Security tight for slaying suspect

March 1, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

CINCINNATI (AP) — A man accused of killing two teenage girls and two women is a danger in the courtroom, and extra security is being added for his trial, authorities said.

Anthony Kirkland, 41, has threatened to kill himself or commit some act that could force police to kill him, authorities said.

As jury selection resumes today, Judge Charles Kubicki Jr. has ordered Kirkland to wear an electronic stun belt in court that can be activated by deputy sheriffs.

Deputies also removed a glass pane covering a table used by attorneys out of concern that Kirkland could break off some of it and stab someone.

For the same reason, Kirkland will not be allowed to have a pen or pencil during the trial. Instead, he will be given a small box of crayons for writing.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, who is seeking the death penalty in the case, said he hopes Kirkland will give the victims’ families answers about what happened.

Deters has described Kirkland as a serial killer who “deserves nothing less than execution.”

Kirkland is a registered sex offender who was arrested in March 2009 and accused of strangling 13-year-old Esme Kenney and trying to burn her body. A halfway house had released Kirkland weeks earlier.

Police said they found Kirkland near Kenney’s partially burned body in woods near her home.

He pleaded innocent in all cases, including the 2006 slayings of another Cincinnati teenager and two women. All of their bodies were burned.

Kirkland also is under extra scrutiny in jail.

He was on suicide watch at the Hamilton County Jail until Feb. 17, when he was transferred to what jail officials refer to as administrative segregation, where he is segregated from the general population and locked down in a cell for 23 hours a day, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett.