"Slaying-suicide caps Idaho campus affair" August 25, 2011|Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho - A college professor who alternately referred to himself as a “psychopathic killer’’ and “the beast’’ killed himself after fatally shooting a graduate student he had recently dated, police said in court documents.
The body of Ernesto A. Bustamante, 31, a former University of Idaho professor, was found early Tuesday in a hotel room in the upstate city of Moscow after he apparently shot himself in the head with a revolver, police said. Katy Benoit, 22, had been killed on the front porch of her Moscow home a day earlier.
Her two roommates told police they had been baking cookies late Monday when Benoit stepped outside for a cigarette and about two minutes later, they heard gunfire. Benoit was shot multiple times with a .45-caliber handgun.
A neighbor, Lorne Hetsler, told police he heard the shots and saw a man, whom authorities later identified as Bustamante, leaving the home in a dark trench coat and hat.
A police affidavit filed Tuesday offers details of the relationship between Bustamante and Benoit, including violent encounters that were described by their friends and roommates.
Meghan Walker-Smith and Emma Gregory, Benoit’s roommates, told police that the romance ended in March. Gregory told authorities that after the breakup Benoit said Bustamante had pointed a handgun at her on multiple occasions and at one point had put a gun in her mouth, according to the statement.
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