BODY FOUND IN `TOMB' AT NEWSPAPER

A Dayton Daily News supervisor accused of killing his wife and entombing her on the newspaper's top floor managed to baffle detectives over her disappearance for five months until a tip led to the concrete grave, police said.

"They won't leave me alone," Theodore Sinks is said to have complained before police discovered his wife's body in a shallow pit covered by a concrete slab in a little-used newspaper utility room.A rope was wrapped several times around her neck, and a long-handled wooden mallet lay near the fully clothed body.

Sinks, 49, a maintenance manager at the newspaper, was charged Wednesday with killing Judith Sinks, 44, who worked in the Daily News circulation department. Dayton Municipal Judge Jack Duncan ordered Sinks held on $100,000 bond, and prosecutors said a Montgomery County grand jury will review the case within a week.

Police and prosecutors refused to discuss a possible motive for the killing, but there were unconfirmed reports of domestic violence in the Sinks home. Police Lt. John Compston said investigators "had had contact with (Judith Sinks) in the past."

Her body was found Tuesday night by workers who used a jackhammer, pickaxes and shovels to break through her concrete tomb. Their first discovery, after clearing away dirt and concrete, was a wrist sticking out.

"Then we found an arm . . . and a wristwatch on it, then a shoe," Montgomery County Coroner James Davis said.

An autopsy showed she had been beaten on the head and strangled, Davis said.

Theodore Sinks reported his wife missing Nov. 23, three days after investigators now say she was killed.

Chambers said police acted on a tip from an unidentified informer who told them another employee at the newspaper recalled helping his boss carry a 55-gallon drum to the utility room on Nov. 20, the day of her death.