A spoiled frat boy carved up a Hofstra honor student who spurned his sexual advances and drove around with the putrefying body in his Land Rover for a week before burying it in his yard, police said.
“People questioned him about the odor in the car,” Nassau County Detective Lt. Frank Guidice said. “He replied to them: ‘I don’t know what it is. I’ve had it for the past few days.'”
The accused killer, Shaun Alexander, 23, was charged with second-degree murder yesterday after police dug up the mutilated corpse of missing sophomore Max Kolb near a barbecue pit at the house he shared in Long Beach.
In chilling detail, cops and prosecutors described how Alexander, the son of a rich Atlanta financier, lured Kolb, 20, to an Econo-Lodge on April 25 with a bogus story about a personal problem.
In Room 102, just 10 feet from the front desk of the Hicksville motel, Alexander made a pass at Kolb, who had a girlfriend, and Kolb “freaked out,” prosecutor Fred Klein said.
The chubby, pimple-faced killer told cops he flew into a fury over the rejection, repeatedly stabbing his former dorm-mate with a kitchen knife, authorities said.
“He was gutted – cut from the sternum to the belly button. He was missing one of his thighs,” Klein said. “It was one of the most disturbing murder scenes I’ve seen in my 22 years.”
Investigators are trying to determine whether the body was cannibalized or sexually violated. Alexander confessed that he “hugged and caressed” the corpse, prosecutors said.
As dawn neared, he wrapped it in two plastic garbage bags and a large tarp, dragged it out of the blood-splattered room and tossed it into the back of his Land Rover.
“I’m sorry there’s blood in the room. I cut my knee,” he told the attendant when he checked out at 5:40 a.m.
“There was a lot of blood on the floor, said hotel manager Amy Sharkey, “but there was no evidence of a struggle and there were no complaints of noise,” she said, explaining why cleaning crews were called instead of cops.
For the next seven days, Kolb’s body lay decomposing in the back of Alexander’s vehicle, cops said. The odor was so putrid, one friend suggested road-kill was trapped behind a wheel.
Eventually, Alexander moved the body to a Garden City storage facility, where it stayed for five days, police said.
Then, after asking a neighbor in Long Beach to move her car so he could unload something in the back yard, he buried Kolb in a shallow grave behind the barbecue pit.
Meanwhile, Kolb’s family had launched a desperate search for the missing film major, who had vanished from Hofstra’s Estabrook dorm.
The Hempstead campus was plastered with his picture, but there were no concrete leads until cops got an anonymous tip that Kolb had been seen getting into Alexander’s car the night he disappeared.
When police began grilling Alexander on Monday, he offered a bizarre story of blacking out and waking up in his front seat, covered in blood.
After further interrogation, Alexander offered a more plausible account.
“He’s much bigger than [Kolb], and he pinned him to the floor with his knees, put his hand over his mouth and stabbed him several times,” Klein said.
Then, when Alexander led cops to the body Tuesday night, they found Kolb naked, grotesquely mutilated and gagged and bound with duct tape.
Alexander then told cops he did “all that stuff after I killed him,” according to Klein, who believes the suspect is trying to convince authorities the crime wasn’t premeditated.
LONG ISLAND SLAYING
Shaun Alexander, accused of killing Max Kold (inset) is led away by police yesterday. Post photos: Mary McLoughlin
1. HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY — Police say Alexander picked up Kolb at dormitory.
2. ECONOLODGE — Alexander stabs Kolb to death in Hicksville motel.
3. STORAGE FACILITY — Kolb’s body kept at this Garden City site for five days.
4. 539 W. PARK AVE., LONG BEACH — Kolb’s body buried behind the patio barbeque.