A woman is alone at her home on a quiet country road. It is early morning when there is a knock on the door. A man, a stranger, is on her porch asking for help. He has run out of gas, he says. He needs to use a phone. The woman, in an act of kindness, obliges.
The woman was Mary E. Whitaker, 61, an accomplished violinist who lived in Manhattan and spent her summers in her home in far western New York, near Lake Erie.
The man was a homeless drifter, Charles Sanford, 30, according to law enforcement officials. And he was not alone last Wednesday morning when he knocked on Ms. Whitaker’s single-story home at 8448 Titus Road, on the Westfield-Sherman town line in Chautauqua County. Hiding nearby, the authorities said, was his accomplice, Jonathan Conklin, armed with a .22-caliber rifle and a plan. Mr. Conklin, the authorities said, wanted to rob Ms. Whitaker so he could live like a “rock star,” using whatever they stole to buy drugs and other goods.
But the plan, as laid out in court documents, quickly turned bloody. By the time the deadly robbery was finished, Ms. Whitaker had been shot twice, stabbed in the neck once, and left to die bleeding in her garage. Mr. Sanford and Mr. Conklin, 43, fled in her car, with little more than some checks and her credit cards, the authorities said.
They drove to Pennsylvania, where they were arrested on Friday. The court documents filed in United States District Court in Buffalo offer a graphic and disturbing account of what the police believe happened. For her friends and loved ones, Ms. Whitaker’s violent end remains incomprehensible.
Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf posted a tribute on Facebook to her friend that seemed to capture the general sentiment. “Going to speak from my heart,” Ms. Dorman-Phaneuf wrote, calling Ms. Whitaker “a very, very rare and gentle human, who thought deeply and carefully about what mattered, and made you feel like she saw who you truly were when you were near her.
“She was killed yesterday with a gun. She has a family and scores of friends and colleagues who are completely at a loss for how to process her being taken.” According to court documents, Mr. Sanford and Mr. Conklin met in a homeless shelter in Erie, Pa., several months ago.
Early last week, Mr. Sanford told Mr. Conklin he was looking for a new place to stay, and Mr. Conklin told him he had an idea. Late on Tuesday, a mutual acquaintance drove the pair to Sherman. “Conklin and Sanford slept for a few hours in a clearing near an old railroad trestle,” according to an affidavit filed in federal court. Before dawn, the two set off to an apartment near a bar in downtown Sherman. Mr. Conklin told Mr. Sanford that the person who lived in the apartment owed him money, and they robbed the place, taking multiple shotguns and a .22-caliber rifle, the affidavit states. It was around 5 a.m. when the pair set off again.
After walking for a while, they arrived — at random, the authorities believe — at Ms. Whitaker’s home, a green ranch-style house atop a hill and opposite a sunflower field. Investigators said Mr. Sanford had told them that Mr. Conklin said he intended to rob the house so he could “live like a rock star.” The plan was for Mr. Sanford to ring the buzzer and ask to use the phone, saying he ran out of gas. Mr. Conklin, with the rifle at the ready, hid. When Mr. Sanford first rang the buzzer, around 7 a.m., there was no response. So he pounded on the door. Ms. Whitaker eventually answered and gave her phone to Mr. Sanford, who made two calls. Mr. Conklin burst out of the shadows, announcing, “This is a robbery.” Ms. Whitaker screamed. Mr. Conklin fired. The gunshot hit her in the chest, according to the account provided by Mr. Sanford.
She then lunged for the gun, grabbing it by the barrel. Another shot rang out. She was hit in the leg. But she was still alive. Mr. Sanford dragged her into the garage, he told the authorities, adding that Mr. Conklin ordered him to use his knife to finish the job.
Mr. Sanford told investigators that he tried to cut her throat but could not get the blade to penetrate deeply. She was left bleeding on the floor, where she died. (Her body was found later that day by a fellow musician who was concerned when she could not reach Ms. Whitaker. Mr. Sanford and Mr. Conklin scoured the home for valuables, found some credit cards and a checkbook, and then fled in Ms. Whitaker’s gray Chevrolet. The next day, after returning to Erie, they set about on their shopping spree. They called a woman who they knew to be addicted to crack and offered her drugs if she posed as Ms. Whitaker to shop at a local Walmart. She bought a large flat-screen television for the two men. Mr. Sanford and Mr. Conklin were arrested on Friday after they were recognized on surveillance video using Ms. Whitaker’s credit cards at a convenience store, the authorities said. They were charged with federal crimes related to the home invasion and robbery and are being held without bail in the Chautauqua County Jail in Mayville. As the state continues to investigate the killing, Ms. Whitaker’s friends remain devastated.
For more than two decades, Ms. Whitaker played with the Westchester Philharmonic and toured widely, including once with Barbra Streisand. In the summers, she played with the Chautauqua Institution's Orchestra. Her last concert there was the night before she was killed. Jason Minter, 44, a neighbor of Ms. Whitaker’s in the Inwood section of Manhattan, said that “everyone is in shock.” Mr. Minter called the crime “the most random awful thing anyone can imagine,” adding that her killing was “confusing, bizarre and disturbing all at the same time.”
Source: The New York Times
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