Suspect in slaying, child rape, beaten

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man accused of killing a Syracuse woman and raping her 10-year-old daughter during a carjacking was beaten and suffered a broken nose on his first day in jail, authorities said.

David Renz had a swollen face and tissues stuffed in both nostrils when he appeared in federal court Friday to face a probation violation charge.

"I have a broken nose," he told his lawyer, according to The Post-Standard in Syracuse.

His attorneys, James Greenwald and Kenneth Moynihan, said Renz was assaulted by other inmates at the Onondaga County Justice Center, where he was taken upon his arrest Thursday night.

Sheriff Kevin Walsh told the newspaper he was looking into why Renz was put into a holding area with other prisoners, which is not the usual practice in holding someone facing such accusations.

Renz abducted a school librarian and her daughter as they left a gymnastics class Thursday night at a mall in the Syracuse suburb of Clay, about 150 miles west of Albany, state police said Friday.

Renz bound both victims, raped the girl and drove a short distance to a spot where the girl escaped and was found by a passing motorist, troopers said.

The motorist told 911 dispatchers he saw a man running away, allowing police to quickly send in officers on the ground and a sheriff's helicopter in the air. Renz was caught a short time later near a wooded area.

The girl was being treated at a hospital Friday. Her mother died from multiple stab wounds.

Renz, 29, was charged in January with possession of child pornography and allowed to remain free under terms that included staying off the Internet and away from places including schools, parks and arcades. He lost his job at a supermarket, moved in with his mother and hadn't been able to find other work after his arrest, according to court documents.

Federal authorities said he cut his electronic monitoring device off his ankle shortly before Thursday's attacks. Probation officials are investigating whether Renz was able to get around an alert that is supposed to go off if the ankle bracelet is removed, Executive Assistant federal prosecutor John Duncan said.

Renz was arraigned Friday on murder, rape and kidnapping charges and was held without bail. The lawyer assigned to his case, Ken Moynihan, didn't return a call seeking comment.

According to an FBI criminal complaint, agents who went to the North Syracuse apartment where Renz was living in June found in his bedroom four computers that he told them he used to view adult pornography.

Agent Alix Skelton said Renz eventually admitted using the Internet for the past six years to download child porn to a drive on one of the machines, which he turned over to the agents. Technicians determined in November that it had an encrypted hard drive, and Skelton said Renz provided the encryption key. Agents reviewing the drive in December found about 100 gigabytes of child porn comprising more than 500 videos and more than 3,000 images, according to the complaint.