A quiet community in fear of a faceless killer

Peach Lane, where the Haines family lived, is a vision of gracious living. Meticulously kept houses perch on wide lawns behind stands of towering pine trees and a profusion of rhododendrons.

Yet in this bucolic corner of Manheim Township, away from the inelegant tangle of highways and shopping centers in nearby Lancaster, Thomas and Lisa Haines and their teenage son, Kevin, were stabbed to death shortly after midnight on May 12.

"It was a real violent murder," Lancaster County Coroner Gary Kirchner said yesterday, the work of a madman, maybe even a serial killer, he speculated.

It's hard for the community to accept that the grotesque murders happened inside their snow globe of a neighborhood. And as the days pass, fear has settled in.

The possibly random killings and the knowledge that a murderer remains loose have created a cauldron of anxiety at Manheim High School, where Kevin, 16, was a student. Classmates and adults report that teens don't want to stay alone in their houses and that some have asked to sleep with their parents.

"You could probably land a plane here at night with all the floodlights" people are leaving on, said Michael Huegel, who lived down the street from the Haines family and who has taken to sleeping with a hunting rifle by his side.

Chase and Molly Reynolds are having a security system installed. They get chills knowing that police can't say why the Haines house, a two-story stone Colonial hidden behind a tall hedge, was targeted.

"Any way you look at it, it's scary," said Molly Reynolds, on the lawn with her 6-month-old, Jack, while her other little one stayed inside.

Police still know little about the crime that took the lives of Kevin and his parents, Thomas, 50, and Lisa, 47. As far as they can tell, nothing was stolen from the house.

Investigators have offered $1,000 for information about the killings and asked the public to look out for anyone with cuts on his or her hands or arms. Tipsters can also submit information anonymously at Victimpower.org.

Authorities have said that on the night of the stabbings, daughter Maggie Haines, 20, just back from Bucknell University, heard a commotion. She went into her parents' upstairs bedroom and discovered her father lying on the bed and her mother slumped over on the edge.

"Go get help," her mother told her in a low voice, Maggie said.

Maggie ran across the street and called 911 from a neighbor's house at 2:24 a.m.

When police arrived five minutes later, they found her parents dead. Kevin's body was in the upstairs hallway.

Authorities said that the back door was open - not unusual in that neighborhood - and that no murder weapon had been found. Father and son were stabbed several times, Kirchner said: Tom Haines in the chest, Kevin in the neck and chest. He would not discuss Lisa Haines' cause of death.

Police have talked to neighbors, friends and classmates and used dogs to search for the killer.

"We haven't eliminated anybody" as a suspect, Manheim Police Sgt. Thomas Rudzinski said on Monday. "We're keeping an open mind on every single person involved."

He wouldn't say in what order the Haineses were killed, or whether Lisa was wounded when she sent her daughter for help. Maggie, now staying at an undisclosed location, told police she did not see an intruder or notice her brother.

Other details are yet to come out. The case "has some twists and turns that I can't really talk about yet," Rudzinski said.

Police are trying to learn everything they can about the father and son, he said. What's made it hard is that "these are nice people. The kids are nice kids," Rudzinski said.

Rumors that Kevin was picked on in school were investigated, but "nothing jumped out," Rudzinski said.

Among other things, an FBI profiler hopes to figure out why the killer used a knife over a more efficient weapon.

Knives are often associated with crimes of passion, said Richard Walter, a crime-scene expert and co-founder of the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia group of investigators who assist with cold cases.

"The question then becomes who has that kind of angst or emotional involvement" with the family, Walter said.

So far, the facts of the case "don't make all that much sense," he said. "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

On Monday, three police cars guarded the house, which had a fresh layer of mulch around new plants and four cars in the driveway and garage, one sporting a Bucknell sticker.

Thomas Haines, a manager at Motion Industries, a machine-parts manufacturer, and a former track star at Manheim High School who still ran marathons, was a trustee of the Methodist church the family attended. His wife taught preschool and Sunday school at Lancaster Church of the Brethren.

Kevin, a sophomore, wrote for the school paper and was a member of the Quiz Bowl team and German Club. He was looking forward to a trip to Germany with classmates this summer.

At a memorial service at Otterbein United Methodist Church on Saturday, the Lancaster Sunday News reported, Lisa Haines' brother, Tom Brown, implored the killer "to come forward and ask forgiveness of Maggie" and her family.

"I say this to you knowing that the killer of our loved ones might be in the audience today," he said. The Haineses were married in the 82-year-old sanctuary and would have celebrated their 22d anniversary on May 18, the day before they were eulogized.

At Manheim High, psychologist Julie Sergovic has talked with dozens of students.

"It's terrifying for them to think, 'Oh, my God, this could happen to me,' " said Sergovic, who held a counseling session for parents and pupils on Monday night.

At a Turkey Hill convenience store near school, two of Kevin's classmates were also grappling with the unthinkable.

He was a smart, nice kid - on the quiet side but with lots of friends, they said.

"The family was real nice," said J.C. Hevener, 16, a sophomore who was Kevin's history partner last year. "I have no idea why somebody would do that to them."

At nearby Caruso's Pizzeria, another hangout, owner Ignazio Caruso said his daughter, who knew Kevin, was having a hard time with the tragedy.

"We had to tell her," he said. "She's doing pretty bad."

With no students in his restaurant after school, when it's usually crowded with teenagers, he wondered whether parents were keeping a tighter rein on their children.

"I hope that they solve this," he said, sitting at the only occupied table. "It would make us feel relieved a little bit."