Jennifer Zoch

 

Strangled to death in the 900 blk. of M St., NW

Police Meet With Residents on Slayings; Tenants Decry Security at Complex Where 2 Women Were Found

by Maria Elena Fernandez
March 26, 1998

Residents of the Mount Vernon Plaza apartments in Northwest Washington, where two women have been found strangled in four months, packed a D.C. police community meeting last night to express their frustration about building security and ask detectives about the slaying investigations.

Homicide detectives, in turn, asked residents for help in narrowing their probe. Mount Vernon Plaza, in the 900 block of M Street NW, was not home to the two women whose bodies were found there, and police said they have not established how the women wound up there.

The body of Deborah A. McKinney, 38, was discovered unclothed from the waist down in a stairwell in the back of the building Nov. 26. Jennifer Zoch, 19, also was unclothed from the waist down when a security guard found her body in a parking space in the basement garage Monday.

Although there are similarities in the slayings, Cmdr. Ross Swope, head of the homicide unit, said yesterday that investigators are not sure whether they are related.

“The preliminary investigation doesn’t look that way,” Swope said. “But we’re not ruling anything out.” Swope declined to say whether the women were sexually assaulted.

Capt. Melvin Scott told the group of about 100 residents: “We are here to receive information that can help target some people. At this point, we do not have enough information to do that.”

Questions lingered last night about whether the two victims were prostitutes. Residents said building managers told them both women were prostitutes, and police said Monday that McKinney had been known to be a prostitute in the Shaw neighborhood. Her family has disputed that assertion. Neither McKinney, who lived in the 900 block of S Street NW, nor Zoch, of Goodman, Wis., had criminal records in the District.

Zoch came to Washington March 9 to dance with a troupe at “high-class go-go clubs,” her father, James Zoch, said. Jennifer Zoch’s stage name was Ecstasy, her father said.

A flier distributed by police at the meeting included Zoch’s nickname and the fact that she frequented the area around Massachusetts Avenue and 12th and 13th streets NW, which is known for prostitution.

Nevertheless, police said the issue of prostitution was not relevant to their investigation. Residents derided that assertion as ridiculous.

Residents also complained about a lack of security at the building, which is owned by Bush Construction Corp. in Williamsburg and managed by W.H.H. Trice & Co. Residents said that the garage is too dark for cameras to record anything and that there is no security in the rear of the building. They said building managers, who did not attend the meeting, refused to make some changes they suggested after McKinney’s body was found.

Joseph J. Adamany, commander of the 3rd Police District, walked through the building and said improvements could be made.

On Tuesday, Dennis Dorsey, president of W.H.H. Trice, said he is willing to work on the concerns.

Credit: Washington Post Staff Writer

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

Saturday, March 8th, 2008, 3:22 pm. Filed under Unsolved.