The Lindsay Lohan Crime-Wave

     The only person more pathetic than an old Hollywood has-been is a young Hollywood has-been. Over the past decade, Lindsay Lohan slipped from successful television actress, theatrical film star and recording artist to a D-list celebrity whose principal claim to fame was her rap sheet. And even her arrest record was D-list. Most of her crimes involved cocaine, alcohol, driving under the influence, a bellicose personality and a sociopath's disrespect for the law and the criminal justice system.

     In 2007, other than being rich and infamous, there was nothing about the 26-year-old that distinguished her from the common garden variety substance abuser. Because she had money, Lohan was well-dressed in court and had better legal representation than the ordinary petty offender. That was one of the reasons why, notwithstanding numerous probation violations, she spent so little time in jail.

     In May 2007 the police arrested Lohan for driving under the influence and possession of cocaine after she lost control of her Mercedes in Beverly Hills. Two months later, in Santa Monica, Lohan got into an argument with a female motorist whom she chased in her SUV. The actress was again under the influence and in possession of cocaine. She had also been driving with a suspended license. Later that summer, in return for pleading guilty to misdemeanor cocaine use and driving under the influence, the judge sentenced Lohan to one day in jail, ten days of community service and three years probation during which time she had to enter an alcohol education program.

     On November 15, 2007, when it came time to serve her 24 hours behind bars at the jail in Lynwood, California, the sheriff, due to overcrowding, released her after she had endured 84 minutes in stir. 

     In October 2009, the judge who had sentenced Lohan following her cocaine and driving under the influence plea, extended her probationary period one year because she'd been too busy (attending Justin Bieber concerts and the like) to complete drunk-driving school. Six months later, after Lohan skipped a court date to attend the Cannes Film Festival, the judge issued a bench warrant for her arrest. After the police took her into custody on the bench warrant, Lohan posted the $100,000 bail and was released. She left the booking center with an alcohol-monitoring device around her ankle. According to the judge, if Lohan didn't stop boozing and snorting cocaine, he'd revoke her bail and she would be incarcerated. Lohan was also ordered to undergo, on a weekly basis, random drug and alcohol testing.

     About two weeks after being fitted with the ankle monitor, Lohan activated the device while attending a MTV Movie Awards party. In response, the judge ruled that she had violated her probation. As a result, the judge raised her bail anther $100,000. Her bail bondsman covered the increase which allowed Lohan to remain free.

     On July 6, 2010 the judge sentenced Lohan to 90 days in jail for failing to attend her court-ordered weekly alcohol education classes. Two weeks later, Lohan showed up at the jail to begin her sentence. After 13 days behind bars, the sheriff released his famous prisoner due to facility overcrowding. In September 2010, Lohan's probation was again revoked after a random drug test revealed cocaine in her system. Instead of being sent back to jail, the authorities shipped Lohan off to the Betty Ford rehabilitation facility.

     A staff worker at the Betty Ford Center, in December 2010, accused Lohan of attacking her after the staff employee asked Lohan to take a drug/alcohol test. The staffer later dropped the charges. 

     In February 2011 police arrested Lohan in connection with the felony theft of a $2,500 necklace from a Venice, California jewelry store. She pleaded not guilty and made bail. A month later, the judge in Lohan's 2007 cocaine/DUI case, revoked her probation and sentenced her to 120 days in the Lynwood jail. She was also ordered to complete the 480 hours of community service. In the meantime, she pleaded guilt to the misdemeanor theft of the $2,500 necklace.

     After a few days behind bars, the sheriff, citing overcrowding, kicked Lohan out of jail again. (I don't buy the overcrowding rationale. I think jail personnel simply found housing this pain-in-the-neck celebrity too disruptive.) While Lohan served the remainder of her jail sentence under house arrest, she failed to complete the required 480 hours of community service. As a result, the judge revoked her probation again, and kicked up her bail another $100,000.

     On March 14, 2012, the LAPD investigated Lohan for allegedly bumping a person with her car outside a Hollywood nightclub then fleeing the scene. The LA prosecutor in charge of the matter, citing lack of evidence, dropped the case. In September of that year Lohan took her one-woman crime wave to the east coast. While outside a fancy Manhattan hotel she clipped another person with her car, then sped off. Again, no charges were filed. A month later Lindsay and her mother Dina allegedly got into a fight at the family home on Long Island. No charges were filed in that case either.

     Police officers in New York City on November 29, 2012 arrested Lohan on suspicion of misdemeanor battery in connection with the alleged assault of a woman at a Manhattan nightclub. The supposed victim, a psychic named Tiffany Mitchell, claimed that Lohan, after calling her a "f-ing Gypsy," punched her in the face. 

     Lohan's ongoing trouble with the law might have finally caught up with her. While she was still on probation from the necklace theft, the police in Santa Monica, on the day of the alleged assault of the psychic, filed new charges against Lohan that are related to her June 2007 cocaine/DUI case. Lohan was accused of giving false information to a police officer, obstructing justice and reckless driving. All of these offenses carried jail sentences.

     On December 3, 2012 the IRS seized Lohan's bank accounts. According to the government, she owes $233,904 in unpaid taxes for the years 2009 and 2010.

     In 2013 Lindsay Lohan did a series of interviews with Oprah that earned her $2 million. Most of that money, however, was earmarked for taxes, rehab fees and further IRS debts. She was left with $500,000.

     In October 2017, in a red-carpet interview, Lohan incurred the wrath of almost everyone when she defended the disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein. "I feel bad for Harvey Weinstein right now," she said. "I don't think it's right what's going on." Lohan had supporting roles in two of Weinstein Company productions.

     In January 2019 the 38-year-old Lohan was back on television with a MTV show called "Lindsay Lohan's Book Club." Two years later she starred in a Netflix romantic comedy called "Falling for Christmas."

The David Camm Murder Trials

     On September 28, 2000 at 9:29 in the evening, David Camm called 911 and reported that he had discovered the murdered bodies of his wife, daughter and son in his garage. Upon arrival at Camm's house in New Albany, Indiana, police discovered Camm's wife Kimberly, his 5-year-old daughter Jill and his 7-year-old son Brad in Kimberly's Ford Bronco. She and her daughter had been shot in the head. The boy had been shot in the chest. There were abrasions and bruises on Kimberly's knees, elbows and feet.

     At seven in the evening on the day of the murders, Kimberly, with Jill in the car picked up Brad from his swimming class. As they drove home, David, a former Indiana state trooper and employee of his uncle's construction company, left the house for his weekly basketball game with friends and relatives. According to eleven witnesses, Mr. Camm left the church gym for home at 9:17 PM. Twelve minutes later, he called 911.

     Medical examiner Donna Hunsaker found that although no semen had been recovered the little girl had been sexually molested within hours before her death. From the onset detectives suspected David Camm of murdering his family. The police and the Floyd County prosecutor, Stan Faith, believed that Camm had arrived home at 9:22, killed his family, disposed of the gun (it had not been recovered), cleaned up the crime scene then called 911. But the crime scene evidence did not support this theory. The blood on the driveway had coagulated which suggested that the victims had been murdered before 9:22. If this were the case, David Camm had an iron-clad alibi. The prosecutor, to get around the alibi, decided that Camm had murdered his family before he left the house that night to play basketball.

     In the Ford Bronco crime scene investigators found a gray sweatshirt under Brad's body. DNA tests on this sweatshirt and the boy's clothing failed to connect the suspect to the scene. Several latent fingerprints lifted from the car did not belong to anyone in the family.

     In March of 2002 a jury found David Camm guilty of murdering his family. While the prosecution didn't have a motive or a murder weapon, they had Robert Stites, a blood spatter analyst from Portland, Oregon who testified that eight tiny bloodstains on the defendant's t-shirt had come from spray made by the bullet fired into his daughter's head. The defense argued that Mr. Camm stained his shirt when he embraced the victim. The judge imposed a 195-year sentence.

