cryptogon.com

By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 4, 2008; B01

Kanika Powell suspected something when the man knocked on her door claiming to be an FBI agent. He held a badge up to her peephole but walked away when Powell refused to open up without seeing a photo ID.

Five days later, there was another knock at the door of her Laurel area apartment. This time a different man, who said he was delivering a package. When Powell again refused to open the door, he also left — no package, no note where it could be claimed.

Five hours later, Powell was outside her door after returning from errands. Someone was waiting in the hallway and opened fire, riddling her with bullets. She died a day later, this past Friday, and police have no idea why she was killed.

Her slaying has all the trappings of a television drama: e-mail messages Powell, 28, left behind about the strange men coming to her door; her mysterious career at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where she worked as a security specialist; the FBI’s insistence that none of its agents approached the woman; and investigators who say they can find no apparent motive for her killing — no spurned lover, no robbery, no signs of gang activity, nothing.

“At this point, we haven’t ruled out any avenue of investigation or motive, other than that it was random,” Detective Kelly Rogers of the Prince George’s County police said yesterday.

Rogers said police arrived at Powell’s home four minutes after she called 911 Aug. 23, after the encounter with the man who identified himself as the agent. Officers canvassed Powell’s apartment complex but found no one matching the description she’d given them.

Powell had also reported the incident to the apartment complex and told friends and colleagues. “It appears she did everything she could,” Rogers said. Yesterday, Rogers and Powell’s family began circulating fliers announcing a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest or indictment. Police are asking anyone with information to call the county’s Crime Solvers hotline at 866-411-TIPS (8477).

Powell’s family and friends say they cannot fathom a reason for the killing. Her wallet and keys were found with her. They said she had no enemies.

“She was just living a normal life,” said her mother, Judy Forrest. “It doesn’t add up. Somebody knows something, and they’re holding on to it, and we don’t know why.”

Powell was a 1998 Largo High School graduate who enlisted in the Army in 2000, served in Korea and worked as a security contractor and then at the Hopkins laboratory. Powell still had a close group of girlfriends from high school. She had never married and had no children. Court records show no criminal record, and police say they found nothing unusual or illegal in her apartment.

Michael Buckley, a spokesman for the Hopkins laboratory in Laurel, where scientists work on more than 400 homeland security and other research projects, said it was premature to speculate on whether Powell’s death had any connection to her work.

Buckley said Powell had started at the lab as a contract worker in 2004 and had become a lab employee in 2006. He declined to name the lab Powell worked in or her title, citing the “nature of the work.”

Powell signed her e-mail to friends and colleagues as “Kanika T. Powell, Special Security, 13-S448 JHU/APL.”

Forrest said her daughter was a security specialist who would not talk about her work. Powell would occasionally leave town for a couple of days to pick up things for the lab, she said. “I would ask her where she was going, and she would say, ‘Mom, you know I can’t tell you that.’ ”

Powell did tell her mother about the strange men who came to her door. Forrest said her daughter installed a security system after the first man came to the door. She might have thought she was being set up for a scam after the first visit, Powell’s mother said, but the second one made her feel targeted.

“She said, ‘Why are these people bothering me, Ma?’ ” Forest said, recalling that her daughter wondered whether she had angered someone. “But she didn’t seem scared.”

Still, Powell sent e-mail warnings to colleagues and friends about the men who came to her door. “The most scariest thing that happened to me,” she wrote. “Pass this along ladies . . . who knows who these guys are.”

Kelly Easter, one of Powell’s co-workers, said he last had lunch with her Aug. 26. “She was busy working on stuff, trying to get police involved. She was really messed up about the whole thing,” he said. The man claiming to be an FBI agent had come to her door only a few days earlier. “She just had no idea who would do that.”

LAUREL, Md. – Prince George’s County Police are baffled by the execution-style murder of a women near Laurel last Thursday, and they now say the victim was being stalked by as many as three different men in the days leading up to her shooting.

Investigators say Kanika Powell was gunned down as she entered her apartment building on Merrill Lane, and her death has left her family shaken and looking for answers.

Detectives say they have no solid leads in Powell’s murder, and they’re not sure who may have wanted her dead. Her family says she had no known enemies, but on the Saturday before her death a man claiming to be an FBI agent came to her door. He told her he needed to talk to her about a bank fraud investigation, and police say that was the first of three attempts to kill her.

Two days after the imposter came to her door, Powell sat down at her computer and wrote an email to friends and family. It read, in part, ‘I just wanted to share with you the most scariest thing that happened to me this weekend.’

In the email, the 28-year-old Army veteran and security specialist said the man showed her a badge and said, ‘… once I got close to the door and looked out of the peephole I saw a male figure that was not familiar to me at all. I asked who he was and all he stated was that he was from the FBI and that he was looking for Kanika Powell. It freaked me out completely because this man knew my name.’

Powell called her uncle and her mother to tell them what happened.

“I told her to call 911 and report it, and she said, ‘Mom, what are they gonna do?'” said Judy Forrest, Powell’s mother. “You have to report it, you never know.”

Forrest says Powell was worried, but didn’t seem overly concerned.

“I think that she might have been hiding from me the level of fear, you know,” said Forrest. “She was trying to be independent and not let me know how frightened she really was.”

Then, it happened again. A man posing as a deliveryman came to the apartment on Wednesday night, and again Thursday morning. Powell refused to open the door.

“She even discussed arming herself with some protection but I don’t think she ever did,” said Ernest Powell, her uncle.

Law enforcement sources say if Kanika Powell knew why someone was after her she never told family or the friends they’ve been able to speak with.

Toward the end of the email she sent, Powell wrote, ‘…not only did I get NO sleep for the rest of my weekend, I am trying to get an alarm system installed in my apartment.’

That alarm system was installed, but whoever was out to get her ambushed Powell at her front door.

Powell worked as a security specialist for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Her family says she was not involved in any illegal activity, and her lifestyle was simple and low-key.