Heard in the Hall:
A new take on FBI work in Schieber case

With considerable drama, the Philadelphia Police Department summoned anxious women to a Center City church last year for a packed meeting on the hunt for the so-called Rittenhouse rapist.

There, a rapt audience listened as a member of the FBI's glamorous "profiler unit" sketched out the agency's view of the killer of college student Shannon Schieber and rapist of other women.

This year, in a recent court hearing, a lawyer for the city had a different view of the FBI work. It was "conjecture, speculative" and "unreliable," Denise Wolf of the City Solicitor's Office said this month.

Here's the background.

DNA has established that Schieber, killed in May 1998, was the rapist's fifth victim since 1997. Police had been summoned to her apartment after a neighbor heard someone screaming. The officers departed after knocking on the door and getting no response. Schieber, 23, was found dead the next day.

The man raped a sixth Center City woman in 1999. No attacks have been linked to him this year.

At the church meeting last year, the FBI said the predator was very likely a self-doubting underachiever who "rapes to reassure himself of his masculinity."

One thing that the profiler didn't share with the public that night was that the FBI had concluded that Schieber was likely alive when police knocked on her door, and that the rapist killed her for fear she would scream and alert the officers. That conclusion is in the FBI's written report.

Schieber's parents, Vicki and Sylvester Schieber of Chevy Chase, Md., are pursuing a federal lawsuit against the city, contending that the police should have knocked down their daughter's door.

To support that claim, the parents asked the judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge Norma Shapiro, to let them use the FBI profiling report as evidence, especially its finding that their daughter was alive when police knocked.

In its legal filings, the city contends that Schieber was already dead when police arrived. It also says police did not have sufficient legal grounds to burst into her apartment.

After hearing both sides, Shapiro barred the FBI profiling report from being introduced as evidence should the case go to trial. Shapiro appeared to dismiss the FBI profiler's work.

"What he said didn't seem to do any good," Shapiro said. "They still haven't found the fellow."