The Life and Death of Serial Killer Israel Keyes

     Israel Keyes, a 34-year-old part time carpenter and bank robber, traveled around the country randomly targeting women to abduct, rape and murder. He owned property in upstate New York and had lived in the states of Washington and Oregon. (As a teenager he had kidnapped and sexually assaulted an Oregon girl, his first rape victim.) In 2012 the tall thin killer lived in Anchorage, Alaska.

     At eight o'clock on the night of February 1, 2012, 18-year-old Samantha Koenig was closing up shop at the Common Grounds Expresso coffee stand on Tudor Road. Keyes walked up to the kiosk and ordered a cup of coffee. After Koenig prepared his drink Keyes pulled a gun and entered the stand where he used zip ties to secure the employee's hands behind her back. A surveillance camera caught Keyes and his victim as they walked toward his white pickup truck parked in the nearby Home Depot parking lot. Using Koenig's cellphone Keyes sent a text message to her boyfriend saying that she, after having a bad day, was leaving town for the weekend.

     At his home that night Mr. Keyes raped his victim. The next morning he strangled Koenig to death, put her body into a shed on his property and flew to Houston, Texas where he embarked on a two-week cruise.

     Keyes flew back to Anchorage on February 17, 2012. He tied up Koenig's body and posed it to make it appear that she was alive. He took a Polaroid photograph of the dead girl that included a newspaper dated February 13. On the back of a photocopy of this picture Keyes typed a ransom note demanding $30,000 from Koenig's family. He followed up the ransom note with a text message instructing her father to deposit the money in a bank account Keyes could access with Koenig's debit card. The family complied with the kidnapper's demands.

     After making a withdrawal from the Koenig bank account Keyes dismembered Koenig's body and hauled the remains to Matanuska Lake north of Anchorage. Using a chainsaw he cut a hole in the ice and slipped the body parts into the water.

     On March 6, 2012 Keyes flew from Anchorage to Las Vegas where he withdrew more money from the ransom account. From Nevada he traveled to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Later that month police in Lufkin, Texas arrested Keyes when he used Samantha Koenig's debit card to take out more ransom money. The police also seized the disguise props Keyes had used when making his ransom withdrawals. Keyes also possessed several rolls of cash.

     While in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Facility, Keyes admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering Samantha Koenig. On April 2, 2012 divers recovered her remains from Matanuska Lake. Keyes also confessed to having kidnapped and murdered Bill and Lorraine Currier (he raped Lorraine) in June 2011. (Their bodies were not recovered.) In the course of discussing his life as a serial lust killer Keyes took credit for the rape and murder of five other women whose names he either didn't recall or chose not to reveal.

     Scheduled to be tried for Samantha Koenig's murder in March 2013 Keyes said he planned to kill himself long before his trial. As a result officials at the correctional facility placed him on suicide watch. (Keyes was one of 23 inmates in the jail's segregation unit where the prisoners did not have cellmates.) In August 2012 Keyes talked the psychiatric staff at the jail into taking him off suicide watch. After that a guard checked Keyes' cell every 30 to 45 minutes.

     During the early morning hours of Sunday, December 2, 2012 Keyes cinched one end of a sheet around his neck and tied the other end to his ankle so that when he extended his leg the sheet tightened around his neck. He climbed into his bunk, and using a razor blade attached to a pencil, slit his left wrist. During the night the guard checking on his cell thought the inmate was sleeping.

     The next morning at six when the guard couldn't rouse Keyes out of bed the prison authorities discovered that the prisoner had committed suicide. Since inmates were required to return razors after shaving no one was sure how Keyes had come into possession of the blade.

     Israel Keyes, without the freedom to rape and murder women, had no reason to live. Instead of waiting around ten years for the state to kill him he decided to execute himself. By committing suicide this killer also expressed the sociopath's contempt for society, the law and his victims. 

Karen Sharpe: The Grandmother From Hell

     Karen Sharpe, a 54-year-old resident of New Straitsville, Ohio in the southeastern part of the state was as far from Norman Rockwell's version of a grandparent as you can get. Sharpe, who strikingly resembled a hungover Winston Churchill in a long ratty wig, had custody of her daughter's two girls, ages 13 and 11. A person like grandma Sharpe having custody of her granddaughters meant that the girls' mother must have been dead, homeless, in drug rehab or in prison.

     The oldest of Sharpe's granddaughters had a metal plate in her head as a result of abuse from another family member. This fact did not deter grandma Sharpe, on January 19, 2014, from punching the 13-year-old in the face. Ten days after that assault, the monster grandparent took out her rage--perhaps drunken--on the younger sister. Unbeknownst to Sharpe the 13-year-old recorded that assault on her cellphone.

