
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 16, 1995                   TAG: 9504170084
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GREENEVILLE, TENN.                                LENGTH: Medium

TRUCKER ADMITS KILLING WOMAN FROM OHIO, N.C. SHERIFF CONFIRMS

A North Carolina truck driver being investigated in a string of killings along interstate highways in as many as nine states has confessed to a second slaying, authorities confirmed Saturday.

Forsyth County, N.C., Sheriff Ron Barker said Sean Patrick Goble told authorities he killed an Ohio woman whose body was found March 19 near Interstate 81 in Tennessee.

The victim was identified as Rebecca Alice Hanes, 36, of Columbus, Ohio.

Goble has not yet been charged in that crime, Barker said, but remains jailed in Winston-Salem, N.C., for another woman's killing he confessed to after his arrest Thursday.

Goble told authorities that Hanes, whose pocketbook was found in the suspect's tractor-trailer cab, was killed an hour from where he dumped her body, the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier reported.

Hanes, a prostitute, had been suffocated and then dumped a half-mile off I-81, the newspaper reported.

Authorities in Kingsport, Tenn., where Hanes' body was found, have scheduled a news conference for Monday.

Goble, who was arrested in Winston-Salem, confessed Thursday to strangling Brenda Sue Hagy of Bloomington, Ind., in Greene County, Tenn., in January. The 28-year-old trucker from Asheboro, N.C., told police he dumped the 45-year-old woman's body in Washington County, Va., along I-81.

The Forsyth sheriff told The News & Record of Greensboro (N.C.) that he expected Goble to be extradited to Tennessee as early as Monday to face charges in Hagy's death.

On April 14, 1985, the badly decomposed body of another woman was found along Interstate 81 in Greene County.

She has never been identified. She had suffered severe blows to her head.

District Attorney Berkeley Bell said Friday that Goble will be questioned about the body found a decade ago, but he expressed some skepticism that Goble could have been involved in the 1985 death.

Over the years, the bodies of dozens of women have turned up along interstates. Many had been strangled or smothered.

Law enforcement investigators from several states are now standing in line to question Goble.

Authorities in Virginia found a plastic bag near the Hagy crime scene. The bag had fingerprints on it that allowed authorities to trace Goble. He has police records for misdemeanors.

by CNB