The Presumed Suicide of "Storage Wars" Character Mark Balelo

     The one thing truly real about "reality" TV is that the character/actors on these shows can have complicated and troubled lives off-camera. This may have been true for Mark Balelo, a 40-year-old Simi Valley auctioneer who appeared regularly on A& E's "Storage Wars." The series features a team of auctioneers who travel around southern California selling off the contents of reclaimed storage units. The handful of regular buyers who bid for the unseen locker contents comprise the stars of the show. These regular bidders each play to their assigned character roles featuring a lot of false bravado and fake trash-talking. Each week they compete with each other to see who profits most from their blind purchases. (They also compete for screen time.) The show has become so popular there have been spin-off series set in Texas and other venues. (Dave Hester, a former "Storage Wars" star, recently sued the show. According to the plaintiff, producers salt the storage units with valuables to make the episodes more exciting.)

     Mark Balelo, born in Portugal, came to America from Brazil at age fourteen. He lived in Simi Valley where he owned and operated a gaming store called The Game Exchange. In 2011, Balelo opened his auction house, Balelo, Inc. That year, as the character "Rico Suave," Balelo, who'd show up at auction sites carrying a bag filled with $50,000 in cash, began bidding against the show's stars. In 2011, Balelo made his "Storage Wars" mark when he purchased a $1 million Superman comic book that had been missing from the actor Nicolas Cage's collection for ten years. Balelo returned the 1938 Action Comics edition to its former owner.

     Through the reality TV show, Balelo developed a larger-than-life persona of  the high-rolling, playboy/entrepreneur. He promoted this phony image on his Facebook page with statements like: "I fly private planes, race cars, and love going to Las Vegas and put on a show. I own several businesses and participate in many TV shows including "Storage Wars." I am currently working on a new reality show of my own."

     In 2011, at the height of his "Storage Wars" notoriety, Balelo served 45 days in the Ventura County Jail after violating the terms of his 2010 probated sentence stemming from a 2009 drug conviction. He had been caught transporting a gun he had acquired pursuant to a storage unit purchase.

     On Saturday, February 9, 2013, the Simi Valley police arrested Mark Balelo for being under the influence of a controlled substance, and the possession of methamphetamine. On Sunday, after making bail, Balelo asked his fiancee to come to his office. According to his girlfriend, Balelo was so distraught over his drug arrest he was afraid that if he were left alone he'd harm himself. After they talked awhile in the auction house office, Balelo took a nap. When he awoke he said he felt a lot better. His fiancee, no longer worried about him, went home.

     On Monday morning, February 11, 2013, an auction house employee found Mark Balelo slumped in his car parked inside the company garage. The engine was running, and Balelo was not breathing. According to the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office, Mark Balelo had died of asphyxiation from carbon monoxide and exhaust fumes.

     On February 19, 2013, the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office officially declared Mark Balelo's death a suicide. 

Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius: Girlfriend's Death Accident or Murder?

     In South Africa, 26-year-old Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee Paralympic champion and 2012 Olympics sprinter, is a hero and household name. Born without fibulas, Pistorius had both legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday. In America, he has appeared on the cover of GQ Style magazine, and made last year's People's list of "Sexiest Man Alive." The athlete's Twitter followers number 230,000. Because he competes with carbon fiber prosthetic blades, Pistorius is known around the world as the "Blade Runner."

     In 2009, Oscar Pistorius moved into an upscale neighborhood near Pretoria with his three dogs. In his house nestled amid an enclave of dwellings surrounded by a high, razor-wire-topped wall, Pistorius kept a handgun by his bedside, a baseball bat and cricket bat behind his bedroom door, and a machine gun near a window. Over the past few years Pistorius had crashed one of his cars, his boat, and had injured himself on a dirt bike.

     In September 2009, Pistorius spent 17 hours in jail after being charged with common assault, a charge based upon a complaint filed by Cassidy Taylor-Memmory, a student at the University of Pretoria. The student accused him of slamming a door on her during a fight at his house following a party. In November 2012, he threatened to "break the legs" of a South African football (soccer) player whom he believed had slept with his then girlfriend. The director of public prosecutions decided not to go forward with the case.

