Pregnant Ga. woman abducted, killed in Puerto Rico
Associated Press

Thursday, February 05, 2009

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A pregnant Georgia tourist was killed Wednesday after she was abducted during a morning jog. Stuffed into the trunk of a car, she made a desperate call for help. About an hour later, the Savannah woman was found dead with her throat slashed.

Based on Sara Kuszak’s description of her kidnapper’s car, police arrested a local man whose clothing was covered with blood. He was not immediately charged.

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“He saw the woman and kidnapped her,” said Lt. Angel Ocasio. “He didn’t take anything. He stole her life.”

The man was located because the FBI picked up a signal from the victim’s cell phone, which he was carrying, investigating officer Arsenio Rodriguez said. Kuszak’s fiance had called the FBI, but the department turned the case over to local police.

The suspect told police that he was covered with blood because his brother owns horses and one of them had been cut, Rodriguez said.

Kuszak, who moved to Savannah from San Francisco about five years ago, arrived Tuesday night in Puerto Rico, where she met up with her fiance and several friends.

“She was looking forward to the rest of her life with her fiance and her unborn baby,” her friend Matt Daniel said in a phone interview from Georgia. “I’m just devastated. I don’t know who would do something like that.”

Kuszak, who worked on sailboats and part-time in real-estate and catering, was five months pregnant, friends said.

She and her fiance, Cheshire McIntosh, met several years ago on a South Pacific island where she was vacationing and he was sailing a yacht, said another friend in Georgia, John Everette.

“That’s how two young, attractive people met,” he said. “She dropped her life in San Francisco … to be with Cheshire and live this free life of sailing on the seas. She was a rolling stone.”

Kuszak apparently was going to visit some friends whose yacht was at a marina in Fajardo, in eastern Puerto Rico, marina spokeswoman Frances Rios said. After she was kidnapped, Kuszak called a marina employee on her cell phone from the trunk of the car, Ocasio said. The employee then called 911.

It was unclear why Kuszak did not call 911 directly, but she may not have known that the same emergency number used on the mainland is also used on this U.S. Caribbean territory.

Police would not release a transcript of the employee’s 911 call because the case is under investigation.

About an hour after receiving the call, police found Kuszak’s partially clothed body in a field.

and all for nothing probably. sick sick sick. rest in peace dear lady and baby

so sad.... damn.

Horrible and so sad,
she was looking forward to the rest of her life and they were taken in an instant.

Slain tourist told fiance she was going to die
Sara Kuszak make phone call from trunk of suspect’s car before dying in Puerto Rico
Associated Press

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Savannah — A pregnant tourist who was abducted and killed while jogging in Puerto Rico told her fiance “she was going to die” in a frantic cell phone call from the trunk of her abductor’s car, the victim’s mother said Friday.

Sara Kuszak, 36, was found dead with her throat slashed Wednesday. Her mother, Joan Lang, said her final call to fiance Cheshire McIntosh offered little hope of escape.

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“She talked to Cheshire and she told him she knew she was going to die,” Lang said by phone from her home in San Jose, Calif. “She knew she didn’t have a chance with this man. You can just imagine the agony they were both going through, to say goodbye to each other.”

A friend said Kuszak, who moved to Savannah from San Francisco five years ago to live with McIntosh, was a fearless explorer of the islands she visited during work trips with her yacht-captain fiance.

She spent weeks at a time at sea, preparing meals as the crew chef while McIntosh, piloted private yachts for their wealthy owners. Friends say the couple that planned to marry in March were a perfect match — attractive, adventurous and charismatic.

“A lot of these trips were to islands and she would run through some kind of crazy neighborhoods and tell stories about dogs chasing her,” said John Everette, a friend of the couple, who lived in Savannah. “She was always somebody who didn’t have a lot of fear in her.”

Now the couple’s friends and families are trying to make sense of why she was grabbed, stuffed into a trunk, raped and killed in the coastal town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico. She was five months pregnant when she was slain.

“That’s a line even the most debased person usually just doesn’t cross,” Everette said Thursday. “It’s a particular shame it would happen to her. Everybody has faults, but they were really hard to find with her.”

Eliezer Marquez, 36, was charged in court Thursday with kidnapping, rape and first-degree murder in Kuszak’s death. Police in Fajardo said he confessed to killing Kuszak after they arrested him Wednesday with bloodstains on his shirt and pants.

The killing was carried out in the same fashion as murders that Marquez’s mother, Ines Navedo, was convicted of committing in 1992. She slit the throats of two young siblings aged 2 and 3.

“He told me he felt bad because he didn’t know (Kuszak) was pregnant,” said police officer Arsenio Rodriguez. “He was crying and telling me he was sorry because he has a daughter and knew he had made a big mistake.”

Police said Marquez told them he spotted Kuszak jogging alone Wednesday, stopped his car and opened the trunk as he waited for her to pass. He then grabbed her and forced her into the trunk.

Kuszak used her cell phone to make a desperate call for help from the trunk of her kidnapper’s car Wednesday, about an hour before she was found dead by police. The FBI then used the signal from the phone to help locate the suspect.

Marquez, who could face up to life in prison, walked into court Thursday with his head down for a closed hearing in which the charges against him were announced. He did not enter a plea and does not have a lawyer yet.

“Justice is being done for this victim,” prosecutor Francisco Sanchez said outside court. “In this case, there will be no negotiation. He will face the full consequences.”

Kuszak moved across the country from San Francisco about five years ago to live with McIntosh on the Georgia coast. Everette said the couple met in the South Pacific, where McIntosh was working on a boat and Kuszak was vacationing with friends.

She had arrived in Puerto Rico to meet up with McIntosh the day before she was killed. Kuszak’s mother said she and McIntosh planned to sail together to the Virgin Islands to be married between March 15 and 22.

“The McIntosh family just worshipped Sara,” Lang said. “She’s always been an adventurous spirit and very smart woman. She had all her ducks in a row.”

Everette, a friend of McIntosh’s since high school, got to know Kuszak last summer when he joined their crew as a deckhand for a three-week trip from the Virgin Islands to Rhode Island. When she wasn’t preparing meals of fresh fish caught over the side of the 66-foot yacht, Everette said, Kuszak would try to cheer up anyone who might seem glum.

This makes me sick to my stomach. F*cking bastard.

I'm only 45 minutes from Savannah so I've heard this story alot the last couple of days...such a senseless crime...my thoughts are with her friends and family
[Edited 2/6/09 18:22pm]

poor dear