WASHINGTON -- District police appear closer to solving the 1997 triple homicide at a Georgetown Starbucks, questioning a suspect yesterday and continuing to interrogate another man who has long been under investigation for a possible role in the crime.

But police said last night that neither man has been charged in the Starbucks case.

"We do have some very strong leads we're pursuing right now, and hopefully it will result in our ability to be able to close the case," police Chief Charles Ramsey said in a radio interview on WTOP yesterday.

"But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done."

The multiple killings, in this city's elegant Georgetown area, shocked the neighborhood, and the delays in solving the case have long frustrated residents and the victims' families. Of the three victims, two had been raised in and around Baltimore.

Yesterday morning, police picked up a Prince George's County man on a federal firearms violation and questioned him about the Starbucks case. They withheld the name of the man, a Mount Rainier resident who was interrogated at the FBI's Washington field office, but they said he lived in the same apartment complex as one of the victims, Emory Allen Evans, 25.

The second man, Carl Derek Cooper, a 29-year-old Northeast Washington resident, was arrested Monday on an unrelated charge -- the 1996 attempted murder of Bruce Howard, an off-duty Prince George's police officer.

Cooper has been a suspect in the Starbucks slayings since at least last summer, and yesterday he gave statements about the case, police officials said.

Authorities said the suspects in custody have been involved in several robberies together, and added that they are trying to charge them under a federal anti-racketeering statute.

Investigators say they had been trying to nail down a case against Cooper for nearly a year and tapped his phone for clues. Cooper has a record in the District of Columbia and Montgomery County that includes charges of armed robbery and drug possession with intent to distribute.

Yesterday, Prince George's County police Chief John Farrell said Cooper had voluntarily submitted to questioning. Farrell said Cooper agreed to delay an appearance before a district court commissioner to answer more questions.

Police would not say whether the suspect arrested yesterday had cooperated with authorities.

The slayings claimed the lives of three employees -- Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25; Aaron David Goodrich, 18; and Evans.

Family members found themselves buffeted over the past year and a half by apparent breakthroughs that went nowhere, followed by long periods without new information.

Yesterday, Mahoney's mother, Mary Belle Annenberg of Baltimore, said the latest news gave her new hope for a trial.

"Other people are going to say these guys created terrible loss and pain," she said, "but I want to say to them, 'How did you get this way? What was your pain?' "

Fran Block, Goodrich's mother, who also lives in Baltimore, said that for months she did not want to speak about the killings but now feels compelled to do so.

"I think about it all the time," she said. "I still expect him to call or stop by. There will never be closure. It will always hurt."

Pub Date: 3/05/99