A known murderer has beaten the rap again by cutting off his own fingers, making it impossible for the prosecution to prove that his fingerprints were on the murder weapon.
Police are certain that Alton Griert, 31, has gotten away with murder, again. And this time they had him caught.
They can’t make the charges stick because the only real evidence — his fingerprints on the knife that he raped and stabbed Carina Pesterka, 22, to death with — cannot be proven to be his.
When the police surrounded Griert’s house, he was so outnumbered that he knew he was caught. His only choice was to kill himself or surrender, so he preceded to cut-off the tips of all of his fingers, and then surrender.
He first took a heavy butcher knife and cut off the ends of the fingers of his right hand, flushing the excess flesh down the toilet.
Then stood at the kitchen sink, put his left hand in the garbage disposal, and flicked it on with his knee, destroying any possibility of the police getting a fingerprint off of that hand.
He wrapped his bleeding hands in towels and went outside with his hands up. Police arrested him and took him to the hospital, in Keastrosta, Rumania — before taking him down to the station and booking him for murder.
He had guessed that his fingerprints would be the key evidence in getting a conviction — and he guessed right. His hands are mangled for life, but he managed to blow the prosecutor’s evidence right out the window.
Police think Griert has brutally killed and raped as many as thirty women — but he is so clever that until this case there has never been enough evidence to bring him to trial, much less get a conviction.
Now the stubby-fingered killer is back on the streets, free as a bird.
“I personally think the slippery weasel has killed at least forty people,” says Police Sergeant Stephano Gravino.
“He might have a harder time of it now, without the full use of his fingers, but he’ll still continue to murder until we get him behind bars, where he belongs.”
Carina Pesterka, 22, mother of two small children — Leena, 3, and Mika, 2 — was at home in the middle of the afternoon when someone stormed into her house, raped her in front of her little ones, and stabbed her dozens of times.
The knife used in the killing was found in the house, and it was full of fingerprints. Rumor and circumstantial evidence led the police to Griert, but they needed to match the fingerprints in order to prove his guilt.
“This is an outrage, an abomination,” says Lasteeva Pesterka, 41, the devastated mother of the victim.
“These tiny children are going to grow up without a mother, and this maniac is still free, raping and killing more women. I don’t understand why it is so difficult to prove. Everyone knows he did it. I wouldn’t mind if a sniper took care of him, since the courts won’t.”