A man charged with the torture and dismemberment killings of two high school cheerleaders committed suicide in his jail cell Saturday by hanging himself with a shoelace, authorities said.
John B. Andrews, 31, had been in jail since Oct. 7, when he was arrested in the abductions of Sarah Hajney and Jennifer Bolduc, both 16.An indictment Thursday charged Andrews with nine counts of first-degree murder, which carries a possible death sentence. District Attorney George Dentes had not yet decided whether he was going to seek the death penalty.
Andrews was a neighbor of the Hajney family in McLean. Sarah and Jennifer, both cheerleaders at Dryden High School about 35 miles south of Syracuse, had been house-sitting for Hajney's vacationing parents.
The indictment alleged that Andrews tortured and sexually abused the teens before killing them, and then scattered their remains over several miles of back roads. He was arrested three days after the girls' disappearance at his job in a Cortland factory.