The Cesspool.(on the right)(Jonathan Zarate)

NEW YORK, AUGUST 9

THE Randolph Killing, we may as well call it, freezes the blood and all but estops the working of the mind. What does thoughtful analysis yield? Have we learned anything in any sense new? Surely--we need to comfort ourselves by saying--the Randolph Killing is not merely new, it is unique?

Jonathan Zarate is 18. He had quit high school, but hadn't got a job. He lived with his divorced father and his father's new wife and her four children in the leafy community of Randolph, New Jersey, whose inhabitants have a median family income of $110,000.

Last Saturday night, Jonathan called a neighbor, 16-year-old Jennifer Parks. Would Jennifer like to come on over and watch some television with Jonathan in the basement? It was 2 A.M., but Jennifer said yes, and walked on over.

Soon after, Jonathan got mad, really mad at Jennifer. He beat her with an aluminum pole, then knifed her, then stuffed a bandana down her throat. But now he had a corpse, and these are ungainly, so Jonathan undertook to saw off Jennifer's legs, at the knees. He got hold of a steamer trunk and stuffed her and the legs into it, and dragged it into the back of his father's Jeep. He went back to the basement and got some bleach, with which he tackled the blood stains on the carpet.

The next morning the girl's parents went about in the neighborhood looking for her. They stopped at Jonathan's house and asked if he had seen her. He said no, and rejoined the singing of Happy Birthday as a cake was passed about celebrating his stepsister's birthday. By noon that day the parents were worried enough about Jennifer's absence to call the police. A search yielded nothing.

Late Sunday night, Jonathan asked his 14-year-old brother James to help him with a project. James agreed, and persuaded a 16-year-old friend, who lived 30 miles away, to join in helping.