     In the tradition of dashing, world-class athletes, the blade runner, in 2013, was dating a tall, blond cover-girl. Reeva Steenkamp, however, was more than just a trophy-squeeze. The 30-year-old South African face of Avon cosmetics, and recent contestant on a South African reality TV show, possessed a law degree. She was also a spokesperson on behalf of the nation's battered and raped women. Steenkamp was better educated than her boyfriend, and just as famous.

     On Thursday, February 14, 2013, Steenkamp had been scheduled to speak at a Johannesburg school. It was going to be one of those follow-your-dreams motivational talks. (When you're not smart, beautiful, or healthy, there are no dreams to follow. I'm not a fan of this "look-at-me" genre of speeches. I think they do more harm than good.) Reeva Steenkamp didn't make it to the school that day. Instead of seeing a celebrity, kids would be watching her on television news. So much for chasing your dreams.

     During the early morning hours of February 14, 2013, Pretoria police officers and paramedics responded to a report of a shooting at Oscar Pistorius' luxury house. The first responders found Reeva Steenkamp lying on the floor bleeding from several gunshot wounds. Paramedics pronounced the woman dead.

     Oscar Pistorius told the officers he had mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder. He had shot her four times through a bathroom door. Accidental killings of this nature are not uncommon in South Africa, one of the most violent and dangerous countries in the world. There were 16,766 home invasions in the nation last year.

     Because the police had been previously called to the Pistorius house on domestic violence complaints, and the overall look of the death scene, the police arrested one of People magazine's most sexy men on suspicion of murder.

     On Friday, February 15, Oscar Pistorius, after being formally charged of murder, broke down in tears as he stood before magistrate Desmond Nair. The magistrate postponed the suspect's bail hearing to give prosecutors time to make their case of premeditated murder.

     The Pistorius affair might remind some American true crime buffs of the Phil Spector murder case in southern California. While Spector wasn't a hero or household name, he had been an eccentric icon in the music business. The homicides are similar in that women were shot to death in the homes of these men in cases without third-party eyewitnesses. Spector, who claimed the dead woman had committed suicide by shooting herself in the mouth, was convicted after two trials. The Pistorius case, because it involves an internationally known athlete and a beautiful young woman at the peak of her fame, will remain in the world's headlines until it is resolved. The Spector case received little media attention outside of southern California. In all probability, the Pistorius case, like the Spector murder, will feature forensic ballistics, blood spatter interpretation evidence, and dueling criminalists.

UPDATE

     According to the City Press, the local Pretoria newspaper, police found a bloody cricket bat at the scene of the alleged murder. According to the paper, Steenkamp's skull had been crushed.

     Neighbors reported having heard a couple arguing in the Pistorius house at l:10 that morning. They next heard intermittent gun shots starting at 3:30 AM. Police have found steroids in the house which has prompted speculation that Pistorius killed Steenkamp in a steroid-fueled rage. It appears that the suspect's claim that he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder is out the window. Pistorius might be heading toward an insanity plea.    

Two Hit-and-Run Cases In Youngstown, Ohio: Was Robert Brown the Victim of Premeditated Murder?

     On the night of February 2, 2013, Robert Brown was walking to his pickup truck from Duka's Bar on Youngstown, Ohio's south side. As the 23-year-old and a friend were crossing the street that Saturday, a speeding car ran him down and kept going. Brown, who was engaged to be married, died of his injuries shortly after the hit-and-run.

     Five days after Brown's violent death, the Youngstown Vindicator published an article about a candlelight vigil in Brown's honor to be held in front of Duka's Bar on Friday evening, February 8. Brown's mother Jewell and his fiancee Bianca Caradine had organized the event.

     The day after the newspaper article, fifty people were gathered at the spot of the fatal hit-and-run. At 6:30 that evening, a vehicle described by witnesses as a white Pontiac with its headlights off, smashed into a couple of parked cars before plowing into the gathering of Brown's family and friends. As the car sped from the scene, it dragged one of the victims, 19-year-old Tyler Austin, 70 feet.

     Five young men were rushed to the St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown where Tyler Austin, the most seriously injured, was in critical condition. (The other four victims have been treated and released.)

