Criminal Spotlight

[Dark Star]

I'm going crazy with all these books (thank you Morbid for letting me get my freak on with the Lit sections)....and loving it! Since this area is Crime in Literature. Let's focus on a "famous" criminal each week. Someone so famous, they've got their own book.
When I thought of this idea and then went on my journey of discovery, I found too many sick fucks. I read about crimes that I don't remember ever hearing of, and things that disturbed the shit out of me. Since the Dreamin'Demon is a Crime News Blog, what better subject to look into, heh? Killers who have committed heinous crimes and the authors who have written about them. Feel free to feature your own "famous criminal".Turn us all on to a new book; another adventure. Maybe one day some lucky bastard from the Demon Pages will become "famous" for their flagitious behavior and a book shall be written about them. (hopes the Imp reads this and gets the hint...she's such a good writer)

 

[Morbid]

Well, since I have alread stated that everyone should read Capote's In Cold Blood, I would also reccommend one of the first two true crime books I ever read.

Helter Skelter

Wikiwikiwiki
Helter Skelter is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. The subject of the book is the 1969 Manson Family murders and Bugliosi's own prosecution of Charles Manson and his followers.

Helter Skelter was first published in the United States in 1974 and became a bestseller. The book takes its title from the song by The Beatles, with which Manson was obsessed. Manson used the phrase for an anticipated race war. Helter Skelter won a 1975 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book and was the basis for two movies, released in 1976 and 2004.

and

Fatal Vision

Wikiwikiwiki
Fatal Vision is a best-selling book published in 1983 by true crime writer Joe McGinniss. The following year it was made into an NBC television miniseries under the same name. Fatal Vision is the real-life story of Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, M.D., who in 1979 was convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and his two young daughters. These murders took place in 1970 while MacDonald was a Green Beret captain and physician in the US Army, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

This is a very controversial book in that McGinniss, the author, led MacDonald into believing that he thought MacDonald was innocent. This was not the case at all, so you can imagine MacDonald's surprise when the book came out shedding him in a very bad light (he deserved it, though, he killed his family) but brought up interesting questions regarding authors and their moral responsibility to the subjects that are confiding to them.

 

[Dark Star]

My first criminal to focus on was an unknown to me. Her name NICOLE KASINSKAS. Nicole was an 18 yr old girl from New Hampshire who, along with her boyfriend BILLY SULLIVAN, plotted and succeeded on murdering Nicole's mother, JEANNE DOMINICO. Lovely children indeed. Prosecutors said that Nicole and Billy killed them because Jeanne would not let them live together.That Bitch! So while Nicole was the "look out", good old Billy beat Nicole's mother to death.

Nicole's book that chronicles her famous crime....

BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME by M. William Phelps
Book Description
A Life Taken
Jeanne Dominico's fiancé found her body on her kitchen floor. More than forty stab wounds and blows to her head with a blunt instrument had cut her life short. What monster had struck in the heart of a peaceful New England town?
A Trust Betrayed
Jeanne was a hard-working single mother. Nicole, her fourteen-year-old daughter was on the honor-roll and head over heels in love--with an eighteen-year-old man she'd known only through the Internet. Once the lovers met in person, Jeanne's motherly instincts sensed trouble. If only she'd known that the life in danger was her own.
In The Name Of Love
With a history of psychological trouble and family misfortune, Billy Sullivan's obsessive and controlling power over Nicole contributed to the brutal slaying of her mother. But it was Nicole's stunning confession and guilty plea that led to Billy's sensational trial, where a sordid tale of love, loss, betrayal and murder finally took a cold-blooded killer offline--and on line for justice.

"Phelps is a first-rate investigator." --Dr. Michael M. Baden

Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos

 

[Dark Star]

Derrick Todd Lee

I was checking out Amazon True Crime books, and happened upon one called An Invisible Man: The Hunt for a Serial Killer Who Got Away With a Decade of Murderby Stephanie A. Stanley. This is the story of a black serial killer from Louisiana who, because of a poor system of investigation and many slips through the cracks, was able to kill for a decade.
From Wiki
Derrick Todd Lee (born in 1968 in St. Francisville, Louisiana, USA), dubbed the Baton Rouge Serial Killer, has been linked by DNA to the deaths of seven women in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas in Louisiana. Newspapers have suggested a link with other unsolved murders in the area, but the police lack DNA evidence to prove these connections.

The murder method has varied with nearly each case. Similarities between the crimes include the removal of phones from the victim's belongings and the lack of forced entry. Most murders were committed in the area around Louisiana State University (LSU), with two of the bodies being found in Whiskey Bay.

Public hysteria had created many rumors and false suspect reports in the area. Previously, the suspect was believed to be a white man driving a white pickup truck. New DNA evidence then pointed to an African-American ancestry committed the crime. Also, further evidence pointed to a man from the Breaux Bridge area driving a gold 1997 Mitsubishi Mirage who was also wanted in connection with an attempted rape. Lee was captured in Atlanta, Georgia, in May 2003.

During the last week of May 2003, DNA swabs taken from a West Feliciana Parish man who resembled the most recent composite of the suspect were rushed to the crime labs for analysis. It didn't take long for the lab technician processing the samples to realize that there was a positive match between the suspects DNA and samples taken from Carrie Lynn Yoder. Technicians were able to further link the suspect to three more murders attributed to the suspected Baton Rouge serial killer. After many long months, investigators finally had their key suspect, thirty-four-year old Derrick Todd Lee.

On Monday 26, 2003 police issued an arrest warrant for Lee, who fled to Chicago and then Atlanta in an effort to escape murder charges. At the time the warrant was issued, he and his family had been gone for approximately three weeks. Police learned that on the day Lee voluntarily provided a DNA sample, his wife Jacqueline withdrew their young son and daughter from school, claiming they were moving to Los Angeles. The couple then quickly packed up their belongings and abandoned their brown-brick ranch style house on 4273 U.S. 61 in St.Francisville of West Feliciana Parish, La.

On May 27, 2003, Atlanta police working with a joint FBI-metropolitan Atlanta task force apprehended Lee at a hotel where he was lodging. Lee waived extradition and was flown back to Louisiana the following day. Initially he was charged with only Carrie Lynn Yoder's murder. However, by early June he was also accused of the rape and murder of Green, Pace, Kinamore and Colomb based on DNA evidence linking him to the crimes.

During the investigation into Lee, the police learned that he had an extensive criminal history. According to Penny Brown Roberts, staff writer for 2theadvocate.com, Lee's youthful record included a string of juvenile offenses that stretched back to 1984 when he was caught peeping into the home of a St. Francisville woman's home. It would mark the first of many such offenses. Robert's further states that Lee never really outgrew his teenage fetish.

As Lee grew older his "rap sheet" became more extended, including arrests for attempted first-degree murder, stalking, peeping into homes, as well as break in and burglary, among other crimes. According to Roberts, Dunne and Millhollon, Lee's arrests and related incidents between 1992 and 2001 were as follows:

November 1992: Lee arrested for illegal entry and burglary of Zachary resident Rob Benge's house.

January 1993: Lee and his accomplice, Thomas Whitaker Jr. were arrested for breaking into the home of seventy-three-year old Melvin Foster, whom they beat with a stick and robbed.

July 1993: Lee sentenced to one year in prison for burglary.

September 1995: Lee arrested for a peeping incident and resisting arrest, after being chased and caught by police after looking into the window of a woman. During the same month, Lee was arrested again for stealing from a Salvation Army Thrift Store.

August 1997: Lee arrested after being caught looking into the windows of a woman.

August 1999: Lee arrested after being caught in a woman's residence uninvited, for being a peeping Tom and stalking.

December 1999: Received a suspended sentence on a misdemeanor stalking charge.

January 2000: Accused of attempted first-degree murder after severely kicking and stomping his girlfriend Consandra Green at a bar after an argument over Lee's advances towards another woman. While trying to flee from the police following the incident he allegedly tried and to run over the sheriff's deputy with a car. Lee was sentenced to two years for the incident.

September 2001: Lee arrested for battery against wife but charges later dismissed.

Following the release of Lee's vast criminal history, residents of Baton Rouge were shocked that he was never suspected in the Baton Rouge murders, especially when the focus was changed to a man of color in March of 2003. Moreover, the task force was heavily criticized because Lee had been overlooked after having been brought to their attention by the Zachary Police Department in 2002. The Zachary Police suspected Lee in the murder of forty-one-year old Connie Warner in 1992 and the disappearance of twenty-year old Randi Mebruer in 1998. Despite the mistakes made in the case, the task force was congratulated for their work in catching the killer.

After Lee had been taken into police custody, the police with the help of the FBI immediately were focusing on trying to locate his estranged wife Jacqueline and the couple's two children. It was hoped that Jacqueline might be able to provide clues into Lee's behavior and whereabouts during the crimes. Family members suspected she was hiding out of fear.

According to Ned Randolph, a reporter for the Baton Rouge news site 2theadvocate.com, family members of Jacqueline Denise Lee claimed that "she lived in denial of her husband's transgressions, which include stalking, peeping into windows and infidelity." According to Advocate writer Ned Randolph, Jacqueline's aunt claimed she was afraid of her husband and at one point against her wishes he had a mistress move into their home.

Initially, Jacqueline and the couple's two children could not be traced. Eventually in June 2003, the FBI located the three in Chicago. Investigators were interested in Jacqueline not only for questioning purposes but also because they needed her consent before they could begin digging up the property of her former residence.

Lee was tried in August 2004 for the murder of Geralyn DeSoto, who was found dead in her home in Addis, Louisiana. DeSoto had been stabbed numerous times. Desoto's husband was the primary suspect, but DNA evidence creating a possible link to Lee was discovered as the murder investigation progressed. Although eligible for first degree murder charges, the District Attorney elected to try Lee for murder in the second degree, since DeSoto was not sexually assaulted and thus a first-degree murder conviction would be harder to obtain. He was convicted by jury and sentenced to life in prison without the benefit of parole by the Honorable Robin Free.

One of Lee's victims is believed to have been Mari Ann Fowler (born 1937), wife of former Louisiana Elections Commissioner Jerry M. Fowler. Mrs. Fowler was abducted on Christmas eve 2002 from a sandwich shop in Port Allen in West Baton Rouge Parish. She was never found and was declared legally dead in 2004.

Lee was convicted on October 14, 2004, for the May 31, 2002 rape and murder of LSU graduate student Charlotte Murray Pace. Lee was sentenced to die by lethal injection. On January 16, 2008, a unanimous state Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction and death sentence.

 

[Dark Star]

Albert Fish: American sado-masochistic torture murderer, serial killer and cannibal.

This week's focus is on a brutal killer named Albert Fish. Albert liked to kill and eat his victims. Yummy. "Albert was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and The Bogeyman."

Early Life:
Albert was born in Washington, D.C. in 1870. He had three siblings. It is said that many members of his family suffered mental illness, and one suffered from religious mania.
Albert's father was a riverboat captain and fertilizer manufacture. He died in 1875. Albert's mother no longer able to care for him, placed him in an orphanage. Here he was frequently beaten and the young Albert discovered he enjoyed physical pain. The beatings often giving him erections, in which the other children saw, and made fun of him.

"By 1879, his mother got a government job and was able to look after him. However, his various experiences before this had affected him. He started a homosexual relationship in 1882, at the age of 12, with a telegraph boy. The youth also introduced Fish to such practices as drinking urine and coprophagia. Fish began visiting public baths where he could watch boys undress, and spent a great portion of his weekends on these visits.

By 1890, Fish had arrived in New York City, and he said he became a male prostitute. He also said he began raping young boys, a crime he kept committing even after his mother arranged a marriage. In 1898, he was married to a woman nine years his junior. They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry Fish. He was arrested for embezzlement and was sentenced to incarceration in Sing Sing in 1903. He regularly had sex with men while in prison.

Throughout 1898 he worked as a house painter, and he said he continued molesting children, mostly boys under six. He later recounted an incident in which a male lover took him to a waxworks museum, where Fish was fascinated by a bisection of a penis; soon after, he developed a morbid interest in castration. During a relationship with a mentally retarded man, Fish attempted to castrate him after tying him up. The man became frightened and fled. Fish then began intensifying his visits to brothels where he could be whipped and beaten more often.

Early Attacks and Attempted Abductions:
Fish committed what may have been his first attack on a child, named Thomas Bedden in Wilmington, Delaware in 1910. Afterward, he stabbed a mentally retarded boy around 1919 in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Consistently, many of his intended victims would be either mentally retarded or African-American, because, he believed, they would not be missed.

On July 11, 1924 Fish found eight-year-old Beatrice Kiel playing alone on her parents' Staten Island farm. He offered her money to come and help him look for rhubarb in the neighboring fields. She was about to leave the farm when her mother chased Fish away. Fish left, but returned later to the Kiels' barn where he tried to sleep for the night before being discovered by Hans Kiel and told to leave.