     In 2004 an Indiana appeals court set aside David Camm's conviction on grounds of insufficient evidence. The prosecution promised a retrial. A year later, after the arrest of an armed robber and rapist named Charles Boney, investigators submitted his DNA to a data bank which linked him to the site of the Camm family murder. After initially denying that he knew David Camm, Boney told the police that Camm had paid him $250 for the gun Camm had used to shoot his family. To explain the presence of his sweatshirt at the crime scene, Boney said the gun had been wrapped in the shirt when he gave it to Camm.

     On the belief that Charles Boney had been Camm's crime scene accomplice, the authorities charged the 36-year-old with three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. In January 2006 the jury found Charles Boney guilty. A few months later the judge sentenced him to 225 years in prison. After the trial several jurors told reporters they believed David Camm was the actual shooter. Following Boney's conviction, a man he had served time in prison with told the police that four months before the murders Charles Boney said that when he got out of prison he planned to kill a police officer's family and frame the cop.

     David Camm's second trial got underway in January 2006 with a new prosecutor, Keith Henderson, representing the state. On the third day of the trial the Indiana State Police sergeant in charge of the crime scene investigation testified under cross-examination that within days of the murders, the prosecutor (Stan Faith) hired two outside blood spatter analysts to study the serological evidence. The private experts from Portland, Oregon were Rod Englert and his protege Robert Stites. (Stites had been the prosecution's key witness in the first trial.) Defense attorney Stacy Vliana asked the witness if he had been aware that Stites wasn't qualified to process crime scenes. Did the sergeant know that Stites hadn't even taken the 40-hour standard bloodstain analysis course? The witness said he had not been informed of Stites' professional background.

   The next day, on cross-examination, defense attorney Stacy Viliana grilled Robert Stites on his lack of experience as a blood spatter expert. The witness acknowledged that he had not taken the introductory course. He said he had read one book on the subject in 1994. Two days after the Camm murders he had traveled to New Albany, Indiana because his mentor, Robert Englert, was too busy to handle the case. This was the first murder scene Stites had processed on his own. He had examined the t-shirt David Camm had been wearing on the night of the crime. The shirt contained eight bloodstains, each about a millimeter in diameter, spots he considered consistent with blood sprayed from the impact of a bullet. The defense attorney asked Stites if he had known that the defendant, while wearing that t-shirt, had carried his daughter out of the Bronco. The witness said he had not been aware of that. Stites acknowledged that concerning blood spray staining from the impact of a bullet, one would expect to find hundreds of little spots, not just eight.

     Forensic scientist Lynn Scamahorn took the stand and testified that in Camm's first trial, prosecutor Stan Faith had tried to get her to change her testimony about the DNA evidence on Charles Boney's crime scene sweatshirt. According to Scamahorn, the prosecutor wanted her to say that David Camm's DNA was also on the garment. When she refused, prosecutor Faith threatened to charge her with obstruction of justice. The prosecutor had also yelled and swore at her. In recalling her ordeal the witness broke down. (Stan Faith later denied these allegations.)

     In February, 2006, blood spatter expert Tom Bevel testified for the prosecution. According to his analysis, based on 25 years in the field, the blood on the defendant's t-shirt had been sprayed there by a bullet. Bevel also told the jury that David Camm had to be at the crime scene when his wife was shot because her blood had dropped onto one of his sneakers. The witness said that he believed the defendant was within four feet of his daughter when she was shot.

     The next day, prosecution blood spatter expert Rod Englert (Stites's mentor from Portland, Oregon) testified that the defendant must have been standing next to his wife and just a few feet away from his daughter when the two were shot. Englert added that the bloodstain on Camm's shoe appeared to have been diluted with water. Microscopist William Chapin, an employee of McCrone Laboratories, took the stand and confirmed the prosecution theory that the defendant was a few feet from his daughter and right next to his wife when they were shot. According to Mr. Chapin traces of the victim's tissue were on the defendant's t-shirt.

     The defense put two of its own blood spatter experts on the stand. Paul Kish and Bart Epstein testified that the blood on Camm's t-shirt had gotten there by transfer when he hugged the victims. Paul Kish said he couldn't render an opinion on how the blood stain had gotten on the defendant's shoe.

     On March 3, 2006, following 45 hours of deliberation, the Camm jury found the defendant guilty of murdering his family. The judge sentenced David Camm to life in prison. Following the verdict, F. Thomas Schomhorst, a law professor emeritus at Indiana University, questioned the prosecutor's claim, without supporting evidence, that the defendant had sexually molested his daughter.

     The Indiana Supreme Court, on June 26, 2009, overturned Camm's 2006 conviction. A third trial was scheduled for June 2010. Shortly after the second conviction, prosecutor Keith Henderson signed a publishing deal for a book called, Sacred Trust: Deadly Betrayal. The nonfiction book about the Camm case would actually be written by Damon DiMarco. The Camm defense, on the grounds the prosecutor's book deal created a conflict of interest, petitioned the court for a special prosecutor. In November 2011 the Indiana Court of Appeals granted the request. This ruling delayed the start of David Camm's third trial.

     In February 2012 the Indiana Supreme Court decided not to hear the state's appeal of the appellate court ruling. Prosecutor Keith Henderson was therefore off the case. Convicting David Camm of murder became the job of special prosecutor Stan Levco.

     On August 22, 2013, the third Camm trial got underway in Lebanon, Indiana. Once again blood spatter analyst Tom Bevel testified that the crime scene bloodstain patterns proved that the defendant was in the garage when his wife and children were shot to death.

     Charles Boney, the man convicted in the case as an accomplice, took the stand and repeated his story that he provided the gun that David Camm used to kill his family. Boney said he had no physical contact with any of the victims.

     To counter the prosecution's blood spatter case, defense blood analyst Barrie Goetz took the stand. Goetz had worked for the Indiana State Police from 1978 to 1981. From 1981 to 2004 he conducted blood spatter examinations for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. According to Mr. Goetz, the blood on the defendant's shoe had been caused by a bloody shoelace hitting the side of the shoe when he ran. The pattern was not, in this witness' opinion, a "projected stain." Goetz said that unlike his prosecution counterparts he had used real human blood in his recreations.

     On cross-examination, prosecutor Levco asked this forensic witness why he hadn't videotaped his blood pattern experiments.

     On October 3, 2013, two defense witnesses testified that when the Camm murders took place they were playing basketball with the defendant.

     Dr. Robert Shaler, a forensic anthropologist known for his work identifying bodies after the World Trade Center terrorist attack, testified that blood spatter analysis was not a true science. The interpretation of blood stain patterns had not been subjected to scientific peer review. Moreover, no data had been collected regarding error rates. "Either blood pattern analysis is based on science or it's an art form," Dr. Shaler said. "If it's an art form, then anyone can come up with opinions on it."

     On October 9, 2013 Dr. Richard Eikeienboom, a Dutch DNA analyst, took the stand for the defense. According to Dr. Eikeienboom, DNA evidence proved that Charles Boney had physical contact with Kim and Jill Camm. That meant Charles Boney had lied when he testified he had not touched the victims. The defense attorney had put Dr. Eikeienboom on the stand to discredit the prosecution's star witness.

     On Dr. Eikeienboom's cross-examination, prosecutor Levco brought out the fact the witness' Netherlands based firm, Independent Forensic Services, was not accredited in the United States.

      On Thursday, October 24, 2013, after thirty-one days of testimony the jury of eight women and four men found David Camm not guilty. The defendant's thirteen-year criminal justice ordeal involving three murder trials had finally come to an end. The state of Indiana had spent millions of dollars in a failed attempt to acquire a murder conviction in an obviously flawed case.