     When the 11-year-old granddaughter accidentally stepped on Sharpe's sore foot the grandma forced the girl to the floor and stuffed a pair of heavily soiled men's underwear into her mouth. [Whose underwear?] Grandma Sharpe added to the girl's misery and horror by taping the disgusting garment into place, then ordering the child to swallow the fecal matter. 

     The domestic depravity continued. When Sharpe removed the tape the girl vomited on the floor. The sadistic grandmother responded by ordering the child to lick up the mess.

     The victim's sister, after secretly recording her grandmother's obscene cruelty, called the police. Police officers, after reviewing video, immediately arrested Karen Sharpe. Child services personnel placed the girls into temporary foster homes.

     A Hocking County prosecutor charged Karen Sharpe with kidnapping (a felony which includes unlawful confinement) and misdemeanor counts of assault and child endangerment. The thoroughly disgusted officers booked the suspect into the Southeastern Regional Jail. The judge set her bond at $1.1 million.

     The next day at the Hocking County Municipal Court Sharpe pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted of kidnapping she faced up to ten years in prison.

     Hocking County sheriff's deputy Ed Downs told a reporter with the Columbus Dispatch that the crime was the "most disgusting, heinous" case of child abuse he'd ever seen."

     On June 3, 2014 Karen Sharpe was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser offense of endangering children. Hocking Common Pleas Judge John T. Wallace sentenced the degenerate to three years in prison.

     The public officials responsible for this guilty plea should have been thrown out of office. For a crime against nature like this there are no mitigating circumstances. Such a case makes a mockery of our criminal justice system.

Don't Flip the Judge

     Your fingers can get you into a lot of trouble. Citizens who flip-off police officers are often arrested for disorderly conduct. School kids who make firearms gestures with their hands are suspended. And if you raise your middle finger while standing before an arraignment judge they will haul you off to jail. If you don't believe this, ask Penelope Soto.

     On February 4, 2013, 18-year-old Penelope Soto, having been charged with the illegal possession of Xanax stood before Miami-Dade County Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat. Pursuant to the judge's decision regarding the amount of Soto's bail he inquired about her assets. When the judge asked Soto specifically how much her jewelry was worth she laughed.

     Visibly annoyed by Soto's casual attitude in his court room, the judge said, "It's not a joke, you know. We're not in a club, be serious about it."

     "I'm serious about it," Soto replied. "You just made me laugh. I apologize. It's worth a lot of money."
     "Like what?" the judge asked.

     "Like Rick Ross. It's worth money."

     Judge Rodriguez-Chomat, who had no idea who Rick Ross was [a south Florida rapper], again became annoyed. He asked Soto if she had taken any drugs in the past 24 hours.

     "Actually, no," she replied.

     Judge Rodriguez-Chomat set Soto's bail at a very low $5,000. Moving onto the next case, he said, "Bye, bye."

     Instead of thanking the judge for his leniency, Soto replied, "Adios."

    Obviously irritated by Soto's flippant response and dismissive attitude the judge summoned her back to the bench and upped her bail to $10,000, still a relatively low amount.

     Now it was Soto's turn to be angry. "Are you serious?" she exclaimed.

     "I am serious," he replied.

     As she was being escorted out of the court room Soto turned back to the judge, blurted "F-you," and flipped him the finger.

     Shocked and obviously angered by this prisoner's disrespect Judge Rodriguez-Chomat cited Soto for contempt of court. He sentenced her on the spot to thirty days in jail.

The Vincent Viafore Murder Case

     In 2011 Vincent Viafore, a 1986 graduate of Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappinger, New York, met 31-year-old Angelika Graswald at the Pickwick Pub in Poughkeepsie. At the time Mr. Viafore was going through a divorce. Angelika Graswald, a native of Lativa (maiden name Lipska) had been previously married.

     In 2015 the engaged couple planned to get married in Europe on the Baltic Sea.

     At four in the afternoon of Sunday April 19, 2015, Vincent and Angelika entered the choppy waters of the Hudson River in Kayaks. They were en route from Plum Point in the Cornwall-on-Hudson area to Bannerman's Island.

     Three hours and forty minutes after they set out on the Hudson River in Kayaks Angelika Graswald called 911 to report that, forty minutes earlier, her fiancee had fallen out of his kayak into the river. She capsized as well and was rescued by a boater. Mr. Viafore was still missing.

     As Graswald received treatment for hypothermia at a local hospital police and rescue crews launched a search for Vincent Viafore. According to her, Mr. Viafore was not wearing a life jacket.

     The next day while searchers continued to look for Vincent Viafore's body Graswald went on Facebook to thank everyone for reaching out to her with sympathy. "Please keep your prayers for Vince," she wrote. "Miracles ARE possible. The authorities are doing everything they can." Graswald also posted a number of photographs of herself and Viafore captioned: "I miss you my love."

