, awaiting transfer to a state prison. Early on the Thursday he was due to be moved, guards found him hanging in his cell, about 10 minutes after they had told him he would be transferred that day, according to Corporal Mike Higgins of the Lake County sheriff's department. He was taken to St. Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point, where he died on the morning of Friday, January 20, 2006, the Associated Press and United Press International reported that day.
Guards found a seven-page note in his cell. In it he admitted to five killings and apologized for his crimes. He wrote that with his death the families and other people could move on with their lives. The Lake County prosecutor's office released the note.
The forensic psychologist and author Katherine Ramsland, writing in Psychology Today in 2013, quoted further from his last writings. He called his victims "good, nonviolent, innocent young people who did not deserve to die," and wrote that his greatest fear was the pain their parents would feel. He said he had left home after police visited him on September 19, 2003, and had driven about 600 miles looking for a place to die. He wrote that he had meant to take responsibility for the crimes and then end his life around the time of his trial, so that the families would not have to wait long for justice. Ramsland noted that he did not describe how the victims died.
Whether Maust killed anyone besides the five people he admitted to has not been established. His mother said in 2003 that she believed there were more victims from the years after his 1999 release. Police said in December 2003 that they found no further remains in the Hammond basement. His final note spoke of five killings, matching the two earlier convictions and the three Hammond deaths.
1974: While serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, kills a teenage boy; convicted of manslaughter by an Army court; serves more than three years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
1979: Asks to live with his mother in Chicago after her husband's death; she refuses.
1981: Kills a 15-year-old boy at an abandoned quarry near Elgin, Illinois.
After 1981: Serving a five-year Texas sentence for stabbing a child when Illinois charges him; held in Illinois mental institutions for two years before being found fit for trial; convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years.
1999: Released from Illinois prison.
May 2003: Nicholas James, 19, last seen.
August 2003: James Raganyi and Michael Dennis visit Maust's Hammond apartment, a friend later tells detectives.
September 10, 2003: James Raganyi, 16, and Michael Dennis, 13, last seen near Maust's home.
October 2, 2003: Maust arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor; released on $300 bond.
November 2003: Detectives find a fresh concrete pad in the basement; Nicholas James reported missing.
December 9, 2003: Maust in police custody; two bodies recovered.
December 10, 2003: Third body recovered.
December 11, 2003: Charged with James Raganyi's murder.
December 12, 2003: Pleads not guilty in Crown Point.
Fall 2005: Pleads guilty to the three Hammond murders; the state withdraws its death penalty requests.
December 2005: Sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole.
January 20, 2006: Dies at St. Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point after hanging himself in the Lake County Jail; a seven-page note admits five killings.