     Sometimes prosecutors just don't know when to quit. Moreover, the David Camm case, featuring dueling experts in blood spatter interpretation was an embarrassment to forensic science. Blood spatter analysis, while perhaps an investigative tool, is not a science and shouldn't be presented as such in a court of law.

Order In The Court: The AWOL Juror

     Anyone who has observed a civil or criminal trial gavel to gavel soon realizes that the slow, herky-jerky pace of the proceeding and the staggering inefficient use of time is nothing like how people go about their business in the real world. If it were otherwise, nothing would get done and our economy would grind to a halt. It would take two hours to buy a loaf of bread.

     It also becomes clear to court-watchers that the courtroom is the domain of legal profession insiders--the judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors. Everyone else--spectators, witnesses and jurors--are tolerated guests.

     People who have been called to testify or sit on a jury, citizens with lives outside the courthouse, marvel at how much of their time is wasted by the courtroom insiders. The eight-hour work day does not exist within the walls of a courtroom. Trials often don't get underway until ten in the morning. Lunch breaks can last two hours and a judge may decide to adjourn for the day at three in the afternoon.

     Judges set their own pace and time schedules, attorneys show up late and prosecutors and defense attorneys frequently ask for delays to prepare their cases as jurors and witnesses wonder if the ordeal will ever end. On the other hand, a witness cannot show up late, or, after having traveled a great distance to testify, is often left hanging when the court is suddenly adjourned just before the witness is scheduled to take the stand on what will turn out to be five minutes of unnecessary testimony.

     As unwilling participants in these exercises of time mismanagement, the jurors, people with responsibilities outside the courthouse, are also at the mercy of the legal masters of this bizarre universe. As anyone put through jury service knows, there are a lot of rules to obey and there will be hell to pay for any juror who violates them. In a world of false starts and endless delays, courtroom insiders do not tolerate interruptions caused by people other than themselves.

     When a citizen enters a courtroom the perceptive visitor experiences an atmosphere heavy with insider arrogance and privilege, a closed environment that conveys a simple message: you have entered our world and must play by our rules. You are barely welcome here, so watch your step.

Judge John Kastrenakes

     Palm Beach, Florida Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes, appointed to the bench in May 2009, ruled as the emperor of his courtroom and expected to be treated like a king outside of his courtroom. As the enforcer of rules, he did not take well to having them enforced on him.

     At 12:30 in the morning of September 18, 2009, Florida State Trooper Sandra Thompson pulled over a gray Lexus going the wrong way in the parking lot of a Florida Turnpike service plaza. Judge John Kastrenakes was behind the wheel of the vehicle.

     When the judge could not produce proof of insurance, Trooper Thompson issued Kastrenakes a $216 traffic ticket. The judge became quite irate and argued loudly with the officer. The judge informed the trooper that he would dismiss any case she brought before him in court because he knew she was a liar. He said that if this were the type of tickets state troopers issued, he would always have doubts about these officers' credibility when they testified before him in court. 

     Assistant State Attorney Ellen Roberts accused Judge Kastrenakes of using the prestige of his judicial position to "influence and gain advantage" over the officer who gave him the ticket. After initially pleading not guilty to the violation, the judge, a few months later, reluctantly paid the fine. He offered no apologies.

The Case of The AWOL Juror

     The dust-up with the Florida State Trooper over the traffic ticket paled in comparison to Judge Kastrenakes' fury over what he considered a juror's disrespect and contempt for the sanctity of his courtroom.

     In 2019, Deandre Sommerville lived with his grandfather in Palm Beach, Florida. In addition to his part time job as a recreation specialist at a nearby park, the 21-year-old took care of his grandfather, who, because of a recent heart attack, relied on a walker and a scooter to get around. Sommerville took his grandfather shopping and to his physical therapy sessions where the two spent hours doing exercises in the rehabilitation pool. Deandre Sommerville had never been in trouble with the law.

     On August 20, 2019, Sommerville was selected as a juror in a civil negligence trial involving a car accident that occurred in Palm Beach County. The case was tried in Judge Kastrenakes' courtroom. The morning after being picked for the jury, Sommerville awoke at nine and realized he had overslept. Because he had missed his ride to the courthouse, he would be late for the trial.

     Instead of calling the bailiff to report his predicament, Sommerville decided to put in a day's work at the park. After that, he compounded his problem by simply ignoring the fact he was a member of a jury in an ongoing trial. He was young, but he should have known better. He made a mistake he would remember the rest of his life.

     Three weeks after Deandre Sommerville went AWOL from Judge Kastrenakes' courtroom, police officers showed up at his grandfather's house with a summons ordering the young man to appear at a hearing on September 20, 2019 before Judge Kastrenakes.

   When Deandre Sommerville appeared before the angry Judge, he realized he was in serious trouble. Judge Kastrenakes informed him that jury service was as important as serving in the military. Sommerville had broken his oath to serve this essential role as an American citizen. "You were," The judge said, "the only African-American on the jury."

     Judge Kastrenakes also pointed out that as a result of the fugitive juror's no-show, the trial had been delayed 45 minutes. "Your intentional, willful failure to follow the orders of the court is a serious matter," he scolded.

     For Deandre Sommerville's disregard for the sanctity of the America's jury system, Judge Kastrenakes found him guilty of direct criminal contempt. While the judge's verdict was not a surprise, his sentence was. Deandre Sommerville received a ten-day stint in the county jail, 150 hours of community service, a $223 fine and one year of probation. He also was ordered to write Judge Kastrenakes a letter of apology. While on probation, Mr. Sommerville would have to meet once a month with a county probation officer.

     After imposing Sommerville's sentence, the judge warned him that if he didn't perform the community service as ordered, he could end up behind bars for up to six months. "I'm dead serious about this," said the judge. "Dead serious. I'm going to monitor you, make sure you adhere to all the rules and conditions of probation." (How different it would have been for this young man if he lived in California where rapists on probation cut off their ankle bracelets, sexually assault more victims and repeatedly get away with it.)

     The public defender representing Deandre Sommerville, citing his client's lack of criminal record and his ties to the community, appealed Judge Kastrenakes' sentence as grossly excessive. On October 4, 2019, after Sommerville had served his ten-day stint the county jail, the judge reduced his probation period to three months and his community service hours to thirty. In return for the lighter penalty, Deandre Sommerville, for the duration of the current court session, had to report once a week to the jury office and give a 10-minute speech about the importance of jury duty. Each presentation would count as three hours of community service.

The Kyron Horman Missing Person Case

     In 2000, 26-year-old Kaine Andrew Horman, an engineer in Portland, Oregon, married Desiree Young. The marriage did not work out. Within a year the couple discussed separating. But in January 2002, when Desiree learned that she was pregnant, she and Kaine decided to give their marriage a second chance. But it still didn't work. In August 2002 Desiree filed for divorce and moved in with her parents in Medford, Oregon.

     A month after the separation, Desiree gave birth to Kyron. The divorce became final in 2003 and a year after that Desiree moved to Canada where she received treatment for a kidney ailment. When she returned to the U.S. two months later she relinquished custody of 2-year-old Kyron to her ex-husband, Kaine Horman.

     The toddler, in 2004, began living with his father in a house on Sheltered Nook Road in a rural section of northwest Portland. Because of Kaine's demanding job at the Intel Corporation's Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro, the father arranged day care for Kyron. For that job he hired a friend of his ex-wife's named Terri Moulton.

     Terri Moulton grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, a town three hours from Portland. After graduating from high school in 1988 she attended Umpqua Community College where she met Ron Tarver. Terri and Ron were married in 1991 and three years later had a son named James. A year after the birth of their son Terri and Ron divorced.

     In 1996 Terri married Richard Ecker in Springfield, Oregon. Four years later she graduated from Northwest Christian University with a bachelor's degree in education. From March 2001 to June 2002 Terri worked as a substitute teacher in the Hillsboro School District. In 2002 she divorced Richard Ecker.

     In 2004 Terri Moulton moved into the home on Sheltered Nook Road with Kaine Horman and his 2-year-old son. She had been taking care of the boy for more than a year. Kaine's divorce from Desiree Young had been finalized a year earlier.

     In April 2007 Kaine and Terri were married. Their daughter Kiara Horman was born in 2009.

     Kyron, in 2010, was a second grade student at Portland's Skyline Elementary School two miles from his home. On most days Kyron rode the bus to school, but on June 4, 2010, Terri drove her stepson to class. That day Kyron wanted to set up his Red-Eyed Tree Frog exhibit at the school's science fair.

     Terri and the boy arrived at the elementary school at eight in the morning. They were last seen together fifteen minutes later near Kyron's science exhibit. That day Kyron's teacher marked him absent. At 3:45 in the afternoon of June 4, 2010, Terri Horman reported Kyron missing after he didn't come home from school.

     Students and teachers at the school told detectives that no one had seen Kyron after 8:45 AM. According to Terri, she left the school just before the morning bell. She told detectives that Kyron told her he was leaving the exhibit site en route to his classroom. She said that was the last time she saw him.

     Teachers and staff described the three-foot, eight-inch 50 pound boy as too timid to have left the school on his own. That morning he was dressed in a black T-shirt with "CSI" in green lettering and an image of a handprint. The boy with the metal rimmed eyeglasses wore cargo pants and sneakers trimmed in orange.

     In the week following Kyron's disappearance police officers and others searched the school building, its grounds and the surrounding neighborhood. It seemed the 7-year-old had vanished into thin air.

     From the start, detectives operating on the theory that Kyron had not been abducted by a stranger, focused on Terri Horman's activities on the morning of his disappearance. The police became particularly suspicious when a search of her cellular phone records revealed that she wasn't where she said she was that morning. In fact, her cellphone showed she had been on Sauvie Island five miles from the school. This led to a massive search of the island for the missing boy. Again, no trace of Kyron.

     Interrogated by detectives as a suspect in the case, Terri maintained her innocence. She reportedly took and failed two polygraph tests. Detectives, looking for physical evidence of foul play, seized and searched her car. They found nothing incriminating.

     On June 26, 2010, 22 days after Kyron's disappearance, detectives approached the boy's father with startling information about his wife Terri. According to these investigators, Terri, five months before Kyron went missing, asked a landscaper named Rodolfo Sanchez to kill her husband.

     Sanchez, in reporting the murder solicitation, claimed that Terri told him that Kaine Horman physically and mentally abused her. The would-be hit man's compensation was supposed to be the $10,000 in cash Kaine always carried on his person. To help facilitate the murder-for-hire scheme, Terri allegedly provided Sanchez details regarding her husband's daily routine. She suggested that Sanchez make the hit look like a mugging.

     On the day he learned of the alleged plot against his life, Kaine kicked Terri out of the house. Two days later he filed for divorce and served his estranged wife with a restraining order. Terri moved back into her parents' house in Roseburg, Oregon. (No charges were filed regarding the murder-for-hire allegation.)

     In 2011, with her son still missing and no charges filed in the case, Desiree Young posted missing person's fliers around a strip mall in Roseburg not far from Terri's residence. She also asked the reclusive suspect's neighbors to grill Terri about Kyron's disappearance. Desiree told the Roseburg neighbors that Terri had blamed her failing marriage on Kyron, that she had grown to hate her stepson.

     The Oregon legislature passed a law in 2011 inspired by the Kyron Horman case. The new legislation required school officials to notify parents by the end of the school day if their child had an unauthorized absence.

     On June 1, 2012, Desiree Young filed a lawsuit against Terri Horman claiming that the defendant was "responsible for the disappearance of Kyron." The plaintiff sought $10,000,000 in damages. On July 30, 2013, Young dropped the lawsuit. She said she didn't want the civil action to jeopardize the continuing police investigation into her son's case.

     Desiree and a small group of supporters, in November 2013, staged a demonstration outside of Terri Horman's house in Roseburg. Terri's mother called the police who came and disrupted the demonstration.

     On December 31, 2013, a Multnomah County judge finalized the divorce of Kaine and Terri Horman. The couple still had to resolve the issue of who would get legal custody of their daughter Kiara who was now 5-years-old.
   
     According to Terri Horman's attorneys she was not the last person to see Kyron alive. Moreover, they believed the murder-for-hire allegation against their client was bogus. According to her neighbors, Terri seldom left the house in Roseburg. A lot of people reviled this woman and a few supported her. But for most people familiar with this case, it was hard not to suspect that Terri Horman was somehow responsible for her stepson's disappearance and presumed death.

     In June 2014 the missing boy's mother told reporters that Horman, when asked by a polygraph examiner if she had knowledge of the disappearance, failed the lie detector tests. That month, a family court judge granted Kaine Horman custody of 5-year-old Kiara Horman. Terri Horman, after her daughter received counseling to facilitate a relationship with her mother, would be able to visit the girl under court-ordered supervision.

     Terri Horman, in August 2014, petitioned the court to change her name to Claire Stella Sullivan. She wanted to make the change to avoid what she called the stigma of the Horman name. In addressing the judge, she said, "Kyron Horman is missing. He needs to be found. I love my stepson, I want him home more than anything." She also reminded the judge that she had not been the last person to see Kyron alive. She said her attorneys could prove that. The judge denied her request.

     In December 2014, the head of a residential care facility for mentally ill adults hired Terri Horman as a Mental Health Support Specialist. The Eugene, Oregon company, the Shangra-La Corporation, hired Horman with full knowledge of her status as a suspect in her stepson's disappearance. According to Shrangra-La Chief Executive, "Terri was hired because she has the skills and training that enables her to provide excellent support in the critical area of need."

     On February 20, 2015 Terri Horman petitioned a Lane County judge to issue a temporary protective order against a person named Stacy Green. Horman objected to the 35-year-old's posting of missing child posters outside her place of employment. The petitioner claimed that Green and her associates had been obsessively stalking her for four years. "They are now escalating in this behavior to where I fear they will kill me," she claimed. The judge denied Horman's request for the protection order.

     Terri Horman, on February 21, 2015, quit her job at Shangra-La. She said the denial of her anti-stalking order was the reason she left the residential care facility.

     In a January 2016 interview with a correspondent with the television show "Inside Edition," Terri Horman said, "I never harmed my son. I'm speaking now because nobody is looking for my son anymore. I want Kyron home. I love my son." She admitted to the reporter that she had failed the polygraph test, explaining that because she was deaf in one ear, she didn't hear the questions properly.

     On June 4, 2021, eleven years after her son went missing, the boy's mother, Desiree Young, posted the following message on her Facebook page: "Things are too quiet and it sounds like Multnomah County may not even know they are still searching for Kyron. This is not acceptable and I will be taking it to their doorstep. Kyron--I love you. I will never stop fighting for you."

     Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, in response to Desiree Young's Facebook posting, tweeted this: "Bringing Kyron Horman home is our number one priority in this case and we will never lose sight of that."

     As of August 2023, Kron Horman remained missing. No charges in the case have been filed.

The Kenneth John Konias Jr. Armored Truck Robbery/Murder Case

     One would think that stealing a large sum of money from an armored truck--a bullet-proof vault on wheels protected by at least two armed security officers--would be extremely difficult, and rare. It is not. While some armored car heists feature a lot of planning and several accomplices, most are committed by one or two people. A high percentage of armored car robberies are inside jobs committed by security personnel. In the infamous 1950 Brinks job in Boston, the police didn't recover one cent of the stolen $2.7 million in bills, checks and money orders. By the time the suspects were identified and rounded up the checks and money orders had been destroyed and the cash spent.

     An armored van or truck makes between ten and twenty pickups and deliveries a day. The most secure vehicles are equipped with tracking devices and are staffed by a crew of three armed officers. The driver never leaves the truck. At the delivery and pickup stops, the guard is positioned near the vehicle while the messenger handles the cargo. Occasionally the guard will accompany the messenger to and from the truck. To cut costs armored car companies often use 2-person crews in which the driver is also the messenger.

The Pittsburgh Armored Truck Robbery/Murder Case

     Kenneth John Konias Jr., a 2008 graduate of Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lived in nearby Dravosburg, a town of 2,000 along the Monongahela River. The 22-year-old, an only child, lived in his parents' house. Upon graduation Konias began work as a security guard in a shopping mall. After a year with the Dravosburg Voluntary Fire Department Mr. Konias joined the volunteer fire department in Duquesne. Six months later the Duquesne fire chief dismissed him because he "didn't fit in." He had failed the test to become an Allegheny County police officer.

     Early in 2011, following a background check, some psychological testing and a little firearms training, Kenneth Konias became a driver-messenger with the Garda Cash Logistics Armored Transport Company. Several months later Kenneth Konias' fellow employees found lottery tickets from a grocery store on his route in the back of the truck. Konias, who hadn't purchased the tickets, said he must have carried the tickets out of the store on the bottom of his cash satchel. His supervisor accepted the explanation and the matter was closed.

     On February 28, 2012 Konias was paired with 31-year-old Michael Haines, a guard who had been on the job a few months. After graduating from Pittsburgh's Robert Morris University with a degree in communications, Haines, from East McKeesport, had previously sold Verizon cell phones. Until getting the job with Garda, Haines had struggled finding full time work. On that Tuesday, with Konias behind the wheel and Haines in the cargo area of the truck, the men pulled away from the Garda office in downtown Pittsburgh. It was a few minutes before eight o'clock in the morning.

     Just before one in the afternoon, after making a pickup at the Home Depot store in suburban in Ross Township, Home Depot employees thought they heard a gun go off inside the Garda truck. Thirty minutes later Kenneth Konias parked the armored vehicle under a bridge two blocks from the Garda office. He climbed out of the truck, walked to the employee parking lot and drove off in his tan Ford Explorer.

     After stopping at places to pick up money bags he had stolen and stashed, Konias drove to his parents' house in Dravosburg where he greeted his father. After putting his bloody Garda jacket on a hanger and hiding $200,000 in cash in the house, Konias left the dwelling in his Ford Explorer.

     At 3:45 that afternoon, a Garda employee came upon the idling truck under the bridge. Blood seeped out the back of the vehicle, and inside Michael Haines lay dead from a bullet fired into the back of his head. The guard's 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistol was missing along with $2.3 million in cash, enough money to fill two trash bags.

     Konias, after leaving Dravosburg that afternoon, called several people on his cell phone. He spoke to his mother Renee, telling her that he had stashed $25,000 at his grandmother's grave site at St. Mary Magdalene Cemetery in Munhall. (Mr. Konias retrieved the money, and a relative notified the police.) Konias called a friend and asked him to run off with him. He said he would never have to work again. To another friend he said he had messed up and that his life was over. The friend asked him if he had killed someone. Konias paused, then said yes. In one of the conversations Konias asked about extradition laws in Canada and Mexico. After making these calls, Konias tossed his cell phone out his car window. It was found along Route 51 south of downtown Pittsburgh.

     On Tuesday night, when police officers searched the Konias house in Dravosburg, they recovered the bloody Garda jacket and $200,000. Hoping to catch Konias before he got too far, the police alerted U.S. border authorities, airports, bus depots and train stations.

     On March 1, 2012, the Allegheny County district attorney charged Kenneth Konia with criminal homicide, robbery and theft. The FBI issued a wanted poster and added Konias to the FBI's Most Wanted List. The bureau also posted information regarding the fugitive on its Facebook page.

     On Friday, March 16, the police-hunt for the 6 foot one, 165 pound fugitive was featured on Lifetime TV's "America's Most Wanted" show.

     On April 25, 2012, FBI agents arrested Konias without incident at a house in Pompano Beach, Florida. Based on information from the suspect himself, agents recovered most of the stolen money from the Pompano Beach house and a storage locker nearby. At the time of his arrest Konias still had possession of the handgun he had carried when he worked for Garda Cash Logistics.

     On November 13, 2013, at the conclusion of the 7-day bench trial, Allegheny County Judge David Cashman found Konias guilty of first-degree murder, robbery and theft. At the sentencing hearing on February 18, 2014, Judge Cashman, in advance of announcing Konias' fate, said that Konias had put greed before human life. Konias interrupted the judge by saying, "I was going to suggest you not lecture me and give me my sentence so we can proceed." Unfazed, the judge continued, pointing out that Konia had plotted the assassination for months. The judge also noted that the Haines family had shown mercy by not requesting the death penalty.

     Judge Cashman sentenced the 24-year-old murderer to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Bobby Wilson Murder Case

     About 6,000 people lived in Spanish Fort, Alabama, a Gulf Coast suburb of Mobile on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. In the early morning hours of August 11, 2007, Spanish Fort police officer Steve McGough pulled into Wilson's Service Center for gas and a cup of coffee. When McGough walked into the convenience store he found the owner, Arthur "Bobby" Wilson, slumped over the counter. The officer grabbed hold of the bleeding 71-year-old and helped him onto a chair. Mr. Wilson had been beaten in the head with a blunt object, and robbed. As the officer called in the robbery and assault, the victim made "gurgling sounds" and mumbled incoherently. Four months later Mr. Wilson died from his head wounds. The victim had been unable to describe or name his assailant. The robbery/assault case had turned into a murder.

     In December 2008, shortly after Bobby Wilson's death, Baldwin County prosecutor Michael Plyant charged Leslie Eric Buzbee with capital murder in the case. Police arrested the 23-year-old and hauled him to the Baldwin County Corrections Center in nearby Bay Minette, Alabama. The murder suspect remained in custody without bail.

     Detectives learned that days before the robbery/assault, Mr. Buzbee, who lived ten minutes from the service station and knew the victim well, had asked Mr. Wilson to cash a check. According to the police theory of the case, when Bobby Wilson refused to cash Buzbee's check the second time the suspect assaulted him with an aluminum baseball bat the victim kept on the premises. The authorities were convinced that Buzbee, high on cocaine and in desperate need of money, assaulted Mr. Wilson out of anger and the need for cash to support his drug habit.

     Leslie Buzbee's trial got underway on May 4, 2009 in Bay Minette. His attorney, John Beck, exploited the fact the prosecution, without the murder weapon, physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime scene, a confession or an eyewitness, had an extremely weak circumstantial case. As it turned out, Attorney Beck was right. Four weeks later the judge declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach an unanimous verdict.

    Following the hung jury, prosecutor Plyant decided to try again. The second trial, which commenced in August 2009, ended prematurely when the judge declared a mistrial on a procedural issue.

     On August 8, 2009, the Baldwin County prosecutor took a third run at Leslie Buzbee. Without new incriminating evidence the third jury after four hours of deliberation found the 25-year-old defendant not guilty. Leslie Buzbee, having been incarcerated in the Baldwin County Correction Center since December 2008, walked free. (The double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution protected Buzbee, regardless of what new evidence might surface, from being tried a fourth time for Mr. Wilson's murder.)

     Following the not guilty verdict, in response to a reporter's question about whether the authorities would re-open the murder case, prosecutor Plyant said, "The investigation is done because we tried the person we believe did the crime."

     The Wilson murder case, from an investigative point of view, produced a suspect, but didn't feature enough hard evidence to support a conviction. Had Bobby Wilson, before he died, been able to communicate with the police, the outcome of this case might have been different.

     On December 31, 2012, officers with the Mobile Police Department arrested Leslie Eric Buzbee in connection with a series of residential burglaries and thefts from vehicles. Officers found cocaine and drug paraphernalia in his car. At the time of his arrest he was the subject of several burglary warrants issued out of Baldwin County. He was back in jail, but not for murder.

The Tim Lambesis Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 2000, 19-year-old guitarist Tim Lambesis, a graduate of a San Diego area Christian high school, formed a heavy metal band called "As I Lay Dying" (the title of a William Faulkner novel). The group's sixth album came out in the fall of 2012 prior to a tour of Asia. The band was scheduled to kick-off a U.S. tour from Oklahoma City on May 30, 2013. Many of the band's songs included Christian themes of forgiveness and struggle.

     In 2011, Lambesis and his wife Megan separated. According to divorce papers, she accused him of becoming emotionally distant from her and the three children they adopted from Ethiopia. She complained that he had become obsessed with bodybuilding and touring. Megan also accused her estranged husband of having a "string of women."

     In April 2013, the 32-year-old rock star, on two occasions, confided to a man who worked out at his gym that he wanted to have his wife killed. Lambesis told this man his wife made it difficult for him to visit his children. The man in the gym Lambesis reached out to reported Lambesis' homicidal wishes to the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. Shortly thereafter Tim Lambesis met with an undercover police officer posing as a hit man named "Red".

     In the recorded murder-for-hire meeting the heavy metal rocker handed Red an envelope containing $1,000 in cash, a photograph of his wife, the security gate code to the Encinitas, California estate and a list of dates in which Lambesis would have an alibi. According to court documents the murder-for-hire mastermind also gave the undercover sheriff's department officer instructions on how to kill Megan Lambesis.

    At two in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 7, 2013, San Diego sheriff's deputies arrested Lambesis as he shopped at a mall in Oceanside. The officers booked him into the Vista Jail on the charge of solicitation of murder.

     The day after his arrest at his arraignment, Lambeis pleaded not guilty to the murder solicitation charge. The judge set his bail at $3 million. Forty-eight days later Lambesis posted his bond. The judge required him to wear a GPS device.

     The murder-for-hire suspect's attorney told reporters that his client had been set up by the man in the gym. If convicted as charged, Lambesis faced up to nine years in prison. His fans and people who knew the entertainer expressed shock over the murder-for-hire accusation.

     On September 16, 2013, the Superior Court Judge, after hearing preliminary hearing testimony from the undercover officer and other prosecution witnesses, bound the murder-for-hire case over for trial.

     In February 2014 Tim Lambesis pleaded guilty in a Vista, California courtroom of soliciting an undercover officer to murder his wife. At his sentencing hearing on May 16, 2014 the former rock star's attorney said his client suffered brain damage as a result of using steroids. The deputy district attorney dismissed the claim. She called it a flimsy, illogical excuse for what in reality was a calculated plan to have a person murdered.

     The judge sentenced Mr. Lambesis to six years in prison.

     In December 2016, after serving just two years of his sentence Tim Lambesis was released from prison. Six months later in San Diego, California, the singer reunited with his band. 

     On December 12, 2020, at a holiday party outside his parents' home in Dan Diego, Lambesis, in starting a backyard bonfire, was burned over 25 percent of his body when the cap came off the flammable liquid container he used to start the fire. While recovering at a nearby hospital the musician on his Instagram page assured his fans that his "man parts" were not burned. 

Bethany Deaton's Sex Cult Death

     Bethany Ann Leidlein, a bright, ambitious and spiritual person, grew up in Arlington, Texas. In 2005, the 20-year-old graduated magna cum laude in English and Spanish from Southwestern University. While enrolled at the university in Georgetown, Texas, she met Tyler Deaton and his friend Micah Moore. Deaton, a domineering and charismatic young man from Corpus Christi, had been a member of the National Honor Society at Calallen High School. At Southwestern, a small liberal arts school affiliated with the Methodist Church, he played jazz piano and led prayer groups in the college chapel. A campus spiritual leader, he became known for his belief that "God glorifies in your having fun."

     After Bethany and Tyler graduated from Southwestern University the two of them, joined by Micah Moore and a handful of other young men, moved to the Kansas City, Missouri suburb of Grandview where they became members of a fundamentalist Christian church called the International House of Prayer (IHOP). In May 2009 Bethany and Tyler completed a six-month religious program at IHOP University.

     In the summer of 2012, after Tyler and Bethany were married, they moved, along with his male religious friends and followers into a large, old house in Grandview. Having gone back to school and earned a degree in nursing, Bethany worked as a registered nurse at a local hospital. She and her male roommates had evolved into a cult-like religious group led by her husband. The Grandview house they lived in became sort of a church.

     At ten o'clock on the night on October 30, 2012, Jackson County (Missouri) sheriff's deputies were called to investigate the body of a woman found in the back of a van parked near Longview Lake. The dead woman turned out to be Bethany Ann Deaton.

     Bethany's head had been covered by a white plastic bag. In the Ford Windstar van deputies recovered a notepad upon which someone had written what appeared to be a suicide note. It read: "My name is Bethany Deaton. I chose this evil thing. I did it because I wouldn't be a real person and what is the point of living if it is too late for that. I wish I had chosen differently a long time ago. I knew it all and refused to listen. Maybe Jesus will save me."

     In the van's cup-holder sat an empty 100-count bottle that had once held Acetaminophen pills. While most experienced homicide investigators would have considered Bethany Deaton's death suspicious, the Jackson County Coroner's Office classified it as a suicide. The plastic bag over her head, the empty pill bottle and the suicide note had the look of a staged suicide.

     Bethany Deaton's parents claimed her body and had her buried in Arlington, Texas without an autopsy. According to Bethany's online obituary, she had been "a lover of books, writing, nature, deep conversations, dance, worship and, most of all, Jesus."

     On November 9, 2012, one of Bethany Deaton's male roommates, 23-year-old Micah Moore, showed up at the Grandview Police Department with something to confess. He informed the detective who spoke to him that Bethany Deaton had not committed suicide because he had murdered her. He had pulled the plastic bag over her head and had held it there "until her body shook."

     According to Micah Moore, he, Tyler Deaton and the other male members of the spiritual clan had been sexually assaulting Bethany for months. They all had sex with her after drugging her with an antipsychotic drug called Seroquel. (This medication had been prescribed to a member of the sect.) Micah Moore said he had video-taped the group rapes on his tablet computer. He told the detective that he had also confessed his role in the rapes and murder to his pastor. Moore said he had written poems about Bethany Deaton's sexual assaults.

     Micah Moore informed the Grandview detective that the victim's husband, Tyler Deaton, had talked him into killing Bethany and making it look like a suicide. In the weeks prior to her death, Bethany had been seeing a counselor. Tyler Deaton, according to Moore, had been worried that she might report the group rapes to the therapist. Moore also confessed that after the men raped the drugged-up woman, they had consensual sex with each other.

     Following Micah Moore's stunning murder confession, the authorities in Jackson County, Missouri re-classified Bethany Deaton's manner of death as a criminal homicide. Her cause of death: asphyxiation by suffocation. On November 10, prosecutor Jean Peters charged Micah Moore with first degree-murder. Tyler Deaton was not charged with a crime.

     Allen Hood, the president of IHOP University, distanced the school and the church from Tyler Deaton and his followers. He described Deaton as the leader of an independent, close-knit religious group that had operated separately "under a veil of secrecy."

     On November 28, 2012, Micah Moore's attorney, Melanie Morgan, announced that her client had recanted his confession. The lawyer described the confession as "bizarre, nonsensical and most importantly, untrue." Attorney Morgan went on to say that Moore was a "distraught and confused young man under extreme psychological pressure as a result of his friend Bethany's untimely suicide and the sudden removal of his spiritual leader, Tyler Deaton from their extremely close-knit religious community."

     On October 31, 2014, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker dropped the charges against Micah Moore. Moore's DNA was not on the bag over Deaton's head and forensic document examination revealed that the suicide note had been written by her. Moore's attorney, Melanie Morgan, said her client's confession had been a "reactive psychotic episode triggered by the suicide of his friend."  

The Kaylene Bowen-Wright Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Case: Putting A Child Through Hell

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

     In 1977, a pediatrician from England published the results of an investigation he had conducted into the cases of 81 infants whose deaths had been classified as either Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) or natural death. The study, by Dr. Roy Meadow of St. James University Hospital in Leeds, covered a period of 18 years. His article, "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: The Hinterlands of Child Abuse," which appeared in the journal Lancet, was shocking in its implications. Dr. Meadow claimed that these 81 babies had in fact been murdered and that the forensic pathologists who had performed the autopsies ignored obvious signs of physical abuse in the form of broken bones, scars, objects lodged in air passages and toxic substances in their blood and urine. He came close to accusing some of these pathologists of helping parents, mostly mothers, of getting away with murder.

     The Munchausen Syndrome, a psychological disorder identified in 1951 by Richard Asher, described patients who injured themselves or made themselves sick to attract sympathy and attention. Asher named the syndrome after Baron von Munchausen, a man known for telling tall tales. Dr. Meadow added "by proxy" because the people gaining sympathy were not hurting themselves. They were getting sympathy and attention by injuring and sickening their infants and children.

     In his landmark article in Lancet Dr. Meadow profiled some of the pediatric cases that had puzzled him in the early 1970s. For example, he was treating a young boy who had extremely high salt levels in his blood that adversely affected his kidneys. Because there was no way the boy could have eaten this much salt, Dr. Meadow came to suspect that the mother, a nurse, was force-feeding salt into the child through a nasal tube. When Dr. Meadow voiced his hypothesis to his colleagues at the hospital they ridiculed him. In this case, however, the boy's mother confessed to exactly what Dr. Meadow had suspected. Her intent had not been to kill her child but to use him as a way to make herself a center of attraction at the hospital, an environment she found exciting and romantic.

     After the publication of Mr. Meadow's shocking article, physicians all over the world sent him accounts of cases similar to the ones he had described in his Lancet piece. Even Dr. Meadow was shocked by some of the stories--cases that involved punctured eardrums and induced blindness as well as inflicted respiratory problems, stomach ailments and allergy attacks. Years later, Dr. Meadow would design a controversial experiment involving hidden cameras in hospital rooms where suspected Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy victims were being treated. Of the 39 children under surveillance, the cameras caught 33 parents creating breathing problems by putting their hands, bodies or pillows over the victim's faces. Staff members monitoring nearby television screens quickly entered the hospital rooms, causing the abusers to discontinue their assaults.

     In the years that followed Dr. Meadow's initial research into these child abuse and infant death cases, he came to believe that the vast majority of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy perpetrators were women, and that one-third of them were either nurses or women who worked in some other capacity in the health care industry. His research also suggested that many of these mothers were married to men who were cold and indifferent, and that at least part of the motive behind making their children ill was an attempt to emotionally energize their spouses. According to Dr. Meadow, many Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy women also enjoyed the attention and sympathy they received from physicians and nurses.

 Kaylene Bowen-Wright

     In 2008, Ryan Crawford and Kaylene Bowen-Wright decided to have a baby together even though they were not in a romantic relationship or even lived under the same roof. Kaylene, a resident of Dallas, Texas, had two children from another man.

     Shortly after Christopher Bowen's birth, Kaylene claimed the infant, because he had been premature, couldn't digest milk. This was untrue and marked the start of an eight-year litany of false illnesses attributed to the boy by a sociopathic, attention-seeking Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy mother who, to feed her own personality disorder, tortured her son and put his life at risk.

     Kaylene Bowen-Wright, over the years somehow managed to convince hospital staffs and doctors that Christopher suffered from muscular dystrophy, cancer, heart problems and seizures that resulted in unnecessary medical procedures, radiation treatments and medicine. All of this unnecessary medical attention and exposure to hospitals led to serious infections in the young patient. There were also horrible side effects from the medication that included blood clots. 

     Early on in Christopher Bowen's ongoing nightmare, his father, Ryan Crawford, although he didn't know why, suspected that the boy's mother was fabricating the boy's medical problems. He tried to intercede on his son's behalf, but the boy's mother did everything she could to keep him out of their lives. In 2011, when the boy was three, his father went to court to gain custody of Christopher. The judge not only denied him custody, he prohibited the father from visiting his son.

     Kaylene Bowen-Wright received the attention and sympathy she craved through her Facebook postings that claimed her son was dying of cancer and would not live to see the age of five. She also started several GoFundMe campaigns and took advantage of the Make-A-Wish foundation. At this point in the child's ordeal he was being fed through a tube and was confined to a wheelchair.

     In 2014, Ryan Crawford came across an article about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and suddenly understood what Kaylene Bowen-Wright was doing to their son. He began reaching out to the authorities in an effort to save his son before she killed him.

     Between 2009 and 2015, Kaylene Bowen-Wright took Christopher to 323 medical facilities in Dallas and Houston. The boy underwent thirteen major surgeries for his nonexistent illnesses. It was a miracle he survived all of this medical treatment at the hands of clueless physicians and surgeons.

     Finally, in 2015, the staff at a Dallas hospital suspected that Christopher Bowen was the victim of child abuse. Someone from the hospital notified a child services agency. The investigation that followed led to Kaylene Bowen-Wright's arrest in November 2017 for the prolonged abuse of her son. The authorities took custody of Christopher Bowen and Kaylene's two other children.

     In August 2019 Kaylene Bowen-Wright pleaded guilty to causing serious bodily injury to her son by subjecting him to unnecessary medical treatment, medication and surgery. She faced a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.

     On October 1, 2019, Dallas County Judge Ernest White, after hearing testimony from Christopher Bowen's father, medical personnel and a Munchasusen Syndrome by Proxy expert, sentenced 36-year-old Kaylene Bowen-Wright to six years in prison.

     Six years in prison for what this woman did to her son during his young life is beyond outrageous. Twenty years behind bars would have been a lenient sentence. No thanks to this child's mother he could have died from her insatiable need for attention. 

The Frederick Harris III Murder Case

     In 1987, when he was 20-years-old, Pittsburgh area (Penn Hills) resident Frederick Harris III joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. Four years later he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in psychology. In 1996 Mr. Harris left the National Guard and the Army Reserve with the rank of first lieutenant.

      From December 1997 until May 2000 Frederick Harris worked as a correctional officer at the State Correctional Institution at Somerset, Pennsylvania. In May 2000 he trained as a case worker for Allegheny County Children and Youth Services but didn't stay beyond his six-month probationary period.

     Despite his college degree and military background, Harris' life began to unravel due to mental illness that included bipolar disorder. In 2001 he was treated at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh where a psychiatrist prescribed a mood stabilizer. By 2004 he was living on a disability payment of $800 a month. In December 2004, at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Harris participated in group therapy sessions that lasted until November 2005.

     In 2009 Harris pleaded guilty to insurance fraud after he lied to his insurance company about how his motorcycle had been stolen. The judge sentenced him to six months probation.

     Harris pleaded guilty in April 2011 to criminal trespass in a bizarre case. After a real estate agent showed him a $500,000 home in Murrysville, Pennsylvania Harris moved into the vacant house without permission. He stocked the refrigerator with food and slept in a sleeping bag. When police officers came to evict him they found Harris hiding in a closet. The judge sentenced the house squatter to probation, the terms of which he quickly violated.