     On April 21, 2015, with the search for Viafore still underway, Angelika Graswald spoke to a local television reporter about how she and her fiancee had fallen out of their kayaks into the cold, choppy waters of the Hudson River. According to her, he had said, "I don't think I'm gonna make it." She responded, "What are you talking about? Of course you will."

     Detectives questioned Graswald on April 28, 2015, nine days after the still missing Viafore capsized on the Hudson. Investigators came away from the interview doubting Graswald's account of the incident.

     On Tuesday April 30, 2015, New York State Police Major Patrick Regan announced at a press conference that Angelika Graswald had been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of the still missing Vincent Viafore. "Initially," he said, "we believed Graswald to be a survivor of a tragic accident."

     Without elaborating, Major Regan said, "Graswald made statements to us that implicated herself in the crime. We believe we know what happened."

     Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, regarding the absence of a corpse, told reporters that "It's not unheard of presenting a murder case without a body." (True, but with an autopsy providing a cause of death the case against the accused would have to be very strong. With no eyewitness, confession, a strong motive or physical evidence linking Graswald to the murder, the prosecutor had an uphill battle.)

      As the investigation progressed Angelika Graswald was held in the Orange County Jail without bond on the second-degree murder charge.

     On May 3, 2015 Angelika Graswald gave another television interview, this time from the Orange County Jail. She said the police arrested her after reading entries in her diary in which she had written that at times she wished her fiancee dead. She explained that these passages had been written "during tough times under stress." The murder suspect insisted she loved Viafore and would never have caused him any harm.

      Angelika Graswald, on July 24, 2017, pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. Under the plea agreement she received a sentence of 15 months to four years in prison. She spent 27 months in jail awaiting her trial and was released from custody in December 2017.

     Mr. Viafore's body has not been found. 

Reckless Crime Reporting

     In the world of sloppy crime reporting guns shoot "rounds," indictments are "squashed," homes are "robbed," crime scenes are investigated by "criminologists" and negligent drivers are charged with "wreckless driving." Also, criminal suspects are "allegedly arrested."

     Rifles and handguns shoot bullets not rounds. The bullet is the projectile, the round is comprised of the bullet (usually lead made from a used car battery) and the cartridge case which contains the gun powder. The round is the whole package. In semi-automatic handguns--pistols--cartridge cases are automatically ejected and can become crime scene evidence. In revolvers cartridges remain in the handgun. The term "firearm" generally applies to revolvers and pistols.

     Criminal indictments, "true bills" handed down by grand juries, are quashed. Bugs are squashed. An indictment is an early step in the criminal justice process which merely indicates there is enough evidence to justify moving the case forward to the trial stage. Indicted subjects are still presumed innocent.

     Since the crime of robbery is theft by force or threat of force, a crime against persons--homes and cars cannot be robbed. Homes can be burglarized. Burglary is an unlawful intrusion into a dwelling or occupied structure motivated by the intent to commit a crime--usually theft. It is a crime against property. Cars are broken into for purposes of theft.

     Reporters often use "murder" and "arson" inappropriately. These are legal terms. An intentionally set fire--an incendiary fire--is not an arson until someone is found guilty of unlawfully setting it. A killing or homicide becomes murder after someone is found guilty of unlawfully and intentionally taking a life.

     A criminologist is a sociologist interested in criminal subgroups such as juvenile delinquents, prison inmates and prostitutes. They are usually academics who think about the causes of crime and invent terminology crime writers consider mealy-mouthed and vague such as "anti-social behavior" which runs from first-degree murder to littering. Criminalistics (an unfortunate term coined in 1947 by Dr. Paul Kirk) refers to a form of forensic science practiced by crime scene investigation experts interested in latent fingerprints, blood stains, bullets, cartridge cases, tire tracks and other types of physical evidence commonly found at the scenes of crime.

     Criminalists analyze physical evidence for the purpose of interpreting the crime scene and identifying the people who were there. Criminologists are usually found in the classroom, criminalists are found at crime scenes, in crime labs and in courtrooms.

     A wreckless driver is a careful one who has not had a wreck. A grossly negligent driver can be charged with reckless driving.

     Criminal suspects who are taken into custody have not been allegedly arrested. The arrests are facts. Until proven guilty they are the alleged perpetrators of the charges against them.

The Brenda Delgado Murder-For-Hire Case

     At quarter to eight on the night of Wednesday September 2, 2015, 35-year-old dentist Dr. Kendra Hatcher parked her car in the garage of her upscale Dallas, Texas apartment complex. As Dr. Hatcher did so a man hiding in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee driven by a woman jumped out of the vehicle and approached her. It was at that moment the assailant shot the dentist one time with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol, killing the victim on the spot. After stealing two of Dr. Hatcher's purses the shooter climbed back into the Jeep and was driven off by his driver.

