Crime History: Gallaudet slayings shock hearing-impaired community

On this day, Sept. 28, in 2000, Gallaudet University student Joseph Mesa Jr. strangled 19-year-old Eric Plunkett in a freshman dorm at the liberal arts college for the hearing impaired in Washington. Four months later Mesa fatally stabbed Benjamin Varner, 19, in the same dormitory. The killings shocked the close-knit community of 2,000 students at Gallaudet, which was established by Congress in 1864.

At his trial, Mesa testified that “black hands” told him in American Sign Language to kill.