“The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world, pursuing the most dangerous criminals.”
“When two deaf college students are savagely killed in their own dorm rooms… everyone was really blaming each other in the community.”
“The bureau mobilizes. The killer had great access to both of these dorm rooms and carried out these crimes unnoticed.”
“Who has access to both of these students? I mean, who has a motive to do this sort of thing? Everybody was thinking we’ve got a serial killer loose here.”
“September 28th, 2000. It’s a quiet day on the campus of Gallaudet University, the Harvard of Higher Education for the Deaf. Surrounded on all four sides by fencing, the campus is a tranquil island in one of DC’s roughest neighborhoods.”
“Once you got right outside of Gallaudet, you’d get mugged like that. The fences didn’t, to me, feel safe because things can happen inside of an island, not just outside of an island.”
“At 8:00 p.m. in Cogwell Hall, a male student nervously approaches resident adviser Lauren Husby.”
“He told me that he was supposed to meet up with Eric Plunkett for a tutoring session. So I told him, you know, why don’t we wait a few minutes and see, maybe he’ll show up a little bit later. But he was really persistent. He wanted me to check his room. And the other thing about him, he said that Eric Plunkett’s room had smelled funny.”
“Lauren follows the student to Eric Plunkett’s room at the end of the hall. She notices that Eric’s door is closed. That’s unusual for the outgoing 19-year-old freshman who has a mild case of cerebral palsy.”
“Lauren can’t enter the room alone.”
“The rule is that I was supposed to have a second person there for witnessing purposes, and also that would have to be a male.”
“She finds resident adviser Thomas Cook.”
“And then Lauren showed up in my room and I was like, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know, someone reported that Eric’s room smelled funny.’ So I said, ‘All right, well let’s check it out.'”
“As he approaches Eric’s room, Thomas feels uneasy.”
“It was very strange to have his door closed because most of the time his door was open. He was always welcoming everybody, anybody could go to his room at any time.”
“He rings Eric’s doorbell several times. The doorbell has a light bulb above the door.”
“We could see that the light was flashing in the room when the doorbell rang, but there was no response.”
“We have a master key where I can get into anybody’s door at any time. We opened the door, turned the light on, and there was just a shocking scene.”
“There was a big red splotch on the floor. I thought it was really odd, so I followed those spots to his body, and his body was face down on the ground, horrified.”
“Thomas rushes to Eric’s side.”
“My very first thought was, I hope it’s just a seizure. I, I hope it’s something like that. But I was seeing so much blood around the room, I just, I just knew.”
“Thomas tells Lauren to call campus security while he gets their supervisor.”
“I went to go see my boss. I just said one word. I said, ‘Death.'”
“Thomas and his boss hurry back to Eric’s room. DC Metro police are called to the scene. It’s clear to them that Eric’s death was no accident.”
“There was a, a broken chair in the room and they summarized that he was struck with the chair and, and maybe repeatedly with parts of the chair.”
“Could someone have snuck onto campus and broken into Eric’s room to rob him? Investigators look around but nothing seems out of place.”
“There were certain items that were left behind. His computer hadn’t been touched, and other items like that were still there within the room.”
“Detectives doubt that robbery was the motive. Does that mean a cold-hearted killer broke in, or is the enemy within Gallaudet’s walls?”
“Technicians carefully recover blood samples, hairs, fibers, and fingerprints, hoping to find DNA evidence that will lead them to a suspect.”
“Eric’s mother and stepfather, Kathleen and Chris Cornells, are asleep in Minnesota when police arrive at their house 2:00 in the morning.”
“The phone rang at the same time that there was a loud rap on the front door, and Kathleen responded first to the telephone.”
“Hello? Who is this?”
“It’s the police.”
“The police are downstairs. What is this about? Okay, we’re on our way. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“Hi, ma’am, you mind if we come in?”
“They asked if he, you know, was a student in Gallaudet, Washington D.C.”
“Yes.”
“Then they told us there had been an altercation and that he was dead.”
“Eric’s sister calls their father, Craig Plunkett, in Oregon.”