     On Friday, September 4, 2015 detectives with the Dallas Police Department arrested 23-year-old Crystal Cortes on suspicion she was the person behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee. Cortes, during her interrogation, confessed to her role in the robbery-murder. She also identified the shooter as 31-year-old Kristopher Love.

      After a week into the Hatcher murder investigation detectives came to believe that robbery had not been the motive behind the killing. The officers suspected the slaying was the culmination of a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by a 33-year-old dental hygiene student at Stanford-Brown College named Brenda Delgado.

     Two months before the murder Delgado, a Mexican citizen, and her boyfriend, 38-year-old dermatologist Dr. Ricardo Panigua, broke up following a two-year relationship. After the split Dr. Panigua began dating Dr. Kendra Hatcher. Detectives suspected that Delgado had the dentist murdered out of jealousy and rage.

     When questioned by investigators the murder-for-hire suspect admitted lending Crystal Cortes the Jeep Cherokee and meeting with Cortes and the suspected hit man, Kristopher Love. She met with the murder suspects at a Dallas apartment complex a few days before the killing. Delgado, however, denied being the mastermind behind a plot to have her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend murdered. That, she claimed was Kristopher Love's idea.

     On September 11, 2015 a Dallas County prosecutor charged Crystal Cortes with capital murder. Police officers booked her into the Dallas County Jail under $500,000 bond. Cortes' attorney, George Ashford III, told reporters that his client, before what she believed was just going to be a robbery, tried to call and warn Dr. Hatcher of the hold-up plot. The lawyer said that after the killing Mr. Love had threatened to kill Cortes' 6-year-old son if she went to the authorities.

     According to Crystal Cortes, Brenda Delgado promised her and the hit man free prescription drugs if they robbed Dr. Hatcher. Also, Delgado allegedly paid Cortes $500 to drive Kristopher Love to the robbery scene. Just before Love climbed out of the Jeep in the victim's parking garage Cortes asked him how much money Delgado paid him to commit the robbery. Love replied, "That's none of your business."

     On October 3, 2015 Dallas detectives arrested Kristopher Love on suspicion of capital murder. At the time he was taken into custody he was still in possession of the murder weapon. A magistrate set his bail at $2.5 million. In Texas a capital murder conviction can lead to the death penalty.

     About the time Kristopher Love was arrested a Dallas County prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Brenda Delgado. At that time the murder-for-hire suspect's whereabouts were unknown.

     In speaking to reporters regarding Delgado, Major Max Geron of the Dallas Police Department said: "Ms. Delgado was involved in the planning and the commission of Kendra Hatcher's murder."

     On April 7, 2016 a spokesperson with the FBI announced that murder-for-hire fugitive Brenda Delgado had been placed on the bureau's "Ten Most Wanted" list. A day later the authorities in Torreon, Mexico took the fugitive into custody.

     In October 2018 a jury sitting in Dallas, Texas found Kristopher Love guilty of murder. The judge sentenced the hitman to death.

    Before Delgado could be extradited back to Texas the U.S. prosecutor agreed not to pursue the death penalty against the suspect. According to the Mexican authorities in charge of the case it could take up to a year to complete the extradition process.

     On June 7, 2019 a jury in Dallas, Texas, after deliberating only twenty minutes, found Brenda Delgado guilty of the plot to murder Dr. Kendra Hatcher. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

Robert Durst: Money, Madness and Murder

     Robert Durst, born in April, 1942 into a wealthy family, grew up in Scarsdale, New York. His father, Seymour Durst, got rich investing in real estate. In 1949 when Robert was seven he saw his mother fall to her death from the roof of the family mansion. The authorities ruled her death a suicide. Although young Robert received extensive psychological counseling his doctors worried that this childhood trauma would lead to future mental illness. (Robert's brother Douglas claimed in 2014 that Robert did not witness their mother's death, that the lie was nothing more than a ploy to gain sympathy.)

     After graduating from Scarsdale High School and Lehigh University, Robert Durst started graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles. After acquiring a first-class education he entered the family real estate business but hit a roadblock in 1995 when his brother Douglas assumed control of the enterprise. This led to Robert's permanent estrangement from his family.

     In January 1982 Robert Durst's wife Kathleen, a woman he'd married ten years earlier, suddenly disappeared. Robert waited several days before reporting her missing and didn't bother notifying her family. The police suspected foul play but without the body the homicide investigation hit a dead end.

     In 2000, with Kathleen Durst still missing, the New York State Police re-opened the 18-year-old case as a cold-case murder investigation. Detectives suspected that Mr. Durst murdered his wife and disposed of her body.

