Missing and Murdered Children

The stories I write in this blog generally address missing and murdered children. I am making an exception to this general rule because I am dumbfounded by a story I read today on Click2Houston.com.

Edward George McGregor was arrested on May 1, 2006 and charged with the 1990 brutal stabbing murder of 38-year-old Kim Wildman in her home.Quote from Detective Andi Wiltse with the Missouri City Police Department:

“This was a very savage, brutal killing that did involve intrusion, sexual assault…”

Detectives say that McGregor was seventeen at the time of the crime, lived near the victim and chose her randomly.

Another quote from Detective Wilste:

“We were able to do a comparison and the DNA from Houston’s case was an exact match for the DNA in our case…”

The above quote may confuse you because it indicates “DNA from Houston’s case”.

Houston Police are now looking at McGregor as a suspect in at least two more murders of women in their Houston homes.

This from Click2Houston.com:

Houston police investigators believe McGregor is responsible for the killings of Danielle Subjects, 28, of 10965 South Gessner, and Mandy Rubin, 25, of 10750 Westbrae Parkway.

Both women were strangled, beaten and found in their apartment bathtubs. Subjects was found on Aug. 5 and Rubin on Feb. 4. Their apartment complexes were four blocks apart. McGregor lived in the same apartment complex as Rubin.

“The women were left in the same situations, same physical posing of their bodies, same areas of their house and bathtub. It wasn’t just a random thing that they both happened to die like that,” said Sgt. Jim Binford with the Houston Police Department.

McGregor was known to Rubin and had attended a party at her mother’s home.

Police are not charging him in the murders of Danielle Subjects and Mandy Rubin, but they are calling him a suspect in the two crimes. They also believe because the three crimes span a sixteen-year time frame, McGregor may be responsible for other murders, assaults, or sexual assaults in the area. They do not believe he met his alleged victims while carrying out the duties of his job as a UPS delivery driver. Houston Police are researching their open cases to determine if they can match McGregor to any of those crimes.

When McGregor was arrested and charged with the murder of Kim Wildman his bond was set at $1 million.

Now for the part that prompted me to write this blog entry, the part has left me sitting here completely dumbfounded.

McGregor has made bond. The judge reduced his bond to $250,000 last week and he is free. I do not understand why his bond was reduced when he was charged with murder, and he has other convictions for assault.

I just don’t understand. What was the judge thinking when he reduced McGregor’s bond? While I realize McGregor is the alleged murderer of Kim Wildman, his DNA ties him to the crime.

Anyone with information on McGregor is asked to contact the Homicide Division at (713) 308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-TIPS.

Update: May 16, 2006 6 p.m. PDT

According to KHOU.com, Mr. McGregor’s bond was lowered because his attorney gave a good argument to the judge for the reason that Mr. McGregor’s DNA was found at the Wildman murder scene.

Mr. McGregor’s attorney contends that his client not only knew the victim and lived next door to her; he had a relationship with her and had been with her earlier that evening. Also, before the victim died she indicated that she did not know her attacker.

I am sitting here contemplating that argument. Mr. McGregor was 17-years-old at the time of the murder, Ms. Wildman was 38-years-old. It is too bad she is not here to dispute the claim.

In the cases of the two other victims, they also knew Mr. McGregor, lived near him and they both had his cell phone number in their phones. Their bodies were also found in the bathtub, positoned the same way and murdered the same way.

After presenting the argument above to the judge, the attorney made the following analogy:

“I grew up in Dallas, I was at Dealey Plaza. I was at Dealey Plaza when john Kennedy was killed. In 1968 I was at the Ambassador hotel when Robert Kennedy was killed. That would be like saying I was a prime suspect in both of those cases.”

That analogy was good enough to persuade the judge to lower bond for Mr. McGregor.

He has some conditions on his release. He is to wear a tracking device and he is restricted to home and work.

I sure would not want to open my door to accept a delivery from UPS and find him standing on my porch.

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