True Crime-Jonathan Luna;Gardens-A Gardener's Gotta Believe; Comments-Schiavo, Apprentice

 


In view of another missing prosecutor, Gricar in Pennsylvania, I thought it might be time t o re-visit the still unsolved death of Jonathan Luna, a Baltimore prosecutor, found dead under strange circumstances, in a small pond in Pennsylvania.
Original Entry and Source Links
The Intriguing and Bizarre Mystery of Jonathan P. Luna

Perhaps it was the proximity of this mystery to my home town of Baltimore. Perhaps it's my life long mild obsession with true crime. But the mystery of Jonathan P. Luna, Assistant US district attorney, 38 years of age, father of two young boys and by all accounts a serious and dedicated young man, is, I assert, the most intriguing true crime currently in process and still unsolved.

Much of the mystery remains because of the closed mouths of the investigators. As of this date, the FBI hints Luna committed suicide. The PA Coroner declares Luna's death a homicide. Whatever the case, and I do have an opinion should anyone be surprised, more on this later, Jonathan Luna died the strangest death of most any human on the planet.

For he had been stabbed 36 times, mostly shallow cuts. His body was found, face down, in the muddy waters of a small creek in Amish Pennsylvania. His death appears to have been from drowning, with the unstated supposition that had he not been in the creek he would have eventually bled out from his wounds.

There's many interesting facets of the Luna case, including one factoid I found so very telling yet is buried beneath the verbiage and reporting on this case.

Let's begin with the events of the night of Luna's death. There seems to have been a back and forth type of thing going on with Luna that night, having returned to the office, then returning home, then going back to the office. For whatever reason this type of activity was going on, the real strangeness began at almost midnight on 12/3/2003.

At that time, Luna left his office, this after promising to fax papers to the defendant's attorneys on a current case first thing in the morning. Around 1 am, he stopped at a Delaware rest stopped and withdrew $200. Videotapes of that transaction seem to show a normal and calm Luna doing this most ordinary of business. At 2:47 am, his car went through a Delaware toll plaza.

At 5:30 am, his body was found in dead in a small Pennsylvania creek.

Odder, the route Luna took to get to his final destination was roundabout, a route that added two hours to the normal travel time from Baltimore to the small Pa. Town where he was found of a little under two hours. It took four hours for him to finish a trip that should have only taken two hours is what I'm saying here.

From 11:30 pm 12/3/03 until around 4:30 am or so, Luna traveled all about the Delaware interstate in a circuitous route to a deadly end. Nowhere along his route that night is there any evidence that he was anything but all alone.

I use the ending of his travel time as 4:30 am as my own personal estimate as there had to be some time required to get the man stabbed 36 times and drag him to finish dying in the creek. This is my estimate alone but the discovery of his body at 5:30 am already dead in a manner that required some time to get that way makes me conclude there was at least an hour non-driving time for the "killing".
His car left the turnpike after 3:30 a.m. at Exit 286, south of Reading. The ticket turned in to the tollbooth worker had a speck of blood, a law enforcement source said, and DNA tests are being conducted to determine whether it was Luna's.


Which means Luna drove around 4 hours that night, mostly along the Delaware interstate route. It is known that he stopped at two places along that route and passed through a toll at almost 3:30 am. He was supposedly alone when he stopped at a gas station in King of Prussia, Pa. shortly before 3:30 am. though this is not clear. Add a half an hour to 45 minutes to get to his final destination at that little creek, that brings Luna to around 4:30 am, my timeline, when the killing probably began.

 


By most accounts Luna is a straight up sort of fellow. He worked his way through law school and helped his parents to move to Maryland to be closer to him. His mother-in-law lived with him, his wife and two sons.


But there's other tidbits that seem more juicy than they are germane.
Luna allegedly had a stash of porn on his home computer. Also, someone using his name had placed an ad for a "discrete" relationship on an Internet web site.
He had 25K in credit card debt of which his wife was unaware.

Even other tidbits are more germane, I assert. While his boss publicly declared that Luna was in no danger of losing his job, friends say he was very worried about being fired and even hired a lawyer in anticipation of a job related lawsuit.

At yet another rest stop in PA, The Peter J. Carmiel rest stop, Luna was well known and stopped there regularly in the six months prior to his death.

Most germane of all, Luna was the prosecutor in a case when $36K in cash went missing and has yet to be accounted for.

So what do I think happened to Jonathan P. Luna?

I think he committed suicide.

Yes, as bizarre as it sounds, given everything I know and understanding there's lots we don't know, I think Luna killed himself and, indeed, had been planning to do so for over six months prior.

Also of important note, there was NO, absolutely NONE, evidence, of anyone else ever being in that car with Luna. Not a fiber, a hair, a drop of blood from anyone else but those that belonged there. To stab someone 36 times inside of a car would require some engagement that would surely leave SOME evidence.

As for his home porn and credit card debt, even that little naughty ad, I say this is nothing. $25K worth of debt to a lawyer is not the stuff of suicide and I'm betting there's plenty of spouses out there who don't know about their better half's credit debt.

I think Luna had been planning a suicide for the six months prior to his death and his trips past that rest stop were either times when he planned to do the deed but chickened out or preliminary planning trips.

There are some debatable details about the state of his car. Also, Luna's head supposedly had a massive wound. A pool of congealed blood was found on the floor behind the driver's seat. Money was alleged to be scattered all over his car and his wallet was missing.

