A Virginia man in prison for the 2002 strangulation death of his ex-girlfriend has now been charged with murder in the cold-case killings of two other women in Virginia and Maryland, law enforcement officials announced Wednesday.
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The man, 52-year-old Charles Helem, wrote Maryland law enforcement officials twice over the past decade, officials said, claiming he had information about an unsolved homicide in Mount Rainier, Md., but then refusing to speak to detectives.
In the fall he finally confessed, officials said, revealing from prison that he had strangled and then slit the throat of 19-year-old Jennifer Landry in 2002. In the same conversations with Prince George’s County detectives, Helem said he had information about another cold-case homicide in Fairfax County — which he ultimately said was the 1987 killing of 37-year-old Eige Sober-Adler.
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In both cold cases, police officials said that Helem revealed information about the women’s deaths that only the killer would know.
A Fairfax County grand jury indicted Helem on one count of murder in connection with Sober-Adler’s killing Tuesday, officials said. Helem has been separately charged in Landry’s killing in Prince George’s County.
Helem’s case was not yet listed in Fairfax County or Prince George’s County court records, so it was unclear whether he had retained an attorney.
Family members for Sober-Adler and Landry could not immediately be reached for comment. Law enforcement officials said the parents of both women had died before charges were placed in their cases.
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At a news conference Wednesday, police and prosecutors from both states called the investigations and charges a team effort and highlighted the collaboration between Virginia and Maryland law enforcement.
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Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis and Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve T. Descano, as well as Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz and Prince George’s State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy (D), were joined by the original detectives and prosecutors who worked Helem’s cases.
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“We now know even more about what danger this killer presented to the entire national capital region,” Davis said, assuring the community that law enforcement officials in the Washington region are looking back at old cold cases to see if Helem has any connection. When asked Wednesday if the man who killed Landry drove a truck, authorities said Helem had wanted to make it known to investigators that he drove a truck before he went to prison.
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“The families of these victims have waited a long time for answers," Aziz said. “We all collectively hope the charges now brought against Helem provide some comfort to these families.”
Construction workers found the nude and beaten body of Sober-Adler in a field near a Days Inn that was under construction in Herndon on the morning of Sept. 8, 1987, according to news reports at the time. The Kensington woman’s car was found a short distance away on the shoulder of the westbound lanes of the Dulles Toll Road.
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Police believe Sober-Adler had parked her car on the shoulder the night before and walked around the Herndon area. An autopsy determined her cause of death was a skull fracture and cerebral hemorrhage caused by an unknown object.
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Fifteen years after Sober-Adler was found dead, the body of another woman was discovered in a wooded area on Oak Lane in Mount Rainier in August 2002. She had been strangled and cut on her neck, police said, and she was not identified as Landry until three years later through a fingerprint match.
Aziz said Helem admitted to picking up Landry in D.C., while he was soliciting sex for money. Helem told police he killed her just across the county line in Mount Rainier and left her body in the woods, officials said.
Helem is currently serving a life sentence in Red Onion State Prison in Virginia for the killing of his ex-girlfriend, 37-year-old Patricia Bentley, whom prosecutors said he strangled with a cord and his hands. Bentley was a single mother of two sons and had driven a bus for Loudoun County schools for six years, The Washington Post reported at the time of Helem’s first trial.
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Bentley’s oldest son and her best friend found her body inside her townhouse in Chantilly, Va. Detectives focused on Helem, who had been in a relationship with Bentley and moved out of her home in January 2002 — just months before the woman was killed. Helem had been convicted in 1997 of interstate domestic violence against his then-wife after he beat and choked her until she passed out
Helem was tried three times for Bentley’s death. The first two resulted in mistrials before a jury convicted him in 2003.
Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.