A Prince George's County man who was ordered released from a Maryland prison and sent to a private drug rehabilitation clinic in Denver has emerged as a suspect in a Denver killing that terrified residents and incensed politicians there last month.

Authorities in Colorado are seeking the extradition from Maryland of Donta Terrorus Paige, 19, who was convicted in Maryland of armed robbery and burglary. He had been serving a 10-year sentence at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown until October, when Judge James Casula of Prince George's County Circuit Court granted a public defender's request that Paige be released and sent for treatment to the Stout Street Foundation Clinic in Denver.

The private clinic is well known nationally for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It is in a residential neighborhood not far from downtown Denver.

It was in this neighborhood that Peyton Tuthill, a 24-year-old recent college graduate who moved to Denver to attend design school, was bludgeoned to death Feb. 24 in the upstairs bedroom of her rented Victorian home.

A day later, police linked the killing to another Maryland man who, like Paige, was a resident of the clinic and had been an inmate with him at Roxbury. That man, Gerald G. Simpson, 34, was cleared of involvement in the crime and remains at the Stout Street clinic, police said.

But the arrest of an out-of-state felon from the clinic caused a storm of protest against the clinic and the state of Maryland -- the clinic for importing criminals into Denver, Maryland for exporting them without warning state and local authorities.

"I don't blame [Maryland] for deporting their felons, I just wish they would deport them somewhere else," said Edward P. Thomas, a Denver city councilman whose district is near the clinic. "The crime rate in Denver is going down dramatically and the homicide rate in Baltimore is going up. This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard."

Denver television stations also ran reports about Baltimore's crime rate -- even though neither man is from the city -- and politicians called for greater regulation of clinics like Stout Street.

Paige was arrested for armed robbery of a customer in a Prince George's County convenience store four days after Tuthill's killing. After his arrest, Paige identified himself as Omar Thomas Wells, but a fingerprint analysis revealed his identity, police said.

Denver homicide detectives and a deputy district attorney interviewed Paige at the detention center in Upper Marlboro this week. They refuse to say why they suspect Paige in the killing, but Detective Virginia Lopez, a spokeswoman for the Denver Police Department, said: "Right now we are confident that this is the fellow liable for this homicide. We are not looking for any other suspects in this case."

According to officials at the Maryland Division of Correctionand the state Parole Commission, Paige was convicted in 1996 of two armed robberies, two burglaries and one unarmed robbery. He was sentenced to 10 years.

Two years later, Paige's public defenders asked the court to reconsider the sentence. At this hearing, Casula released Paige to the custody of his mother and ordered him to complete the Denver program.

The next day, Paige took a bus to Denver and joined the $24,000-a-year rehabilitation program. He took a job to help pay for his treatment.

On Feb. 24, Tuthill had a job interview and then went to lunch with her boyfriend. After lunch, she returned home to change her clothes for her job at a mortgage company.

Later that evening, her roommates returned home to find a broken window and called police.

Tuthill had been stabbed and beaten in her bedroom, police said.

As police combed the crime scene and notified her family in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., Paige was riding the bus back to Maryland, police said.

The police would not say why they initially arrested the first Marylander. Simpson was held for more than a week, but was never charged and was released by Denver police, who say he is still a resident of the Stout Street Program.

Simpson was freed from a 10-year narcotics sentence by a Circuit Court judge in Anne Arundel County and also ordered to the Stout Street Clinic. He had served one year of his sentence. Maryland officials say that no state funds were used to pay for Paige's or Simpson's treatment in Denver.

Pub Date: 3/18/99