The Infamous Bell, California Public Corruption Case

     The Los Angeles Times in July 2010 exposed public corruption in Bell, one of the poorer suburban communities in Los Angeles County. Investigative journalists revealed that the city manager, his assistant, members of the city council and the chief of police of this town of 40,000 were being paid salaries that were, even by California standards, outrageously high.

     Robert Rizzo, the city manager, made $800,000 a year as part of a combined annual salary and compensation package. Mr. Rizzo lived in a mansion and was wealthy enough to raise thoroughbred racing  horses. His assistant, Angela Spaccia, pulled in $375,000 a year. Six of the part-time city council members each made $100,000 a year for essentially doing nothing. The clueless taxpayers of Bell, California were being taken on a ride.

     In March 2011, following criminal investigations by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and investigators with the state, Robert Rizzo and seven other Bell city officers were indicted on various charges of public corruption. Mr. Rizzo faced 50 counts of misappropriating public funds, conflict of interest, falsifying documents and giving himself and Angela Spaccia raises without council approval. The eight defendants were accused of stealing just under $6 million from the taxpayers of this small, debt-ridden town.

     Randy Adams, the 59-year-old hired by Robert Rizzo as Bell's chief of police in August 2009, was not among those indicted for public corruption. Chief Adams, who had been the chief of police of the Glendale, California Police Department, had been given a sweet deal by city manager Rizzo. Besides his whopping salary of $457,000 a year, Randy Adams was immediately declared physically disabled notwithstanding his impressive time at a 5 K race he ran a month before starting the job. In the Golden State, being declared officially disabled (in Adam's case a bad back and knees) meant that he could retire whenever he wanted and receive a pension equal to one-half of his salary--for life. (City manager Rizzo and his assistant were charged with falsifying public records to show that the chief was only being paid $200,000 a year.)

     Although patrol officers in California routinely made over $100,00 a year, being paid $457,000 a year to run a police department with 40 employees was excessive, even in California. For example, Charles Beck, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, an agency that employed 13,000, made $307,000 a year.

     After the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the corruption in Bell, the taxpayers revolted and threw the bums out of office.  Randy Adams left the police department in August 2010. After working a year as its chief he was entitled, pursuant to his employment contract, a pension of $22,000 a month.

     In August 2012, Randy Adams, instead of quietly enjoying the good life at the expense of Bell's struggling taxpayers, sued the city for the one-year severance pay he said he was owed by the municipality. (A year earlier the angry ex-chief sued the city for not reimbursing him for the legal costs he had incurred defending himself against the public corruption scandal.)

     In Bell, California and who knows how many other places in the Golden State, crime didn't pay nearly as well as crime fighting, assuming you could tell the difference between the two.

     On October 23, 2012 a judge ruled against Randy Adams in his suit to recover severance pay and legal expenses.

     In January 2013 former city manager Robert Rizzo, his assistant Angela Spaccia and four members of the city council were convicted of public corruption. The former city council members were each given the light sentences of five years probation. The judge sentenced Robert Rizzo and Angela Spaccia to 12-year prison terms.

The Stiletto Heel Murder Case

     At four in the morning on Sunday, June 9, 2013 a resident of the Parkline condominium high rise in Houston's upscale Museum District called 911 to report a possible domestic disturbance in an adjacent apartment. When police officers knocked on the door of the 18th floor residence they were met by a woman covered in someone else's blood.

     The woman who answered the door that morning was 44-year-old Ana Lila Trujillo, a former message therapist who was visiting the home of a University of Houston research professor employed in the school's  biology and biochemistry department. The officers found Professor Alf Stefan lying face-up in a pool of his own blood. The 59-year-old researcher in the field of women's reproductive health lay sprawled on the floor in the hall between the entranceway and the kitchen. The dead man had ten puncture wounds in his head and fifteen to twenty such wounds to his neck and chest. The death scene had all the markings of an overkill murder committed by someone who was enraged and out of control.

     The blood-covered Trujillo told the Houston police officers that the professor, her boyfriend, had physically attacked her. In defending herself she struck him with the stiletto heel of one of her pumps. When questioned by detectives at police headquarters she asked for a lawyer then clammed-up.

     Later that Sunday Ana Trujillo was booked into the Harris County Jail on the charge of murder. The next day she walked free after posting $100,000 bond.

     Since Ana Trujillo and Professor Stefan were alone in his apartment the prosecution would have to make a circumstantial case of murder based upon the physical evidence and the character of the defendant and the history of her relationship with the professor.

