N.J. cop wanted for murders kills self

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Posted 4:20PM on Wednesday, April 10, 2002

DOVER TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A police officer wanted in a shooting rampage that killed five people was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Wednesday about 15 miles away, authorities said. Edward Lutes, a Seaside Heights police officer for 15 years, was found dead in his car in Barnegat Township at about 10 a.m., said Greg Sakowicz, the executive assistant Ocean County prosecutor. The time of Lutes' death wasn't known. Authorities would not provide a motive for the shootings. ``We have our suspicions. We're fleshing them out,'' Sakowicz said. Seaside Heights Fire Chief Reece Fisher, who had known Lutes since the 1980s, said Lutes was devastated last year when his girlfriend was killed in a car accident. ``He was able to come back to the job, but who is to say what was going on inside of him,'' Fisher said. Lutes' car was parked in the driveway of a home. The front passenger door was open and a rifle could be seen on the front seat. Authorities wouldn't say if the elderly woman who lived at the house knew Lutes. Lutes was wanted for a shooting late Tuesday in Dover Township, a New Jersey shore community that is still reeling from a February rampage in which a retired police officer allegedly killed four people, including his granddaughter. Police said Lutes shot five of his neighbors: two people who lived next door and three who were in a house across the street. Lutes later went to nearby Barnegat Township and wounded Seaside Heights Police Chief James Costello as the chief was leaving his home, police said. Costello, in satisfactory condition Wednesday with wounds to the leg and wrist, said he could not explain the rampage. ``He's a very close friend of mine,'' Costello said from his room at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune. Neighbors said Lutes had a daughter and two stepsons. Another person was wounded in Dover Township and taken to Community Medical Center in Toms River. Police did not say where the victim was when he was shot. The first shootings happened about a mile from the street where John E. Mabie allegedly killed his granddaughter and three neighbors on Feb. 21 as he went from house to house firing a .38-caliber revolver. ``It's just a sad time for the community,'' Dover Township Police Chief Michael Mastronardy said. Steve Rizzolo said Wednesday he moved into the neighborhood 10 years ago, about the same time that Lutes did. ``He used to walk his dog down the street, and he'd say hello. He wouldn't go by without saying hello,'' said Rizzolo, who described Lutes as a ``real neighborhood guy.'' Other neighbors, however, described Lutes was a disciplinarian, saying he set strict rules about when the children in his house could eat snacks, how they could wash their hands and what toys they could play with. ``He'd stand with his mean face just watering his lawn like he was having a bad, bad day, always,'' said Cara Reilly, 20. Several parents, including neighbor Karen Picht, waited with their children at school bus stops in the neighborhood Wednesday morning. Picht, whose 12-year-old daughter sometimes played with Lutes' daughter, said she normally wouldn't accompany her daughter in the mornings but she was concerned since the two neighborhood shootings. ``To do something like that, they snap,'' Picht said. In another multiple shooting this year in the state, six people were shot to death Feb. 4-5 in two towns near Camden. Four were killed at one home and two were killed the next day in an apartment complex. A 16-year-old boy, the nephew of one of the victims, was arrested.