THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, April 14, 1995                 TAG: 9504140432
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY LESLIE LLOYD, ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: ABINGDON                           LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines

TRUCKER ADMITS TO INTERSTATE KILLING THE VICTIM'S BODY WAS FOUND DUMPED ALONG A VIRGINIA HIGHWAY

A North Carolina trucker confessed Thursday to killing a woman whose body was dumped along a Virginia interstate, and authorities are trying to determine whether he is a serial killer who has left victims' bodies along highways in at least six states.

Sean Patrick Goble, 28, of Asheboro, N.C., was arrested early Thursday in Winston-Salem, N.C., and is being held without bail, said Washington County Sheriff Joe Mitchell.

Goble confessed to strangling Brenda Kay Hagy, 45, of Bloomington, Ind., saying he killed her at a service station in eastern Tennessee and took her body to Virginia, Mitchell said. Her body was found along Interstate 81 at Abingdon, in Washington County, on Jan. 23.

At the time of Hagy's death, Mitchell said it fit the pattern of killings in at least six states in recent years, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and New York.

Many of the slayings involved women who loitered at truck stops or were prostitutes and whose bodies were dumped along highways. Many of them had reddish-blond hair.

Goble has admitted only to Hagy's slaying. But, said Ron Barker, sheriff in Forsyth County, N.C., ``the fact that he is a long-distance driver, we may be hearing from some other states where police are looking at their file of unsolved murders.''

Late Thursday, the district attorney in Tennessee's Greene County filed first-degree murder charges against Goble, and Virginia prosecutors agreed to drop their warrant.

Greeley Wells, district attorney in Sullivan County, Tenn., said Goble is also a suspect in the slayings of two other women whose bodies were found at the same Interstate 81 exit. One body was found last month, the other in 1991. One woman was strangled; the cause of the other woman's death could not be determined because her body had been crushed by a large truck, Wells said.

In 1991, the FBI and authorities from several states established the Interstate Homicide Task Force to investigate the unsolved highway slayings.

Hagy had been charged with trespassing at truck stops. Members of her family said she could often be found at a truck stop along Interstate 65 in the Indianapolis area. She, too, had reddish-blond hair. ILLUSTRATION: Color map

Photo

Sean P. Goble

KEYWORDS: MURDER by CNB