Grace Budd
On May 25, 1928 Edward Budd put a classified ad in the Sunday edition of the New York World that read: "Young man, 18, wishes position in country. Edward Budd, 406 West 15th Street." On May 28, 1928, Fish, then 58 years old, visited the Budd family in Manhattan, New York City under the pretense of hiring Edward. He introduced himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from Farmingdale, New York. When he arrived, Fish met Budd's younger sister, 10-year-old Grace. Fish promised to hire Budd and said he would send for him in a few days. On his second visit he agreed to hire Budd, then convinced the parents, Delia Flanagan and Albert Budd I, to let Grace accompany him to a birthday party that evening at his sister's home. Albert senior was a porter for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Grace had a sister, Beatrice; and two other brothers, Albert Budd II; and George Budd. Fish left with Grace that day, but never came back.

Seven years later, in November 1934, an anonymous letter was sent to the girl's parents which led the police to Albert Fish. The letter is quoted here, with all of Fish's misspellings and grammatical errors:

Dear Mrs. Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1-3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid [sic] there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them – tortured them – to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it.On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you potcheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

Postcapture discoveries:
A child named Billy Gaffney was playing in the hallway outside of his family's apartment in Brooklyn with his friend, Billy Beaton on February 11, 1927. Both of the boys disappeared, but the friend was found on the roof of the apartment house. When asked what happened to Gaffney, Beaton said "the boogey man took him." Initially Peter Kudzinowski was a suspect in the murder of Billy Gaffney. Then, Joseph Meehan, a motorman on a Brooklyn trolley, saw a picture of Fish in the newspaper and identified him as the old man that he saw February 11, 1927, who was trying to quiet a little boy sitting with him on the trolley. The boy wasn't wearing a jacket and was crying for his mother and was dragged by the man on and off the trolley. Police matched the description of the child to Billy Gaffney. Gaffney's body was never recovered. Billy's mother visited Fish in Sing Sing to try and get more details of her son's death. Fish confessed the following:

I brought him to the Riker Avenue dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him. I took the boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took the trolley to 59 Street at 2 a.m. and walked from there home. Next day about 2 p.m., I took tools, a good heavy cat-o-nine tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these halves in six strips about 8 inches long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears, nose, slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out of his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a grip with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly in the grip. Then I cut him through the middle of his body. Just below the belly button. Then through his legs about 2 inches below his behind. I put this in my grip with a lot of paper. I cut off the head, feet, arms, hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see all along the road going to North Beach. I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body I liked best. His monkey and pee wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears, nose, pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and pee wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put them in the oven. Then I picked 4 onions and when the meat had roasted about 1/4 hour, I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about 2 hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was a sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet.

Trial and Execution
The trial of Albert Fish for the premeditated murder of Grace Budd began on Monday, March 11, 1935, in White Plains, New York with Frederick P. Close as judge, and Chief Assistant District Attorney, Elbert F. Gallagher, as the prosecuting attorney. James Dempsey was Fish's defense attorney. The trial lasted for ten days. Fish pleaded insanity, and claimed to have heard voices from God telling him to kill children. Several psychiatrists testified about Fish's sexual fetishes, including coprophilia, urophilia, pedophilia and masochism, but there was disagreement as to whether these activities meant he was insane. The defense's chief expert witness was Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist with a focus on child development who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts; Wertham stated that Fish was insane. Another defense witness was Mary Nicholas, Fish's 17-year-old stepdaughter. She described how Fish taught her and her brothers and sisters a "game" involving overtones of masochism and child molestation. The jury found him to be sane and guilty, and the judge ordered the death sentence.

After being sentenced Fish confessed to the murder of eight-year-old Francis X. McDonnell, killed on Staten Island. Francis was playing on the front porch of his home near Port Richmond, Staten Island in July 15, 1924. Francis's mother saw an "old man" walk by clenching and unclenching his fists. He walked past without saying anything. Later in the day, the old man was seen again, but this time he was watching Francis and his friends play. Francis' body was found in the woods near where a neighbor had seen Francis and the "old man" going earlier that afternoon. He had been assaulted and strangled with his suspenders.

Fish arrived in March 1935, and was executed on January 16, 1936, in the electric chair at Sing Sing. He entered the chamber at 11:06 p.m. and was pronounced dead three minutes later. He was buried in the Sing Sing Prison Cemetery. He was recorded to have said that electrocution would be "the supreme thrill of my life".Just before the switch was flipped, he stated "I don't even know why I am here."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish

Check out this hot book from Amazon. Deranged by Harold Schechter

 

[Dark Star]

Dr. Bart Corbin-Murderer

Too Late to Say Goobye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal by Ann Rule

"As one of America’s most respected authors of true-crime sagas, Ann Rule has the luxury of picking the cases she will transform into bestselling epics. Her reputation has placed her in the enviable position of having people contact her to suggest real-life murders that warrant the Ann Rule treatment. Such was the case with Jenn Corbin, who appeared to take her own life in her suburban Atlanta home late in 2004. To make her death even more tragic, her lifeless body was discovered by her seven-year old son Dalton, who ran to a neighbor’s house announcing, “My daddy shot my mommy --- I need you to call 911.â€￾ The police investigation pointed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound as the cause of death.

To their community of Buford, Georgia, Jenn Corbin and her dentist husband, Bart, seemed to be the idyllic couple --- the parents of two boys, Bart was building his dental practice and Jenn was a preschool teacher --- but appearances can often be deceiving. Bart Corbin was a man who was far different in private than in public. In addition to his controlling personality, he was also a womanizer. This combination was too much for Jenn to bear, and shortly before her death, they separated. Divorce was imminent.

Experienced law enforcement officers acknowledge that homicides must be solved quickly, within hours or days. They also will admit that spouses are generally prime suspects when their partner is murdered. The Corbin death had all the markings of a suicide, and the case appeared to be headed to the cold case files of the Gwinnett County Police Department. But hard work and luck are often far superior law enforcement tools than DNA or fingerprints.

Authorities learned about another woman, Dolly Hearn, who had been involved with Bart Corbin years before and had met her death in circumstances remarkably similar to Jenn. One suicide can perhaps be explained, but the odds of two women, romantically linked to the same man, taking their own lives were as remote as one person being struck by lightning on two separate occasions. However, knowing that crimes have occurred and proving them beyond a reasonable doubt are far different animals. TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE is the mesmerizing tale of how law enforcement coordinated information from two deaths separated by nearly a decade to convict Bart Corbin of murder."

http://tinyurl.com/2hxk53

 

[Jaded]

Ann Rule is my favorite author in this genre. She focuses on the victim without glorifying the criminal...and while I like my crime scenes bloody, the pictures included in her works are tasteful and I'm ok with that.
I have her entire collection and I usually finish her books in one night...I just can't put them down.
Vincent Bugliosi and Ann Rule are to blame for my fascination with serial killers and true crime. Helter Skelter and The Stranger Beside Me were the 2 books that started my entire collection.
Another good one is The Night Stalker by Philip Carlo. Oh oh oh....and one more. The Last Victim by Jason Moss. Ok...I'll stop now. I could go on for days with my suggestions!

 

[Lizard]

Ann Rule, Small Sacrifices

Like with any author, some of Ann's stuff is better than others, and sometimes because of the nature of the events she's retelling. I picked up Small Sacrifices in a used bookstore several years ago, and despite several intensive household book purges since then, that book remains part of my collection. For those who don't know, it's the story of Diane Downs, who shot her three children (two survived). As you progress through the book, everything this woman does is just a degree or two (okay, sometimes more) off kilter--I finished the book feeling not only the usual outrage, sadness, etc. but also incredibly unsettled. And at the end, you still only have hints of what the children's lives were like before their mother shot them....

Jack Olsen is really good, too, but it's been a while since I read any of his, so I don't have particular recommendations.

 

[Dark Star]

Frederick "Kevin" Coe~Psychopath and Rapist

This week, thanks to the mention from Lizard, I chose a story by Jack Olsen. The killer in the spotlight this week? Fred Coe. The book? Son.

Fred Coe was a sick bastard who was a sociopathic rapist. On the outside he was a clean cut-realtor.....on the inside a raper of dozens of women.

"Frederick "Kevin" Coe, known as the South Hill Rapist, is believed to have committed up to 53 sexual assaults from 1978 until 1981 in the community of Spokane, Washington. Convicted of 4 assaults, 3 of the convictions were thrown out based on the use of hypnosis during interviews of witnesses and victims. He has spent 25 years in prison and, currently at age 60, his DNA and case are being reexamined in the face of his release from prison.

Before Kevin Coe began his rape campaign in Spokane, Washington from the late 1970's until his arrest in early 1981, from 1975 to 1976 he repeatedly abused/sexually molested a 2nd grade 8 year boy who was his 2nd wife Jennifer Coe's sister's son who was living with the couple for the year in Las Vegas, Nevada, and later Santa Monica, California until their divorce in mid-summer of 1976."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Coe

"This is one of the most remarkable true crime books you will ever read. It is many things at once. For months, the story of a mother, a son and a city emmeshed in tragedy made headlines across the nation. This is the story behind the headlines. It is also an extraordinary examination of the mind of a psychopath and of the women -- and men -- who were his victims. And it is a chilling investigation of the consequences of a crime that does not kill -- but which destroys as surely as any knife or gun.

For more than two years, a rapist prowled the night streets of the homey, "All-American" city of Spokane, Washington, terrorizing women, sparking a run on gun stores, and finally causing one newspaper to offer a reward, the calls taken by the distinguished managing editor himself, Gordon Coe. In March of 1981, luck and inspired police work at last produced an arrest, and Spokane shuddered. The man was clean-cut, teetotal, conservative -- and Gordon Coe's son.

The family rallied behind Fred Coe. They had an explanation for everything. Fred's mother, Ruth, gave "Son" detailed alibis for the rapes. But the evidence was overwhelming. As Fred was led away, Ruth Coe was heard to say, "Down, but not out." It was no mere gesture of defiance.

Ruth Coe was bent on revenge, and soon the judge and the prosecuting attorney would feel the full force of her murderous wrath.

For eighteen months, Jack Olsen researched the cases of Fred and Ruth Coe to try to learn not only what happened within that family, but how and why. He intereviewed more than 150 people, and slowly, bit by bit, built up a portrait not only of that extraordinary family, but of the mind of a psychopath. Talking with the rape victims, he probed the devastating effect the violations had had on their lives two weeks afterward, two months afterward, two years afterward. And searching the memories of the women in Fred Coe's life, he unearthed a most horrifying question: What is it like to love and live with a man for years -- and then discover he is a psychopathic criminal?"
http://tinyurl.com/38dgbc

 

[Jaded]

Along those lines....might I suggest "Slow Death" by Jim Fielder. It's the story about David Parker Ray...one of the sickest bastards that I have ever read about.

 

[Dark Star]

Mary Ann Cotton Liked To Feed Folks Arsenic

This week the spotlight is focused on a female serial killer from England. Mary Ann Cotton. Mary's weapon of choice, arsenic poisoning. It was believed that Mary Ann killed close to twenty individuals mostly with arsenic. Nice little spice, heh Ms. Cotton?

"Mary Ann Robson was born in the small English village of Low Moorsley, County Durham in what is now Sunderland in October 1832. Her childhood was an unhappy one. Her parents were both younger than 20 when they married. Her father Michael, a miner, barely managed to keep his family fed; he was ardently religious, a fierce disciplinarian with Mary Ann and her younger brother Robert, and active in the Methodist church’s choir.

When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the town of Murton, where she went to a new school and found it difficult to make friends. Soon after the move her father fell 150 feet to his death down a mine shaft at Murton Colliery.

When Mary Ann was 14, her mother remarried. Mary Ann did not like her new stepfather, Robert Stott, but she liked the things his better wages could buy. At the age of 16 she could stand the discipline of her stepfather no more, so she moved out to become a nurse at Edward Potter's home in the nearby village of South Hetton. She served there for three years and then returned to her mother's home and trained as a dressmaker. About this time she met a colliery labourer called William Mowbray.

Husband 1: William Mowbray

Mary Ann, aged 20, married William Mowbray in Newcastle upon Tyne, and soon they moved to Plymouth, Devon. The couple had five children, four of whom died from gastric fever or stomach pains. William and Mary Ann moved back to the North East and she had another three children, all of whom died. William became a foreman at South Hetton Colliery and then a fireman aboard a steam vessel. He died of an intestinal disorder in January 1865. William's life was insured by the British and Prudential Insurance office and Mary Ann collected a payout of £35 on his death.