     Not long after the renewed police interest in Kathleen Durst's disappearance, someone murdered, execution-style, Susan Berman in her home in Benedict Canyon, California. Because Berman had been Robert Durst's longtime friend and confidant, detectives believed she had knowledge of Kathleen Durst's disappearance. Investigators speculated that she had been killed because she was a potential witness against Robert Durst. The Beverly Hills police were alerted to Berman's murder by the writer of an anonymous, hand-printed note telling them of a "cadaver" in Berman's house. The writer, in addressing the envelope, misspelled Beverly as "Beverley." Handwriting experts did not have enough document evidence to identify Robert Durst as the writer of the so-called "cadaver note."

     Although interrogated by detectives as a suspect in the Berman murder, Robert Durst was not charged. The two cases remained unsolved.

     In 2000 Robert Durst moved to Galveston, Texas to get away from the criminal investigations of his missing wife and his murdered friend, Susan Berman. About this time he took up cross-dressing.

     In 2001 the body parts of 71-year-old Morris Black, Robert Durst's apartment complex neighbor, were found floating in Galveston Bay. When questioned by the police Durst claimed that Mr. Black had entered his apartment, grabbed a gun hidden in the room and pointed it at him. According to the 60-year-old Durst the gun went off accidentally when he tried to disarm his neighbor.

     While he denied murdering Mr. Black in cold blood, Durst admitted that after the killing he used a paring knife, two saws and an axe to dismember the victim's corpse before dumping the body parts into Galveston Bay. The authorities booked Durst into the county jail on the charge of murder.

     Free on bail until the Morris Black murder trial, Durst missed a preliminary court hearing on the case. The judge issued an arrest warrant for the bail-jumper whose whereabouts were unknown. A month or so later police officers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania took him into custody outside a supermarket after he shoplifted a chicken sandwich, Band-Aids and a newspaper. Durst had $500 in his pocket and $37,000 in cash stashed in his car along with two guns, marijuana and Morris Black's driver's license.

     At Durst's 2003 murder trial for killing Morris Black, his three attorneys--the best legal defense team money could buy--argued self defense. Following seven weeks of testimony the jury shocked everyone by finding Robert Durst not guilty. After this stunning verdict, lead investigator Cody Gozalas told reporters that he'd rarely had a more clear-cut case of murder against a defendant. "I believe," the investigator said, "that Mr. Durst walked up behind Mr. Black and shot him in the back of the head. There was nothing to suggest self defense. Mr. Durst never mentioned self defense until after the defense attorneys took over the case."

     The Durst case jurors, widely criticized for the acquittal, said it had been a difficult verdict for them to arrive at. While they knew the defendant had cut up Mr. Black's body, they weren't convinced he committed a premeditated murder. The jurors bought the defense theory that Durst suffered from a psychological disorder that caused him to cut up and dispose of Mr. Black's body amid a state of panic.

     At the time of Durst's murder acquittal the Durst family fortune was valued at more than $2 billion.

     Prosecutors, having lost the Morris Black murder case, charged Durst with two offenses related to Mr. Black's murder--bail jumping and evidence tampering. To avoid going through another trial Mr. Durst pleaded guilty to the lesser charges. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison. Durst served one year of that sentence. Pursuant to the terms of Durst's 2005 parole he had to obtain official permission to travel any significant distance from his home.

     In December 2005 Robert Durst made an unauthorized trip to a shopping mall near the apartment complex where he killed Morris Black. In the mall he had the bad luck to run into the judge who had presided over his murder trial. The judge, suspecting a parole violation, notified the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. Corrections authorities sent Durst back to prison on the parole violation. He remained behind bars until March 2006.

     In 2011 Robert Durst purchased a townhouse in Harlem, New York. Three years later in Houston, Texas he exposed himself at a CVS drugstore then urinated on a rack of candy. A Harris County prosecutor charged him with criminal mischief and indecent exposure.

     In February 2015 the HBO television network aired the first episode of a six-part series about Robert Durst and his connection to his wife's disappearance and the Susan Berman murder. The show was called "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst." In making the documentary New York City producers Marc Smerling and Andrew Jarecki spent 25 hours interviewing Mr. Durst on camera.

     In the course of their research the producers acquired from Susan Berman's stepson a hand-printed letter Durst had sent to her a year before her murder. On the envelope Durst had misspelled Beverly as "Beverley."

     Believing that the identical misspellings in the Berman letter and the "cadaver note" indicated that Durst had hand-printed the note sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department, the TV producers asked New York City forensic document examiner John Osborn to analyze the handwriting evidence. After comparing the note to the Berman letter and 40 specimens of Durst's known hand-printing, Mr. Osborn concluded that Durst was the writer of the cadaver document. The producers notified the authorities in Los Angeles.

     In Louisiana at eleven at night on Saturday March 14, 2015, the day before the airing of the final episode of "The Jinx," deputies with the Orleans Parish arrested Robert Durst in his room at the J. W. Marriott Hotel. A prosecutor in Los Angeles had charged him with the first-degree murder of Susan Berman.  Durst had been preparing to fly to Cuba.

