Commuters Wary After Woman`s Death

CAMDEN, N.J.: Now the relatives who nag Amy Lindoerfer to be careful when she takes the commuter railway to and from downtown Philadelphia have something tangible to worry about.

On Monday, 27-year-old Christine Lynn Eberle did not make it to the home she shared with her fiance in Washington Township. She was abducted and killed after exiting the train at the PATCO Hi-Speed line's Ferry Avenue station. She had worked late that night at her accounting job at Delaware Investments.

"Sometimes, late at night, I have to get on the train and it's kind of scary," said Lindoerfer, a Web designer who lives in Pitman. Each morning, she catches the speed line at the Haddonfield station. And many nights, she works as late as 10 p.m.

A Camden man was arrested Wednesday and charged with murdering Eberle. Ryshoane Thomas was being held on $1 million bail. Authorities said others may be charged but that the crime appeared to be random.

"It's everybody's worst nightmare," Camden County Prosecutor Lee Solomon said. "It's the reason you lock your door at night." The crime was the talk of commuters Thursday, including Debra Mabo, 22, a Camden resident who cleans houses for a living. "I usually think of that as happening in Philly, not Jersey," Mabo said as she waited for a train at the Camden Transportation Center.

Solomon said Thomas, 23, and another man held up Eberle at gunpoint, attempted to rape her and, when she fought back, beat and strangled her before leaving her body in the woods nearby.

Solomon said he is considering pursuing the death penalty against Thomas, on whose behalf an innocent plea was entered during an arraignment Wednesday.

Random killings are rare, but scary for many people who don't see much crime, said Jon'a Meyer, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University's Camden campus.

"It would have been anyone getting off PATCO and into their car," Meyer said. "Or it could have been somebody they knew."

Meyer, who studies homicides in Camden, said the vast majority of them there and elsewhere involve victims and suspects who know one another.

In the 273 homicides in Camden between 1994 and 1999, 84 percent of the victims were male; the murder weapon was a gun three-quarters of the time and one-fourth of them involved drugs.

Many commuters on Thursday were reassessing their daily routines on what is generally regarded as a safe train system.

Since the beginning of 2000, there have been 99 reported crimes _ excluding turnstile jumpings _ on the trains, stations and parking lots run by PATCO, said Joe Diemer, a spokesman for the Delaware River Port Authority, which owns the train system.

PATCO runs around the clock, seven days a week and carries about 39,000 riders one way each day.

Most, like Eberle and Lindoerfer, are New Jersey residents who take the train to Philadelphia after leaving their cars at parking lots near the stations.

John Myers, 32, who lives near the Ferry Avenue station, said his girlfriend called him Wednesday when she heard about the killing in her neighborhood.

"It's got her nervous," Myers said. "She wants to stay in the house all day."

Diemer said uniformed PATCO police officers have been at the Ferry Avenue station since the slaying. The train system has about 30 police officers, including some who ride the trains in plain clothes.

Rosemarie Tevis, 42, a sales assistant at a bank in Philadelphia who lives in the tiny town of National Park, said she pays $1 a day to park closer to the Ferry Avenue station rather park for free in one of the more distant lots _ where Eberle was headed to pick up her car around 8:30 p.m. Monday.

"If I was in the habit of being that late, I would go to another stop," Tevis said.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Author: 6 - ABC, Action News