'Strangler' suspect tells cops: Crimes 'just happened'

Christine Piacentini wanted to stop the Kensington Strangler, wanted to stop other women from meeting the same gruesome fate as her daughter, Nicole.

So she put a lock on the back door of the abandoned Kensington house where Nicole's body was found on Nov. 13, the same building where another woman survived being choked and raped by a deranged attacker in October. If nothing else, she thought, the strangler wouldn't be able to hurt another woman in the place where Nicole died. It was a comforting thought.

Drug addicts ultimately tore off the lock, but Piacentini said yesterday that she is now comforted by knowing that the sicko who allegedly murdered her daughter is behind bars - locked up, she hopes, forever.

Police sources said that Antonio Rodriguez confessed to being the man the city called the Kensington Strangler - confessed to raping and murdering Nicole Piacentini, 35; Elaine Goldberg, 21; and Casey Mahoney, 27, in a monthlong, violent rampage.

Rodriguez's confession came just a day after police identified him as a "strong person of interest," a few hours after investigators learned that his DNA matched genetic samples that had been taken from the bodies of Piacentini and Goldberg.

Minutes after police showed Rodriguez's photo on the 6 p.m. TV news Monday, a tipster called in and said that the 22-year-old was hiding out in a house on Mutter Street near Westmoreland.

Sources said that he's been estranged from his family for much of the past year, drifting from one abandoned property in the Kensington area to another.

"He's basically a loner," one source said.

Rodriguez offered detectives little in way of a motive for the stranglings, painting them simply as crimes that "just happened," after he set out to have admittedly violent sexual encounters with each of the women, sources said.

Rodriguez was very much aware of the intense manhunt that grew in the days and weeks after each of his victims was found, sources said.

Rodriguez is not expected to face murder charges until today at the earliest, said Police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers.

Police were awaiting DNA results taken from a fresh swab of Rodriguez after he was brought in Monday night.

In the interim, Rodriguez is being held on what is known as a "wanted card" for skipping a meeting with his probation officer.

Last night, Christine Piacentini said that if Rodriguez is the man who killed her daughter, she hopes that he meets the same fate in prison as his alleged victims did in Kensington.

"I hope he gets in there with somebody who rapes him and beats him so he knows how it felt," she said. "I pray somebody kills him in there."

Evers declined to say whether three other women believed to be surviving victims of the Kensington Strangler had positively identified Rodriguez as their attacker.

However, police did previously say that the man who attacked one of those victims identified himself as "Anthony."

No DNA evidence was obtained from the surviving victims because of the time lag between when their assaults occurred and when they were reported to police, Evers said. Rodriguez's DNA was submitted to the State Police in October, following his release from prison on a felony drug charge.

According to court records, he was arrested last June 4, on Willard Street near Lee. for possessing a small amount of cocaine and marijuana.

He had been living on Mascher Street near Ontario with his father, identified in court records as Hosea, and a woman named Teresa.

He was sentenced to three to 23 months in jail for possessing the drugs but granted immediate parole. A warrant was issued for Rodriguez on Dec. 28 after he failed to report to his probation officer.

Rodriguez's willingness to confess to the killings is not much of a surprise, said Tod Burke, professor of criminal justice at Radford University, in Virgina.

Burke, a former cop, said that many serial killers"want to brag about what they've done. The benefit is the person is still alive and if they want to talk, you want to know what information will they give and if he is in the right state of mind."

Burke said that catching a "strong person of interest" so quickly was just good police work.

"Because what we don't know is if this was the beginning of a long trend of becoming a serial killer," he said. "So we should use this as a learning tool, not just what he tells us - because it may or may not be the truth - but by his actions and the physical and forensic evidence."

Staff writer Mensah M. Dean contributed to this report.