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from: Stash
205.188.192.41
3/8/00
1:17:14 AM
WHEN SHARON R. LOPATKA left her home in Hampstead, Maryland, on 13 October, she wrote a note for her husband saying she was going to visit friends in Georgia and would not be coming back. "If my body is never retrieved, don't worry, know that I'm at peace," she wrote. She also asked him not to go after her attacker. In the event, Lopatka took a 300 mile bus ride to North Carolina, where she expected to be sexually tortured and killed by a man she had corresponded with over the Internet.
Apparently, she got her wish. Her body was found in a shallow grave in late October behind a mobile home in Collettsville. The autopsy showed she had been strangled about 16 October. The home's owner, Robert Glass, was charged with first-degree murder. Messages from Glass, recovered from Lopatka's home computer, indicate that she travelled to North Carolina knowing what awaited her. Lopatka, 35, operated three World Wide Web pages. One offered to write classified advertisements, while the other two, advertising psychic hot lines, were entitled "Psychics Know All," and "Dionne Enterprises." A friend described her as happily married and sensible. Glass, 45, a father of three who separated from his wife earlier this year, worked as a computer programmer for the county for nearly 16 years. The two first came in contact over the Internet.
Lopatka's husband reported her missing on 20 October and police discovered the e-mail messages from Glass despite his attempt to have her erase the files. Messages from "slowhand" -- Glass' apparent Internet alias -- "described in detail how he was going to sexually torture... and ultimately kill her," an affidavit said. [AP] 29 Oct 1996
