A convicted rapist was accused Friday of strangling a 19-year-old college student whose body was found last August under a bridge in a Baltimore park, one of a string of attacks police say he carried out that month against young women.
Ronnie L. Winkler, 34, of the 3000 block of Harford Road was charged in the Aug. 15 killing of Kiuna Jackson, a graduate of Northern High School who was attending the Community College of Baltimore County in Essex.
In addition, authorities in Frederick and Baltimore are looking into whether Winkler is connected to the death of another 19-year-old, a Baltimore woman found strangled in an SUV last year in Frederick. Maj. Terrence McLarney, commander of the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit, said the two agencies are cooperating in the investigation into the death of Shneara Kerrie Boone, who worked in a McDonald's restaurant in Rosedale and who was reported missing Aug. 31.
Boone was found dead five days later in her family's SUV, parked on Frederick's East South Street. Police said Boone's body was discovered after officers responded to a report of a foul odor coming from a green SUV that had been in the same spot for several days.
In charging documents for the Jackson case, Detective Bryan Kershaw wrote that Winkler was asked by an unidentified person to meet with the woman and give her something. Jackson, who lived on the 1300 block of Windemere Ave., had not had prior contact with Winkler, documents say. Cell phone records confirmed that Jackson and Winkler communicated just prior to her disappearance, and one of the witnesses said they saw Winkler driving Jackson's vehicle the next day.
The vehicle was later found near Winkler's home, Kershaw wrote. A jogger discovered Jackson's body a few blocks away, lying face-down on rocks under the Harford Road bridge, on the bank of a stream between a paved trail and Herring Run. An autopsy showed she had been strangled.
At the time of her death, a police spokesman said she was a "good girl who suffered a tragic death."
Contacted by phone on Friday, Marie Simmons, Jackson's aunt, had nothing but good words for detectives who have been trying for months to find her niece's killer, and said she spoke to one of them on Wednesday about the progress in the case. She used an expletive to describe Winkler.
"I know about the other young ladies he's accused of sexually assaulting," said Simmons. She called her niece, who worked at Sam's Club while attending college, "a beautiful young lady who had her whole life ahead of her."
