Family’s Stakeout Nets Killings Suspect

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. —  When two women vanished after leaving a bar with a stranger last month, the family of one took turns staking out Club Bluenote in hopes of spotting the man. He turned up Sunday on Ladies’ Night and they called police.

Police say the work of Angelina Hopkins’ family led to the arrest of Nathaniel White for the slayings of Hopkins, her friend Brenda Whiteside and three other Hudson Valley women and a teen-ager in the past year and a half.

“Deep in our hearts, after the first couple of days, we knew that my sister was dead,” Renee Hopkins said Thursday. “But we couldn’t stop until we found her.”

White, 32, from Middletown, was charged Tuesday with six counts of murder. He confessed to killing the five women and one girl in a murder spree he said began in March, 1991, after he saw the futuristic horror movie ‘RoboCop.”

He had been paroled in April after a year in prison for the knifepoint abduction of a woman. Five of the victims were slain after his release, police said. At least three were raped.

Angelina Hopkins and Brenda Whiteside were last seen alive leaving Poughkeepsie’s popular Club Bluenote on July 19. Hopkins, 23, was visiting her mother and sisters for the weekend.

“Angelina had a 7-month-old son and 5-year-old daughter and she would have called if she couldn’t get back,” said Hopkins’ 26-year-old sister.

Another sister, Cecilia Hopkins, had seen the two women get into a car with White, who had asked the women out to eat.

The Hopkins family reported the women missing the next day.

They began taking turns staking out the Bluenote, asking patrons whether they had seen the man. They tried to find men with the first names of White’s companions--”Damien” and “Gerard”--and got the make and model of White’s car.

On Sunday, Cecilia Hopkins spotted White hanging out at the Bluenote’s Ladies’ Night, which features a male strip show.

She called her mother, Anna Theresa Hopkins, and the family and police confronted White in the parking lot, police said.

White refused to talk but later admitted to Renee Hopkins and her mother that he dropped the women off at houses near Middletown, about 55 miles northwest of New York City.

“We’ve found out the addresses he gave us were where two of his victims lived,” Renee Hopkins said.

Police compared this information with Middletown police, who were investigating the slaying of Adriane Hunter, 27, whose body was found last Thursday in a field in the village of Goshen.

From there, state parole officials, troopers and city police built a case against White.

“The information was totally developed by Mrs. Hopkins,” said Poughkeepsie police Capt. Donald Briggs. “We were merely a conduit.”

White on Tuesday led police to the bodies of Hopkins and Whiteside, 20, buried in the field where Hunter had been found. He also led them to the body of 14-year-old Christine M. Klebbe buried a few miles away.

The other victims were Laurette Huggins Reviere, 34, found in her home July 10, and Juliana Frank, 29, found in March, 1991, on an abandoned railroad track.

White told investigators he heard voices commanding him to assault his victims. He said he slit Frank’s throat and chest as he had seen a killer do in “RoboCop I” or “RoboCop II.”

“I’m glad they have him, but no type of justice can bring my sister back,” Renee Hopkins said.

Troopers said they will bring in dogs to search for other bodies. White insists he killed six women, but police don’t believe him.