     The next evening, when the final episode of "The Jinx" aired, Robert Durst was seen being confronted by producer Jarecki with the two pieces of hand-printing featuring the identical misspellings of Beverly. Durst admitted writing the Berman letter, but in obvious distress, denied writing the cadaver letter to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     At the conclusion of the filmed interview of Durst in the New York City offices of producers Smerling and Jarecki, Robert Durst asked to use their restroom. With his microphone still hot, he began talking to himself. "There it is," he said. "You're caught. What a disaster. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

     On March 17, 2015 the authorities in Orleans Parish announced that Robert Durst had been charged in Louisiana with possession of a firearm by a felon, a felony that carried a maximum ten year sentence. It was not clear how this charge would affect the progress of the Berman murder case in Los Angeles.

     While Robert Durst sat in a Louisiana jail cell, police officers and FBI agents, on March 17, 2015, searched his apartment in a 17-story condominium located in a posh Houston, Texas neighborhood. His attorney, Dick DeGuerin, called the search a publicity stunt orchestrated by the Berman case prosecutor in Los Angeles.

     In January 2016 Robert Durst pleaded guilty to the federal gun charge. The judge in Louisiana sentenced him to 85 months to be served at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

     On November 7, 2016 the 73-year-old was arraigned in the Los Angeles Superior Court for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. At that hearing Deputy District Attorney John Levin announced that the state would not seek the death penalty in the case. Durst, who pleaded not guilty, sat in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace.

     On February 26, 2020, in a Los Angeles, California court room, a jury of eight women and four men were selected in the Susan Berman murder case. 

     On May 22, 2021, following a 14 month COVID-19 delay, Robert Durst went on trial for the murder of Susan Berman. A week into the trial, the judge put the proceeding on pause when the 78-year-old defendant was hospitalized. On June 13, 2021, after doctors declared Durst fit for court, the murder trial continued over the objection of the defendant's attorneys. 

     In July 2021 the Durst trial was put on hold for two weeks due to the defendant's re-hospitalization. 

     Robert Durst, on August 11, 2021, took the stand on his own behalf, and regarding his wife Kathleen, said that he has changed his mind several times on whether or not he had seen her enter the commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in January 1982. He also testified that he lied when he told investigators he had later spoken to her on the phone. Days after Kathleen's disappearance the defendant told a detective he had called and spoken to her at her apartment in Manhattan. "That was also a lie," he said. "I was imagining that she was out someplace having fun. It hadn't occurred to me that anything had happened to her."

     While on the stand Mr. Durst also said that Kathleen fabricated and exaggerated stories about his abusing her. 

     On August 17, 2021, on the fifth day of Durst's testimony, pursuant to being cross examined by prosecutor John Lewin, the witness admitted that he would lie to save his own skin. "If you had in fact killed Susan Berman," the assistant district attorney asked, "would you tell us?"

     "No," the witness replied.

     "If you said you've taken the oath to tell the truth but you've just told us that you would lie if needed, can you tell me how that would not destroy your credibility?"

     "Because what I'm saying is mostly the truth. There are certain things I would lie about, certain very important things." While on the stand Durst admitted writing the "cadaver note" with the misspelling of Beverly and sending it to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     On September 8, 2021 the Robert Durst trial entered the closing arguments stage during which time the prosecutor called the defendant's testimony "cockroach soup" and called him a "narcissistic psychopath." 

     The jury retired to deliberate the defendant's fate on September 14, 2021.

     On Friday, September 17 the jury returned with a first-degree murder verdict. The jurors also found Durst guilty of the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing a witness. This finding carried a mandatory life sentence. The convicted murderer's sentence hearing was scheduled for October 2021.

     After being sentenced to life in October 2021 Robert Durst tested positive for COVID on November 21, 2021 and was placed on a ventilator. He died on January 10, 2022. He was 78.

The Harold Montague Ax Murder Case

     In 2010 33-year-old Harold E. Montague lived in a single-story house with his wife Erricca, their two grade school children and Erricca's disabled mother, Monica O'Dazier. The family resided on San Pedro Avenue in the central valley area of Las Vegas. Erricca worked outside the home while her husband cared for her mother who had cerebral palsy and suffered seizures. Harold had been his mother-in-law's principal caregiver for the past five years.

     At eleven-forty on the morning of Thursday, February 11, 2010, Harold Montague removed a medieval-style battle ax that hung on a wall in his house and used the weapon to hack his mother-in-law twenty times. Leaving the gravely wounded O'Dazier bleeding in the rear bedroom of the dwelling, Montague, with the bloody battle ax in hand walked out onto Pedro Avenue where he encountered a young mother pushing her 4-month-old son in a stroller.

