Bill Shaline, Jean Hillery, and Tom Quadros

Girlfriend says 'Sausage King' wanted to grind up inspectors Bay City News San Francisco CA

Monday, May 17, 2004

The former girlfriend of San Leandro sausage factory owner Stuart Alexander testified in his murder trial today that Alexander said several times he wanted to kill several meat inspectors, put them in a meat grinder and make sausages out of them.

Charlotte Knapp is a dental assistant who said she had an "on-again, off-again'' relationship with Alexander for three years before he was arrested for the deaths of three inspectors on June 21, 2000. She said Alexander, now 43, frequently used profanities to describe inspectors who came to his facility, the Santos Linguisa Factory.

Knapp said, "On many occasions he said he would go 'Bang, bang, bang, bang!' and the last bullet would be for himself.''

She testified that he told her if he ground up the inspectors and made sausages out of them, "no one would know'' about their deaths.

Knapp also said Alexander, who called himself the "Sausage King'' and ran for mayor of San Leandro in 1998, told her only two weeks before the inspectors were killed that he could get away with killing somebody because all he would have to do was call famous defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, who represented O.J. Simpson, and plead insanity.

In addition, Knapp said that one time when they were alone at the sausage factory, Alexander told her, "I could do away with you and nobody would know.''

Alexander's comment "made me feel weird,'' she said.

Prosecutors Jack Laettner and Paul Hora apparently put Knapp on the witness stand to try to show that Alexander planned the killings and to refute defense attorney Michael Ogul's assertion in his opening statement that while the shootings were unlawful, they weren't murder because Alexander was "blind with rage'' and didn't carefully weigh the reasons for and against his actions.

Killed in the bloody incident were state inspector Bill Shaline, 57, of Sacramento, and two U.S. Department of Agriculture compliance officers, Jean Hillery, 56, of Alameda, and Tom Quadros, 52, of Hayward.

In addition to three counts of murder, Alexander is charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to kill a fourth person, state inspector Earl Willis, who managed to escape unharmed after Alexander allegedly ran after him and shot at him.