Husband 2: George Ward

Soon after Mowbray's death, Mary Ann moved to Seaham Harbour, County Durham, where she struck up a relationship with a Joseph Nattrass. He, however, was engaged to another woman and she left Seaham after Nattrass’s wedding. During this time, one of her two surviving children, a girl of 3½, died. That left her with one child out of the nine she had borne. Nattrass would reappear in Mary Ann's life later.

Mary Ann returned to Sunderland and took up employment at the Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society. Her remaining child, Isabella, was sent to live with Mary Ann's mother.

At the infirmary, one of her patients was an engineer, George Ward. After an affair, they married in Monkwearmouth in August, 1865. However, George continued to suffer ill health, and died in October 1866, after a long illness characterised by paralysis and intestinal problems. The attending doctor later gave evidence that Ward was an ailing man but was surprised he had died so suddenly. Once again Mary Ann collected insurance money from the death of her husband

Husband 3: James Robinson

James Robinson was a shipwright at Pallion, Sunderland, whose wife, Hannah, had recently died. James hired Mary Ann as a housekeeper in November 1866. One month later, when James's baby died of gastric fever, he turned to his housekeeper for comfort and she became pregnant. Then Mary Ann's mother, living in Seaham Harbour, County Durham, became ill so she immediately went to her. Her mother started getting better but began complaining of stomach pains soon after her daughter arrived. She died, aged 54, on the 9th of June, nine days after Mary Ann's appearance.

Mary Ann's daughter Isabella — from the marriage to William Mowbray — was brought back to the Robinson household and soon developed bad stomach pains and died; so did another two of James's children. All three children were buried within two weeks of each other at the end of April 1867.

Four months later, the grieving father and widower married Mary Ann. Their baby — a daughter called Mary Isabella — was born in November. But she became ill with familiar symptoms and died in March 1868.

James, meanwhile, had become suspicious of his wife's insistence that he insure his life and discovered that she had run up debts of £60 behind his back and had stolen more than £50 that she was supposed to have banked. The last straw was when he found she had been forcing his children to pawn household valuables for her. He threw her out.

"Husband" 4: Frederick Cotton

Mary Ann was desperate and living on the streets. Then her friend Margaret Cotton introduced her to her brother Frederick, a pitman and recent widower living in Walbottle, Northumberland, who had lost two of his four children. Margaret had acted as substitute mother for the children, Frederick Jr and Charles, although in late March 1870 she died from an undetermined stomach ailment — leaving Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick Sr. Soon she was pregnant again with her eleventh child.

Frederick and Mary Ann were bigamously married in September 1870 and their son Robert was born early in 1871. Soon after, Mary Ann learnt that her former lover, Joseph Nattrass, was no longer married and was living in the nearby village of West Auckland. She rekindled the romance and persuaded her new family to move near him. Frederick followed his predecessors to the grave in December of that year, from “gastric feverâ€￾. Insurance had been taken out on his and his son’s lives.

Two lovers

After Frederick’s death, Nattrass soon became Mary Ann’s lodger. She gained employment as nurse to an excise officer recovering from smallpox, John Quick-Manning. Soon she became pregnant by him with her twelfth child.

This time, the traditional speedy marriage could not follow: what about the Cotton children and Nattrass? Frederick Jr died in March of 1872 and the infant Charles soon after. Then Nattrass became ill with gastric fever, and died — just after revising his will in Mary Ann’s favour.

The insurance policy Mary Ann had taken out on Charles's life still awaited collection. And so it would have been, but for a careless conversation.

Death of Charles Edward Cotton and inquest

Mary Ann's downfall came when she was asked by a parish official, Thomas Riley, to help nurse a woman who was ill with smallpox. She complained that the last surviving Cotton boy, Charles Edward, was in the way and asked Riley if he could be committed to the workhouse.

Riley, who also served as West Auckland's assistant coroner, said she would have to accompany him. She told Riley that the boy was sickly and added: “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons.â€￾

Riley replied: "No, nothing of the kind — he is a fine, healthy boy", and so he was shocked five days later when Mary Ann told him that the lad had died. Riley went to the village police and convinced the doctor to delay writing a death certificate until the circumstances could be investigated.

Mary Ann’s first port of call after Charles’s death was not the doctor’s but the insurance office. There, she learnt that no money would be paid out until a death certificate was issued. An inquest was held and the jury returned a verdict of natural causes. Mary Ann claimed to have used arrowroot to relieve his illness and said Riley had made the accusations because she had rejected his advances.

Then the local newspapers latched on to the story and discovered Mary Ann had moved around northern England and lost three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother and a dozen children, all of whom had died of stomach fevers.

Trial and execution

The defence at Mary Ann’s trial claimed that Charles died from inhaling arsenic used as a dye in the green wallpaper of the Cotton home. The jury retired for 90 minutes before finding Mary Ann guilty.

The Times correspondent reported on 20 May: "After conviction the wretched woman exhibited strong emotion but this gave place in a few hours to her habitual cold, reserved demeanour and while she harbours a strong conviction that the royal clemency will be extended towards her, she staunchly asserts her innocence of the crime that she has been convicted of." Several petitions were presented to the Home Secretary, but to no avail. She was hanged at Durham County Gaol on 24 March, 1873. She died slowly, the hangman having misjudged the drop required for a “cleanâ€￾ execution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Cotton

Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story and Trial by Arthur Appleton

 

[Dark Star]

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

I went with this book and serial killer by suggestion of SoJaded. Thank you! Ted Bundy, great guy, got along with everyone. The judge who sentenced him even like old Ted a bit. He was a serial killer like no other, and Ann Rule, True-Crime Writer, penned this book The Stranger Beside Me.

From Amazon:"Not long ago, true crime writer Ann Rule recalls lying on an operating table. The anesthesiologist leaned over before putting her to sleep. "Ann," the anesthesiologist said softly, "tell me, what was Ted Bundy really like?" Despite meeting Florida's electric chair in 1989, the subject of Rule's bestselling book continues to haunt her. Rule and Bundy were friends. They met in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, where they shared the late shift answering a suicide hotline. Their subsequent conversations, meetings, and letters spanned the rest of Bundy's life as he evolved into one of the century's most notorious serial killers. It's been 20 years since Rule first penned this chilling account. But the story--and her 2000 update--will still have readers reaching for their Xanax. No gratuitous gore here; just the basic, bone-chilling evidence. In fact, like a protective mother shielding us from horrors too awful to mention, Rule seems to avoid delving too deeply into crime scene descriptions. She devotes one paragraph in her new afterword to her discovery that Bundy engaged in necrophilia and returned to the scenes of his crimes to "line dead lips and eyes with garish makeup and to put blush on pale cheeks." She tells readers that John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan, and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, traded prison correspondences with Bundy. And she hints that Bundy's insatiable killer instincts may have started when he was a 14-year-old paperboy. (Ann Marie Burr, an 8-year-old girl on his route, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night and has never been found.) The skimpy update is over too soon, leaving readers wanting more and offering further proof of the public's never-ending fascination with serial killers."

From Wiki:
Theodore Robert Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989), usually known as Ted Bundy, was an American serial killer. Bundy murdered dozens of young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. After more than a decade of vigorous denials, Bundy eventually confessed to 30 murders, although the actual total of victims remains unknown. Estimates range from 29 to over 100, the general estimate being 35. Typically, Bundy would bludgeon his victims, then strangle them to death. He also engaged in rape and necrophilia.

Murders: First wave: Washington State

Many Bundy experts, including Rule and former King County detective Robert D. Keppel, believe Bundy may have started killing as far back as his early teens. Ann Marie Burr, an eight-year-old girl from Tacoma, vanished from her home in 1961, when Bundy was 14 years old. Bundy always denied killing her.The day before his execution, Bundy told his lawyer that he made his first attempt to kidnap a woman in 1969, and implied that he committed his first actual murder sometime during the 1972-73 time frame. His earliest known and confirmed murders were committed in 1974, when he was 27.

Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, Bundy entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old Joni Lenz (pseudonym), a dancer and student at the University of Washington. Bundy bludgeoned her with a metal rod from her bed frame while she slept, and sexually assaulted her with a speculum. Lenz was found the next morning by her roommates in a coma and lying in a pool of her own blood. She survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage. Bundy's next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, another University of Washington student. On the night of January 31, 1974, Bundy broke into Healy's room, knocked her unconscious, dressed her in jeans and a shirt, wrapped her in a bed sheet, and carried her away.

Co-eds began disappearing at a rate of roughly one a month. On March 12, 1974 in Olympia, Bundy kidnapped and murdered Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year old student at The Evergreen State College. On April 17, 1974 Susan Rancourt disappeared from the campus of Central Washington State College in Ellensburg. Later, two different CWSC co-eds would recount meeting a man with his arm in a cast — one that night, one three nights earlier — who asked for their help to carry a load of books to his Volkswagen Beetle. Next was Kathy Parks, last seen on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon on May 6, 1974. Brenda Ball (the first victim who wasn't a student) was never seen again after leaving The Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington on June 1, 1974. Bundy then murdered Georgeann Hawkins, a student at the University of Washington and a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, an on-campus sorority. In the early morning hours of June 11, 1974, she walked through an alley from her boyfriend's dormitory residence to her sorority house. Hawkins was never seen again. Witnesses later reported seeing a man with a leg cast struggling to carry a briefcase in the area that night. One co-ed reported that the man had asked her help in carrying the briefcase to his car, a Volkswagen Beetle.

Bundy's Washington killing spree culminated on July 14, 1974 with the abduction in broad daylight of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington. Eight different people that day told the police about the handsome young man with his left arm in a sling who called himself "Ted". Five of them were women that "Ted" asked for help unloading a sailboat from his Volkswagen Beetle. One of them went with "Ted" as far as his car, where there was no sailboat, before declining to accompany him further. Three more witnesses testified to seeing him approach Janice Ott with the story about the sailboat, and to seeing Ott walk away from the beach in his company. She was never seen alive again. Naslund disappeared without a trace four hours later.

King County detectives now had a description both of the suspect and his car. Some witnesses told investigators that the "Ted" they encountered spoke with a clipped, Canadian-like accent. Soon fliers were up all over the Seattle area. After seeing the police sketch and description of the Lake Sammamish suspect in both of the local newspapers and on television news reports, Bundy's girlfriend, one of his psychology professors at UW, and former co-worker Ann Rule all reported him as a possible suspect. The police, receiving up to 200 tips per day, did not pay any special attention to a tip about a clean-cut law student.

The fragmented remains of Ott and Naslund were discovered on September 7, 1974 off Interstate 90 near Issaquah, one mile from the park. Along with the women's remains was found an extra femur bone and vertebrae, which Bundy shortly before his execution would identify as that of Georgeann Hawkins. Between March 1 and March 3, 1975, the skulls and jawbones (but no other skeletal remains) of Healy, Rancourt, Parks and Ball were found on Taylor Mountain just east of Issaquah. Years later Bundy claimed that he had also dumped Donna Manson's body there, but no trace of her has ever been found.

Second wave: Utah and Colorado

That autumn, Bundy began attending the University of Utah law school in Salt Lake City, where he resumed killing in October. Nancy Wilcox disappeared from Holladay, Utah on October 2, 1974. Wilcox was last seen riding in a Volkswagen Beetle. On October 18, 1974, Bundy murdered Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of Midvale police chief Louis Smith; Bundy raped, sodomized, and strangled her. Her body was found nine days later. Next was Laura Aime, also 17, who disappeared when she left a Halloween party in Lehi, Utah on October 31, 1974; her naked, beaten and strangled corpse was found nearly a month later by hikers on Thanksgiving Day, on the banks of a river in American Fork Canyon.

In Murray, Utah, on November 8, 1974, Carol DaRonch narrowly escaped with her life. Claiming to be Officer Roseland of the Murray Police Department, Bundy approached her at the Fashion Place Mall, told her someone had tried to break into her car, and asked her to accompany him to the police station. She got into his car but refused his instruction to buckle her seat belt. They drove for a short period before Bundy suddenly pulled to the shoulder and attempted to slap a pair of handcuffs on her. In the struggle, he fastened both loops to the same wrist. Next Bundy whipped out his crowbar, but DaRonch caught it in the air just before it would have cracked her skull. She then got the door open and tumbled out onto the highway, thus escaping from her would-be killer.

About an hour later, a strange man showed up at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah, where the drama club was putting on a play. He approached the drama teacher and then a student, asking both to come out to the parking lot to identify a car. Both declined. The drama teacher saw him again shortly before the end of the play, this time breathing hard, with his hair mussed and his shirt untucked. Another student saw the man lurking in the rear of the auditorium. Debby Kent, a 17-year-old Viewmont High student, left the play at intermission to go and pick up her brother, and was never seen again. Later, investigators found a small key in the parking lot outside Viewmont High. It unlocked the handcuffs taken off of Carol DaRonch.

