Meet Convicted 35-Count Rabbit Abuser
Dismemberment Killer Kenneth Biros Slated for Execution on Tuesday
Monday, December 7, 2009 at 8:00 am
Ken Biros, a hard-working, hard-drinking man in his early thirties, had called it a day at his job in Masury, Ohio and headed for a tavern that overlooked the abandoned steel mills of Sharon, Pennsylvania.
A prosecutor believes Ken Biros may have killed other women
22-year-old mother Tami Engstrom took off work early the same day because she was not feeling well and headed for the bar with a relative. As the evening of February 7, 1991, wore on, Tami became more intoxicated until she passed out. At about 1 a.m. she planned to drive home when Biros, an acquaintance of her relative, offered to give her a ride...
Engstrom, described as a beautiful and proud mother of a 1-year-old son, was known as an outgoing young woman who loved life and was always ready to help someone in need.
According to accounts of that evening, Engstrom's relative took her car keys, insisting that she not drive. Her relative knew Biros from the bar, and when Biros offered to intervene, the relative trusted him enough to take her out for coffee to help sober her up. Biros was supposed to bring her back to the bar, but they never returned. The relative assumed that Biros had driven her home instead.
But Engstrom never did go home. After learning about the night before, her husband paid Biros a visit. Biros had a cut over an eye, as well as cuts and abrasions on his hands, which he explained that he'd gotten in two separate incidents. The cut on the eye, he said, had occurred while chopping wood, and the injuries to his hands had been caused from climbing through a window he'd broken after locking himself out of his house.
Biros first told Engstrom's husband that his wife had jumped from his car and ran off somewhere. He later told investigators that she had struck her head on railroad tracks and died from an accident after jumping from his car. In yet another version, he said that he had struck Engstrom with his car after she jumped out, while he was following her alongside railroad tracks.
He claimed that she began throwing rocks and swearing at him, so he stabbed her twice with a pen knife. Later, he said, he cut her up and buried her body parts.
In actuality, he had cut off her head and right breast, and eviscerated her naked torso -- removing her anus, rectum, bowels, bladder, and sex organs. The part of his story that he seemed truthful about was that she had died near the railroad tracks -- detectives found her intestines, her coat, and a shoe in marshland that bordered railroad tracks, along with a lot of blood, where instructed the cops to look. A portion of her liver was found inside the trunk of Biros's car, and additional body parts were discovered at another dumping site.
It was a pretty open and shut case. Engstrom's blood was found on his clothes, and he reportedly tried to rape her inside a concrete shed behind his house. An autopsy determined that she had suffered ninety-one injuries and stab wounds before succumbing to death, and there were at least five knife wounds inflicted to her body after death.
At his trial, he was dubbed "crybaby" for sobbing during testimony and presentation of grisly evidence. Biros was found guilty of a number of crimes including murder, robbery, sexual assault, and was sentenced to death. Now 51, Biros is scheduled to die in Ohio's execution chamber on Tuesday.
There are some, including James Lewis, the attorney who defended him, who believe that justice would be better served by a life prison sentence.
Dennis Watkins, the man who prosecuted the case, says that Biros possesses a schizoid personality and has the type of personality disorder typically found in serial killers. Watkins has even suggested that Biros may be linked to a number of unsolved murders in the region that occurred in the late 1980s, and that his jail mug shot resembles a composite drawing of a man in connection with an attack on a prostitute that was circulated at the time.
Watkins also cited an attack on another prostitute, a 21-year-old transient who worked between Sharon, PA and Youngstown, OH. In that case, the woman's body was found in a field in 1989. Her torso had been dissected and her organs removed in a manner similar to Engstrom's.
Biros's lawyer called the claims "ridiculous... For crying out loud, Ken Biros was introduced to Tam Engstrom by Tami's (relative)," Lewis said. "They were in a bar and there were a lot of people there. It's not like he was lurking in the darkness. Something simply went wrong that one time."
Yeah, like he got caught.
Question is: Should Biros be spared the death penalty because he believes that Ohio's one-drug lethal injection is little more than an experiment that is not fit for use on humans? That's his last-ditch effort to try and get out of his appointment with the executioner's needle.
Watkins, who admits that he does not have any proof that can definitively link Biros to other attacks, recently scoffed at Biros' attempt to escape death. "The facts show he is an incipient serial killer, an educated loner who kept to himself and hated women," Watkins said. "That was my opinion. It is my opinion today. It will never change."
Tags: Ohio, Pennsylvania
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