Tampa - Five days after Sandra Sutherland's brutal 1991 rape and murder, her parents grew suspicious when they couldn't get straight answers about the apartment complex's security.
      So they sued the company that owned Brookside apartments, saying the company knew of a wave of violent crime at the complex but failed to warn residents. The management also knew that a man fitting the description of Sutherland's killer, Charles William Finney, had been stalking women at the complex, the lawsuit alleged.
      At the time of the slaying, the complex was in the middle of a $2 million worth of renovations that included added security systems. Sutherland was waiting for her security system to be installed the morning she died.
      The owners of the complex and the security company in late August agreed to settle with Robert and Ruth Sutherland for $2.055 million instead of taking the case to a jury and risking a higher punitive award.
      Ruth Sutherland said she was talking to her daughter January 16, 1991, when the younger Sutherland paused and said "Oh, hi!" to someone who walked into her apartment.
      Then her daughter told her, "Mother, there is someone here. Let me call you back."
      She never did. Police found the 36-year-old woman's body when she didn't show up for her job as a reservationist at Eastern Airlines. She had been raped, tied up and stabbed 13 times.
      Finney, who pawned Sutherland's videocassette recorder on the day of the murder, was later convicted and sentenced to death.
      The family would not have been able to sue if their daughter had been murdered three months earlier. A loophole in Florida law didn't allow parents of adult children to file wrongful death suits. Legislation changed that in October 1990.
      Brookside's owners, Benderson Development, Inc., dispute that they covered up anything. Their attorney, Albert D'Aquino, said charges that management knew about dangers came from a former employee who had an ax to grind.

10/05/93