In 1975, while still attending law school at the University of Utah, Bundy shifted his crimes to Colorado. On January 12, 1975, Caryn Campbell disappeared from the Wildwood Inn at Snowmass, Colorado, where she had been vacationing with her fiancé and his children. She vanished somewhere in a span of fifty feet between the elevator doors and her room. Her body was found on February 17, 1975. Next, Vail ski instructor Julie Cunningham disappeared on March 15, 1975, and Denise Oliverson in Grand Junction on April 6, 1975. While in prison, Bundy confessed to Colorado investigators that he used crutches to approach Cunningham, after asking her to help him carry some ski boots to his car. At the car, Bundy clubbed her with his crowbar and immobilized her with handcuffs, later strangling her in a crime highly similar to the Georgeann Hawkins murder.

Lynette Culver went missing in Pocatello, Idaho on May 6, 1975 from the grounds of her junior high school. While on death row years later, Bundy confessed that he kidnapped Culver and had taken the girl to a room he had rented at a nearby Holiday Inn. After raping her, he stated that he had drowned her in the motel room bathtub and later dumped her body in a river. After his return to Utah, Susan Curtis vanished on June 28, 1975. (Bundy confessed to the Curtis murder minutes before his execution.) The bodies of Cunningham, Culver, Curtis, and Oliverson have never been recovered.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, investigators were attempting to prioritize their enormous list of suspects. In an innovative use of technology for 1975, they used computers to cross-check different likely lists of suspects (classmates of Lynda Healy, owners of Volkswagens, etc.) against each other, and then identify suspects who turned up on more than one list. "Theodore Robert Bundy" was one of 25 people who turned up on four separate lists, and his case file was second on the "To Be Investigated" pile when the call came from Utah of an arrest.

Bundy was arrested on August 16, 1975, in Salt Lake City, for failure to stop for a police officer. A search of his car revealed a ski mask, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, an icepick, and other items that were thought by the police to be burglary tools. Bundy remained cool during questioning, explaining that he needed the mask for skiing and had found the handcuffs in a dumpster. Utah detective Jerry Thompson connected Bundy and his Volkswagen to the DaRonch kidnapping and the missing girls, and searched his apartment. The search uncovered a brochure of Colorado ski resorts, with a check mark by the Wildwood Inn where Caryn Campbell had disappeared. After searching his apartment, the police brought Bundy in for a lineup before DaRonch and the Bountiful witnesses. They identified him as "Officer Roseland" and as the man lurking about the night Debby Kent disappeared. Following a week-long trial, Bundy was convicted of DaRonch's kidnapping on March 1, 1976 and was sentenced to 15 years in Utah State Prison. Colorado authorities were pursuing murder charges, however, and Bundy was extradited there to stand trial.

On June 7, 1977, in preparation for a hearing in the Caryn Campbell murder trial, Bundy was taken to the Pitkin County courthouse in Aspen. During a court recess, he was allowed to visit the courthouse's law library, where he jumped out of the building from a second-story window and escaped. In the minutes following his escape, Bundy at first ran and then strolled casually through the small town toward Aspen Mountain. He made it all the way to the top of Aspen Mountain without being detected, but then lost his sense of direction and wandered around the mountain, missing two trails that led down off the mountain to his intended destination, the town of Crested Butte. At one point, he came face-to-face with a gun-toting citizen who was one of the searchers scouring Aspen Mountain for Ted Bundy, but talked his way out of danger. On June 13, 1977, Bundy stole a car he found on the mountain. He drove back into Aspen and could have gotten away, but two police deputies noticed the Cadillac with dimmed headlights weaving in and out of its lane and pulled Bundy over. They recognized him and took him back to jail. Bundy had been on the lam for six days.

Upon arrest, Bundy was placed in the smaller Glenwood Springs jail, rather than being taken back to Aspen. Somehow he had acquired a hacksaw blade and $500 in cash; he later claimed the blade came from another prison inmate. He sawed through the welds fixing a small metal plate in the ceiling and, after dieting down still further, was able to fit through the hole and access the crawl space above. An informant in the prison told guards that he had heard Bundy moving around the ceiling, but no one checked it out. When Bundy's Aspen trial judge ruled on December 23, 1977 that the Caryn Campbell murder trial would start on January 9, 1978, and changed the venue to Colorado Springs, Bundy realized that he had to make his escape before he was transferred out of the Glenwood Springs jail. On the night of December 30, 1977, Bundy dressed warmly and packed books and files under his blanket to make it look like he was sleeping. He wriggled through the hole and up into the crawlspace. Bundy crawled over to a spot directly above the jailer's linen closet — the jailer and his wife were out for the evening — dropped down into the jailer's apartment, and walked out the door.

Bundy was free, but he was on foot in the middle of a bitterly cold, snowy Colorado night. He stole a broken-down MG, but it stalled out in the mountains. Bundy was stuck on the side of Interstate 70 in the middle of the night in a blizzard, but another driver gave him a ride into Vail. From there he caught a bus to Denver and boarded the 8:55 a.m. flight to Chicago. The Glenwood Springs jail guards did not notice Bundy was gone until noon on December 31, 1977, 17 hours after his escape, by which time Bundy was already in Chicago.

Bundy's final rampage: Florida

Bundy then caught an Amtrak train to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he got a room at the YMCA. On January 2, 1978, he went to an Ann Arbor bar and watched his former University of Washington Huskies beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl. He later stole a car in Ann Arbor, which he abandoned in Atlanta, Georgia before boarding a bus for Tallahassee, Florida, where he arrived on January 8, 1978. There, he rented a room at a boarding house under the alias of "Chris Hagen" and committed numerous petty crimes including shoplifting, purse snatching, and auto theft. He stole a student ID card that belonged to a Kenneth Misner and sent away for copies of Misner's Social Security card and birth certificate.

Just one week after Bundy's arrival in Tallahassee, in the early hours of Super Bowl Sunday on January 15, 1978, two and a half years of repressed homicidal violence erupted. Bundy entered the Florida State University Chi Omega sorority house at approximately 3 a.m. and killed two sleeping women, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman. Levy and Bowman were bludgeoned and strangled, and Levy was also sexually assaulted. Two other Chi Omegas, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, were bludgeoned in their sleep and severely injured. The entire episode took no more than half an hour. After leaving the Chi Omega house, Bundy broke into another home a few blocks away, clubbing and severely injuring FSU student Cheryl Thomas.

On February 9, 1978, Bundy traveled to Lake City, Florida. While there, he abducted, raped, and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, throwing her body under a small pig shed. She would be his final victim. On February 12, 1978, Bundy stole yet another Volkswagen Beetle and left Tallahassee for good, heading west across the Florida panhandle. On February 15, 1978, shortly after 1 a.m., Bundy was stopped by Pensacola police officer David Lee. When the officer called in a check of the license plate, the vehicle came up as stolen. Bundy then scuffled with the officer before he was finally subdued. As Lee took the unknown suspect to jail, Bundy said "I wish you had killed me." At his booking Bundy gave the police the name Ken Misner (and presented stolen identification for Misner), but the Florida Department of Law Enforcement made a positive fingerprint identification early the next day. He was immediately transported to Tallahassee and subsequently charged with the Tallahassee and Lake City murders. He was later taken to Miami to stand trial for the Chi Omega murders.

Conviction and execution

Bundy went to trial for the Chi Omega murders in June 1979 with Dade County Circuit Court Judge Edward D. Cowart presiding. Despite having five court-appointed lawyers, he insisted on acting as his own attorney and even cross-examined witnesses, including the police officer who had discovered Margaret Bowman's body. He was prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Larry Simpson.

Two pieces of evidence proved crucial. First, Chi-Omega member Nita Neary, getting back to the house very late after a date, saw Bundy as he left, and identified him in court. Second, during his homicidal frenzy, Bundy bit Lisa Levy in her left buttock, leaving obvious bite marks. Police took plaster casts of Bundy's teeth and a forensics expert matched them to the photographs of Levy's wound. Bundy was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death. After confirming the sentence, Cowart gave him the verdict:

"It is ordered that you be put to death by a current of electricity, that current be passed through your body until you are dead. Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself, please. It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I've experienced in this courtroom. You're a bright young man. You'd have made a good lawyer, and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don't feel any animosity toward you. I want you to know that. Once again, take care of yourself."

Bundy was tried for the Kimberly Leach murder in 1980. He was again convicted on all counts, principally due to fibers found in his van that matched Leach's clothing and an eyewitness that saw him leading Leach away from the school, and sentenced to death. During the Kimberly Leach trial, Bundy married former coworker Carole Ann Boone in the courtroom while questioning her on the stand. Following numerous conjugal visits between Bundy and his new wife, Boone gave birth to a daughter in October 1982. Eventually, however, Boone moved away, divorced Bundy, and changed her last name and that of her daughter. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

Victims

Below is a chronological list of Ted Bundy's known victims. Bundy never made a comprehensive confession of his crimes and his true total is not known, but before his execution, he confessed to Hagmaier to having committed 30 murders. Ten of his victims remain unidentified. All the women listed were killed, unless otherwise noted.

1974

* Jan. 4: Joni Lenz (survived). Bludgeoned in her bed as she slept.
* Feb. 1: Lynda Ann Healy (21). Beaten & bludgeoned unconscious while asleep and abducted from the house she shared with other University of Washington co-eds.
* Mar. 12: Donna Gail Manson (19). Abducted while walking to a jazz concert on The Evergreen State College campus, Olympia, Washington.
* Apr. 17: Susan Rancourt (18). Disappeared as she walked across Ellensburg's Central Washington State College campus at night.
* May 6: Roberta Kathleen Parks (22). Vanished from Oregon State University in Corvallis while walking to another dorm hall to have coffee with friends.
* May 25: Brenda Ball (22). Disappeared from the Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington.
* Jun. 11: Georgeann Hawkins (18). Disappeared from behind her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta, at the University of Washington in Seattle.
* Jul. 14: Janice Ott (23) and Denise Naslund (19), both from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington.
* Aug. 2: Carol Valenzuela (20). Last seen at a welfare office in Vancouver, Washington.
* Oct. 2: Nancy Wilcox (16). Disappeared in Holladay, Utah.
* Oct. 18: Melissa Smith (17). Vanished from Midvale, Utah on her way to a friend's house.
* Oct. 31: Laura Aime (17). Disappeared from a Halloween party at Lehi, Utah.
* Nov. 8: Carol DaRonch (survived). Escaped from Bundy by jumping out from his car in Murray, Utah.
* Nov. 8: Debra (Debby) Kent (17). Vanished from the parking lot of a school in Bountiful, Utah, hours after DaRonch escaped from Bundy.

1975

* Jan. 12: Caryn Campbell (23). While on a ski trip with her fiancé in Aspen, Colorado, Campbell vanished between the hotel lounge and her room.
* Mar. 15: Julie Cunningham (26). Disappeared while on her way to a nearby tavern in Vail, Colorado.
* Apr. 6: Denise Oliverson (25). Abducted while visiting her parents in Grand Junction, Colorado.
* May 6: Lynette Culver (13). Snatched from a school playground at Alameda Junior High School, Pocatello, Idaho.
* June 28: Susan Curtis (15). Disappeared while attending a youth conference at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
* July 4: Nancy Baird (23). Disappeared while working at a convenience store. Confessed shortly before his execution. Layton, Utah.

1978

* Jan. 15: Lisa Levy (20), Margaret Bowman (21), Karen Chandler (survived), Kathy Kleiner Deshields (survived). The Chi Omega killings, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.
* Jan. 15: Cheryl Thomas (survived). Bludgeoned in her bed, eight blocks away from the Chi Omega Sorority house.
* Feb. 9: Kimberly Leach (12), kidnapped from her junior high school in Lake City, Florida. She was raped, murdered and discarded in Suwannee River State Park, Florida.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_bundy

 

[Dark Star]

Witch: The True Story of Las Vegas' Most Notorious Female Killer

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Witch-Notorious-Female-Killer-Berkley/dp/0425207196/dreamindemon-20"]Witch: The True Story of Las Vegas' Most Notorious Female Killer[/ame]
by Glenn Puit

Brookey Lee West and her mother had a love/hate relationship that went beyond the typical mother-daughter conflict. When Brookey was seven, her alcoholic mother Christine went to prison for shooting an ex-lover, leaving Brookey in the care of her father – and he wasn’t exactly a model parent either.

The gun toting-white supremacist and Satan worshipper soon dumped Brookey in an orphanage, and she didn’t see either of her parents again for six years. Over the next three decades, Brookey achieved professional success as a technical writer, but her personal life was a different story. Her relationships tended to end with someone mysteriously dead – and that someone definitely wasn’t Brookey.

In 2001, police uncovered another mysterious death in her life: Christine’s badly decomposed body was discovered in a trash can locked inside a Vegas storage unit, surrounded by books about witchcraft and Satanism. But, it was no mystery who put her there: Brookey not only rented the unit, her fingerprints were on the tape sealing the trash can shut.