      Mr. Montague walked up to Sonia Castro and her son Damian and started swing the weapon. He quickly hacked the baby to death, then struck the mother several times in the head and hands as she tried to protect herself. During the murderous rampage Sonia Castro begged her attacker to stop. Instead of letting up he laughed in her face. With the dead baby under the overturned stroller and the infant's mother on the ground with her jaw hanging loosely from her face, Harold Montague walked back into his house.

     A neighbor, 52-year-old Teresa Garner, witnessed the attack and called 911. After making the emergency call Garner ran to the victims. She found the baby dead and Sonia alive but horribly disfigured and bleeding profusely.

     Paramedics rushed the unconscious Monica O'Dazier to the University Medical Center. Sonia Castrol was taken to the same facility where she was listed in "extremely critical" condition. Both women would survive Montague's vicious attacks.

     Following a brief scuffle, Las Vegas officers arrested Harold Montague at his house. He told the officers that he had no memory of the assaults. They booked him into the Clark County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

     The next day, at Montague's arraignment, the judge denied him bail. At that hearing defense attorney Norm Reed characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. The lawyer said he would have his client examined by a psychiatrist, and depending upon the results of that examination, make a decision as to whether he would plead his client legally insane.

     In October 2010 attorney Reed informed the court he planned to put on an insanity defense. The judge set the trial for June 2011.

     By 2013, due to several postponements, the Montague case had not come to trial. At a preliminary hearing on December 6, 2013 attorney Reed put a Reno, Nevada psychiatrist named Dr. Tom Bittker on the stand. Dr. Bittker said that several interviews of Mr. Montague had given him a profile of this disturbed man's life. For example, as a child he had been beaten, raped and emotionally tormented by his drug-abusing parents. At age six someone murdered the boy's father.

     According to Dr. Bittker, Harold Montague didn't go beyond the fifth grade and grew up in and out of a Las Vegas juvenile detention center. As an adult he married Erricca and fathered two children with her. She worked out of the house while he stayed at home, unable to hold down a job. In 2004 he began taking care of Erricca's mother.

     Dr. Bittker testified that in his expert medical opinion, when Mr. Montague attacked Monica O'Dazier, Sonia Castro and little Damian, he was in the midst of a psychotic episode that included the delusion that God was speaking to him directly.

     Erricca Montague took the stand at the hearing and testified that for several days before the attacks her husband's behavior had been bizarre. He hadn't slept for days, stopped eating and refused to drink water. He spent his nights pacing the house and talking to himself.

     Following the preliminary hearing the judge ruled the defense had produced enough evidence to go forward with an insanity defense. (In Nevada as in most states, legal insanity is a so-called affirmative defense which means the defendant has the burden of proving, with a preponderance of evidence, that the defendant was insane at the time of the alleged criminal act.)

     On May 22, 2014 the Montague case came to an abrupt conclusion when attorney Reed announced that his client pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and battery of a police officer. Under the plea agreement the defendant was sentenced on July 30, 2014 to life in prison without the chance of parole. In prison he would receive treatment for his mental illness.

     The plea agreement meant that Sonia Castro would not have to testify at Montague's trial. Earlier, at a April 2010 preliminary hearing, she testified that when she begged him to stop his murderous assault he laughed at her. After the rampage her jaw had to be surgically reattached. The attack had also left her with an irreparably damaged eye.

     Montague's guilty plea also spared eyewitness Teresa Garner from the ordeal of re-living the crime in court. After Montague's ax-wielding madness she suffered a nervous breakdown.

     Harold Montague, on anti-psychotic medication, expressed a desire to apologize to his victims and to explain that he had acted out of a psychotic delusion. I doubt that his apology and explanation helped his victims, people who were permanently scarred physically and emotionally as a result of his bloody rampage.

Judge Michael Thornsbury

     There are many jurisdictions in the United States that have earned reputations of being awash in governmental corruption. For example, nothing is politically on the level in the states of Louisiana and Nevada and the cities of Detroit and Chicago. But to varying degrees, governmental fraud, dishonesty, crime and abuse of power on the federal, state and local levels flourishes everywhere in America. Whenever you have government, big or small, you have corruption. Government is nothing more than organized lying. Government and corruption go together like pancakes and syrup. You can't have one without the other. And corruption is not just limited to big cities and states. It exists in places like Mingo County West Virginia. 

     Mingo County, home to 27,000, is located on the state's southern border with Kentucky. This place, going all the way back to its Hatfield and McCoy days, has a history of violence and political corruption. In 1997 the people of Mingo County elected Michael Thorsbury to the office of circuit judge. As the only common pleas judge in the county he held a position of power and influence. He was the proverbial big fish in the small pond. Unfortunately he was a piranha.

     In 2008 Judge Thornsbury became romantically involved with his married secretary. A couple of months after he begged her to leave her husband, Robert Woodruff, she ended her relationship with the judge. This is when things started to get bad for Mr. Woodruff.

