By Rebecca Henely
East Elmhurst resident John Katehis, 19, has been convicted in Brooklyn State Supreme Court of murdering 47-year-old ABC radio reporter George Weber in a 2009 craigslist.com hookup gone wrong, the Kings County district attorney’s office said last week.
When he is sentenced Dec. 7, Katehis could be behind bars for the next 25 years to life, the DA said.
Katehis, who was 16 at the time of the March 20 incident, met Weber on craigslist.com, a popular classified advertising website that had up until September 2010 allowed users to advertise “adult” services, the DA said. Weber, 47, had offered Katehis money to perform a sexual act, the DA said.
This act had been described as “smothering,” a type of erotic asphyxiation, and Weber had agreed to pay $60 for Katehis to do this to him, according to court documents.
During the encounter, which took place in Weber’s apartment on Henry Street in Brooklyn, Katehis took out a knife and stabbed Weber approximately 50 times, the DA said.
Katehis had changed into a different set of clothes before leaving the apartment and taking the G train, according to an NYPD spokesman speaking immediately after Katehis’ arrest.
He said a Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee had reported Katehis, who was bleeding profusely from his left hand, to the police, the spokesman said. When the NYPD responded to Katehis, the teenager said he had cut his hand on a glass bottle and EMS later transported him from the Court Square subway station to Elmhurst Hospital Center, the spokesman said.
Katehis fled the city, but was arrested March 24 at a Middletown, N.Y., bus station, the spokesman said.
He had been arrested with the help of his father Spiro Katehis, who lured his son to the Middletown, N.Y., spot where police were waiting to arrest him by offering a change of clothes and money, according to court documents.
Upon his arrest, Katehis initially said he had stabbed Weber in self-defense, according to court documents.
On his MySpace profile, Katehis said he was an “extremist, an anarchist and a sadomasochist” and that he enjoyed “long conversations, drinking, bike riding, hanging out, roof hopping, hanging off trains … extreme violence (chaos, anarchy etc.).”
Defense attorney Jeffrey Schwartz said the MySpace profile was not to be taken seriously, according to previous reports by TimesLedger Newspapers.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
