Friday, April 4, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
John Brewer Eustace was charged March 27 with kidnapping, rape, taking indecent liberties with a child, first-degree sex offense and first-degree burglary, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Sgt. Mike Justice said.
Authorities from Salt Lake City, Utah and Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., said they have since exchanged information with Charlotte police about three similar abductions in their areas.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Sgt. Rick Sanders, who questioned Eustace for 12 hours, declined to comment on the investigation but said police believe Eustace was in the Western cities at the time of those killings.
Police say Eustace, 31, crawled through the bedroom window of an east Charlotte apartment and snatched the toddler. They say he chose the girl at random.
In two of the three child murders out west, the kidnapper crawled through windows to steal the children.
In August 1995, in Salt Lake City, someone removed the screen covering Rosie Tapia's bedroom window, climbed into the basement apartment and took the 6-year-old girl from her bed while her brother and sister, 4-year-old twins, were sleeping nearby.
A jogger found her body that morning in a canal. Salt Lake City police said she had been sexually assaulted and thrown into a river.
In September 1990, Monica DaSilva, 7, disappeared from her Reno apartment while her parents slept. They told police somebody removed a window screen and took their daughter from her bed, also in a ground-floor apartment.
Monica's skeletal remains were discovered three weeks later in a canyon 10 miles east of Reno.
In April 1994, in Las Vegas, Diana Hernandez, 7, disappeared from her parents' apartment. Police eventually found her nude body in a dumpster at the complex.
Las Vegas, Reno and Salt Lake City investigators said they are thinking about traveling to Charlotte to talk with investigators and question Eustace.
"You hate to see this kind of crime," said Salt Lake City investigator Jim Prior said. "I'd go anywhere I need to go to get this case solved."
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