Timothy Noah Kaufman, a marine combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was taken into custody on Wednesday 24 April in connection with the killing of a former Northern Ireland police officer and his girlfriend in 2011.
The 35-year-old fugitive was arrested by the Saratoga County Police and the FBI and is one of three suspects for the murders of David Joseph Baler and Elma A. De Guia who were found shot to death on September 2, 2011 in their Angeles City home. According to the Philippine arrest warrant, all three have been charged with two counts of murder in the Philippines.
The report alleges that Kaufman came under suspicion after a watchmen in the gated residential neighborhood seen him “hastily” leaving the scene as a car passenger soon after the estimated time of the killings, TimesUnion.com reveals.
After the murders, according to Philippine authorities, Kaufman called his part-time maid, asked her to burn a garbage bag full of clothes he had left in his apartment, retrieve the car he had been renting from her for a month from a nearby hotel and, later, ordered her to bury two 9mm Beretta pistols wrapped in a bath towel
The maid saved some of these clothes and kept the guns, eventually handing them over to police. The authorities determined that the 9mm bullet casings found at the scene (18 in all) matched the guns provided Kaufman’s maid.
After Balmer and De Guia's bodies were discovered, Kaufman allegedly traveled between three different hotels in the area instead of returning to his apartment. He left the country just over a month after the murders, on October 6, 2011. His co-defendant, Joseph S. Tramontano is also said to have left the country a month after the bodies were found.
Kaufman's grandfather, Sidney Kaufman recently visited his grandson at Rensselaer County Jail saying: "He's my grandson, he's a former sergeant in the U.S. Marines, he served his country and I love him."
The FBI refused to comment on the arrest, however, it is revealed that Kaufman will be held pending an extradition hearing which is scheduled for May 9 in the U.S. District Court in Albany.
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