     On April 10, 2014 a jury in Houston, Texas found Ana Trujillo guilty of capital murder. The prosecutor successfully portrayed her as a self-serving violent woman who lived in her own world. The Trujillo defense failed to make the case that she killed an abusive lover in self-defense.

     Based on the advice of her attorney the defendant did not take the stand on her own behalf.

     The judge sentenced Ana Trujillo to life in prison.  

The Adam Kaufman "Spray Tan" Murder Case

     Adam Kaufman, on November 7, 2007, called 911 from his home in Aventura, Florida. Sounding hysterical, the 34-year-old south Florida real estate developer informed the dispatcher that he had awaken that morning to find his wife, Eleonora (Lina) slumped unconscious in the bathroom, her neck draped over a bar on a magazine rack. Paramedics rushed the 33-year-old to the hospital where she died later that day.

     One of the responding officers with the Aventura Police Department touched the hood of Adam's car and found it warm. Another officer noticed that only one side of the couple's bed had been slept in. As a result, the police didn't believe Adam Kaufman when he claimed to have slept all night next to  his wife.

     Associate Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Dr. Chester Gwen conducted the autopsy. Although the forensic pathologist found injuries on Lina's upper-back and abrasions on her chin, neck, left shoulder and chest as well as hemorrhages in her interior neck muscles, declared her cause and manner of death "undetermined."

     Without a finding of death by homicide, the Kaufman case remained in limbo for 18 months. In May 2009 Miami-Dade County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce A. Hyma ruled that Lina Kaufman had died by mechanical asphyxiation, that she had been strangled. The following month the prosecutor, even though he didn't have evidence of marital strife or a motive, charged Adam Kaufman with second-degree murder.

     At Adam Kaufman's bond hearing his attorneys revealed the defense version of the death: Lina Kaufman, with a history of fainting spells, had applied a spray-on tanning substance that resulted in a violent allergic reaction causing respiratory failure. When she collapsed she fell with her neck draped over the magazine rack bar.

     Adam Kaufman's trial commenced on May 7, 2012 before Judge Brownyn Miller in Miami, Florida. A week later, following the jury selection process, defense attorney Bill Matthewman, in his opening remarks, unveiled the new defense version of Lina Kaufman's death: while sitting on the toilet she had a heart attack and fell forward with her neck hitting the bar of the magazine rack. In addressing the prosecutor's case, attorney Matthewman said, "The state's evidence cannot even prove that a homicide occurred, let alone that Adam Kaufman did it....The case is a tragedy of errors. An innocent man was charged with a non-existent crime."

     Prosecutor Joe Mansfield in his opening speech to the jurors said that Lina Kaufman had been a "healthy, active woman, arguably in the best shape of her life. All of that ended because of the actions of that man, her husband."

      In this case the outcome would come down to how Lina Kaufman had died, naturally or by the hand of her husband. That meant that the important testimony would be of a medico-legal nature.

     On May 16, 2012, Dr. Bruce Hyma took the stand for the prosecution. The Chief Medical Examiner for Miami-Dade County testified that Lina Kaufman had died from strangulation and not a heart attack. Dr. Tracy Baker, the plastic surgeon who had enhanced Mrs. Kaufman's breasts told the jury that when he examined her a few months before her death she was in good health. Defense attorney Albert Milian asked Dr. Baker on cross-examination if Lina could have lied to him about her medical history. The witness answered yes.

     Dr. Chester Gwen, the former Miami-Dade County forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy in 2007, testified that the injuries he found on Kaufman's body had not been caused by emergency personnel who had tried to revive her. On cross-examination Dr. Gwen admitted that in April 2012 he had said that in his expert opinion the cause of Lina Kaufman's death was still a mystery to him. The forensic pathologist also said that Dr. Hyma, before he ruled the death a homicide by strangulation, had not consulted with him.

     Larissa Adamyan, a friend of the deceased woman, took the stand on behalf of the prosecution. As it turned out her testimony helped the defense more than the prosecution. The witness described the relationship between the defendant and his wife as a "loving marriage." Ten hours before Lina's death, in anticipation of Adam's brother Seth's upcoming wedding, she had gotten a spray tan.

     Aventura police officer Robert Meyers took the stand and said that at the hospital the day Lina died he overheard the defendant tell three different versions of what he had seen that morning in the bathroom. According to this witness the defendant said he found Lina's neck resting on the toilet bowl; her body slumped over the toilet; and her head hung over the magazine rack. On cross-examination defense attorney Milian got the witness to admit that none of this information was included in his police report.

     Dr. Bruce Hyma re-took the stand on May 2, 2012 to explain why it had taken 18 months to declare Lina Kaufman's cause and manner of death as a strangulation homicide. The forensic pathologist attributed this passage of time to a delayed toxicological report and the fact he wanted to be sure he made the right call. On cross-examination the defense attorney accused the medical examiner of caving to pressure from the prosecutor to declare Lina Kaufman's death a homicide.

     Prosecutor Mathew Baldwin, during the direct examination of a friend of the deceased woman, asked if the witness had been aware that the defendant, shortly after his wife's death, had been carrying on with another woman. This question brought an objection from the defense. Judge Miller called the attorneys to the bench and excused the jury. In justifying this line of questioning, prosecutor Baldwin said, "He's [the defendant] is asking this girl out with his dead wife's wedding ring on his finger the next month in December 2007. [Lina died in November.] By January and February they're having regular sex. He was not exactly devastated by his wife's passing. The best analogy I can think of is when Casey Anthony was getting a tattoo [after the death of her child]."

     Judge Miller asked the prosecutor if the state had evidence that the defendant had been unfaithful to his wife. The answer was no. Judge Miller ruled that the prosecution could not present evidence of the defendant's post-death dating. At his point defense attorney Matthewman asked the judge for a mistrial on the grounds the jury had heard the question which had planted the idea in jurors' minds that the defendant had not been a good husband. Judge Miller denied the motion. She had told the jurors to disregard the question.

     That afternoon a Miami-Dade crime scene technician testified that Lina Kaufman's fingernails contained traces of her blood and tissue, suggesting she had clawed at something around her neck. The prosecutor also called a physicist to the stand who said it would have been physically impossible for Lina to have fallen off the toilet and land with her head draped over the magazine rack. With that, the prosecution rested its case.

     On Thursday, May 24, 202l the defense launched its case by calling Lina's mother Frida Aizman to the stand. This witness told the jury that she and her family loved the defendant and after Lina's death they had become even closer. The witness also testified that in the weeks leading up to her daughter's death Lina had complained of headaches and feeling weak. She tried yoga to relieve her headaches.

     Miami-Dade fire rescue captain Joseph Carman, the first responder to enter the Kaufman house, testified that he found the defendant giving Lina CPR. According to the witness, Mr. Kaufman was wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts. The defense presented this testimony because it was consistent with Adam Kaufman's story that he awoke after a night of sleep to find his wife collapsed in the bathroom.

     Thomas Hill, a Broward County Sheriff's Office crime scene investigator took the stand for the defense and criticized Kaufman case investigators for not collecting important physical evidence. The witness said they had failed to gather Adam Kaufman's clothing, magazines from the bathroom rack and bedding from the master bedroom. The crime scene investigator also said he could see no evidence of a struggle in the small bathroom. "My goodness," he said, "she would have been kicking those walls in, and I don't see any of that." The witness said that if Lina had been strangled, the defendant would have had gouge marks on his arms from her trying to claw them from her neck.

     Dr. John Marriccini, the former Palm Beach County Chief Medical Examiner, testified that the forensic pathologists in the Kaufman case had overlooked Lina Kaufman's history of health problems which included heart disease. Celebrity forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden climbed into the witness box and said, "Lina Kaufman did not die of unnatural causes. There was no homicide, there was no murder. She died of natural causes." Dr. Baden testified that in his expert opinion Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Bruce Hyma based his homicide ruling on the work of two rookie forensic pathologists who had gotten it wrong. Dr. Baden said Lina Kaufman died of a heart attack and that the injuries to her throat from hitting the magazine rack had been exacerbated by bungled resuscitation attempts by the defendant and paramedics. Following Dr. Baden's testimony the defense rested its case without putting the defendant on the stand.

     On May 31, 2012, because the defense had portrayed the Kaufman marriage as blissful, Judge Miller allowed the prosecution to put Fara Corenblum, a rebuttal witness, on the stand. According to Corenblum, she and the defendant started an affair a month after Lina's death. The witness said she ended the twice-a-week relationship after she realized he was not ready to move on following his wife's death. For the prosecution, Corenblum's testimony, by casting a sympathetic light on the defendant, may have done more harm than good.

     Both sides made their closing arguments on Monday, June 4, 2012. The next day the case went to the jury. At five o'clock that evening the jury returned with its verdict: not guilty.

A Police Officer's Unlawful Requests

     In 2014, 27-year-old Patrick Quinn worked as a uniformed patrol officer for the Cypress-Fairbanks School District in suburban Houston, Texas. On August 11 of that year, while driving his patrol vehicle, officer Quinn pulled over a motorist in northwest Harris County. Following the stop, the officer examined the female driver's insurance card and found that her car insurance had expired. Quinn also informed the driver that he detected the odor of marijuana in the vehicle.

     Officer Quinn, after he secured the stopped driver's permission to search her car, placed the suspect in the backseat of his patrol vehicle. A search of the motorist's car resulted in the discovery of a marijuana grinder. Officer Quinn advised the detainee that he could arrest her for possession of drug paraphernalia. At that point the patrol officer stunned the woman with the revelation that he had a foot fetish. If she allowed him to sniff and lick her bare feet he wouldn't take her into custody.

     Not wanting to be arrested, the motorist removed her boots and socks. But instead of availing himself of the woman's feet, officer Quinn asked her to remove and give him her underwear. Before the woman could comply with that request, the patrol officer changed his mind and let her go.

     The day following her harrowing encounter with the disturbed cop, the woman reported the bizarre and frightening incident to the authorities. Detectives with the Harris County District Attorney's Office launched an investigation.

     Police officers arrested Patrick Quinn after detectives identified him through his latent fingerprints on the victim's insurance card.

     The Cypress-Fairbanks School District fired Mr. Quinn after a Harris County prosecutor charged him with two counts of official oppression. In the course of the investigation leading up to the arrest, detectives found three other women who had been victims of the officer's deviant propositions.

     On October 22, 2015, in a Houston Courtroom, Patrick Quinn pleaded guilty to one count of official oppression. The judge sentenced him to a year in the Harris County Jail.

The Alexander Hilton St. Andrews Poison Case

     In 2011, Alexander D. Hilton, a 20-year-old rich kid from Princeton, Massachusetts attended St. Andrews University in Fife, Scotland. The sophomore prep school graduate (St. Johns) had moved to the United Kingdom to study economics at this ancient and prestigious institution of higher learning.

     On March 5, 2011 on the eve of the annual St. Andrews ball, Alexander Hilton and a group of his fellow students were participating in a dormitory drinking game. One of the drinkers, Robert Forbes, an American from Virginia, after gulping down a bottle of red wine given to him by Hilton, became seriously ill. The 19-year-old suffered loss of balance, severe nausea, had trouble breathing and temporarily lost his eyesight. He spent a week in the hospital. Doctors said that had Robert Forbes not received medical treatment he could have died.

     A few days after the dormitory drinking game, local investigators questioned Alexander Hilton about the incident. The authorities suspected that Hilton, known around the school as an anti-social oddball, had intentionally poisoned Robert Forbes. Hilton denied mixing anything into the wine. The Scottish authorities didn't have enough evidence to charge the American with a crime, but urged him to leave the country. He was also kicked out of St. Andrews. On March 18, 2011 Alexander Hilton returned to his parents' home in Princeton, Massachusetts.

     Back in Scotland, toxicological tests revealed that the red wine that made Robert Forbes so sick had been spiked with methanol, an ingredient found in antifreeze. The sweet-smelling liquid, also known as wood alcohol, is colorless, highly flammable and deadly. A search of Hilton's computer determined that he had investigated the toxicological effects of combining red wine and methanol. In Hilton's dormitory room investigators found a funnel.

     After Alexander Hilton returned to the United States he enrolled in a college in New Mexico. About a year after the St. Andrews drinking party he learned the authorities in Scotland planned to charge him with the attempted murder of Robert Forbes. Upon learning this Hilton dropped out of the college in New Mexico and returned to his parents' house in Princeton, Massachusetts. Seven months later, in the fall of 2012, the prosecutor in charge of the case in Scotland charged Alexander Hilton with attempted murder.

     On February 4, 2013, under an extradition treaty the United States had with the United Kingdom, United States Marshals took Alexander Hilton into custody. The federal authorities hauled the former St. Andrews student to the Central Falls, Rhode Island Detention Center where he was placed under suicide watch.

     Hilton, on February 21, 2013, appeared at his bail hearing in federal court in Boston before a U. S. magistrate judge. Assistant United States Attorney David J. D'Addio, in arguing against bail for this defendant, said, "This is an attempted murder case, a serious case, and we can't lose sight of that. The evidence before us is that Mr. Hilton deliberately poisoned a student at St. Andrews."

     Hilton's defense attorney, Norman S. Zalkind, argued that because his client was seriously mentally ill bail should be granted in order that the defendant could continue taking his medication and not be denied psychiatric therapy. According to the defense attorney, if Alexander Hilton remained in custody he was "...going to get sicker and sicker and sicker." Mr. Zalkind described Hilton as an extremely intelligent person with the socialization skills of a 14-year-old. The defense lawyer wondered why someone at the university didn't notice Hilton's mental problem after he started flunking his classes. 

     The U.S. magistrate judge withheld Hilton's bail decision pending the outcome of his extradition hearing scheduled for March 7, 2013.

      On March 7, 2013, the federal judge certified Hilton's extradition to Scotland. Following that ruling the U.S. magistrate judge allowed the suspect to post bail. Hilton's attorneys immediately appealed the extradition certification to a federal court of appeals.

     Robert Forbes, in March 2013, filed a personal injury suit against Alexander Hilton in federal court. A federal judge later dismissed the civil lawsuit. (It may have been settled.)

     The federal court of appeals, in February 2014, granted Alexander Hilton a stay of extradition on grounds he was mentally incompetent to stand trial in Scotland.

     Alexander Hilton, in May 2015, was extradited to Scotland to stand trial in the attempted murder case. In July 2015 the defendant pleaded guilty as charged pursuant to the claim that, at the time of the poisoning he had been mentally ill. Judge Lord Burns of the High Court in Edinburgh sentenced Mr. Hilton to three years in prison. 

The Krystal Marie Barrows Police-Involved-Shooting Case

     Eleven people were inside a mobile home near Chillicothe, Ohio when, at 10:30 PM on December 11, 2013, a dozen or so members of a local drug task force unit rolled up to the dwelling with a no-knock warrant to search for guns and drugs. One of the occupants of the trailer house was a teenage girl.

     Just before breaking into the home one of the heavily armed U.S. 23 Task Force officers tossed a flash bang grenade through a window. At the moment the device detonated officers forced their way into the house.

     Following the initial chaos created by the SWAT-like raid, officers found Krystal Marie Barrows slumped on the living room couch. The 35-year-old mother of three had been shot in the head. She died shortly after being flown by helicopter to the Wexner Medical Center in Columblus.

     The raiding police officers arrested two women and four men for illegally possessing pistols, assault rifles and heroin. The task force cops also recovered stolen goods and a significant amount of cash. During the raid none of the mobile home occupants pulled a gun or fired a shot. This meant that Krystal Barrows had been shot by one of the task force officers.

     According to the results of a preliminary police inquiry into Barrows' death, she had been shot by Ross County sergeant Brett McKnight. The eleven-year veteran of the Ross County Sheriff's Office had accidentally discharged his sidearm outside the trailer when the flash bang grenade went off. The bullet pierced the trailer home's exterior wall and hit Barrows in the head.

      Other than a misdemeanor drunk and disorderly conviction, Krystal Barrows did not have a criminal record. Her sons were aged 19, 14 and 9. Detectives with the Ohio Bureau of Investigation looked into the case to determine if Sergeant McKnight had fired his gun recklessly.

     In March 2015, after a Ross County grand jury declined to indict Office McKnight for criminal homicide or lesser charges, the officer returned to work without any disciplinary action.

     Two years after the grand jury refused to indict the officer, the Ross County Sheriff's Office and other wrongful death defendants settled a lawsuit filed by Krystal Barrows' family for $156,000.

Failing to Stop a Murderous Serial Stalker

     Scottye Leon Miller, a violent, sociopathic stalker of ex-girlfriends and other women unfortunate enough to have crossed his path, lived in Burien, Washington, a King County town of 33,000 located south of Seattle. Between 2002 and 2010 Mr. Miller stalked, harassed, threatened and assaulted several women. His arrest record featured 15 domestic violence related convictions and six court protection order violations. It was just a matter of time before he killed one of his victims.

     In 2008 the violent ex-con started dating Tricia Patricelli, a 30-year-old mother of two daughters who lived in the nearby city of Auburn. In January of the following year Scottye Miller forced his way into Patricelli's apartment and assaulted her in front of her children. A local prosecutor charged the 30-year-old subject with burglary and third-degree assault. The defendant pleaded guilty and received a short sentence in the King County Jail. (Because home intrusion is a violent felony the judge should have sentenced Miller, given his criminal record, to twenty years in prison.)

     Miller served less than a year in jail on the Patricelli burglary/assault conviction. In January 2012 Tricia Patricelli called 911 and reported that Miller had threatened to kill her and was chasing her in the parking lot of the apartment complex. "Please hurry, he is going to kill me!" she screamed. The police arrived and took Miller into custody. To the responding officers, Tricia Patricelli said, "You don't know who you are dealing with. He is going to kill me."

     Scottye Miller, convicted of fourth-degree assault and harassment, was sentenced to another short stretch in the King County Jail. The fact he was behind bars, however, did not stop this man from continuing to terrorize his victim. While serving his time Miller wrote Patricelli letters in which he promised to kill her when he got out of jail. Apparently in King County, Washington victims of stalking and assault did not get relief even when their offenders were in custody. For a victim of this type of crime this reality must have been frightening.

     Scottye Miller on October 12, 2012 walked out of jail a free man. This meant serious trouble for Tricia Patricelli, the object of this serial stalker's obsession and pathological wrath. The criminal justice system, at this point, had no solution for Patricelli's life-threatening predicament. It didn't take a psychic detective to predict bad things for this vulnerable woman.

     At eight-thirty in the morning of October 30, 2012, just two weeks after Miller's release from the King County Jail, neighbors heard the screams of a woman coming from Tricia Patricelli's apartment. Moments after the woman went silent witnesses saw a man meeting Miller's physical description walk out of the building. Someone called 911.

     Responders to Patricelli's apartment found that Scottye Miller had stabbed Tricia Patricelli to death in the bathroom. He had stabbed her in the face, neck, torso and back--22 times in all. Police arrested him shortly thereafter at a nearby bus stop. Miller denied any knowledge of the stabbing but admitted that he had sent the dead woman text messages in which he had threatened to kill her. Miller told the arresting officers that he had been dating the victim for four years and had lived with her, on and off, during half of that time.

     Shortly after Patricelli's murder, investigators found three bloody knives, a pair of blood-stained gloves and the victim's cellphone at the foot of a fence near the apartment complex. During a second interrogation Scottye Miller confessed to the killing. He said that in the midst of a fight in Patricelli's apartment he just "snapped." After "snapping," Miller slipped on a pair of gloves, and using the three knives he had brought with him to Patricelli's dwelling, started stabbing her. The bloody assault ended up in Patricelli's bathroom where she died.

     On November 15, 2012 a King County judge arraigned Scottye Miller on the charge of first-degree murder. The homicidal stalker was back in jail under $1 million bond.

     In December 2013 a jury found Miller guilty of first-degree murder. Two weeks after the verdict the judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison.

     The Scottye Miller case reminds us of a frightening truth about our criminal justice system. The police cannot arrest dangerous people for what they might do. Law enforcement authorities only spring into action after the harm is done. In this case it was too late to protect the victim's life. Our system of criminal justice is designed more for the protection of the criminal than it is for the safety of the victim. Women being stalked, threatened with death and assaulted by pathological criminals like Scottye Miller cannot look to the police or the courts for protection. They either have to flee and hide, hire a contract killer or buy a gun and do the job themselves. None of these options are good, but neither is being hounded, assaulted, then murdered in your own bathroom by some low-life sociopath.  

Prison Escape By Computer

     Inmates have been known to tunnel, climb, sneak, saw, assault and bribe their way out of prisons and jails. But in central Florida a pair of convicted murderers managed to escape by forging court documents.

     On September 27, 2013, an official with the Florida Department of Corrections ordered convicted killer Joseph Jenkins released from the Franklin Correctional Institution where he had been serving a life sentence. In 1997 Jenkins murdered Roscoe Pugh in an Orlando robbery that went bad. The 34-year-old's ticket to freedom was a phony court document that reduced his life sentence to fifteen years. The release order bore the signature of Chief Circuit Judge Belvin Perry. The forged corrections paperwork included a motion filed by a local prosecutor in support of the new sentence. The phony documents had been processed by the Orange County Clerk of Courts Office.

     On October 8, 2013 another convicted murderer serving a life sentence at the Franklin County prison near Tallahassee walked out of the prison. Charles Walker had killed Cedric Slater in 1998. At his trial Walker claimed that because the victim bullied him he fired three shots to scare him off. Instead of scaring Slater, Charles Walker shot him dead. The Orlando jury found him guilty of second-degree murder.

     Corrections authorities released the 34-year-old Walker after receiving the same set of forged documents that freed Joseph Jenkins. It was extremely rare for a trial judge in cases involving convictions affirmed on appeal to order reduced sentences. Moreover, prosecutors rarely supported shortened sentences. To say that someone at the Florida Department of Corrections was asleep at the switch would be an understatement. After their releases both men went to the Orange County Jail where they registered as felons as required by law.

     According to investigators with the Florida Department of Corrections, the forging lifers had either been helped by a jailhouse lawyer with computer skills or an outside person with paralegal experience.

     Judge Belvin Perry told an Associated Press reporter that "Someone with the aid of a computer lifted my signature off previously signed documents, which are public record." [Judge Perry, in 2011 presided over the Casey Anthony trial. As a result his signature was available on public documents and accessible online.]

     According to Judge Perry, "In my 35 years in the judicial system, I have never seen the state of Florida file a motion to correct an illegal sentence. One of the things we have never taken a close look at is the verification of a particular document to make sure it is the real McCoy." 

      
     At 6:40 PM on October 19, 2013, U. S. Marshals and officers with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins at the Coconut Grove Motor Inn in Panama City. A tip from a person who knew both men led to their arrests. 

Anthony Novellino: The Pig Mask Murder Case

     In 2010 after years of marriage, Anthony Novellino and his wife Judith, a teacher at Morris Catholic High School in Denville Township, New Jersey, couldn't stand each other. She accused him of being verbally abusive and controlling. He claimed that because she was such a lousy housekeeper the house was always a mess. To back up his accusation he emailed photographs of the unkempt home to family and friends.

     The couple also fought over their oldest son Anthony A. Novellino Jr., a resident of nearby Parsippany. Over the past few years police officers arrested Novellino Jr. for possession of drugs. He had also been charged with auto theft. Judith Novellino treated her drug-addicted son with compassion and accommodated his needs such as giving him money. The father, fed up with his son, believed that tough-love such as jail was the best way to deal with the problem.

     Judith Novellino filed for divorce and on June 8, 2010 it became final. According to the divorce settlement she would receive $110,000, her share of the house, plus $150,000, her half of their IRAs and bank savings. Mr. Novellino made no secret of the fact he felt cheated in the distribution of the family assets.

     On June 19, 2010, eleven days after the finalization of the breakup, Anthony Novellino came home and found Judith in the house retrieving her personal belongings. They argued and he became enraged. The confrontation came to a bloody end when he stabbed her 84 times with an 8-inch kitchen knife. Before he packed some of his belongings and walked to his car, Mr. Novellino slipped a pig mask over his former wife's head.

     Christina German, the divorced couple's daughter, discovered her mother's body in the bathroom when she came to the house to help the 62-year-old move her belongings to an apartment in Parsippany.

     Five days after the brutal murder police in Puyallup, Washington took Anthony Novellino into custody. The 66-year-old fugitive had driven across the country to be with a woman he had met on the Internet. Assistant Morris County prosecutor Maggie Calderwood charged Mr. Novellino with murder and several lesser offenses.

     When interrogated by detectives in New Jersey the suspect claimed he had "hit" his former wife twice with the knife in self defense. The judge denied Novellino bond. Officers booked the suspect into the Morris County Jail where he would await his day in court.

     The Novellino trial got underway in a Morristown Superior Court on July 7, 2014. In his opening remarks to the jury the defendant's attorney, Michael Priarone, said his client, in a fit of temporary insanity attacked his wife. This act of violence, according to the defense attorney, was entirely out of his client's character. As a result, attorney Priarone wanted the jury to find Mr. Novellino guilty of what he called "passion provocation manslaughter," an offense that carried a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

     Anthony Novellino's attorney moved to have the death scene pig mask excluded from evidence on the grounds it was "highly prejudicial" to his client. The judge denied that request.

     On July 22, 2014, after just three hours of deliberation, the jury found Anthony Novellino guilty of murder, hindering apprehension, tampering with evidence and two counts of illegal weapons possession.

     At the September 12, 2014 sentence hearing the judge sentenced 70-year-old Anthony Novellino to 50 years in prison. The overkill and the pig mask had sealed his fate.

The Tomeikia Johnson Murder Case

     Off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Tomeikia Johnson and her husband Marcus Lemons started arguing while having drinks on February 21, 2009 at the T.G.I. Friday bar in Compton, California. At 11PM, after the 32-year-old cop paid the bill, she and Lemons, a barber and locally known amateur bowler, left the restaurant with the CHP officer behind the wheel. About an hour later Tomeikia Johnson pulled up to her parents' Compton home with her husband's dead body in the BMW. Mr. Lemons had been shot point-blank in the head with his wife's handgun. Tomeikia Johnson's mother called 911.

     Pending the results of the homicide investigation conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, the CHP re-assigned Johnson to desk duty. She told investigators that she and her husband, after they left the bar, continued to fight. When she pulled the car off the road he became physical. As they struggled for control of the gun it went off and killed him. According to her account of the shooting she was defending herself against an abusive husband.

     Detectives looking into the shooting believed that Johnson had pulled the car off the road, reached into her purse, took out her gun and shot Markus Lemons in the head. The Los Angeles County deputy district attorney handling the case believed that Johnson had murdered her husband. In January 2011 sheriff's deputies arrested Tomeikia Johnson on the charge of first-degree murder as she sat at her CHP desk. (From the beginning the CHP had cooperated with the investigation.) Initially held in the county jail on $2 million bond she made bail and was released.

     In January 2012, with the defendant's family seated on one side of the courtroom and her dead husband's relatives gathered in the other half of the gallery, the Yomeikia Johnson trial got underway in downtown Los Angeles. In her opening statement to the jury Deputy District Attorney Natalie Adomian laid out the prosecution's theory of the shooting. According to the prosecutor, after Johnson pulled the BMW off the road, she pulled out her gun, pressed the muzzle against his head and pulled the trigger.

     Over the next several days prosecutor Adomian, to support the state's assertion the killing had been intentional, put a blood spatter interpretation analyst as well as a gunshot residue expert on the stand. The experts testified that the pattern and location of the blood and powder staining did not support the defendant's account of the shooting. The forensic scientists were followed by a series of witnesses who portrayed the defendant as having an aggressive personality and a drinking problem. These witnesses characterized Marcus Lemons as a peaceful, nonviolent husband who had taken a lot of abuse from his wife. Since Johnson hadn't confessed and there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial.

     To establish that his client had been an abused wife, and that the shooting had occurred during a life and death struggle for the gun, attorney Darryl Stallworth put the defendant on the stand realizing that the outcome of the case depended upon Tomeikia Johnson's credibility. Defense attorney Stallworth, to make the case for his client's innocence, had to put Marcus Lemons on trial. He had to attack a dead man, always a risky move in a murder trial.

     According to the defendant, a week before her husband died while trying to kill her, he had given her reason to fear for her life. They had gotten into an argument while driving back to Los Angeles from a bowling tournament in Las Vegas. She told him to stop the car, and when he pulled off the road, she ran to a nearby truck stop and called 911 and reported that her husband had gotten possession of her gun and wanted to kill her. (No charges were filed against Lemons.) Johnson also testified that in 2008 Mr. Lemons attacked her in a Las Vegas hotel room, injuring her neck. No charges were filed in that case either.

     After giving testimony intended to establish Marcus Lemons as the abuser in the marriage, Johnson provided her account of how he died: After leaving the T.G.I. Friday bar in Compton she and Lemons continued to argue. He became so angry he reached over and started choking her, forcing her to pull off the highway. He grabbed the keys out of the ignition and told her to walk home. She climbed out of the BMW and started running. Worried that he would take the gun out of her purse (left behind in the car) and shoot her, she returned to the vehicle. As she and her husband reached for the gun it fell to the ground. When she picked it up the pistol went off, killing him.

     "Did you want to fire that weapon?" asked the attorney.

     "No."

     "Did you want to kill your husband?"

      "No," the defendant replied.

     The defense rested. Following the closing arguments and the judge's legal instructions the case went to the jury. If jurors believed Johnson's account of the shooting they would acquit her. If not, she would not be walking out of the courthouse a free person.

     On January 23, 2012, the jury, after deliberating slightly more than a day, found Tomeikia Johnson guilty of first-degree murder. She fainted and paramedics rushed to the defense table and wheeled her out of the courtroom on a gurney.

     At Johnson's March 9, 2012 sentencing hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry, her attorney asked the judge to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. Judge Perry denied the request and sentenced Johnson to 50 years to life. Apparently the judge didn't buy her story either. As Johnson wept, her mother yelled "I love you Tomiekia!" This set off a raucous back and forth in the gallery between the opposing families.