At her trial, Brookey admitted putting her mother in storage, but insisted she didn’t kill her. However, there was one nagging detail the jury couldn’t get past: Brookey had tied a plastic bag around her mother’s nose and mouth.

A forensic expert testified that it was highly possible that Christine had been alive when put in the barrel and the bag suffocated her to death. It took the jury just two hours to find Brookey guilty. She’s now serving out a life sentence in a southern Nevada women’s prison, where she leads a Bible study group and teaches art to the other inmates.

http://tinyurl.com/6kje9s

 

[Dark Star]

Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates

Jack the Ripper. So many stories written about this notorious killer and prolific knife wielder. He or she perhaps???, literally ripped, slashed and gouged their victims apart....hence the name "The Ripper".

I got the idea to do old Jack after I was in the Whitechapel area today. lol.

Again there are many books written about Jack, I chose this one simply for the fact I've read it before.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Ripper-Scotland-Yard-Investigates/dp/0750942282/dreamindemon-20"]Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates[/ame]
by Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow

Authors Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow are not only two of the most well-respected authors in the field of Ripper studies (with such titles as The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell and The Complete Jack the Ripper), they are also two former London police officers who are directly responsible for finding and preserving important documents about this case for posterity. Put the two of them together and you can expect a book just full of great information, much of it brand new and fully documented with footnotes. On top of that, this is also easily the Ripper title with the most illustrations, many of them never before seen in any other modern publication. This book is simply required reading for anyone with a serious interest in the Jack the Ripper case.

Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the late 19th century. The name is taken from a letter sent to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer.

The victims were women allegedly earning income as prostitutes. The murders were perpetrated in public or semi-public places at night or towards the early morning. The victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Theories suggest the victims were first strangled in order to silence them and to explain the lack of reported blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.

Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer owing to the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police in their attempts to capture the murderer, sometimes missing him at the crime scenes by mere minutes.

Due to the lack of a confirmed identity for the killer, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore and exploitation. Over the years, many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories regarding the identities of the killer and his victims.

Victims

The files kept by the Metropolitan police show that the investigation begun in 1888 eventually came to encompass eleven separate murders stretching from April 3, 1888, until February 13, 1891, known in the police docket as "the Whitechapel Murders." In addition, at least seven other murders and violent attacks have been connected with Jack the Ripper by various authors and historians. Among the eleven murders actively investigated by the police, five are almost universally agreed upon as having been the work of a single serial killer. These are known collectively as the canonical five victims:

* Mary Ann Nichols (maiden name Mary Ann Walker, nicknamed "Polly"), born c. August 26, 1845, and killed on Friday, August 31, 1888. She was 43 at the time of her death. Nichols' body was discovered at about 3:40 in the morning on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel two hundred yards from the London Hospital.

* Annie Chapman (maiden name Eliza Ann Smith, nicknamed "Dark Annie"), born c. September 1841 and killed on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Chapman's body was discovered about 6:00 in the morning lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. She was forty-seven years old, in poor health and destitute at the time of her death.

* Elizabeth Stride (maiden name Elizabeth Gustafsdotter, nicknamed "Long Liz"), born c. November 27, 1843 in Sweden, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888. Stride's body was discovered close to 1:00 in the morning, lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. She was forty-four years old when she died.

* Catherine Eddowes (used the aliases "Kate Conway" and "Mary Ann Kelly," from the surnames of her two common-law husbands Thomas Conway and John Kelly), born c. April 14, 1842, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888, on the same day as the previous victim, Elizabeth Stride. She was forty-six years old when she died. Ripperologists refer to this circumstance as the "double event." Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London. Mutilation of Eddowes' body and the abstraction of her left kidney and part of her womb by her murderer bore the signature of a 'Jack the Ripper' killing.

* Mary Jane Kelly (called herself "Marie Jeanette Kelly" after a trip to Paris, nicknamed "Ginger"), reportedly born c. 1863 either the city of Limerick or County Limerick, Munster, Ireland and killed on Friday, November 9, 1888. She was about twenty-five years old when she was killed. Kelly's gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 a.m. lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields.

Other victims in the Whitechapel murder file:

Six other Whitechapel murders were investigated by the London police at the time, two of which occurred before the 'canonical' five and four after. Some of these have been ascribed, by certain figures involved in the investigation, or by later authors, to have been victims of Jack the Ripper.

These two murders occured before the canonical five:

* Emma Elizabeth Smith, born c. 1843, was attacked on Osborn Street, Whitechapel April 3, 1888, and a blunt object was inserted into her vagina, rupturing her perineum. She survived the attack and managed to walk back to her lodging house with the injuries. Friends brought her to a hospital where she told police that she was attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. She fell into a coma and died on April 5, 1888. This was the first "Whitechapel Murder," according to the book Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow.

* Martha Tabram (name sometimes misspelled as Tabran; used the alias Emma Turner; maiden name Martha White), born c. May 10, 1849, and killed on August 7, 1888. She had a total of 39 stab wounds. Of the non-canonical Whitechapel murders, Tabram is named most often as another possible Ripper victim, owing to the evident lack of obvious motive, the geographical and periodic proximity to the canonical attacks, and the remarkable savagery of the attack. The main difficulty with including Tabram is that the killer used a somewhat different modus operandi (stabbing, rather than slashing the throat and then cutting), but it is now accepted that a killer's modus operandi can change, sometimes quite dramatically. Her body was found at George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel.

These four murders happened after the canonical five:

* Rose Mylett (true name probably Catherine Mylett, but was also known as Catherine Millett, Elizabeth "Drunken Lizzie" Davis, "Fair" Alice Downey, or simply "Fair Clara"), born c. 1862 and died on December 20, 1888. She was reportedly strangled "by a cord drawn tightly round the neck," though some investigators believed that she had accidentally suffocated herself on the collar of her dress while in a drunken stupor. Her body was found in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar.
.
* Alice McKenzie (nicknamed "Clay Pipe" Alice and sometimes used the alias Alice Bryant), a prostitute, born c. 1849 and killed on July 17, 1889. She reportedly died from "severance of the left carotid artery," but several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body. Her body was found in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. Police Commissioner James Monro initially believed this to be a Ripper murder and one of the pathologists examining the body, Dr Bond, agreed, though later writers have been more circumspect. Evans and Rumbelow suggest that the unknown murderer tried to make it look like a Ripper killing to deflect suspicion from himself.

* "The Pinchin Street Torso" - a headless and legless torso of a woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel on September 10, 1889. The mutilations were similar to the body which was the subject of the "The Whitehall Mystery," though in this case the hands were not severed. It seems probable that the murder had been committed elsewhere and that parts of the dismembered body were dumped at the crime scene.An unconfirmed speculation of the time was that the remains were of Lydia Hart, a prostitute who had recently disappeared. However she was soon located in a local infirmary where she was receiving medical treatment to cure the after effects of a "bit of a spree". "The Whitehall Mystery" and "The Pinchin Street Murder" have often been suggested to be the work of a serial killer, for which the nicknames "Torso Killer" or "Torso Murderer" have been suggested. Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso Killer" were the same person or separate serial killers of uncertain connection to each other (but active in the same area) has long been debated. The Pinchin Street murder prompted a revival of interest in the Ripper - manifested in an illustration from "Puck" showing the Ripper, from behind, looking in a mirror at alternate reflections embodying current speculation as to whom he might be - a doctor, a cleric, a woman, a Jew, a bandit or a policeman?

* Frances Coles (also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell"), born c. 1865 and killed on February 13, 1891. Minor wounds on the back of the head suggest that she was thrown violently to the ground before her throat was cut. Otherwise there were no mutilations to the body. Her body was found under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. A man named James Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police and charged with her murder, and was briefly thought to be the Ripper himself. However he was discharged from court due to lack of evidence on 3 March 1891. After this eleventh and last "Whitechapel Murder" the case was closed.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_ripper

 

[impqueen]

oooh, Jack the Ripper is one of my favorites! (Hence Whitechapel )

Thank you, Hippie! :love:

 

[Dark Star]

Criminal Spotlight~O. J. Simpson

Good old O. J. Simpson. I went with O. J this week because of the new book that has just come out by Mike Gilbert and his "knowledge" of the murders. Personal opinion; I've always believed O. J. guilty as a motherfucker. He was lucky he was rich and had one hell of a legal team because any average Tom, Dick or fucking Harry, would have never gotten off....

The O.J. Simpson murder case was a highly publicized U.S. criminal trial in which O. J. Simpson, former American football star for the National Football League (NFL) and actor, was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson was acquitted after a lengthy criminal trial.

Shortly before midnight on June 12, 1994, Brown and Goldman were found fatally stabbed outside Brown's Bundy Drive condominium in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, California. Her two children, Sydney (aged 8) and Justin (aged 5), were asleep inside in an upstairs bedroom. OJ Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson had divorced two years earlier. Evidence found and collected at the scene led police to suspect that O.J. Simpson was the murderer.

Simpson hired a high-profile defense team led by Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. The County believed it had a solid prosecution case, but Cochran created in the minds of the jury reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence (then relatively new evidence in trials), including that the blood-sample evidence had been mishandled. Cochran and the defense team also alleged other misconduct by the Los Angeles Police Department. The televising of the lengthy trial riveted national attention on the dramatic case. By the end of the criminal trial, national surveys showed dramatic differences between most blacks and most whites in terms of their assessment of Simpson's guilt.

Later both the Brown and Goldman families sued Simpson for damages in a civil trial, which has a lower burden of proof for determining responsibility. On 5 February 1997, the jury unanimously found there was a preponderance of evidence to find Simpson liable for damages in the wrongful death of Goldman and battery of Brown. In its conclusions, the jury effectively found Simpson liable for the death of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. Simpson appealed the verdict. On February 21, 2008, a Los Angeles court upheld a renewal of the civil judgment against him.


Criminal trial evidence

* DNA showed that blood found at the scene of Brown's murder was likely O.J. Simpson's. The odds it could have come from anyone but Simpson were about one in 170 million.
* DNA analysis of blood found on one of Simpson's socks identified it as Nicole Brown's. The blood had DNA characteristics matched by approximately only one in 9.7 billion Caucasians, meaning she was likely the only person in the world with that match.
* DNA analysis of the blood found in, on, and near Simpson’s Bronco revealed traces of Simpson’s, Brown's, and Goldman’s blood.
* DNA testing of the blood under Brown's fingernails showed it was from an unidentified person, who was never found.
* DNA analysis of bloody socks found in Simpson's bedroom proved this was Brown's blood. The blood made a similar pattern on both sides of the socks. Defense medical expert Dr. Henry Lee of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory testified that the only way such a pattern could appear was if Simpson had a "hole" in his ankle. He suggested the more likely scenario was that someone intentionally placed the blood on the socks while they were on the floor of OJ Simpson's bedroom. Lee testified the collection procedure of the socks could have caused contamination.
* Simpson’s hair was found on Goldman’s shirt.
* DNA analysis of blood on the left-hand glove, found outside Brown's home, was proven to be a mixture of Simpson’s, Brown's, and Goldman’s. Although the glove was soaked in blood, there were no blood drops leading up to, or away from the glove. No other blood was found in the area of the glove except on the glove.
* The gloves contained particles of Goldman’s hair and carpet fibers from Simpson’s Bronco.
* The left-hand glove found at Nicole Brown’s home and the right-hand glove found at Simpson’s home proved to be a match.
* The gloves were proven to be Simpson’s size. Although Simpson testified under oath that he did not own a pair of Aris Isotoner gloves, several media pictures emerged showing Simpson wearing the exact gloves.
* LA Police Detective Phillip Vanatter could not explain why he kept the 8 cc's taken as a sample of OJ Simpson's blood for hours before recording it as evidence, and why he had it at Simpson's house when evidence was being collected, as corroborated by TV news footage.
* The LA County District Attorney's Office and the Medical Examiner's Office could not explain why 1.5 cc's of blood were missing from the original 8 cc's taken from Simpson and placed into evidence.
* Officers found arrest records indicating that Simpson was charged with the beating of his wife Nicole Brown. Photos of Brown's bruised and battered face from that attack were shown. Simpson was sentenced with 3 years' community service for the crime.
* Police discovered the dome light in the Bronco had been removed. A search of the vehicle revealed the light was carefully placed under the passenger seat and was in good working condition. Puzzling blood smears on the passenger floorboard suggested Simpson may have removed the light and placed it under the seat before the murders. Then, after the murders, he may have tried to find it to put it back in the socket.
* Nicole Brown had told family and friends that one set of keys to her home was missing. She had indicated to several family members and friends that she feared Simpson had stolen them to gain entry. The keys were later found in Simpson’s home.
* Paula Barbieri indicated that she had broken up with Simpson the day of the murders. She said he seemed very disturbed at the news. Phone records demonstrated that Simpson attempted to contact her shortly before the murders from his Bronco’s cellular phone.
* Much of the incriminating evidence: bloody glove, bloody socks, blood in and on the Bronco, was discovered by Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman. He was later charged with perjury for falsely claiming during the trial that he had not used the word "nigger" within ten years of the trial. During the trial he pleaded the 5th Amendment against self incrimination to avoid further questioning after his integrity was challenged on this point.
* The bloody footprints were identified as made from a pair of Bruno Magli shoes. These shoes were quite expensive and relatively rare. The large size 12 prints matched Simpson’s shoe size. Simpson swore under oath that "I never would have owned those ugly-ass shoes!" However, three weeks later, a reporter came forward with multiple exposures of Simpson wearing the shoes at a baseball game a few years earlier.
* Evidence collected by LAPD criminologist Dennis Fung came under criticism. He admitted to "having missed a few drops of blood on a fence near the bodies," but on the stand he said that he "returned several weeks afterwards to collect them."
* Fung admitted that he had not used rubber gloves when collecting some of the evidence.
* Friends and family indicated that Nicole Brown had consistently said that Simpson had been stalking her. She claimed that everywhere she went, she noticed Simpson would be there, watching her. She said she was afraid because Simpson had told her he would kill her if he ever found her with another man.
* Ross Cutlery provided store receipts indicating that Simpson had purchased a 12-inch stiletto knife six weeks before the murders. A replica of the knife purchased by the police exactly matched the wounds on Brown and Goldman.[citation needed]
* LA Police Detective Phillip Vanatter testified that he saw photographs of press personnel leaning on Simpson's Bronco before evidence was collected.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/How-Helped-O-J-Away-Murder/dp/1596985518/dreamindemon-20"]How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret, and Remorse[/ame]
by Mike Gilbert

