ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 1996 TAG: 9610300054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LENOIR, N.C.
SOURCE: PAUL NOWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
COMPUTER E-MAIL FILES indicate a Maryland woman visited a North Carolina man after he'd agreed to sexually torture and kill her, police say.
When Sharon R. Lopatka left her Maryland home, she wrote a note telling her husband she was going to visit friends in Georgia and would not be coming back. She also asked him not to seek vengeance.
Lopatka, though, had planned all along on going to North Carolina, where she expected to be sexually tortured and killed by a man she had met over the Internet, according to police and court papers made public Tuesday.
Apparently, she got her wish.
Her body was found in a shallow grave last week behind a mobile home in Collettsville. The home's owner, Robert Glass, was charged with first-degree murder. He is being held without bond.
E-mail messages on Lopatka's computer revealed that this was the second time she had used the Internet to ask someone to torture and kill her, said Sgt. Barry Leese of the Maryland State Police.
``If my body is never retrieved, don't worry; know that I'm at peace,'' Lopatka, 35, wrote her husband. She asked him not to go after her attacker, police said.
An autopsy showed the cause of death was strangulation, but initial tests were inconclusive on whether she was sexually tortured before being killed.
Investigators said computer messages from Glass, recovered from Lopatka's computer in her Hampstead, Md., home, indicate that she traveled to North Carolina knowing what awaited her and even had planned it.
Glass, 45, a father of three who separated from his wife this year, has worked as a computer programmer for the county government for nearly 16 years. Neighbors said he seemed to change, taking less interest in his home, after his wife left him.
Glass and Lopatka got to know each other in sexually oriented Internet chat rooms before they arranged to meet on Oct. 13.
She left Baltimore by train that day and met Glass in Charlotte, investigators said. An autopsy indicates she was killed three days later.
Her husband reported her missing Oct. 20. Police investigating her disappearance said they discovered the e-mail messages from Glass despite his attempt to have her erase the files.
Messages from ``slowhand'' - Glass' apparent Internet nickname - ``described in detail how he was going to sexually torture and ultimately kill her,'' according to the search warrant application investigators used to search Glass' property.
``There's no way to know precisely what was in her head when she came here,'' said Capt. Danny Barlow. ``The only thing we can see is the e-mail messages, and there they discussed in detail as to what they expected to happen when she got here.''
The Charlotte Observer contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Carroll County Times. (headshot) Lopatka KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB