TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A fugitive ex-policeman who confessed by telephone to the March killings of two Georgian girls on a Florida beach has been found dead by poisoning in New Mexico, police said.
Robert Neal Rodriguez, 42, apparently took cyanide to commit suicide at a highway rest stop in western New Mexico, said Warren Roddenberry, the sheriff of the Florida county where the dead girls were found.
Rodriguez's body was found Saturday in a car 7 miles east of Grants in Cibola County, said Larry Diaz, an undersheriff.
Florida authorities had searching for Rodriguez since Friday, when the former Portland, Ore., police officer called them to confess he killed the two Thomasville, Ga., girls.
The bodies of Cherish DeSantis and Megen Carr, both 16, were found March 27 lying on a secluded beach at Alligator Point in Franklin County of the Florida Panhandle. Both had been shot twice in the head.
Rodriguez also confessed to killing a young woman in Leon County in 1984. That victim appeared to be a Tallahassee Community College student who disappeared from a shopping center in June 1984. Her body was found in 1985 near a sinkhole in Wakulla County.
John Joyce, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said that agency would reopen investigation into the unsolved death of the college student to see whether Rodriguez was responsible.
Rodriguez had left his Tallahassee apartment either May 2 or 3, a neighbor told the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper. His death occurred sometime between 6 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. EDT Saturday, police said.
A glass vial containing white powder was on a leather strap around Rodriguez's neck, and a warning note on the car said: 'Cyanide poison, by mouth, do not do mouth-to-mouth. It may poison you,' according to Diaz.
Rodriguez also left a note explaining he 'took cyanide for the sake of the girls' parents, for their peace of mind, and to avoid a prison term,' Roddenberry said.
Rodriguez also said he had mailed a detailed explanation for his reasons for the killings to FDLE special agent Delbert McGarvey, Roddenberry said.
'We're not closing the Alligator Point case yet,' Roddenberry said. 'But we're 99 percent there.'
Joyce said an investigator and technician had been sent to New Mexico to continue to search for clues.
The Alligator Point Homicide Task Force had pursued more than 100 leads since March 27, when a police officer and his wife found the bodies of the two high school friends who had traveled 65 miles to spend the day at the beach.
The bodies, both in swimsuits, showed no signs of a struggle. Neither had been sexually assaulted, and their purses and other valuables were left untouched, Roddenberry said.
Rodriguez made his long-distance confession eight hours after his former girlfriend in Tallahassee called FDLE to report he had told her he killed the girls at Alligator Point, officials said.