     The day after the candlelight vigil, the Youngstown police received a tip regarding a damaged vehicle that may have been involved in the hit-and-run. The car, parked outside a house in Youngstown, was a 1997 white Pontiac Sunfire. Officers had the suspect vehicle towed to the police impound lot where it would be processed for evidence that might link it to the crime. The police did not arrest the owner or anyone else associated with this vehicle.

     It doesn't seem likely that the vigil hit-and-run was some kind of fluke coincidence. If one assumes that the second hit-and-run incident was connected to Robert Brown's death a week earlier, it follows that he could have been the victim of a premeditated murder. This begs the questions: who murdered Robert Brown, and why? 

Did Mailman Daniel Villasensor "Go Postal" With Girl in Park?

     On Monday afternoon, February 4, 2013, Daniel Villasensor, a 55-year-old U.S. Post Office employee who'd been on the job since 1981, was in a public park outside of Los Angeles. Dressed in his postal uniform, Villasensor asked an 11-year-old girl directions to the public restrooms. After the girl directed him to the facility, Villasensor accidentally entered the women's section. He realized his mistake and quickly retreated from the women's room. Outside the facility he was greeted by the girl and her friend who laughed and made fun of him.

     Apparently infuriated and humiliated by what he considered taunting, the postman pushed the 11-year-old girl. When the frightened kid ran, he gave chase. Villasensor caught up with the girl, and according to reports, grabbed her by the throat and began choking her. Employees of Bristow Park heard the young victim's screams and came to her rescue.

     Villasensor, with the park employees approaching, let the girl go, ran to his car and drove out of the park. Deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office arrested him a short time later.

     A Los Angeles County prosecutor has charged the postal worker with felony cruelty to a child, and assault on park property. Daniel Villasensor has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The judge set his bail at $100,000.

    Villasensor, who was on duty at the time of the alleged attack, has been placed unpaid leave.

     This is one of those crime stories that, without more information, doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would a man who has worked for the federal government 32 years attack an 11-year-old girl for laughing at him?  Is he married? Does he have children? One also wonders what Villasensor was doing in the park, and why he couldn't find the public restrooms? If he had been delivering mail, he should have been familiar with the area. Was he there with someone else? Does he live near the park? Since this is not a headline case, we may never know the answers to these and other questions.

     

Six Spanish Tourists Raped by Acapulco, Mexico Gang

     Acapulco, the famous vacation mecca in the Mexican state of Guerrero on the country's Pacific Coast, has become increasingly more dangerous. Once an oasis amid rampant drug gang violence, the crime has filtered into the city. The violence comes from rival drug cartels fighting for control of drug routes from South America.

     In 2010, 20 million Americans visited Acapulco. Today, following travel warnings issued by authorities in the United States and Great Britain, hotel occupancy rates in the city have fallen to 46 percent. It's the threat of crime that is killing Acapulco's tourist industry.

     On February 1, 2013, a pair of Mexican tourists returning from a beach east of Acapulco were shot and wounded by members of a masked self-defense squad at an improvised roadblock. To defend their neighborhoods against drug gang violence, citizen self-protection units have sprung up throughout the region. The tourists were fired upon because they failed to stop at the roadblock. (The tourists probably thought the men blocking the road were drug criminals.)

     At two in the morning of Monday, February 4, 2013, five men wearing face-masks broke into a beach bungalow on the outskirts of Acapulco. The picturesque beach house had been rented by a Mexican woman, six Spanish women, and seven Spanish men. The armed intruders, motivated by robbery and "to have some fun," tied-up the seven men with phone cords and bikini straps. Over the next five hours, the robbers raped the six Spanish women. The rapists spared the Mexican woman because of her nationality. The rape victims were in their twenties.

     According to the Guerrero state attorney general, if investigators determine that the crime was related to drug cartel activity, the case will be turned over to the federal authorities. Military checkpoints have been set up in an attempt to quickly identify and arrest these violent intruders. The crime has attracted international media attention, and presents a nightmare for Acapulco's tourism business, an industry already suffering from Mexican drug violence.

     To a large extent, Mexico's out-of-control crime problem, and the corruption of its government, is caused by America's insatiable appetite for drugs. 

Keith Lawrence and Monica Quan: Engaged Jocks Found Dead in Irvine, CA Condo Garage

     Keith Lawrence, a 27-year-old public safety officer on the campus of the University of Southern California and his fiancee, Monica Quan, a 28-year-old assistant women's basketball coach at California State Fullerton, had recently moved into a condominium complex in the Orange County town of Irvine. Some of the units in the complex, located near the University of California Irvine, cost more than $1million. For the past eight years, Irvine has been named by the FBI as America's safest city.

     In 2002, Monica Quan graduated from Walnut High School located in the town of that name in the San Jose Hills of the San Gabriel Valley. As a star on the women's basketball team, Quan set records for making the most three-pointers. Her father, Randal Quan, was the first Chinese-American to rise to the rank of Captain in the Los Angeles Police Department. After retiring from the force in 2002, Quan became chief of campus police at Cal Poly in Pomona. (Six months after taking the job, he was fired.)

     After graduating from Walnut High School, Monica Quan played basketball for Cal State Long Beach. From there she transferred to Concordia University in Irvine where she starred in basketball while earning her degree in exercise and sports science. Following assistant coaching positions at Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks and Diamond Bar High School, Quan, in 2011, joined the coaching staff at California State Fullerton.

     Keith Lawrence met Quan at Concordia University where he was a basketball standout. (Before Concordia, Lawrence played for Moorpack College.) After graduating with a degree in business in 2008, Lawrence completed a police certification program run by the Ventura County Sheriff's Office. In 2012 the former basketball star began working as a security officer at USC.

     At nine o'clock on the night of Sunday, February 3, 2013, a resident of the Irvine condo complex, while walking to her car in the parking structure, saw a young couple slumped over in the front seat of a white Kia. The man was seated behind the wheel. He and the woman next to him had been shot to death. The victims were identified as Keith Lawrence and Monica Quan. The white Kia was parked on the top floor of the parking structure.

     Homicide detectives have ruled out robbery as a motive for the shootings, and consider murder-suicide possible but unlikely. Access to the condo garage requires a key code, and every inch of the structure is in view of surveillance cameras. Homicide investigators are reviewing hours of video footage from these cameras in hopes of catching a break in the case.

UPDATE

     Irvine Police Chief David Maggard, at a press conference, identified former LAPD officer Jordan Dorner as a suspect in the double murder. The 33-year-old has incriminated himself in a multi-page "manifesto" containing death threats against several people. Apparently Lawrence and Quan are mentioned in that document.

     Monica Quan's father Randal, after leaving police work, became an attorney. In October 2011, he represented Dorner before the LAPD disciplinary board that fired him. Dorner's last known address is in La Palma, California, a northern Orange County town not far from Fullerton. The fugitive is believed  to be driving a blue, 2005 Nissan Titan pickup truck. He is considered armed and dangerous. 

FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

     In 1949, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover started the bureau's top ten wanted program as a way of involving the public in the apprehension of the nation's worst criminals. As of June 2012, 497 fugitives have made the list. Patricia Hearst was one of only eight women ever considered bad enough to make the program. (The bureau had a hell of a time catching her.) Since the inception of the program, 94 percent of top ten fugitives have been captured. A third of these apprehensions involved tips from member of the public.

     Today, information that leads to the arrest of a top ten fugitive earns the tipster a $100,000 reward. (In the 1950s, the man who turned in the infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was murdered for his troubles. The tipster had ignored advice from the New York police not to go public. After that, law enforcement agencies, to encourage people to come forward, began offering rewards.)

     What follows is the current roster of the FBI's top ten most wanted fugitives:

Joe Luis Saenz

     In July 1998, Saenz shot and killed two Los Angeles gang rivals. Two weeks later, he raped and murdered his girlfriend, and in October of that year, murdered a fourth person.

Glen Steward Godwin

     In 1987, while serving time for murder in California's Folsom Prison, Godwin escaped. Later that year the police in Mexico arrested him for dealing in drugs. While serving time in Mexico, Godwin murdered a fellow inmate, and five months later, escaped.

Eduardo Ravelo

     A Texas grand jury indicted Ravelo in 2008 for trafficking in heroin, marijuana, and cocaine. The capo with the Barrio Azieca crime enterprise had been an active interstate drug racketeer since 2003.

Semion Mogilevich

     In April 2003, a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania indicted Mogilevich for his role in a stock fraud that cost investors $150 million. The public corporation, headquarters in Bucks County, collapsed in 1998.

Jason Derek Brown

     In November 2004, Brown murdered an armored car guard in a robbery outside a Phoenix a movie theater.

Eric Justin Toth

     Toth, a graduate of Purdue University and a former private school teacher, was indicted in 2008 on charges related to child pornography. The computer expert stands accused of producing, for the Internet, child pornography in the state of Maryland.

Alex Flores

     Flores, in July 2000, kidnapped and murdered a 5-year-old Philadelphia girl. The victim's strangled and stabbed body was found three months later in a nearby apartment.

Robert William Fisher

     Fisher is accused of the April 2001 murder of his wife and two young children in Scotsdale, Arizona.

Fidel Urbina

     In March 1998, Urbina beat and raped a woman in Chicago. Seven months later, while free on bail, he assaulted, raped and strangled to death another woman. His last victim was found in the trunk of a burned-out car.

Victor Manuel Gerena

     In 1983, Gerena, in the commission of a $7 million robbery of a Connecticut security company, took two employees hostage at gunpoint. After placing his hostages in handcuffs, Gerena injected them with a toxic substance to further disable them.

     All of the fugitives on the top ten list but the swindler Mogilevich, were in their 20s and 30s when they committed their crimes. Mogilevich was in his 50s.



      

The Baseball Bat as a Deadly Weapon

     If there is a one-stop shopping place for people contemplating criminal homicide or aggravated assault, it's the sports store. Would-be assailants can choose from a wide variety of handguns, rifles, shotguns, knives, ropes, and baseball bats.

     Two-thirds of all criminal homicides in the United States involve handguns. Knives come in second as the weapon of choice, accounting for about 14 percent of all homicidal deaths. Blunt objects--hammers, clubs, tire irons, and baseball bats--come in third at about five percent. That leaves hands, fists, feet, rifles, shotguns, ropes, pillows, poisons, bath tubs, vehicles, and matches.

     In 2011, of the 12,664 criminal homicides perpetrated in the United States, 500 were committed with blunt objects of which aluminum baseball bats were the most popular. While no one knows exactly how many people are assaulted every year by bat wielding assailants, the number would have to be in the several hundreds. (It is a fact that more people are murdered every year by baseball bats than assault rifles.)

     In 2001, corrections authorities in Texas finally got around to executing Adolpho Gil Hernandez who, in 1988, used a baseball bat to murder a 69-year-old woman in the course of a Lubbock robbery. More recently, in June 2012, a jury in Bend, Oregon found Richard Clarke guilty of murdering Matthew Fitzhenry in October 2010. Clarke, who beat the victim to death with a baseball bat, was sentenced to life in prison.

     Every year, police officers in the United States shoot dozens of people who threaten them with baseball bats. More than half of these police involved shoots are fatal.

     In New Castle, Pennsylvania, a former mill town of 26,000 in the west central part of the state not far from the Ohio line, a man attacked women with a baseball bat.

     At nine o'clock in the evening on January 20, 2013 New Castle police responded to a call involving a fight outside a city house. Matthew Green, armed with a baseball bat, was fighting with his girlfriend's son who possessed a metal pipe. According to witnesses, the 49-year-old Green chased the son onto the front porch where he tried to hit him with the bat. Green missed and smashed the porch banister instead. A witness to the fight sprayed mace in Green's face. The bat wielding assailant responded by using the weapon to break his girlfriend's left arm.

     While incarcerated in a holding cell, Matthew Green complained of chest pains, and asked for an ambulance. On his way to the hospital, Green informed the ambulance crew that he had previously suffered a heart attack. Police notified hospital personnel that Green was under arrest for aggravated assault and other crimes. Officers, however, did not accompany him to the hospital.

     Shortly after being admitted, Matthew Green, after faking the heart attack, walked out of the hospital. No one knew where he went. (He could have returned to the scene of the fight and attacked his girlfriend again.) Later that night, officers arrested Green at his home and hauled him to the Lawrence County Jail.

     At Matthew Green's arraignment hearing, the district magistrate set his bond at $1,000. Given the fact this man had used a baseball bat as a deadly weapon, then escaped police custody by faking a heart attack, the judge set Green's bail extremely low. This lenient magistrate might as well have given the alleged assailant a bus ticket to Florida.

   

   

      

Law School Admissions at a 30-year Low: What Does That Mean?

     For the country's 200 law schools, 2013 is not going to be a good year. In 2004, law schools admitted 100,000 students. This fall, only 54,000 students will be seeking a legal education, a 30-year low in enrollment. There are two main reasons for this stunning drop-off: a lousy job market, and the staggering cost of a legal education. It's a double-whammy, who wants to pay all of that money to become an unemployed attorney?

     With annual law school tuition costs ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 or more, the average law graduate enters the job market $125,000 in debt. Only 55 percent of these graduates find full time positions that require passage of a state bar exam. And a good number of those jobs are not financially rewarding. Over the past several years, various law profession surveys have revealed a continuous drop in job satisfaction among practicing attorneys.
   
          Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in promoting her memoir My Beloved Life on Oprah, said that "... being a lawyer is one of the best jobs in the whole wide world, because every lawyer, no matter whom they represent, is trying to help someone..." What a load of crap. In an article about the legal profession in Time Magazine, author Paul Campos points out that after twenty years as a federal judge, Sotomayor is detached from "any sense of the increasingly severe problems faced by so many members of the legal profession. For young law graduates, especially, Sotomayor's words about service and happiness are likely to ring hollow."

     To make his point, Paul Compos cited part of a letter he received from a young lawyer who entered the field $150,000 in debt. The lawyer wrote: "Over the last six years, I have discovered that I hate our system of justice, our courts, our law and everyone remotely connected to them. I hate the actual work of being a lawyer and having to deal with other lawyers. Being chained to the computer and phone every day feels like torture. It has affected my physical and mental health negatively..."

     The diminishing prospects of a lucrative and satisfying career as a lawyer exists because there are too many practitioners at a time when fewer citizens need the services of an attorney. People who used to hire lawyers can find answers to their law questions on the Internet which also provides a wide variety of legal forms. For example, if you need a simple will, a lease agreement, an employment contract, or a loan document, go online. Law firms are also employing paralegal personnel to do work once done by lawyers.

     As a result of fewer young people entering the legal profession, many law schools have reduced faculty and staff. Several institutions are also offering tuition discounts, and accepting less qualified applicants. Some in the profession have suggested conferring law degrees after two rather than three years of schooling. Costly law classes are also being replaced with cheaper field training programs.

     So, what does all of this mean for the future of the legal profession? I think it means that to keep 200 law schools in business, less qualified practitioners will be funneled into the profession. In the long run, this will make the lawyer problem even worse. 

Texas Prosecutor Mark Hasse Assassinated Near Kaufman County Court House

     Mark Hasse graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School in 1981. In 1988, as an assistant prosecutor in the Dallas County, Texas District Attorney's Office, he became a certified police officer which gave him the right to carry a concealed firearm. In Dallas, Hasse was in charge of the D.A.'s organized crime unit. He was also president of the Dallas Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

     In July 2010, Mark Hasse moved to Kaufman, a northeast Texas town of 6,700 35 miles southeast of Dallas where he joined the Kaufman County District Attorney's Office as the lead felony prosecutor.

     Just before nine in the morning of Thursday, January 31, 2013, two men ambushed the 57-year-old prosecutor as he got out of his car in a parking lot near the Kaufman Court House used by judges and prosecutors. The men, dressed in black and wearing ski-masks and bullet-proof vests, shot Hasse five times. Doctors at the nearby Texas Presbyterian Hospital pronounced him dead a short time later.

     Following the execution-style murder, witnesses saw two man in a late model silver Ford Taurus speed from the scene. In a search for suspects, homicide investigators began combing through the prosecutor's caseload. One of Hasse's 400 case ssignments involved a probe of Aryan Brotherhood activities.

     The authorities have posted a $20,000 reward leading to the identification and arrest of the prosecutor's assassins. In all probability homicide detectives are looking for a connection between the Ford Taurus and a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

     At a Thursday January 31 press conference, Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland said, "I hope the people who did this are watching, because we're very confident that we're going to pull you out of whatever hole you're in. We're going to bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."