Bill Keisling, who wrote “The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna,” says in a new edition of the book that Kim MacLeod, the Baltimore-area mortician who prepared Luna’s body for viewing, counted 32 cuts — including the ones in his back and “ragged” wounds to his scrotum.


MacLeod’s account casts more doubt on the theory that anonymous federal sources have advanced to the media in the three years since Luna’s body was found in a Brecknock Township creek: that the Baltimore assistant U.S. attorney committed suicide or killed himself accidentally during a faked suicide try.


Keisling and Blue Ball private investigator Ed Martino, who was retained by friends of Luna’s, insist Luna was killed.


Lancaster County Coroner Dr. G. Gary Kirchner, who cautioned that some of the “linear” cuts that MacLeod saw might have been made during the autopsy, reiterated his view that Luna’s death was a homicide.


Since Luna was found face-down in a stream at Sensenig & Weaver Well Drilling on Dec. 4, 2003, little progress seems to have been made.


But the case isn’t quite cold yet.


Martino said the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into the case.


And he said he and two other people are preparing to file a lawsuit against Kirchner, asking him to hold an inquest into the death.


Meanwhile, Keisling is organizing a vigil on the third anniversary of Luna’s death Monday, this time outside the Baltimore federal courthouse where Luna worked.


“What’s really emerging is, the guy was lynched,” Keisling said. Luna was of African-American and Filipino descent.


“He was fighting for his life.”


‘Worst one I’ve ever seen’




Jonathan Luna, 38, was working late in his office on Dec. 3, 2003, preparing a plea agreement for two men he was prosecuting for heroin dealing.


He left the office at 11:38 p.m., one of the plea deals unfinished and his glasses — which friends said he needed to drive — and cell phone on his desk.


Six hours later, Luna was found by workers at Sensenig & Weaver. His idling Honda Accord was at the edge of the creek bank. A pool of blood was on the floor of the rear seat.


Early reports said Luna sustained 36 knife wounds. He died of drowning.


The Pennsylvania Turnpike ticket that was handed over at the Exit 286 toll booth was found to have a spot of Luna’s blood on it.


And there was an unexplained hour-and-a-half gap in the time it took Luna to get from Baltimore, via Delaware, New Jersey and Philadelphia, to Brecknock Township.


Yet after Luna’s death, federal sources were cited in The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun stories saying that Luna killed himself, deliberately or accidentally. The sources suggested Luna could have been involved with a missing $36,000 from a bank robbery that he prosecuted and hinted at personal problems.


At one point, FBI agents asked Kirchner, the coroner, to change the cause of death from homicide to suicide. He declined.


Keisling and Martino have attacked the suicide theory. In August, Keisling appeared on a Baltimore radio show. A caller told Keisling about a mortician who contacted authorities to question news reports of suicide, given the nature of the injuries she had seen.


MacLeod later told Keisling, according to the third edition of his 2004 book, that Luna had stab wounds in the middle of his back, around and below the shoulder blades.


His hands had been “shredded” by deep cuts between the fingers and by slashes to the front and back of the hands — in some places bone-deep.


“I tried to sew them up as best I could, but we had to put gloves on for the viewing,” she is quoted as saying.


MacLeod told Keisling that Luna’s neck had been slit and his scrotum cut, but the slash wasn’t a clean one.


Luna’s boyhood friend, Danny Rivera, earlier described the gloves Luna wore at his funeral. Keisling pointed out that early news reports said Dr. Barry Walp, the coroner at the time, had noticed the throat injury; there also were early reports of genital mutilation.


The Sun has quoted federal sources saying Luna did not “appear to suffer substantial defense wounds on his hands.” The Post quoted an FBI source saying Luna was “staging an abduction but went too far by nicking an artery or crucial vein.”


“I’ve seen lots of murders, but this was definitely the worst one I’ve ever seen,” MacLeod told Keisling.


Excerpts from her story are posted on www.yardbird.com.


Kirchner, who took office in January 2004, said last week that MacLeod “is describing, probably accurately, the wounds on the body. ... She is describing autopsy wounds as well as inflicted wounds. Those linear wounds are the prosecutor looking under bruises for depth of wounds. They were not inflicted pre-death.”


He said he is “reasonably certain” the cut to the scrotum was done during the autopsy, performed by the county’s forensic pathologist, Dr. Wayne Ross.


“There were bruises,” Kirchner said, “and this is the way you access a bruise for depth and severity.”


Keisling, though, said early news stories reported 36 stab wounds, while MacLeod counted 32.


“While no doubt the autopsy probed these wounds, it’s interesting to note that she didn’t count, say, 42 wounds, a number of wounds that would have been added by an autopsy,” he said.


“It seems unlikely that the coroner would have added stab wounds to the back, or slit the scrotum, in an autopsy.”


He raised the possibility of exhumation.


“That body’s still there,” he said, “with those wounds.”


‘Homicide, not suicide’




MacLeod also told Keisling that when Luna’s body was taken from Pennsylvania to Maryland for his funeral, the move was delayed because, according to a Maryland state trooper who escorted the hearse, investigators had found more evidence: a knife.


Authorities first reported in mid-February that the probable weapon — Luna’s penknife — had been discovered. Luna’s funeral was Dec. 15.


MacLeod said she was told two knives were found, one a penknife.


At least one other source has said a fire policeman controlling traffic the day the body was discovered reported that a knife had been found then.


Kirchner has not changed his opinion of Luna’s cause of death.


“I did fully support the conclusions of Barry Walp and Wayne Ross that this was homicide and not suicide and that he died from fresh-water drowning,” he said. “... The forensic evidence gathered by Barry Walp and Wayne Ross did not support suicide as a manner of death.”


District Attorney Don Totaro said last week that he couldn’t comment.


Kirchner has written to the FBI’s Baltimore office to offer an inquest, but he said he didn’t receive a response.


Martino, the private investigator, is hoping to get an inquest anyway.


He and two others are readying a lawsuit, he said Saturday, that West Chester attorney Sam Stretton will file to force Kirchner to call an inquest.


Martino said he referred MacLeod’s story, along with the rest of his findings, to the Senate Judiciary Committee.


He said he met with Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a month ago. At least one FBI supervisor from Baltimore has been called before the committee, Martino said.


“The only thing he would say is, ‘It’s under investigation,’ ” Martino said. “They [the FBI] need to be investigating themselves.”


Even though the Judiciary chairmanship will change hands in January with the new Democratic majority, he said, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expected to be the new chairman, is interested in the case.


“I can’t elaborate beyond the fact that it’s an ongoing investigation,” said a Judiciary Committee aide who asked not to be named. The committee “wrote the FBI a letter about it back in May, and it remains ongoing.”


The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania now has jurisdiction over the Luna case.


“It is still an open investigation,” spokesman Rich Manieri said last week.


Keisling is trying to keep it that way.


Monday, the third anniversary, he will be at a noon vigil outside the Baltimore federal courthouse to commemorate Luna’s death.


The vigil will be held beneath a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP attorney who argued the Brown v. Board of Education segregation case and who later was a Supreme Court justice.


Members of the Baltimore NAACP are expected to attend. In Baltimore, African Americans are calling Luna’s death a “lynching,” Keisling said.


“The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna” has consumed Keisling.


“This book has been really difficult for me,” he said. “I’ve lost money on it. I’ve been kicked around the block.”


He’s been sued, too, by Russell Wantz, owner of York-based Schaad Detective Agency. Wantz has asked a federal judge to block sales of “Midnight Ride” because of corruption allegations reported in the book.


Still, Keisling hopes for the Luna case to break.


“I think,” he said, “it’s only going to be a matter of time.”