Teen, 16, arrested in S&M killing of reporter

A self-proclaimed teen-aged "extremist, anarchist, a sadomasochist" was arrested yesterday in the brutal slaying of a New York City radio reporter with Philly-area roots.

New York cops found veteran newsman George Weber, 47, in his Brooklyn apartment bound with duct tape and stabbed about 50 times, according to a spokesman with the New York City Police Department.

Police arrested John Katehis, 16, whose knife fetish was featured on a now-deleted MySpace page, and charged him yesterday as an adult with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

Weber, who grew up in Doylestown, worked at a Warminster radio station in high school, and then at WBUX in Doylestown before moving on to other stations in San Francisco, Denver and New York, according to a biography on his Web site.

Weber and Katehis met through Craigslist after Weber purportedly posted an item last week seeking rough sex, according to media reports.

Katehis, who lives in Queens with his separated parents, allegedly admitted to the stabbing, but told police it was self-defense, according to the New York Daily News.

"He saw the victim's ad looking for violent sex and said, 'I can smother somebody for $60,' but it got out of hand," a police source told the paper.

The alleged teen killer and his victim met Friday night and headed to Weber's ground floor apartment, where Katehis purportedly stabbed Weber 50 times in the neck, leaving the residence bloodied, police said.

The radio reporter, who fostered his love for the medium in his parents' Doylestown basement, apparently fought back and in the attack injured the suspect.

Katehis changed clothes after the killing, leaving Weber's bloody apartment in clothing stolen from the victim, the tabloid said. The tattooed teen was later placed in police custody after a subway conductor "reported a passenger bleeding profusely from his left hand," according to the paper.

The injured teen told authorities he had cut himself on a bottle.

Police believe Weber was killed Friday, but his body wasn't discovered until Sunday after his boss reported him missing.

Weber worked for WABC for 12 years as the on-air reporter for popular shows like "Curtis and Kuby."

Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, worked alongside Weber for 10 years on the show.

"He was a top-shelf guy. Five stars," he told the People Paper yesterday. "I never saw him have a bad day."

The station let him go amid programming changes last year, and he had since worked as a freelancer for ABC News Radio, the national network, according to Weber's Web site. In his last blog entry, posted Friday, he talked about working to rid his apartment of bedbugs. *

The Associated Press contributed to this report.