A two-day manhunt ended yesterday with the capture of a 19-year-old man who was charged in the stabbing death of a 61-year-old woman in her Severn home Sunday.
Reginald Cooper of the 11500 block of Ridgely Road in Caroline County was arrested without incident about 12: 30 p.m. after police got a tip that he was hiding in a home in the 1800 block of Eagle Court, less than half a mile from the house where Joan T. Maiolo was killed. He was charged with first-degree murder.
According to police, the two were strangers.
Police said Cooper became a suspect after they lifted his fingerprints from Maiolo's home. The prints matched those taken from the scene of a Meade Village burglary in March 1995. Cooper was not charged in that burglary, in which someone slipped in and out of the home through a rear kitchen window, police said.
The same method was used about 1: 30 a.m. Sunday, when a burglar sneaked through the rear window of Maiolo's home in the 8200 block of Deerfield Circle and attacked her in the kitchen with an 8- to 10-inch kitchen knife, stabbing her several times, said Sgt. Charles Blevins.
The woman managed to get up from a pool of blood and climb the stairs to her bedroom, pick up the phone, dial police and tell a 911 operator she had "just been knifed inside her residence," according to court documents.
Pub Date: 7/08/97