“I believe she asked me if the police had come to the door and I said, ‘No, what’s going on?’ And she says, ‘They found Eric dead in his dorm room.’ I have one chair that I sit in. I went over, I sat in my chair. I sat in that chair all day long.”
“As word rapidly spreads around the small campus, everyone is stunned. Though he was new to Gallaudet, Eric was already popular.”
“I just kept thinking, ‘Why him?’ I have to admit I was starting to think, you know, ‘well, maybe he was an easy target.’ I did think of that. He did have cerebral palsy. He did live alone. He lived at the very last room on the hallway. He wasn’t very close to where traffic areas where people congregated.”
“Detectives begin interviewing witnesses. Because of the language barrier, it’s a painstaking process.”
“Can I talk?”
“You’re often times restricted on the the the pace of the interview because a lot of times you have to go through an interpreter, and so it takes so much longer, and sometimes you miss out on nuances and things like that that you would typically pick up on somebody who could speak with you.”
“Detectives finally glean some intriguing information. Eric was homosexual and had recently become secretary of a campus club for gay and lesbian students. There’s great concern that it was the result of a hate crime due to his particular sexuality.”
“One student even tells detectives that he saw another student sign, ‘One less fag’ after Eric died.”
“Everyone was really blaming each other, and there’s another possible motive. Could Eric have been killed by a lover?”
“What they saw in the crime scene is, this was a crime of passion. It was their impression that this was perpetrated by somebody that had an emotional attachment to Eric.”
“A potential suspect emerges when a student reveals that Eric was in a romantic relationship. The student doesn’t know the young man’s identity, just the first name, Thomas, and the last initial B. Was Eric killed by his boyfriend, an angry student, or by a total stranger? It’s a riddle that only the FBI will be able to answer, but not before the campus is thrust deeper into a bloody nightmare.”
“I was very scared and nervous. I felt to the point that I just wasn’t safe anymore.”
“It’s been less than 24 hours since 19-year-old college freshman Eric Plunkett was beaten to death in his dorm room at Gallaudet, a university for deaf students in Washington D.C. A makeshift memorial grows outside his dorm window.”
“We had a vigil right in front of Cogwell Hall and we had a tree there and we put flowers, pictures of Eric, and we tried to mourn Eric.”
“Grief-stricken, Eric’s mother, stepfather, and sister arrive in D.C., where they’re met by detectives.”
“They took us right to the precinct. They took us into a conference room and we expected to get information in that session, and they were basically interviewing us, asking us questions.”
“And there’s a reason. During their search of Eric’s room, detectives discovered that Eric’s computer was powered up. He was instant messaging his sister, Eric, who is likely the last person who saw him alive.”
“Does she have clues as to what happened in the moments before Eric’s death?”
“They wanted to understand from her, ‘What were you guys talking about? What was the conversation leading up to that? Did you see anything? Did he tell you anything? What was going on?'”
“Aaron tells detectives that Eric seemed totally normal during their last chat, except for one eerie moment when Aaron was communicating with Eric with the webcam going on, she noticed that somebody walked by who was lingering by Eric’s door.”
“Detectives need to find out. Eric’s family leaves the precinct and makes the grim trip to Gallaudet.”
“Eric’s mother flashes back to the day she dropped Eric off.”
“We were getting ready to leave and, um, gave him a hug and I said, ‘Just the typical good luck, I don’t want to leave you.'”
“He’s like, ‘Mom, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.’ And those were the last words that he said to me when I last physically was with him. ‘Don’t worry about me, Mom, I’ll be fine.'”
“With only a fuzzy webcam image as a lead, detectives continue their investigation. They focus on Eric’s resident adviser, Thomas Cook, who discovered the body. Cook has a master key to every dorm room in the building, including Eric’s.”
“It’s typical in homicide investigations to scrutinize the individual that found the body. That’s kind of basic police work.”
“At the same time, detectives tried to track down a student named Thomas B., who was allegedly in a relationship with Eric.”
