Excerpts from a journal kept by Alec Kreider after the murder of the Haines family. The journal entrie...(more)

 

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Tom and Lisa Haines and their 16-year-old son, Kevin, were stabbed to death in their bedrooms early one May morning.

Initially, the killer was nowhere to be found. He had seemingly vanished without a trace.

Even after the arrest of the murderer — Alec Kreider, who was 16 at the time — speculation continued to percolate throughout the community.

Was Kreider jealous of Kevin Haines, a classmate and presumed intellectual rival at Manheim Township High School?

Was there a falling out between the two sophomores — described as the "best of friends" — in the days before the killings?

Did a grudge exist between the parents of the two teenagers?

All those theories were dismissed Tuesday when prosecutors portrayed Kreider as a "merciless killer" who slaughtered the Haineses for no reason.

"Everybody wants to believe there is a good explanation. There is no explanation," Stedman said Tuesday, shortly after Kreider pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in state prison. "It's pretty clear that Alec had a need to kill. They were easy targets. There's nothing we have seen to show there is any other motive than that."

Stedman went so far as to say that Kreider had the disturbing qualities of a potential serial killer.

A lack of transportation and being under his parents' supervision likely prevented Kreider from further acting on the "murderous thoughts" he wrote about in journals. Police seized those journals, which included writings in which Kreider says "his want/need to kill people increased."

"I think we do know why," Stedman said of a motive. "The why is he is a murderer. Sometimes, there are truly evil people, deviants, who kill just to kill."

Media from across the country swarmed to the Lancaster County Courthouse on Tuesday morning for Kreider's guilty plea and subsequent sentencing.

After the two-hour proceeding inside Courtroom 12, many people walked out still asking, Why?

"Sometimes, there is no motive," Stedman said. "That's the harsh reality of this case; it's much more disturbing than it seems."

Even Judge David L. Ashworth wouldn't accept that explanation. He repeatedly asked Kreider for a motive, anything that might have provoked him to commit what the judge called "willful, deliberate and premeditated" killings.

Kreider refused to comment, and that may have convinced the judge to hand down the harshest sentence possible.

Ashworth could have sentenced Kreider to serve three life sentences concurrently, meaning they all would be served at the same time. Instead, he ruled they be served consecutively.

Before ruling, Ashworth told Kreider he "considered the lack of statements by the defendant" in deciding his sentence.

The lack of a motive was part of the reason investigators initially were baffled by the gruesome killing.

Victimology, a process by which investigators research the lifestyles of victims and the people they most recently came into contact with, proved fruitless.

"They had no enemies," Stedman said. "No one wanted to kill the Haineses."

Concerned citizens tied up the Manheim Township police station's phone lines, and many stopped there on a daily basis looking for answers.

"We did not know why this occurred," township Detective Allen Leed said of what he called "the worst criminal case in Manheim Township history."

According to investigators, only Kreider knows.

E-mail: bhambright@lnpnews.com