"You Don't Know the Full Truth About O.J. Simpson and the Murders that Gripped a Nation.

But Mike Gilbert does, and after nearly two decades of being O.J. Simpson's sports agent, business advisor, and trusted confidant, Gilbert is breaking his silence and telling the full story of the man he idolized, but now despises.
Gilbert's shocking tale is unlike anything you've read before; it isn't his "version" of what happened--it's the unvarnished truth. The truth about O.J., the murders, and the infamous trial. Not as Gilbert imagined or would like it to be, but how it actually was. Gilbert doesn't spare anyone, not even himself--he helped deceive the jury and feels deeply responsible for the "Not Guilty" verdict.

So why is Gilbert speaking out now? Has he gone from sinner to saint? Is he making a play for sympathy or looking to make a quick buck? No. (Proceeds from this book are going to the March of Dimes and other selected charities with which Gilbert has long been associated.) Gilbert is writing this book because he regrets what he did for his adored, childhood idol. He can no longer find any excuse for how he has shielded O.J. Simpson; and he is determined that the full truth must now be told, including:

* O.J.'s late night confession to Gilbert
* How Gilbert was responsible for O.J.'s hand not fitting the murder glove
* Why O.J. murdered Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman (it was more than jealousy)
* Why Gilbert defended O.J. for so long--and what finally convinced him he could do so no longer
* How O.J. ignored his financial obligations to the Goldman family and milked the tabloids for money
* The real reason why an armed O.J. burst in on the memorabilia collectors in Las Vegas (Gilbert had what O.J. was looking for)

Told with searing candor, this book leaves no one's reputation intact--not even Gilbert's. But he casts a glaring light on how celebrity can corrupt, how power can mislead, and how friendship and loyalty can be perverted. His book is meant to set the record straight, to lay to rest the ghosts of that dreadful night that have haunted him ever since, and to now play what little part he can to forward the process the of justice."

Sources: Amazon and Wikipedia

 

[Dark Star]

Since today is the day these two young lover outlaws where finally offed by the Louisiana Police. I thought I would put my spotlight on them. You can also read more on the two here..http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2565&page=5
in the Crimes This Day in History thread.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were notorious outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known nationwide. They captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1935. Although this couple and their gang were notorious for their bank robberies, Clyde Barrow preferred to rob small stores or gas stations. It is also important to note that Clyde Barrow was believed to have killed, or been a party to killing, at least nine police officers, among several other murders.

Though the public at the time believed Bonnie to be a full partner in the gang, and thus its crimes, the role of Bonnie Parker in the Barrow Gang crimes has long been a source of controversy. Gang members W. D. Jones and Ralph Fults testified that they never saw Bonnie fire a gun, and described her role as logistical. Writing with Phillip Steele in The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde, Marie Barrow, Clyde's youngest sister, made the same claim: "Bonnie never fired a shot. She just followed my brother no matter where he went." In his interview with Playboy magazine, W. D. Jones said of Bonnie: "As far as I know, Bonnie never packed a gun. Maybe she'd help carry what we had in the car into a tourist-court room. But during the five big gun battles I was with them, she never fired a gun. But I'll say she was a hell of a loader."

In his article "Bonnie and Clyde: Romeo and Juliet in a Getaway Car," the noted writer Joseph Geringer explained part of their appeal to the public then, and their enduring legend now, by saying "Americans thrilled to their 'Robin Hood' adventures. The presence of a female, Bonnie, escalated the sincerity of their intentions to make them something unique and individual—even at times heroic."

Bonnie Parker

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children. Her father, Charles Parker (? - c.1914), a bricklayer, died when Bonnie was four, prompting her mother, Emma Krause Parker (c.1886 - 1946), to move with the children to West Dallas, where they lived in poverty. An honor roll student in high school where she excelled in creative writing, she won a County League contest in literary arts, for Cement City School, and even gave introductory speeches for local politicians. Described as intelligent and personable yet strong willed, she was an attractive young woman, small at 4 ft 11 in (150 cm) and weighing only 90 pounds (41 kg).

On September 25, 1926, less than a week before her sixteenth birthday, she married Roy Thornton. The marriage was short-lived, and in January 1929 they separated but never divorced; Bonnie was wearing Thornton's wedding ring when she died. His reaction to his wife's death was, "I'm glad they went out like they did—it's much better than being caught." On March 5, 1933, Thornton was sentenced to five years in prison for burglary. He was gunned down by guards on October 3, 1937 during an escape attempt from Eastham Farm prison.

There are a number of versions of the story describing Bonnie and Clyde's first meeting, but the most credible version indicates that Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow in January 1930 at a friend's house. Bonnie was out of work and was staying in West Dallas to assist a girlfriend with a broken arm. Clyde dropped by the girl's house while she was at a friend's home visiting, and Bonnie was supposedly in the kitchen making hot chocolate. They did not meet, as legend has it, while she was a waitress.

When they met, both were smitten immediately and most historians believe Bonnie joined Clyde because she was in love. She remained a loyal companion to him as they carried out their crime spree and awaited the violent deaths they viewed as inevitable. Her fondness for creative writing and the arts found expression in poems such as "Suicide Sal" and "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde".

Jimmy Fowler of the Dallas Observer noted, "although the authorities who gunned down the 23-year old in 1934 conceded that she was no bloodthirsty killer and that when taken into custody she tended to inspire the paternal aspects of the police who held her ... there was a mystifying devolution from the high school poet, speech class star, and mini-celebrity who performed Shirley Temple-like as a warm up act at the stump speeches of local politicians to the accomplice of rage-filled Clyde Barrow:."

Clyde Barrow

Clyde Barrow was born March 24, 1909 in Ellis County, Texas, near Telico just south of Dallas. He was the sixth child of seven or eight children (the census is not clear, since some of the children were not living at home) in a poor farming family. Clyde was first arrested in late 1926, after running when police confronted him over a rental car he had failed to return on time. His second arrest, with brother Buck Barrow, came soon after — this time for possession of stolen goods (turkeys). In both of these instances there is the remote possibility that Clyde acted without criminal intent. Despite holding down "square" jobs during the period 1927 through 1929, however, he also cracked safes, robbed stores, and stole cars. Known primarily for robbing banks, he focused on smaller jobs, robbing grocery stores and filling stations at a rate far outpacing the ten to fifteen bank robberies attributed to him and the Barrow Gang. According to John Neal Phillips, Clyde's goal in life was not to gain fame and fortune from robbing banks, but to seek revenge against the Texas prison system for the abuses he suffered while serving time.

Death

Bonnie and Clyde were killed May 23, 1934, on a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana hideout. They were shot by a posse of four Texas and three Louisiana officers (the Louisiana officers added solely for jurisdictional reasons — see below). Questions about the way the ambush was conducted, and the failure to warn the duo of impending death, have been raised ever since that day.

Texas Officers

* Frank Hamer
* B.M. "Manny" Gault
* Bob Alcorn
* Paul O'Halloran

Louisiana Officers

* Henderson Jordan
* Joe Montana
* Prentiss Oakley

The posse was led by Hamer, who began tracking the pair on February 10, 1934. Having never before seen Bonnie or Clyde, he immediately arranged a meeting with a representative of Methvin's parents in the hope of gaining a lead. Meanwhile, federal officials —who viewed the Eastham prison break in particular as a national embarrassment to the government— were providing all support that was asked for, such as weapons. Hamer obtained a quantity of civilian Browning Automatic Rifles (manufactured by Colt as the "Monitor") and 20 round magazines with armor piercing rounds.

Hamer studied Bonnie and Clyde's movements and found they swung in a circle skirting the edges of five midwest states, exploiting the "state line" rule that prevented officers from one jurisdiction from pursuing a fugitive into another. Bonnie and Clyde were masters of that pre-FBI rule but consistent in their movements, allowing them to see their families and those of their gang members. It also allowed an experienced manhunter like Hamer to chart their path and predict where they would go. They were due next to see Henry Methvin's family, which explains Hamer's meeting with them within a month of beginning the hunt.

On May 21, 1934, the four posse members from Texas were in Shreveport, Louisiana when they learned that Bonnie and Clyde were to go there that evening with Methvin. Clyde had designated Methvin's parents' Bienville Parish house as a rendezvous in case they were later separated. Methvin was separated from Bonnie and Clyde in Shreveport, and the full posse, consisting of Capt. Hamer, Dallas County Sheriff's Deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton (who had met Clyde in the past), former Texas Ranger B.M. "Manny" Gault, Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan, and his deputy Prentiss Oakley, set up an ambush at the rendezvous point along Highway 154, between Gibsland and Sailes. They were in place by 9:00 p.m. and waited through the next day (May 22) but saw no sign of Bonnie and Clyde.

At approximately 9:00 a.m. on May 23 the posse, concealed in the bushes and almost ready to concede defeat, heard Clyde's stolen Ford V8 approaching. The posse's official report has Clyde stopping to speak with Henry Methvin's father — planted there with his truck that morning to distract Clyde and force him into the lane closest to the posse — the lawmen opened fire, killing Bonnie and Clyde while shooting a combined total of approximately 130 rounds. By 9:15, the couple were dead. The posse, under Hamer's direct orders, did not call out a warning, or order the duo to surrender. Clyde was killed instantly from Oakley's initial head shot. Bonnie did not die as easily as Clyde. The posse reported her uttering a long, horrified scream as the bullets tore into the car. The officers emptied the specially-ordered automatic rifle, as well as rifles, shotguns and pistols at the car. According to Ted Hinton's and Bob Alcorn's statement to the Dallas Dispatch on May 24, 1934:

"Each of us six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols. We opened fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the car got even with us. Then we used shotguns ... There was smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire. After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren't taking any chances."

Following the ambush, officers inspected the vehicle and discovered a small arsenal of weapons including stolen automatic rifles, semi-automatic shotguns, assorted handguns, and several thousand rounds of ammunition, along with fifteen different license plates from various states.

When later asked why he killed a woman who was not wanted for any capital offense, Hamer stated "I hate to bust the cap on a woman, especially when she was sitting down, however if it wouldn't have been her , it would have been us."

Some sources say Bonnie and Clyde were shot more than 50 times, while other sources claim a total closer to 25 bullet wounds per corpse, or 50 total.

Bonnie and Clyde wished to be buried side by side, but the Parker family would not allow it. Bonnie's mother had wanted to grant her daughter's final wish, which was to be brought home, but the mobs surrounding the Parker house made that impossible. Over 20,000 people turned out for Bonnie's funeral, making it difficult for the Parkers to reach the grave site. Clyde Barrow is buried in the Western Heights Cemetery, and Bonnie Parker in the Crown Hill Memorial Park, both in Dallas, Texas. The following words (from a poem of Bonnie's) are inscribed on Bonnie's stone:

As the flowers are all made sweeter: by the sunshine and the dew,
So this old world is made brighter: by the lives of folks like you.