“They first got a name of Thomas B. from some of the other students. They really couldn’t identify who that person was initially, but in reviewing some of the logbooks and other records, that’s when they finally came up with the name of Thomas Mitch.”
“Thomas Mitch is a freshman with no criminal record and no disciplinary problems at the school.”
“It was also determined that they apparently had a bit of a falling out sometime prior to his death.”
“Detectives debate whether the killer targeted Eric for being homosexual or if Thomas Mitch himself killed his former friend. It’s now been 5 days since Eric’s murder and detectives are desperate for answers. They bring 18-year-old Thomas Mitch in for questioning.”
“Thomas, I appreciate you coming in to speak with me today.”
“Detectives interview Mitch for more than 2 hours.”
“Yes, I pushed him down.”
“Mitch admits he and Eric had been close and fought when Mitch ended the relationship.”
“He admitted that he had been in an argument some time before and he admitted that during that argument he pushed Eric once.”
“Mitch admitted to this physical violence of Eric Plunkett, then the interview stopped.”
“Thomas, stand up. Stand up.”
“What?”
“Stand up out of your chair. Why? Hands behind your back. You’re under arrest for the murder of Eric Plunkett. You have the right to remain silent.”
“And that was accepted as a confession that he, in fact, had essentially beaten Eric Plunkett to death.”
“DC Metropolitan Police arrest Thomas Mitch and charge him with second-degree murder. But as time will tell, not everything is as it seems.”
“You should never, ever lock yourself into one theory without challenging that theory every step of the way.”
“Just hours after Thomas Mitch is arrested for the murder of Eric Plunkett, the sensational news of one deaf student killing another on a world-renowned campus floods the airwaves.”
“We saw a lot of it in the papers, of course, and we saw a lot on the Internet.”
“I mean, it’s strange to see your son’s name in the newspaper and especially attached to something like this.”
“DC Metro Police are convinced there is only one reason for the murder: a falling out between Mitch and Plunkett. Nobody had any reason to believe that this could have been a robbery.”
“Detectives collect fingerprints, blood, and handwriting samples from Mitch to compare to evidence collected at the crime scene.”
“But almost as quickly as the case appears to close, there is a shocking turn of events.”
“Basically, US Attorney’s office said, ‘You do not have enough probable cause to make an arrest. You should not have made an arrest on this. We’re going to throw the case out at this point.'”
“To everyone’s surprise, Mitch is released, though he remains the chief suspect.”
“Eric’s family learns of the dramatic development the day of Eric’s funeral.”
“What do you mean you let him go? He confessed! Doesn’t—didn’t make sense, didn’t compute.”
“Once again, the Gallaudet campus is gripped with fear.”
“The students felt nervous about Mitch’s release. They were looking behind their backs, making sure they were safe. And they complained to the president of the university, and the president had told them, you know, that he won’t be coming back to school until the investigation’s over, and that he was suspended.”
“Mitch returns to his home in New Hampshire, but students can’t help but wonder: has a killer been set free?”
“Eric’s mother writes an open letter to students, encouraging them to stay calm.”
“My strong hope is that this tragedy does not deter other students from pursuing their goals and dreams at this university. Please know that Eric’s preach here was a wonderful part of his life, his first real step towards independence. My sincerest wishes for continuing success for Gallaudet University.”
“January 2001. 3 months after Eric Plunkett’s murder, classes resume at Gallaudet.”
“Everyone felt that we were back for the second semester and that it would be a pretty good semester.”
“That optimism is shattered in the early morning hours of February 3rd. A fire alarm goes off at Cogwell Hall, the same dorm where Eric Plunkett was killed. The alarm is accompanied by flashing lights to alert profoundly deaf students. Hughes and the other RAs go room-to-room making sure everyone evacuates.”
“And I saw the other RA who recently checked the fourth floor, his facial expression was really in shock. He looked down to talk to my supervisor and they said, ‘There’s another one.’ And I thought, ‘What are you talking about, another one?'”
“There’s another dead body.”
“What? I just couldn’t believe it. This can’t be happening again.”
“Officer, you can call me ahead and take a picture of these steps.”
