Sep 1, 2007 6:54 pm US/Eastern
Alabama Man Charged In NYC Hotel Murder
Suspect Also A Fugitive Sex Offender
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Police have charged 35-year-old Clarence Dean with the murder of an unidentified woman, found in a Manhattan hotel room. (File)
NYPD
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A woman's body was found wrapped in a garbage bag in Manhattan's Carter Hotel.
CBS
CBS 2 HD learned Saturday that police have charged a 35-year-old fugitive sex offender with the murder of a woman inside a Times Square hotel.
Police say Clarence Dean beat and strangled the unidentified victim, whose body was then placed inside a garbage bag and hidden under a bed in Dean's room at the Carter Hotel, where he'd stayed for 12 days.
A maid came upon the gruesome discovery on Thursday.
Investigators said Friday the woman may have been a 22-year-old tourist from the Alabama area, though a driver's license found in the hotel had a Washington, D.C. address listed.
Police immediately began a search for Dean and brought him in for questioning Friday night after someone apparently tipped them off to his whereabouts.
CBS 2 learned Dean has a lengthy and disturbing rap sheet, which includes an attempted lewd act involving a child under the age of 12 in Florida. He'd been wanted in Alabama for leaving the area without telling officials as required for registered sex offenders.
Hotel staffers told CBS 2 HD Thursday that after the maid found the bag, she called a hotel manager to the scene who reached down and felt a human leg through the plastic. Investigators arrived and secured the scene, before speaking to guests and staff and checking video from hotel security cameras.
Employees also told CBS 2 HD a man stayed in the room from August 17 until Wednesday, but they'd only seen him by himself. Data from Dean's electronic room key appeared to show an unusually high number of comings and goings from the room on August 28.
He's been a wanted man in Shelby County, Ala. since March, when sheriff's deputies performed a check and realized he had moved out without informing officials. He also failed to appear in court in a property theft case, according to sheriff's department Capt. Chris Corbell.
The death wasn't a first for the Hotel Carter, a threadbare accommodation that stands as a throwback to Times Square's seedy past.
A clerk at the Carter was charged in 1999 with killing a co-worker with a knife and a hammer during a brawl at the hotel's front desk. A half-undressed woman with her hands tied behind her back was pushed out a window and fell to her death in 1987.
Over the years there have been small fires and arrests. A building engineer was killed during a freak elevator accident in 2005. FBI agents once went to the hotel to rescue a 4-year-old boy who had been kidnapped from a day care center in Connecticut as part of a ransom plot.
The Carter was closed abruptly by the city 1998 for safety code violations, but later reopened.
Still, it remains an option for budget travelers who don't mind insects, grimy bathrooms, stained furniture and broken telephones.
And there is at least some celebrity cache; The ground floors of the hotel once held the nightclub that Sean Combs and Jennifer Lopez famously fled after a shooting in 1999.
Stay with wcbstv.com and CBS 2 HD for the latest in this unfolding story.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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