July 1, 1999
Web posted at: 12:08 a.m. EDT (0408 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Justice Department is launching an Inspector General investigation into why Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, the man suspected of being the so-called railway killer, was released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service after police notified the agency in February he was wanted for murder, sources said Wednesday.

Sources said the investigation also would examine why Resendez-Ramirez was released repeatedly after being caught entering the United States illegally.

One INS official said the probe would "be looking to see if systemic problems" exist within the agency.

INS Commissioner Doris Meissner called for the high-level Justice Department after recently learning that INS officials were told by Texas police in February that Resendez-Ramirez was a murder suspect.

The key question: Did the INS have information that could have stopped a killing spree?

On June 2, U.S. Border Patrol agents caught Resendez-Ramirez trying to illegally enter the United States, but after fingerprinting him and taking his picture they set him free.

Two days later, an elderly woman was pickaxed to death at her home in Fayette County, Texas, in the first of four killings that he has been linked to this month alone.

The killing happened about three miles from where a man and his wife were beaten to death with a sledgehammer April 30, another case attributed to the railway killer.

Other questions the Justice investigation will seek to answer: Was the February warning posted in the INS computer system? If so, why wasn't he arrested?

According to INS officials, Ramirez has been formally deported from the United States three times. In addition, since January 1998, he has been caught by the U.S. Border Patrol eight times and released to voluntarily return to Mexico.

Authorities have implicated Resendez-Ramirez in eight murders -- seven in the last six months. He has been formally charged in two killings, in Illinois, and is a possible suspect in at least 10 others around the country.

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