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By TERRIE MORGAN-BESECKER [email protected]
Sunday, October 12, 2003     Page: 9A

As the frenzied search for Hugo Selenski continued, family members and
other people connected to the prison escapee calmly went about their lives
Saturday afternoon.
   
Selenski’s stepfather, Ronald Selenski Sr., tended to yard work at his home
on West Minister Drive in Dallas. A few miles away, Christina Strom, Hugo
Selenski’s girlfriend, walked a dog in the yard of the 479 Mt. Olivet Road
home they once shared. And in Shavertown, Polly Bobersky, the mother of
Selenski’s ex-girlfriend, Carey Bartoo, said she was advised of the escape,
but had no concern for her family’s safety.
    “We’re fine. He would never come here,” Bobersky said from her Park
Avenue home before declining further comment.
   
Police immediately notified Selenski’s family, members of the Kerkowski
family and others associated with him of his escape Friday from the Luzerne
County Correctional Facility. Authorities sought out family and friends in
hopes of finding leads to his whereabouts.
   
Reached outside the family’s home Saturday afternoon, Hugo Selenski’s
half-brother, Ronald Selenski Jr., lamented on the latest developments in the
increasingly bizarre case.
   
“If he’s innocent he’s going to be proven innocent. This just makes it
worse. He should turn himself in.”
   
He said he worries the search could end with a police officer shooting
Hugo.
   
“They don’t know him,” Selenski Jr. said of police. “They hear all these
things. If they see him, even if he is not armed, someone might take a shot at
him.”
   
Ronald Selenski Sr., politely declined to comment, saying he wanted to
preserve the family’s privacy.
   
The family name has been in the press since June, when five bodies were
discovered at the home Hugo Selenski shared with Strom. Selenski and a
co-defendant, Patrick Russin, were charged Monday with homicide and other
offenses in connection with two of the victims, Frank James and Adeiye Keiler.
   
Strom returned to her Mt. Olivet Road home in July after police completed a
35-day search of the property. Accompanied by a large, black dog, Strom was
seen walking in the yard at about 1:30 p.m. Approached by a reporter, she said
she did not wish to be interviewed. “I really don’t want to. I’m sorry.”
   
In Brooklyn, N.Y., news of Selenski’s escape drew an angry response from
Randy James, the brother of homicide victim Frank James.
   
“This is crazy. I thought they were supposed to handle things a little
better up there. How can they let someone like him get away?” James said.
   
James questioned why Selenski was not in a more secure facility.
   
“How could you put someone like him in a county prison. That’s like a day
care for him.”
   
News of Selenski’s escape is being reported worldwide, but James said he
hoped to keep the information from his mother, Deborah, who has been upset
with the slow pace of the investigation..
   
“`She sees her son’s not getting justice, now this maniac is on the
loose?” he said.
   
Terrie Morgan-Besecker, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at
829-7179.
   
The Associated Press contributed to this report.