As I see it, Luna kept stabbing himself, perhaps with each try he hoped it would be the one he would thrust in all the way. Or he might have been testing for his tolerance to pain. As for his head wound, I think that once he'd administered so many cuts to his body he just wanted it to end, to end, dammit. In desperation he banged his head forcefully against the side of the car, indeed he even tried to drive his car into the water but chickened out. His car was found with its wheels almost under water. Finally he stumbled, badly bleeding, into the creek and waited for the peace of the waters filling his lungs.

As for the money scattered all about and the missing wallet, I think Luna staged it this way, perhaps tossing the wallet somewhere along the last few miles of his trip. If there was a way for his family to gain double indemnity for his death he wanted it to look like a robbery. The congealed blood on the back floor could have been the normal route of the running blood as it exited his body to snake along the car seat lines to end up in various bloody pools.

Why did Luna kill himself?

This is the part we don't know but I suspect. I think Luna was involved in that missing money-the cash of $36K that went missing on a case he was trying. And I think Luna knew the Feds were closing in. And the Feds knew they were closing in and this is why they are more apt to think Luna committed suicide than those Pa. Cops, who probably never had a homicide at any rate.

In honor of a man so desperate to kill himself for fear of the penalty of his theft, I suspect information about the status of that missing money is not being released. It's why some of Luna's friends say he was worried about being fired and explains that bit about him hiring an attorney.

I don't know why the man didn't just kill himself with a gun and get it done. Surely it would be less painful than death by a thousand cuts. When a person is so driven to suicide who knows what desperate thoughts fill their minds? For whatever reason, Luna wanted a way to end it slowly and, I'm supposing, as painless as possible. Maybe he thought bleeding from a lot of little cuts wouldn't hurt and he knew he would never have the courage to pull a trigger.

By my theory that missing money was being investigated for six months prior to Luna's death. And for the entire six months Luna was driving the Delaware/PA interstate, driving, thinking and looking for a place to end it all.

 


A Gardener’s Gotta Believe

Which is what I told my husband when he told me that the new Rose of Sharon “bushes”-using that term lightly- were a bit “small”.

Hey, they’re not small. They’re twigs with leaves!

So many of the plantings here in Serendipity Shore are “small” in the same manner as the Rose of Sharon. A series of twigs that were planted last year along the fence line and yes I thought they looked pathetic. They are, however, re-sprouting this year and yes, I believe they will one day be big beautiful bushes sporting pretty bluish flowers that the bumble bees adore.

With such as perennials there is one rule of thumb: “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.”

We’re in the creeping year here in Delaware. At least for so many of the plantings that I planted to suit my own gardening sensibilities as opposed to the guy here before me.

Below some pics of this early May 2005 garden.

I believe someday everything will grow and be lush.

A gardener’s gotta believe.

 


 


 


A Compliment…

…is always nice. The writer responds to my story:The Syndrome

That was good si-fi.
Phill

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The Apprentice

you have made some excellent points especially about she should have kept her mouth shut..But I disagree with you about Tana going to bed and Kendra making it an all nighter,,I think a mature person goes to bed on time and gets up fresh with a clear mind..if you have to work all night than you wasted the daytime hours ,,what would have happened if Kendra did not figure it all out that night ,she would not have been worth crap the next day..Kendra wasted the daylight hours winning and arguing with her team like she always does..

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I do think both Tana and Kendra deserve to be here although Tana did dissapoint me in her lack of taking sides in any of the previous arguments she was near enough to here. I don\'t completely blame Tana for going to bed early although there should have been some kind of plan discussed prior to her and Craig leaving to pick up the pieces the next day, Kendra really kept Tana and Craig out of the fire by coming in with her brochure. Tana also lost credability in my mind by failing to acknowledge Kendra\'s role in the development of the brochure and trying to lead the presentation to the company representatives. I just wish Craig would have been in the boardroom earlier because he\'s been carried by these two ladies for too long and everyone finally saw how weak of a person he was in the interview process.

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Another Compliment …

…I must blush.

GREETINGS FROM SC!!! I JUST STUMBLED ONTO YOUR SITE AND HAVE HAD A GRAND TIME. I LOVED IT. YOUR GRANDBABY IS ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE.

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Blog Comment Worth a Smile

PERSISTENT DEMOCRATIC STATE

"Will the last Democrat with an idea please stand up? It doesn't even have to be a good one. Just pick an idea: a chicken in every pot, an intern under every desk, whatever. But please, Democrats, do something soon to indicate some minimal brain activity before a Florida judge shows up and pulls your feeding tube."

- Columnist Michael Graham
Posted by Anonymous to The Kaitlyn Mae Book Blog at 5/6/2005 03:23:57 PM

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About Terri Schiavo

You made some interesting points but you have severely misrepresented some facts here. One of which is that Terri's husband Michael was not the "nurse that could have been giving her CPR while waiting for the ambulance". He did not become an RN until after her heart attack. He did it in part, he says, to learn how to do her care properly. And even though I am not disagreeing with you on your main ideas, until you properly research your facts people will find inconsistancies that will cause doubt about everything you say. If you choose to report fact you should learn to do it accurately and without non-truths and biases.

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Posted by Anonymous to The Kaitlyn Mae Book Blog at 5/7/2005 05:32:57 AM