HOUSTON (October 25, 2001 3:54 p.m. EDT) - The suspect in the 1974 murder of two Mormon missionaries was ordered detained in Britain pending a possible Texas retrial using new DNA evidence, a prosecutor said.
Robert Elmer Kleasen, 69, was serving a prison sentence in Britain for weapons violations but was set for release Nov. 1. A Scotland Yard spokesman said Kleasen was ordered detained until an initial extradition hearing is held.
To win England's cooperation in the extradition, Texas prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty, said Bryan Case, a Travis County assistant district attorney.
"We knew he was there. We also knew his prison sentence was going to be up," Case said. He said it still could be months or years until Kleasen is returned to the state.
Missionaries Mark Fischer, 19, of Milwaukee, and Gary Smith Darley, 20, of Simi Valley, Calif., disappeared in Austin on Oct. 28, 1974. Their bodies were never found.
They were to dine with Kleasen in his trailer behind a taxidermy shop where he worked. Police believe Darley and Fischer kept that date and were shot to death, and their bodies were cut into small pieces with a band saw in the shop.
Kleasen was convicted of killing Fischer and was sentenced to death in 1975, but two years later a state appeals court overturned the verdict because of a faulty search warrant.
In 1990, he moved to England. He was convicted there on the weapons violations in June 2000.
Kleasen was indicted in the 1974 case earlier this year, based on new DNA test results that detected the blood of one of the victims on Kleasen's pants, Case said. The pants were not among the evidence from Kleasen's trailer that was thrown out by the appeals court.