American Notes Crime

It began as a minor traffic violation and ended with the fatal shooting of a police officer, a woman's murder and the discovery of a full female scalp in a stolen car. Alex Mengel, 30, a Guyanese-born tool-and-die maker, was returning home from a weekend of target shooting in the Catskill Mountains when a Westchester County, N.Y., police officer made the mistake of pulling him over. Noting spent shotgun shells in Mengel's car, the officer radioed for assistance. But before help could come, Mengel allegedly killed him with a single bullet to the head and fled on foot.

Investigators believe that a day later Mengel abducted Beverly Capone, a 44- year-old mother, as she was leaving her job as a data processor at an IBM facility nearby. Using Capone's car as his getaway vehicle, Mengel headed for the Canadian border. Six days after the police officer was slain, authorities caught up with Mengel in Toronto, where he was arrested after crashing the car into a wall in a final attempt to escape. Inside, they found a gruesome clue to how Mengel may have crossed the border despite the bulletins for his arrest. A woman's scalp, presumably Capone's, was found in the car. They speculate that Mengel killed Capone and disguised himself as a woman, using her hair as a wig. At week's end police found Capone's body under a pile of stones in a wooded Catskills area.