By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 26, 1999; Page B1

Convicted murderer Leo Gonzales Wright would not have been on a D.C. street, ready and able to kill again, if workers in the District's criminal justice system had done their jobs properly, D.C. Inspector General E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. declared yesterday.

Prettyman delivered a searing indictment of the District's parole system in a 47-page report that traced what he called the "sad, sordid story" of Wright's angry freedom and how he came to kill a spirited, young human rights lawyer named Bettina Pruckmayr.

Wright was paroled in 1993 after serving 16 years, 6 months and 26 days of what was supposed to be a longer sentence for the murder of a cabdriver. On Dec. 16, 1995, he robbed Pruckmayr and stabbed her 38 times. Wright pleaded guilty in 1996 and is serving a life prison term with no chance of parole. Prettyman said he was a violent inmate and a drug-using parolee never properly called to account by responsible authorities.

"If even one of these individuals had done their duty, Bettina would still be alive," Gerfried Pruckmayr said of his 26-year-old daughter. "We hold them directly responsible for the murder of our daughter."

Prettyman said the failings in Wright's case began at the Lorton Correctional Complex, where files were in chaos, office security was lax and inmates could alter their own records through stealth, bribery or intimidation. Wright's file was missing five of his 38 prison disciplinary reports.

Next, the D.C. Parole Board approved early parole for Wright in 1992, despite the recommendation of a parole analyst who said the prisoner deserved no breaks. A Parole Board member said Wright, sentenced to consecutive terms of 15 to 45 years and 5 to 15 years, appeared to be a "mild-mannered, soft-spoken individual . . . not like the person described."

Once free, Wright skipped meetings with his parole officer, tested positive for drug use and was arrested twice. A series of mix-ups and breakdowns, including a D.C. police officer's failure to appear in court, kept Wright from being sent back to prison, Prettyman said.

Prettyman faulted individuals and urged disciplinary proceedings against a Lorton supervisor, Wright's parole officer and the D.C. officer who failed to appear. He also pointed a finger higher. He said the District should spend more on prison security and services, more on parole officers, more on drug treatment.

"A city," Prettyman said, "that spends so little on housing and providing for its serious criminals, perhaps on the theory that it's coddling, and that those criminals are forced through the system and onto the streets before their sentences are up, will learn that the city itself is a victim of its own shortsightedness."

Prettyman's recommendations came on a day when D.C. parole and judicial authorities were meeting to assess the city's porous halfway house system. As many as one-third of the convicts and pretrial detainees in halfway houses have walked away in the last three months.

On both prison and parole, the District's system is undergoing significant change, with the federal government taking increasing control in the years since Pruckmayr died. Parole decisions regarding D.C. inmates are now made by federal authorities. The D.C. Parole Board, on its way to extinction, is now responsible only for parole violators.

Parole supervision is now the province of a federal trustee, John A. Carver, who has instituted policies designed to repair some of the deep cracks identified by Prettyman.

If a parolee is arrested on a new charge, for example, the Parole Board is now required to issue an arrest warrant in the original case based on a judge's finding of probable cause, avoiding the effort and potential delay of a separate ruling by parole officials.

"We've made a lot of gains," Carver said. "We're going to be very much in sync with what they're recommending in tightening up parole supervision."

D.C. Department of Corrections spokesman Darryl J. Madden said he could not discuss personnel matters. He pointed out that Lorton will close in August 2000. On broader issues, he asserted that access to inmate records has been tightened. With more money, he said, prison officials could do more.

Police officials declined to discuss the report, which called for an inquiry into the actions of Officer Wayne Stancil, who arrested Wright on a cocaine charge, then did not appear in court. Prettyman reported that Stancil -- who had known Wright from childhood -- was suspended with pay for nine months in 1997 for seven other episodes of failing to appear.

Executive Assistant Chief Terrance W. Gainer said Stancil's "failure to act when he should have resulted in a death." Police authorities fired Stancil, but the decision was overturned in arbitration, Gainer said.

Nine months in the making, Prettyman's ambitious inquiry started with a lawsuit filed by an indignant family. It ended yesterday when Gertrude Pruckmayr, tears in her eyes, thanked Prettyman for retracing the events that ended in her daughter's death.

"It's mind-boggling how many people screwed up," she said.

The Pruckmayrs, when they sued the city and the Parole Board in 1996, asked not for money but for a measure of truth. They wanted the city to follow the rules it had, improve the rules that failed and spend enough money to make the system work as it should.

"How could so many rules have been ignored?" asked their lawyer, Scott M. Flicker. "How could so many signs have been missed? How could so many so-called public servants have failed so abjectly to do their duty?"