“DC Metro Detective James Traum arrives on scene.”
“The room was in such disarray and the victim was in such a state that nobody had been able to make a positive ID who he was.”
“With a second body on their hands, DC Metro Police immediately reach out to the federal agency equipped to handle high-profile homicide investigations, the FBI.”
“FBI Special Agent John Adams, a forensics expert, has two children enrolled at Gallaudet.”
“There was some personal investment in this case on my part so that not only the Gallaudet community could have some peace of mind, but really that these FBI folks, they, they could have some peace of mind.”
“When he arrives on scene, it’s clear to the veteran agent that this victim has been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and head. His throat is also slashed. His body was laying on the floor beyond a bed where the mattress had been turned over.”
“There was a lot of blood on the victim’s body. There was a lot of blood spatter on the walls.”
“The victim is identified as 19-year-old Ben Varnner, a quiet sophomore from Texas who often kept to himself but is known as kind and helpful. Several important items are missing from Ben’s room: his wallet, debit cards, and checkbook. And this time, the attacker left plenty of evidence.”
“There was a, a bloody trail of shoe tracks that appeared to exit Benjamin Varnner’s room and progressed down the hall in, in the Cogwell dorm.”
“There was a blood trail that came from out of the building, and we were able to follow it, and it led past a dumpster that was located over in that area.”
“And the initial crime scene technicians who got on the scene, what they found was a bloody jacket in the dumpster.”
“Could the murder weapon be inside the dumpster as well?”
“The detective who was actually assigned to the case, he pulled his pickup truck to the back of the dumpster. I jumped in, and I began throwing stuff out of the dumpster into the back of his pickup truck, and that’s when we find the bloody knife inside the dumpster.”
“The team is hot on the killer’s trail. They have shoe prints, a jacket, and a bloody knife. Will the evidence be enough to lead them to the killer before he strikes again?”
“Everybody was thinking, ‘We’ve got a serial killer who’s here.’ Gallaudet students were afraid for their personal safety. There was even greater concern that the killer was still targeting Gallaudet students.”
“4 months after Eric Plunkett is murdered in his Gallaudet University dorm room, Ben Varnner is killed in the very same building.”
“I felt really responsible. I thought maybe I didn’t pay attention to the people in the dorm. Why didn’t I notice a stranger coming into the dorm?”
“Investigators managed to recover bloody shoe prints, a jacket, and a knife from the crime scene. They quickly determined that the knife belonged to Ben himself. But the investigation slows when the interviews begin.”
“We just interviewed everybody in the Cogwell dorm and anybody that had any connection to Benjamin Varnner, trying to get a better understanding of his movements and his activity. Dealing with, uh, interpreters, that really slowed down that process, and there was a number of individuals that needed to be interviewed, and so that took several days to to get through all that.”
“The agents stick with it, convinced that the heartless killer is within reach.”
“The killer had great access to both of these dorm rooms and carried out these crimes unnoticed. So it was fairly clear to us that we’re dealing with somebody that is on campus and very likely resided within the dormitory itself to be able to gain that level of access without raising anybody’s scrutiny.”
“Investigators learned that resident adviser Thomas Cook, who had discovered Eric Plunkett’s body, lives across the hall from Ben.”
“This is another one of my students. Eric was my kid and Ben was my kid, and I was like, ‘Why is this going on? What did I do?’ And, you know, did I not protect them enough? Was I supposed to be protecting them?”
“Investigators eye Cook as a possible suspect.”
“And I was just 100% furious. I mean, who would have suspected? Who dare think that I would do something like that, to think I would be a murderer?”
“Cook’s DNA is tested, but it doesn’t match evidence left at either scene. Investigators turned their attention once again to Thomas Mitch, the man who had initially been charged with Eric Plunkett’s murder, who happened to be in D.C. at the time of Ben’s killing.”
“They started looking at Thomas Mitch and learned that he was scheduled to testify at a grand jury hearing in the next day, and so they were concerned that he may have come into town early and still had access to the dormitory and may have committed this crime as well.”