The bullet-riddled Ford in which Bonnie and Clyde were killed, and the shirt Clyde wore the last day of his life, are currently (March 2008) on display at the Gold Ranch Casino in Verdi, Nevada.

The life insurance policies for both Bonnie and Clyde were paid in full by American National of Galveston. Since then, the policy of pay-outs has changed to exclude pay-outs in cases of deaths caused by any criminal act by the insured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Parker

Bonnie and Clyde
by James R. Knight

This new book on Bonnie & Clyde does greatly to enhance the lives and times of the Barrow gang from start to finish. It is laden with new photo's and research and the authors obviously spent a lot of time and money to travel to the various sites mention in the book. I would rate this as one of the best, if not the best book on the lives and crimes of the Barrow gang. Knight and Davis are great researchers and have done an outstanding job with bringing to life the deeds and misdeeds of Bonnie and Clyde and their partners in crime. I would greatly recommend it to anyone interested in this genre.

 

[Dark Star]

Criminal Spotlight~Scott Peterson

Scott Peterson. The bastard who murdered his wife and baby, why? Girlfriend, didn't want to pay child support, sex addict, asshole, just an all around fuckhead of a guy. Scott was recently featured in the "Crimes This Day in History" thread http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=46687#post46687, so I thought I'd focus on him.

The book about him that I'm featuring is one of several based upon Scott and the selfish murders he committed. This one is by Dr. Keith Ablow.

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Scott-Peterson-Keith-Ablow/dp/0312940521/dreamindemon-20"]Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson[/ame]

The highly publicized Scott Peterson murder case captivated a public hungry for the answer to one question: Why would a man with no known history of violent crime or mental illness and with a pretty wife about to give birth brutally murder her and his unborn son? Forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow’s national media appearances, including a groundbreaking interview on Oprah, resulted in enormous public response, saying that his theories about the spawning of a killer inside Peterson were the first that made sense to them. Members of Scott’s and Laci’s families have also stated that his comments were the first that helped them understand what might have happened inside Scott’s mind. Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson takes readers into the psyche of a killer, exploring:

How Scott Peterson’s empathy for others was shattered by a three-generation “bloodline” of childhood loss and abandonment. Why an addiction to sex took root in Peterson’s psyche. Why Peterson’s meeting Amber Frey while his wife was pregnant triggered the “perfect” psychological storm. Clues to Peterson’s guilt in his interviews with Gloria Gomez and Diane Sawyer. What Peterson was probably thinking as he listened to testimony in court and received his death sentence. Why Peterson could kill again, if released.
Using contacts at the FBI, and hiring private investigators and researchers, Keith Ablow delves deeply into Scott Peterson’s life story to answer the question: How did an all-American boy turn into a ruthless killer?

From Wiki....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Peterson
Arrest

Peterson was arrested by Detective Taylor Burlingame on April 18, 2003 in La Jolla, California, in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting his father and brother and Zak O'Regan (a Canadian from Ontario who is currently attending the Culinary Institue of America) at Torrey Pines golf course, for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, Peterson was in possession of the following non-golf specific items: $15,000 in cash; four cell phones; multiple credit cards belonging to various members of his family; an array of camping equipment, including knives, implements for warming food, tents, and tarpsand also a water purifier; a dozen pairs of shoes; several changes of clothes; a gun; a t-handled double-edged dagger; a map to Frey's workplace (printed that same day); a shovel; rope; 24 blister packs of sleeping pills; Viagra; and his brother's driver's license. His hair and goatee had been dyed blond, although he claimed the lighter hair color was the result of chlorine from swimming in a friend's pool. (The pool's owner later testified that to his knowledge, Peterson had never swum in his pool, nor made use of his hot tub.) The police took all of this as an indication that Peterson had planned to flee, possibly to Mexico.

Police also briefly investigated any possible connection between Peterson and the 1996 disappearance of 19-year-old Kristin Smart, who attended Cal Poly at the same time as Scott and Laci. His name had come up on a short list of people investigators at the time had felt warranted closer investigation. Scott publicly denied this, and investigators found nothing to tie Peterson specifically in this instance of the disappearance of a female.

Trial

Initially, Peterson requested court-appointed counsel and the Stanislaus County Public Defender's Office was appointed to represent him. Chief Deputy Public Defender Kent Faulkner and Deputy Public Defender Maureen Keller were the attorneys assigned to the case. Subsequently, Peterson indicated that he had sufficient funds to hire private counsel and attorney Mark Geragos took over his representation.

On January 20, 2004, due to intense media attention and increasing hostility to Peterson in the Modesto area, a judge moved Peterson's trial from Modesto to Redwood City, California.

The trial, officially styled the People of the State of California vs. Scott Peterson, began in June 2004 and was followed closely by the media. The lead prosecutor was Rick Distaso, and Mark Geragos led Peterson's defense.

Prosecution witness Amber Frey engaged her own attorney, Gloria Allred, to protect her from the news media. Allred was not bound by the gag order imposed on everyone else involved in the trial. Although she maintained that her client had no opinion as to whether Peterson was guilty, Allred was openly sympathetic to the prosecution. She appeared frequently on television news programs during the trial, and seemed to criticize the defense at every opportunity. Allred was key in keeping many facts about her client's past from the public eye.

Peterson's defense lawyers based his case on the lack of direct evidence, and downplaying the significance of circumstantial evidence. They suggested that the remains of Conner Peterson were that of a full-term infant, and theorized that someone else had kidnapped Laci, held her until she gave birth, and then dumped both bodies in the bay. However, the prosecution's medical experts were able to prove that the baby had never grown to full term, and died at the same time as his mother. Geragos suggested that a satanic cult kidnapped the pregnant woman. He also claimed that Peterson was "a cad" for cheating on his pregnant wife, but not a murderer.

Early in the trial, one juror was removed due to juror misconduct and was replaced by an alternate, this on a complaint by CourtTV, supported by a videotape of the juror and Brent Rocha, Laci Peterson's older brother, exchanging some words while passing one another in the courthouse. Later, during jury deliberations, the jury foreman, medical student Gregory Jackson, also requested his own removal, most likely because his fellow jurors wanted to replace him as foreman. Geragos told reporters that Jackson had mentioned threats he had received when he requested to be removed from the jury. Jackson was also replaced by an alternate. On November 12 the reconstituted jury convicted Scott Peterson of first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci and second-degree murder for killing his unborn son. The penalty phase of the trial began on November 30 and concluded December 13, when at 1:50 P.M. PST, the twelve-person jury recommended a death sentence for Peterson.

In later press appearances, members of the jury stated that they felt that Scott Peterson's demeanor—specifically, his lack of emotion, and the phone calls to Amber Frey in the days following Laci's disappearance—indicated that he was guilty. They based their verdict on "hundreds of small 'puzzle pieces' of circumstantial evidence that came out during the trial, from the location of Laci Peterson's body to the myriad of lies her husband told after her disappearance." They also decided on the death penalty because they felt Peterson betrayed his responsibility to protect his wife and son.

 

[Dark Star]

Criminal Spotlight shines down on Harold Shipman

Harold Frederick "Fred" Shipman (January 14, 1946 – January 13, 2004) was an English general practitioner and convicted serial killer.

On 31 January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of 15 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation from the trial judge that he should never be released. Two years later, Home Secretary David Blunkett agreed with this recommendation.

After his trial, a public inquest chaired by Dame Janet Smith, decided that there was enough evidence to suggest that Shipman had killed a total of over 215 people, about 80 percent of them female. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man.

He attended the Leeds School of Medicine in 1964, and around this time met his future wife, Primrose May Oxtoby. They married on November 5, 1966, and she gave birth to their first child, Sarah, in March 1967; they went on to have four children in all, with the births of three sons: Christopher, Samuel, and David. In 1970, he graduated from Leeds School of Medicine and started work at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire.

In 1974, Shipman took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) in Todmorden in West Yorkshire. In 1975 he was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. He was sent briefly to a drug rehabilitation clinic in York, after which he was pronounced clean. After a brief spell as medical officer for Hatfield College, Durham, and temporary work for the National Coal Board, he became a GP at the Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in 1977.

HIS DETECTION
In March 1998, Dr Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde, prompted by Deborah Massey from Frank Massey and Son's funeral parlor, went to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, with concerns about the high death rate among Shipman's patients. In particular, she was concerned about the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had needed countersigned. She claimed that Shipman was "killing" his patients, although she was not sure whether it was negligent or intentional.

The matter was brought to the attention of the police, who were unable to find sufficient evidence to bring charges; the Shipman Inquiry later blamed the police for assigning inexperienced officers to the case. Between the time the investigation was abandoned on April 17, 1998 and Shipman's eventual arrest he killed a further three people. His last victim was Kathleen Grundy, a former Mayor of Hyde, who was found dead at her home on June 24, 1998. The last person to see her alive had been Shipman, who later signed her death certificate, recording "old age" as her cause of death.

Grundy's daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, became concerned when she was informed by solicitor Brian Burgess that a will had been made, apparently by her mother, which excluded her and her children entirely and left £386,000 to Shipman. Burgess told Woodruff to report it, and went to the police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed and examined, and found to contain traces of diamorphine. Shipman was arrested on September 7, 1998, and was found to own a typewriter of the type used to make the forged will.

The police then investigated other deaths that Shipman had certified and created a list of 15 specimen cases to investigate. A pattern was discovered of him administering lethal overdoses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates, and then forging medical records to indicate they had been in poor health.

TRIAL & IMPRISONMENT
Shipman's trial, presided over by Mr Justice Forbes, began on October 5, 1999. Shipman was prosecuted for the murders of Marie West, Irene Turner, Lizzie Adams, Jean Lilley, Ivy Lomas, Jermaine Ankrah, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie Quinn, Kathleen Wagstaff, Bianka Pomfret, Norah Nuttall, Pamela Hillier, Maureen Ward, Winifred Mellor, Joan Melia and Kathleen Grundy. All of these women had died between 1995 and 1998.

After jury deliberations of six days, Shipman was convicted on January 31, 2000 of killing 15 patients with lethal injections of heroin. The trial judge sentenced him to 15 concurrent life sentences and recommended that he should never be released. Two years later Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed this recommendation, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners. He was also convicted of forging the will of Kathleen Grundy, for which he received a further four-year prison sentence.

In February 2002, Shipman was formally struck off the GMC register.

DEATH
Shipman was found hanged in his cell at Wakefield Prison at 6:20am on January 13, 2004, on the eve of his 58th birthday, and was pronounced dead at 8:10am. A Prison Service statement indicated that Shipman had hanged himself from the window bars of his cell using bed sheets.


[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Doctor-Martins-Crime-Library/dp/0312982607/dreamindemon-20"]The Good Doctor[/ame]
by Wensley Clarkson

Product Description
Fifty-five-year-old Dr. Harold "Fred" Shipman has a noble dedication to his profession, winning the trust of his patients with ingratiating charm and an old-school bedside manner. In fact, he even made house calls--but his unsuspecting patients has no idea of the evil that lurked behind the friendly facade of the kindly doctor...

After thirty years of practice, Dr. Shipman's true nature was finally expoosed--that of a calculating killer who delivered his own perscription for death. Authorities eventually unearthed the shocking possibility that the fatherly physician had killed as many as 297 people. As body after body was exhumed from the local graveyard, the question grew more disturbing. How could such a prolific killer remain undetected for so long? What motive drove this seemingly "good" doctor to his deadly obsession with murder? And just how many people did Harold Shipman kill? The search for answers would take investigators into the life of a man who forever changed the stereotype of the sweet country doctor...

http://tinyurl.com/7e6l3

:hippie:

 

[Dark Star]

Criminal Spotlight is on Robert Pickton


[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Pickton-File-Stevie-Cameron/dp/067697953X/dreamindemon-20"]The Pickton File[/ame]
by Stevie Cameron

Robert William "Willie" Pickton (born October 24, 1949) of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia is a Canadian pig farmer and serial killer convicted of the second-degree murders of six women. He is also charged in the deaths of an additional twenty women, many of them prostitutes and drug users from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. As of December 11, 2007 he has been sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 25 years – the longest sentence available under Canadian law.

During the trial's first day, January 22, 2007, the Crown stated he confessed to forty-nine murders to an undercover police officer posing as a cell mate. The Crown reported that Pickton told the officer that he wanted to kill another woman to make it an even 50, and that he was caught because he was "sloppy".

Background

Pickton and his brother, David Francis Pickton, ran a registered charity called the Piggy Palace Good Times Society, a non-profit society whose official mandate was to "organize, co-ordinate, manage and operate special events, functions, dances, shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations, sports organizations and other worthy groups." According to investigators, the "special events" (which convened at "Piggy's Palace", a converted building on another property adjacent to the pig farm) on Burns Road were raucous gatherings that featured "entertainment" by an ever-changing cast of Downtown Eastside prostitutes.

