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TOMS RIVER -- The magazine clearinghouse company for which the suspect in a Dover Township murder was soliciting subscriptions has been connected with other deadly assaults in the past.
American Community Services, based in Michigan City, Ind., was named yesterday by Ocean County Prosecutor Thomas F. Kelaher as the parent company or employer of Phoenix Imaging, the company that recently flew at least a dozen door-to-door solicitors from the Midwest to New Jersey.
One of those salespeople was Azriel Rashad Bridge, 18, of Chicago, who was charged yesterday with murder and robbery in the death of Shirley Reuter, 77. Authorities say Bridge stabbed Reuter to death in her home early Wednesday afternoon after asking to come in for a glass of water and to use the bathroom. Bridge had been soliciting magazine subscriptions door-to-door in the neighborhood.
Authorities said Phoenix Imaging was cooperating with the investigation, but that American Community Services had yet to respond.
American Community Services could not be reached yesterday for comment.
Published reports from the Associated Press in 2001 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 1999 show that American Community Services has employed other magazine solicitors who have run afoul of the law, including at least two men accused of murdering defenseless elderly women.
In Knoxville, Tenn., in August 2001, 21-year-old Roger Broadway was arrested in connection with the slaying of Eskalene DeBorde, 67. DeBorde had been beaten, sexually assaulted and slain with one of her own kitchen knives. Her place had been ransacked. Broadway had been soliciting magazine subscriptions door-to-door in DeBorde's neighborhood on the day of the killing. He was part of an itinerant group of salespeople apparently in the employ of American Community Services.
American Community Services said at the time that it was not Broadway's employer, but that he worked for a subcontractor of the clearinghouse. Knoxville authorities criticized American Community Services for lax hiring practices that caused dangerous people, some with criminal records, to be soliciting door-to-door.
Dover Township Police Chief Michael Mastronardy yesterday contacted Peter C. Harvey, the state Attorney General, urging him to investigate the company.
"The attorney general said he is going to review the activities of this company beginning on Monday," Mastronardy said.
In 1990, in Woburn, Mass., a 76-year-old retired beautician was stabbed to death by a Detroit sales agent with American Community Services. The salesman, who had a prior rape conviction, had sold a subscription to the victim earlier in the day.
In February 1998, an ACS agent going door-to-door was charged with sexually assaulting a 67-year-old Plano, Texas, woman in her home, after threatening her with a kitchen knife.
In May 1992, a driver with no license took the helm from tired co-workers in a sales van that hit a freeway median and overturned on Interstate 80 west of Des Moines, Iowa, killing five sales agents and injuring six people. The sales crew was working under contract to American Community Services.
Local published reports from Monmouth County also indicate that salespeople from the Indiana company were ordered to leave Oceanport in July 2002, after several complaints from residents. One of the agents was arrested on an outstanding out-of-state warrant.
Mastronardy said he'd like to see actions that would end the company's operations in New Jersey.
Joseph Picard: 732-557-5738 or jpicard at domain app.com
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Revision r1.1 - 21 Nov 2004 - 05:26 by EliMantel
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