     Judge Thornsbury, in a effort to railroad Mr. Woodruff into prison, asked a friend to plant drugs in a magnetic box under his car. The judge, thinking that his friend had carried out the assignment tipped-off the local police.

     Having failed to set Mr. Woodruff up for a phony drug bust, Judge Thornsbury tried something else. After carefully cultivating a friendship with a West Virginia State Trooper, the judge asked the officer to file a false complaint accusing Mr. Woodruff of grand larceny. The cop followed through by accusing Woodruff of stealing drill bits from his coal company employer. Mr. Woodruff had salvaged old drill bits, but with the company's permission. Mingo County prosecutor Michael Sparks intervened on Woodruff's behalf and a local magistrate dismissed the case. The state trooper, the next year, was named West Virginia State Trooper of the Year. 

     Determined to get Robert Woodruff out of the way in order to get to his wife, Judge Thornsbury, in an effort to dig up dirt on his target, appointed a friend to the position of foreman of a Mingo County Grand Jury. This gave the Judge's friend the power to issue subpoenas as part of a fishing expedition in search of information the judge could use against Mr. Woodruff. When the recipient of one of these bogus subpoenas refused to cooperate the Judge's scheme fizzled out.

     In 2012 Mr. Woodruff was assaulted outside a convenience store by two men, one of whom brandished a handgun. Judge Thornsbury tried to turn Mr. Woodruff from being the victim of the assault to its perpetrator. Once again the county prosecutor refused to go along with the phony case.

     On August 15, 2013 FBI agents arrested Judge Thornsbury in Williamson, the Mingo County seat. The jurist was under indictment by a federal grand jury for "conspiring to violate Robert Woodruff's right not to be deprived of his liberty without due process of law." If convicted as charged the 57-year-old judge faced up to 20 years in prison.

     On the day of Judge Thornsbury's arrest the West Virginia Supreme Court suspended him without pay and lifted his license to practice law.

     Judge Thornsbury, after posting his $10,00 bond, insisted that he was innocent and predicted that he would be vindicated when his case went to trial.

     On October 2, 2013 Mr. Thornsbury entered a plea of guilty of conspiring to deprive Robert Woodruff of his constitutional rights. He also resigned from office. The federal judge sentenced Mr. Thornsbury to 50 months in federal prison.

Outsourcing Contract Murder

     Murder-for-hire cases fall generally into one of two categories: criminal homicides in which the contract for the killing is carried out and crimes in which, due to law enforcement intervention in the form of an undercover operative playing the role of the assassin, no one is killed. While still a serious felony the latter offense is one of criminal solicitation.

     The cast of a murder-for-hire plot features three principal characters: the instigator/mastermind who solicits the criminal homicide, the hit man (or the undercover cop playing the role of triggerman) and the victim, the person targeted for death. Supporting players might include a cast of go-betweens and accomplices such as people who put the mastermind in touch with the hit man or the undercover cop, and helpers brought into the scheme by the triggerman.

     A few years ago hit men in China added a new player to the traditional cast of murder-for-hire characters: The subcontractor.

     In 2013 in Nanning, China, Tan Youhui, a highly successful owner of a real estate company, hired a hit man named Xi Guangan to kill a business competitor. The murder-for-hire mastermind provided his hit man with the murder target's business card, his cellphone number and his vehicle registration information. Tan Youhui also paid Xi Guangan two million yuan ($385,000) to do the job.

     Instead of pulling off the hit Xi subcontracted the assignment to another assassin named Mo Tianxiang and kept half of the murder fee for himself. Mo, the new hitman, decided to hire a man called Yang Kangsheng to kill the murder-for-hire target. Mo gave Yang 270 yuan ($52,000) upfront and promised $96,000 when he finished the job.

     Yang Kangsheng, the second murder-for-hire subcontractor, also decided to outsource the murder assignment to a third hit man named Ling Xiansi. Yang promised this assassin 100,000 yuan ($19,000) once he completed the task.

     Ling Xiansi, the final hit man in the outsourcing chain, decided not to get his hands bloody for a mere $19,000. Instead of killing Tan Youhui's business rival, Ling went to the murder-for-hire target to convince him to fake his own death. Ling could then collect his fee from Yang without resorting to murder.

     The murder-for-hire target approached by Ling Xiansi had no intention of faking his own death. Instead, he reported Tan Youhui's plot against his life to the local police.

     Following the criminal investigation into this bizarre murder-for-hire scheme where all of the hit men wanted the blood money without spilling any blood, Nanning police officers arrested the murder-for-hire mastermind Tan Youhui and his original hit man, Xi Guangan. The authorities also took into custody all of the subcontractors in the case.

     Upon his conviction for soliciting murder, Tan Youhui received a sentence of five years in prison. The others were each sentenced to two years and seven months behind bars.