“Like everyone else, Eric Plunkett’s parents can’t believe this is happening.”
“We just fell apart again. We thought that it was Mitch that did it, but he’s out of school. So did he come back? Did someone else kill it? What is going on?”
“The theory unravels when Mitch’s grand jury testimony reveals that he only confessed to getting into a fight with Eric, not to killing him.”
“Once the detective heard that I struck or I pushed Eric, in his mind what he had was a confession, and he didn’t critically analyze how did this actually fit the crime as we know it.”
“Without a confession and with no DNA evidence linking him to either crime scene, Thomas Mitch is cleared as a suspect. Investigators have no other lead, but they still suspect their killer is living on campus.”
“It seemed like such a peaceful, tranquil place, and to have two of its students murdered in one dormitory just kind of violated all that tranquility that you experience when you’re on that campus.”
“Despite hundreds of interviews, investigators can find no witnesses who saw or heard anything during either crime. Now everything hinges on the evidence. Research reveals that the bloody shoe prints trailing away from Ben’s dorm room come from a specific cross-training sneaker from a major brand.”
“The thing about the bloody footprints is that they’re no good until you have something to match it up to.”
“The team also believes the killer may have been injured in the attack.”
“If you don’t have what we call a combat knife, and that’s a knife with a big hilt right here that protects your hand, if you have like a kitchen knife or a paring knife or something like that, and you’re fighting with the person and you’re struggling going back and forth, you’re hitting bone, and a lot of times when you hit bone or you hit some kind of solid object, that knife slips and it cuts your hand.”
“Investigators finally catch a break when the bank of the second victim, Ben Varnner, alerts them to a possible forged check.”
“They found out that during the time period that he should have been dead, that somebody actually cashed a check that was supposedly written by Varnner to Joseph Mesa.”
“Joseph Mesa Jr., a sophomore from Guam, lived across the hall from Eric Plunkett and is the same student who reported the odd smell coming from Eric’s room. Security footage from the bank shows Mesa cashing the check.”
“Now, on the check there was a comment on there like, ‘Old laptop.’ Detectives are growing suspicious for other reasons as well.”
“Both victims, Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varnner, were acquaintances of Joseph Mesa. It didn’t appear that they were close friends, but they were in fact acquaintances. And though he had transferred to a nearby dorm before Ben’s murder, Mesa still had access to Cogwell Hall.”
“I saw him at Cogwell Hall a couple of times. He was there with the students, and I didn’t even think odd that he was coming into Cogwell Hall because he was socializing with the other students there.”
“Investigators bring Mesa in for an interview. They’re looking for undeniable physical evidence.”
“What you’re looking for are cuts on the hand. That’s a telltale sign.”
“Do investigators finally have their man?”
“What are you talking about? Or who was… Are they once again on the wrong trail?”
“After Ben’s murder, everyone did look at each other. Was it you? Were not… it became ugly. There were so many people pointing fingers towards each other.”
“Investigators have identified 22-year-old Joseph Mesa as a prime suspect in the stabbing death of Gallaudet University sophomore Ben Varnner.”
“They know they’ll likely see cuts on Mesa’s hands if he is in fact the killer. So when they interviewed Mesa, what they asked to do is, of course, to look at his hands, and they saw that there were cuts on his hands.”
“Despite these telltale signs, Mesa denies everything during the interview.”
“Mesa lied to them, and a lot of times a lie can be as good as a confession.”
“He said that he had never been in Varnner’s room, that he had never gotten a check from Varnner, and that there was nothing about a laptop in there.”
“Agents suspect Mesa is their man, but after what happened with Thomas Mitch, they want to make sure that this time the right killer is caught.”
“The detectives were able to use those lies, were able to use the check and the videotape, and able to use the fact that Mesa said that he had a certain type of shoe which matched what the FBI said. They were able to use that to develop probable cause to actually get a search warrant for his room.”
“But just as investigators submit paperwork to obtain the search warrant, Mesa shocks them by coming forward to confess.”