On February 5, 2002, police executed a search warrant for illegal firearms at the property owned by Pickton and his two siblings. He was taken into custody and police then obtained a second court order to search the farm as part of the BC Missing Women Investigation, when personal items (including a prescription asthma inhaler) belonging to one of the missing women were found. The farm was sealed off by members of the joint RCMP–Vancouver Police Department task force. The following day Pickton was charged with storing a firearm contrary to regulations, possession of a firearm while not being holder of a licence and possession of a loaded restricted firearm without a licence. He was later released and was kept under police surveillance.

On Friday, February 22, 2002, Pickton was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson. On April 2, 2002 three more charges were added for the murders of Jacqueline McDonell, Diane Rock and Heather Bottomley. A sixth charge for the murder of Andrea Joesbury was laid on April 9, 2002 followed shortly by a seventh for Brenda Wolfe. On September 20, 2002 four more charges were added for the slayings of Georgina Papin, Patricia Johnson, Helen Hallmark and Jennifer Furminger. Four more charges for the murders of Heather Chinnock, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving and Inga Hall were laid on October 3, 2002, bringing the total to fifteen, and making this the largest serial killer investigation in Canadian history. On May 26, 2005, twelve more charges were laid against him for the killings of Cara Ellis, Andrea Borhaven, Debra Lynne Jones, Marnie Frey, Tiffany Drew, Kerry Koski, Sarah Devries, Cynthia Feliks, Angela Jardine, Wendy Crawford, Diana Melnick, and Jane Doe (unidentified woman) bringing the total number of first-degree murder charges to 27.

Excavations continued through November of 2003; the cost of the investigation is estimated to have been $70 million by the end of 2003, according to the provincial government. Currently the property is fenced off, liened by the Province of British Columbia. In the meantime, all the buildings have been demolished. Forensic analysis is very difficult because the bodies of the victims may have been left to decompose or allowed to be eaten by insects and pigs on the farm. During the early days of the excavations, forensic anthropologists brought in heavy equipment, including two 50-foot flat conveyor belts and soil sifters to find traces of remains. On March 10, 2004, it was revealed that human flesh may have been ground up and mixed with pork from the farm. This pork was never distributed commercially, but was handed out to friends and visitors of the farm. Another claim made is that he fed the bodies directly to his pigs.

Trial

Pickton's trial began on January 30, 2006. He pleaded not guilty to 27 charges of first-degree murder in the British Columbia Supreme Court, located in New Westminster. The voir dire phase of the trial took most of the year to determine what evidence may be admitted before the jury. Reporters were not allowed to disclose any of the material presented in the arguments.

On March 2, 2006, one of the 27 counts was rejected by Justice James Williams for lack of evidence.

On August 9, 2006, Justice Williams severed the charges and trimmed the indictment from 26 to just six counts. The remaining 20 counts have not been dismissed, however, and the crown can seek another trial (or trials) for them at a later date. Because of the publication ban, full details of the decision are not publicly available; but the judge has explained that trying all 26 charges at once would put an unreasonable burden on the jury, as the trial could last up to two years, and have an increased chance for a mistrial. The judge also added that the six counts he chose had "materially different" evidence than the other 20.

Jury selection was completed on December 12, 2006, taking just two days. Twelve jurors and two alternates were chosen.

The date for the jury trial of the first six counts was initially set to start January 8, 2007, but later delayed to January 22, 2007.

January 22, 2007 was the first day of the jury trial where Pickton faced first-degree murder charges in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Georgina Papin, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe and Mona Wilson. The media ban was finally lifted and for the first time Canadians heard the details of what was found during the long investigation. In his opening statement, Crown Counsel Derrill Prevett told the jury of evidence that was found on Pickton's property, including skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed inside. The remains of another victim were stuffed in a garbage bag in the bottom of a trash can and her blood stained clothing was found in the trailer in which Pickton lived. Part of one of the victim's jaw bone and teeth were found in the ground beside the slaughter house and a .22 calibre revolver with an attached dildo containing both his and a victim's DNA was in his laundry room. In a video taped recording played for the jury, Pickton claimed to have attached the dildo to his weapon as a makeshift silencer.

As of February 20, 2007, the following information has been presented to the court:

* The items police found inside Pickton's trailer - A loaded .22 revolver with a dildo over the barrel and one round fired, boxes of .357 Magnum handgun ammunition, night-vision goggles, two pairs of faux fur-lined handcuffs, a syringe with three millilitres of blue liquid inside, and "Spanish Fly" aphrodisiac.
* A videotape of Pickton's friend Scott Chubb saying Pickton had told him a good way to kill a female heroin addict was to inject her with windshield-washer fluid. A second tape was played for Pickton, in which an associate named Andrew Bellwood said Pickton mentioned killing prostitutes by handcuffing and strangling them, then bleeding and gutting them before feeding them to pigs. However, defence lawyer Peter Ritchie said the jury should be skeptical of Chubb and Bellwood's credibility.
* Photos of the contents of a garbage can found in Pickton's slaughterhouse, which held some remains of Mona Wilson.

Justice James Williams suspended jury deliberations on December 6, 2007 after he discovered an error in his charge to the jury. Earlier in the day, the jury had submitted a written question to Justice James requesting clarification of his charge, asking "Are we able to say 'yes' [i.e., find Pickton guilty] if we infer the accused acted indirectly?"

On December 9, 2007, the jury returned a verdict that Pickton is not guilty on 6 counts of first-degree murder, but is guilty on 6 counts of second-degree murder. A second-degree murder conviction carries a punishment of a life sentence, with no possibility of parole for a period between 10 to 25 years, to be set by the trial judge. On December 11, 2007, after reading 18 victim impact statements, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Justice James Williams sentenced Pickton to life with no possibility of parole for 25 years - the maximum punishment for second-degree murder, and equal to the sentence which would have been imposed for a first-degree murder conviction. "Mr. Pickton's conduct was murderous and repeatedly so. I cannot know the details but I know this: What happened to them was senseless and despicable," said Justice Williams in passing the sentence.

Pickton still faces a further 20 murder charges involving other female victims from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. On February 26, 2008, a family member of one of the 20 women named as alleged victims told the media that the Crown had told her a trial on the further 20 counts might not proceed.

Victims

On December 9, 2007, Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder in the deaths of six women:

* Count 1, Sereena Abotsway (born August 20, 1971), 29 when she disappeared in August 2001.
* Count 2, Mona Lee Wilson (born January 13, 1975), 26 when she was last seen on November 23, 2001. Reported Missing November 30, 2001.
* Count 6, Andrea Joesbury, 22 when last seen in June 2001.
* Count 7, Brenda Ann Wolfe, 32 when last seen in February 1999 and was reported missing in April 2000.
* Count 16, Marnie Lee Frey, last seen August 1997.Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case #98-209922.
* Count 11, Georgina Faith Papin, last seen in 1999.

Alleged victims

Pickton also stands accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of twenty other women, and is suspected in the death of several more:

* Count 3, Jacqueline Michelle McDonell, 23 when she was last seen in January 1999. Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case # 99-039699.
* Count 4, Dianne Rosemary Rock(born September 2, 1967), 34 when last seen on October 19, 2001. Reported missing December 13, 2001.
* Count 5, Heather Kathleen Bottomley (born August 17, 1976), 25 when she was last seen (and reported missing) on April 17, 2001.
* Count 8, Jennifer Lynn Furminger, last seen in 1999.
* Count 9, Helen Mae Hallmark, last seen August 1997. Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case #98-226384.
* Count 10, Patricia Rose Johnson, last seen in March 2001.
* Count 12, Heather Chinnock, 30 when last seen in April 2001.
* Count 13, Tanya Holyk, 23 when last seen in October 1996.
* Count 14, Sherry Irving, 24 when last seen in 1997.
* Count 15, Inga Monique Hall, 46 when last seen in February 1998. Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case # 98-047919.
* Count 17, Tiffany Drew, last seen December 1999.
* Count 18, Sarah de Vries, last seen April 1998.
* Count 19, Cynthia Feliks, last seen in December 1997.
* Count 20, Angela Rebecca Jardine, last seen November 20, 1998 between 3:30- 4p.m. at Oppenheimer Park at a rally in the downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case # 98.286097.
* Count 21, Diana Melnick, last seen in December 1995.
* Count 22, Jane Doe (remains found but not identified) —charge lifted; see below.
* Count 23, Debra Lynne Jones, last seen in December 2000.
* Count 24, Wendy Crawford, last seen in December 1999.
* Count 25, Kerry Koski, last seen in January 1998.
* Count 26, Andrea Fay Borhaven, last seen in March 1997. Vancouver Police Missing Persons Case # 99.105703.
* Count 27, Cara Louise Ellis aka Nicky Trimble (born April 13, 1971), 25 when last seen in 1996. Reported missing October 2002.

As of March 2, 2006, the murder charge involving the unidentified victim has been lifted. Pickton refused to enter a plea on the charge involving this victim, known in the proceedings as Jane Doe, so the court registered a not-guilty plea on his behalf. "The count as drawn fails to meet the minimal requirement set out in Section 581 of the Criminal Code. Accordingly, it must be quashed," wrote Justice James Williams. The detailed reasons for the judge's ruling cannot be reported in Canada because of the publication ban covering this stage of the trial.

Pickton is implicated in the murders of the following women, but charges have not yet been laid (incomplete list):

* Mary Ann Clark[57] aka Nancy Greek, 25, disappeared in August 1991 from downtown Victoria
* Yvonne Marie Boen (sometimes uses the surname England) (born November 30, 1967), 34 when last seen on March 16, 2001 and reported missing on March 21, 2001.
* Dawn Teresa Crey, reported missing in December 2000
* Two unidentified women

http://tinyurl.com/yxysvr

 

[brokenandtwisted]

The Pickton case is so fascinating...I might buy this book if I have time to read it. Thanks Hippie. :he:

 

[Dark Star]

Criminal Spotlight is on Diane Downs

Like with any author, some of Ann's stuff is better than others, and sometimes because of the nature of the events she's retelling. I picked up Small Sacrifices in a used bookstore several years ago, and despite several intensive household book purges since then, that book remains part of my collection. For those who don't know, it's the story of Diane Downs, who shot her three children (two survived). As you progress through the book, everything this woman does is just a degree or two (okay, sometimes more) off kilter--I finished the book feeling not only the usual outrage, sadness, etc. but also incredibly unsettled. And at the end, you still only have hints of what the children's lives were like before their mother shot them....

Thanks Lizard. I kind of forgot about this post. I was going over a true crime site reading about different criminals and the heinous acts they commit and ran across Diane Downs. Well a burnt synapse obviously still has some life because there was this little fire and the smell of smoke and I.... I remembered.....this is posted in the Lit thread somewhere. roud2:

So here is the book that Lizard recommended and a summary of this story.[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Small-Sacrifices-Story-Passion-Murder/dp/0451166604/dreamindemon-20"]Small Sacrifices[/ame]

"Downs claimed she was car-jacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon by a strange man who shot her three small children and herself. Investigators, however, got suspicious when they noticed her manner was calmer than normal for such a traumatic event. Their suspicions heightened when Downs went to see Christie for the first time; Christie's eyes glazed over with fear and her heart rate jumped. They also discovered that she called a man in Arizona with whom she'd been having an affair immediately upon arriving at the hospital. The forensic evidence also didn't match Downs' story; there was no blood on the driver's side, nor was there any gunpowder residue on the driver's panel. Downs didn't tell police she owned a .22 caliber handgun, but both her ex-husband and former lover said she did own one. Investigators later found she'd bought the handgun in Arizona, and some unfired casings had been worked through the same gun that shot the children (though the actual gun was never found). Most damningly, witnesses saw Downs' car being driven very slowly toward the hospital. Based on this and other evidence, Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984 and charged with murder, attempted murder and criminal assault.

Prosecutors argued that Downs shot her children to be free of them to continue her affair with the Arizona man ("Lew Lewiston," a pseudonym given by author Ann Rule) who did not want children in his life, strikingly similar to the later case of Susan Smith. Much of the case against Downs rested on the testimony of surviving daughter Christie Downs (nine years old at the time of the trial), who described how her mother shot all three children while parked at the side of the road, then shot herself in the arm.

Downs was found guilty on all charges, and was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. Most of the sentence is to be served consecutively. The judge made it clear that he did not wish Downs ever to regain her freedom.

Downs escaped from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center on July 11, 1987 and was recaptured in Salem, Oregon on July 21. She received a 5-year sentence for the escape.

The two surviving children, Daniel and Christie, eventually went to live with one of the prosecutors of the case. Both children suffered paralysis as a result of the shooting.

Downs is up for parole on December 9, 2008

http://tinyurl.com/32kxkm

I enjoyed reading this as well.
http://tinyurl.com/5budk4

Thanks again, Lizard.:hello: