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HOPKINSVILLE, KY. -- Squinting as if emerging from darkness, a frail and seemingly confused Steven "Stevie" Tomporowski told a judge this morning he had recently used the hallucinogen LSD as he waived his right to an extradition hearing.
Tomporowski, 18, a native of west suburban Westchester, now will be returned to Wisconsin to face three counts of first-degree intentional homicide for the killings of his parents and an uncle last weekend in a rural farmhouse.
After police issued a warrant for his arrest, the suspect was stopped and taken into custody Monday driving his mother's 1999 Dodge Intrepid on an interstate highway near Cadiz, Ky., 600 miles south of the slaying scene.
The defendant's assertion today about being on drugs touched off immediate concern by the court about his competency.
"We're going to go through this again," Christian County District Court Judge James G. Adams, Jr. said midway through a 10-minute court hearing.
Adams twice asked the 125-pound teen twice if he understood what he was doing. The defendant replied in the affirmative.
Asked when he had last used LSD, Tomporowski paused, first said he wasn't sure, and finally concluded it was last Saturday or Sunday. In the end, Adams accepted Tomporowski's decision as well as his guilty plea to a local misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
The judge imposed and immediately suspended a 30-day sentence for the misdemeanor and said Tomporowski would be handed over to Wisconsin authorities as soon as they were ready for him.
Two Wisconsin police investigators entered Adams' courtroom as the hearing concluded. They declined to talk to reporters. The suspect's parents, Stephen J. Tomporowski, 52, and Deborah Tomporowski, 46, both of Westchester, and his uncle Roger Tomporowski, 56, of Arlington Heights, were found shot to death early Monday in a family farmhouse retreat in Richland County, Wis., some 70 miles northwest of Madison.
Kentucky Commonwealth Atty. Rick Boling said the Wisconsin investigators would conduct a complete search of the Tomporowskis' Dodge before returning both the suspect and the car to Wisconsin later today or Thursday.
Authorities in Kentucky initially charged Tomporowski with felony charges of fleeing and eluding, and receiving stolen property, but reduced those charges to the single misdemeanor count to expedite the Wisconsin case, Boling said. "I did not want to be an obstacle to those proceedings," he said.
No one in Adams' courtroom today identified himself or herself as a friend or relative the 18-year-old murder suspect. The man's public defender, James Kane, acknowledged his client's confused appearance.
"Obviously, I have some concerns for him," Kane said regarding the teen's declaration of recent drug use. "That's why we had the conference at the bench, to be sure he knew what he was doing. And the judge felt he did."
Boling said he was confident Tomporowski was competent to enter his guilty plea and waive extradition.
"The fact that he was able to operate a motor vehicle over a several day stretch and end up in Kentucky and not violate the traffic laws along the way, I think all of that goes toward his ability to function," Boling said.
Previously, a grandfather of Tomporowski told investigators he suspected the teen was involved in the killings because he was suffering from a mental illness and had not been the same since using the drug Ecstasy about two years ago, a Wisconsin criminal complaint said.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday in Richland County, the suspect and his father and uncle left their homes late Friday for the farmhouse, which is used as a second home by the teen's grandfather, Walter Sawoska, also of Westchester.
Roger Tomporowski's wife, Sandra, told investigators she talked to Deborah Tomporowski about noon Sunday in Illinois, the complaint said, noting, "Deborah had told her that she had just received a strange telephone call from her son, Stevie."
The son indicated the men were having car trouble and he wanted his mother to drive to the Wisconsin property, which she did, arriving some time after 4 p.m., the complaint said.
Sandra Tomporowski said she talked to the teen in a telephone call early Monday morning from his home in Westchester and he told her he left the farmhouse because his parents were fighting and he could not stand being there, the complaint said. The aunt then called Wisconsin authorities, who found the bodies.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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