“He had talked to his girlfriend. He had admitted to her that he had done the murders, and she had convinced him that he needed to do the right thing and come turn himself in, and that’s what he did. He came in, and he confessed to the murder of Varnner.”
“I’m going to show you a knife and you tell me if this knife is similar.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Mesa says he brought a knife to Ben’s room, but he saw a larger knife belonging to Ben and decided to use that one instead.”
“I stabbed him. I stabbed him. He walked… got up, walked over, and fell. Then I stabbed him right here in the cheek, and he started bleeding, and he… he tried to defend himself and tried to get away, and he came towards me, and then got blood on me. I tried to choke him. I tried to choke him, and I had his neck in my arm. Tried to choke him that way.”
“After killing Ben, Mesa took his money.”
“Then I took his wallet. I got his checkbook and everything together, and then went back to my room. Then I signed… started signing for the check.”
“He went in there without much more of a plan than stealing and killing. That was pretty much it. He did a poor job covering his tracks. I mean, he definitely went above and beyond what he needed to do to accomplish his goal, which was to kill and to rob. I mean, the overkill, that was totally unnecessary.”
“Detectives asked Mesa if there’s something more he needs to get off his chest.”
“And then they asked him, ‘Is there anything else that you want to tell us about?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, I killed Eric Plunkett as well.'”
“According to Mesa, the motive was always money, nothing more.”
“I don’t understand why I needed the money. I had 550, so this was an additional 650. So I thought with my 550 and with that 650, that would be enough to buy whatever we wanted, you know, to buy things for my girlfriend, like a TV, a mouse. So it matched everything, so it be purple all over.”
“The robbery motive, that turned out to be the driving force behind the killings that Joseph Mesa perpetrated, was quite different than what was thought to be the motive during the investigation.”
“Investigators still need concrete physical evidence to lock their case. They searched Mesa’s dorm room and hit the jackpot.”
“Going into his room, that’s when they found the bloody shoe, and that’s when the game was up.”
“The shoes matched the bloody shoe prints leading from Varnner’s room. Investigators also uncover some items that had been bought with Eric Plunkett’s debit card after his death.”
“Investigators arrest Mesa and charge him with two counts of first-degree murder plus 13 other counts, including burglary and robbery.”
“And I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ Joseph Mesa? How… I mean, maybe he just snapped, you know? Maybe he just snapped and started killing people. But who is this person?”
“When Eric Plunkett’s family learns of Mesa’s arrest, they realize they’ve seen Joseph Mesa before. He offered his sympathies the day they arrived on campus following Eric’s murder.”
“There was a big, huge poster that the student government had put together, and our contact asked for a pen, and they gave us the pen.”
“Mesa was the student who loaned them a pen to sign Eric’s poster.”
“Joseph was the one who killed Eric. I can’t imagine knowing what I did and then hugging the mother of the person who I just killed and offering sympathy.”
“Eric’s sister realizes that Mesa is also the mysterious student she saw lurking in the background of their last video chat.”
“Eric’s father comes face to face with his son’s killer at the arraignment.”
“I was looking at the kid that killed my son, and I wanted to kill him. And I had to sit there like a human being and watch this process go.”
“At trial, Mesa claims insanity. His defense was that he had a mental disorder and that there was a hand that was telling him to commit these murders. And since he couldn’t hear it, it couldn’t be like a voice talking to him. So what he described was his hand hovering in the air and using sign language to instruct him to go out and kill these people.”
“The jury doesn’t buy it. After deliberating for only 3 hours, they find Mesa guilty on all counts. He is sentenced to six life terms.”
“Special Agent John Adams can finally rest knowing his colleagues’ children are safe.”
“There was a very personal sense of duty that I felt that that we get involved in this investigation and provide whatever expertise and assistance that it required to ensure that the killer was caught as quickly as possible and a conviction was upheld in court, and person was sent away for a long time.”
“Eric’s family hopes his murder won’t keep other deaf students from pursuing their dreams at Gallaudet.”
“He found his place. He found his independence. He, you know, he was free, you know. I think that he would definitely not want other students to not have that opportunity.”
