Friday, December 12, 2008; Page B01
A 15-year-old Hagerstown girl suspected of being part of a clique of teens who liked to suck one another's blood approached a friend on a crowded high school bus in October and asked him to kill her father, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors in Washington County in Western Maryland allege that she told the friend, a male classmate, that he could find her father at 5 a.m., climbing into the work truck he parked in the alley behind their rowhouse.
And that was where, on Halloween morning, her father's body was found in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed repeatedly in the head and neck.
This week, the girl was ordered held without bond on charges of soliciting murder.
In recent court hearings, however, this has become clear: The suspect charged in the man's death was not the male classmate she is accused of soliciting for the killing but another of the girl's friends, a 19-year-old accused of confronting the father because of the belief -- unsupported, prosecutors say -- that he was abusing his daughter.
John Dunlap, assistant state's attorney for Washington County, said police and prosecutors began investigating the man's daughter and her friends because the man "had no problems with nobody."
"The only thing he had a problem with was his daughter and her group of friends," Dunlap said. They were a goth "crew, sucking each other's blood, cutting each other."
The Washington Post is not identifying the girl because she is charged as a juvenile. The father is not being identified because he and his daughter share a last name. The male classmate has not been charged.
The 19-year-old, Alec S. Eger, has been charged with first-degree murder.
Eger's public defender did not immediately return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment. The girl's attorney could not be identified last night. Because she is charged as a juvenile, her case file and attorney's name are not public. Calls to her mother's home were not immediately returned.
In court Wednesday, Dunlap said prosecutors have an independent witness on the bus who will testify about hearing the girl try to arrange the killing of her father.
The girl says on her MySpace page that she now lives with her mother: "I used 2 live with my father until he was killed on halloween of this '08." A more recent posting says: "wats gonna happen now that everything is settling down? everything is becoming clear nd i got the best ppl in the world. i luv you guys. don't stop bein u. nd don't give up on ur self or me."
Prosecutors have said the girl told the classmate on the bus that her father abused her. Dunlap said police found no evidence of abuse. He said there had also been no calls to police reporting abuse at the residence.
Prosecutors have not said whether she allegedly offered the classmate anything in exchange for the killing.
According to charging documents, Eger confessed. The documents say he told police that he was carrying two knives, one on his belt and one in his pocket, when he went to confront the man "about allegedly abusing his daughter, a friend of" Eger's.
Eger said that the man grabbed one of the knives and that the two began to struggle, according to the documents. Eger told police that he pulled out his other knife and stabbed the man repeatedly in the head, neck and possibly the chest until the victim "went down," the documents say.
When Eger determined that the man was not breathing, the documents say, he pulled the body near the man's parked truck, removed his wallet from his pants, took $20 to $40 in cash and threw the wallet, knife and his bloody shirt in a nearby dumpster.
On his MySpace page yesterday, the victim's 20-year-old son described himself as "lost for words":
"I love you dad and miss you, you are the best father anyone could ask for. may God watch over you now."
Staff writer Matt Zapotosky and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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