     In May 2012, an assistant Allegheny County prosecutor charged Mr. Harris with the assault and harassment of his sister Angela in her home. Harris put her into a headlock and dragged her into a bedroom where he punched her several times. That day, police officers arrested Harris at a Pittsburgh area homeless shelter. Declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, the judge sent Harris to Torrance State Hospital for treatment. Upon his release from the mental institution he pleaded guilty to the assault and harassment of his sister. The judge sentenced him to seven months in the Allegheny County Jail plus seven years of probation. Upon his release from the Allegheny County Jail the authorities incarcerated Harris at a state prison in Westmoreland County in connection with violating his probation in the Murrysville house squatters case. He remained behind bars in Westmoreland County until March 2013.

      Frederic Harris' father, in 2014, kicked his son out of his Forest Hills home after the 47-year-old tried to choke him. Harris' mother, Olivia Gilbert and her husband Lamar, allowed him to move in with them at their home in Penn Hills, a suburban community a few miles northeast of downtown Pittsburgh.

     On Tuesday December 16, 2014, at two in the afternoon, Harris' sister Angela called the police to report that she hadn't heard from her mother and stepfather since Saturday December 13. Officers, in response to the welfare check, met Angela Harris at the Gilbert house.

     From the outside the Penn Hills residence looked normal. Because the house was locked and the officers didn't have probable cause to force their way in, Angela Harris kicked open a back door.

     Olivia Gilbert, 73, and her 76-year-old husband Lamar didn't seem to be home. A police officer, finding the master bedroom door locked, jimmied his way into the room to find Frederick Harris III lying under covers on the bed. While Harris was breathing and didn't appear injured or sick, he didn't move or speak.

     Paramedics removed Frederick Harris from the Gilbert house on a stretcher and took him to the Forbes Regional Hospital where doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him physically.

     From the hospital, deputies with the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office put Harris in a patrol car and drove him to downtown Pittsburgh to be questioned at the department's homicide unit. The officers transported Harris from the police vehicle to the interrogation room in a wheelchair. When deputies asked him questions, Harris closed his eyes and refused to speak.

     Back at the Gilbert residence, detectives made a series of gruesome discoveries. In the garage, deputies found three trash cans containing knotted garbage bags. One trash can contained two heads. Another bag held human arms, legs, feet, hands and Mr. Gilbert's torso. The third trash can contained a section of a blood-soaked blue carpet that had been cut from an area near the basement laundry room. This bag also held five bloody knives. (A latent fingerprint expert would later connect the suspect to one of the garbage bags.)

     In the laundry room officers found dried blood spatter and three bottles of bleach. They also recovered a bottle of anti-bacterial kitchen cleaner. Although parts of the laundry room had been scrubbed, a crime scene luminal test revealed the presence of blood.

     Detectives at the murder site found a receipt that showed that the three garbage cans had been recently purchased at a Home Depot store in nearby East Liberty.

     Back at the Allegheny County Sheriff's office, deputies found, in one of the suspect's pockets, a handwritten note signed "Mr. & Mrs. Gilbert" that thanked Frederick for house sitting while they were on vacation. The note contained a PS that read: "Don't answer the door for anyone."

     While questioning Harris his interrogators noticed a relatively fresh laceration on the palm of his right hand.

     On December 17, 2014 an Allegheny County assistant district attorney charged Frederick Harris III with two counts of murder and two counts of abuse of corpse. The judge denied the suspect bail.

     According to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office, Mr. Gilbert had died from a stab wound to his torso. The forensic pathologist found that Mrs. Gilbert, whose torso was missing, had died  "by sharp instrument." (Investigators suspected that Mrs. Gilbert's torso and other body parts were picked up by refuse workers and taken to a landfill.)

     In September 2016, in an Allegheny County court room, the jury found Frederick Harris III guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abuse of corpse. The defendant's attorney had failed to convince the jurors that someone else had committed the murders. The judge sentenced Harris to life in prison without parole.

Judge Goes Easy on Baby Killer

     On November 1, 2011, police officers in Cortez, Colorado, a town of 8,000 in the southwest corner of the state, responded to a call involving an infant who was not breathing. At the residence shared by Dylan Kuhn and his girlfriend April Coleman, police discovered the corpse of their 6-month-old daughter, Sailor Serenity Kuhn.

     Officers found the baby lying half off the bed with a blanket wrapped around her neck. One didn't have to be an experienced homicide detective to know this was the scene of a crime rather than a natural or accidental death.

     According to the 19-year-old father of the dead baby, she had been crying in her bed when he returned home from a Halloween party. He calmed her down and went to bed himself. The next morning Mr. Kuhn found the baby with the blanket wrapped around her neck. He said that a few days before her death the infant had fallen off the couch and bumped her head.

     Following the autopsy, the Montezuma County Medical Examiner announced that the child's fatal injuries--a subdural hematoma and hemorrhaging in her optic nerve sheath--had been caused by being slammed violently against a soft but unyielding surface such as a mattress. The medical examiner ruled the baby's manner of death a homicide. The head trauma was too severe to have been caused by a fall off a sofa.

     When police interrogators confronted Kuhn with the forensic pathologist's findings, he admitted slamming the baby down hard on the mattress. He also confessed to placing the blanket around his daughter's neck to throw off investigators. He said he didn't mean to hurt his daughter. As to why he had lied to the police, Kuhn said he was scared, and worried what his girlfriend would think of him if he told the truth. The Montezuma County district attorney charged Dylan Kuhn with child abuse causing death and the offense of manslaughter.

     Several months after Kuhn's arrest, District Attorney Russell Wasley, perhaps because of procedural mistakes made by the police and his office, approached Kuhn with a plea-bargain offer. If the defendant came clean, the prosecutor would drop the child abuse causing death charge. If the defendant pleaded guilty to manslaughter, the worst sentence he could get would be four years in prison.

     In accepting the deal, Dylan Kuhn admitted that he had "aggressively" put the baby to bed that night. She had  been crying, he became frustrated, told her to "shut-up," then slammed her body against the mattress. "I put her to bed too hard," he said. After his confession, Kuhn asked to consult with a defense attorney. The defendant said he was too young to understand how much trouble he might be in. (Kuhn was 19, old enough to drive, vote and serve in the military. Under Colorado law he was considered an adult. He had assaulted and killed his 6-month-old daughter. He wasn't retarded or insane. He knew he had committed a terrible crime. That's why he lied to the police.)

     On October 2, 2012, Dylan Kuhn entered his guilty plea to the charge of manslaughter before District Court Judge Douglas Walker. Before imposing his sentence, Judge Walker heard from Kuhn's girlfriend (and mother of the dead baby) and Coleman's mother. According to April Coleman, Kuhn had always been good to his daughter. The defendant's mother, Vicki Espinoza, told the court that she was worried about what might happen to her son if he had to serve time in prison. (Perhaps Kuhn's mother should have worried about what might happen to her granddaughter when her son lost his temper.) "I don't know why it [the case] went this far," she said. "It was an accident." 

     Judge Walker agreed with the defendant's mother that prison might not be a good thing for her son. (Who is it good for?) The judge also noted that the defendant was young, and had no history of violent crime prior to killing his daughter. In addressing Kuhn, the judge said, "I am giving you an opportunity. Make the best of this opportunity, if nothing else, to honor your daughter's memory."

     The judge's "opportunity" was this: He sentenced Dylan Kuhn to 90 days in jail and four years of probation. Lest critics characterized this sentence as insanely lenient, Judge Walker ordered Kuhn to take parenting classes. The judge also ordered Kuhn to undergo mental and substance abuse evaluation. And finally, Kuhn, during his four year probationary period, was prohibited from being alone with any child under the age of ten.

     In June 2015, with 15 months remaining on his four year probation sentence, correction officials filed probation revocation charges against Kuhn for missing his mandatory appointments with his probation officer. Mr. Kuhn had also tested positive for meth and opiates and had failed to engage in ordered counseling. When Kuhn failed to show up at his July 9, 2015 revocation hearing, a warrant was issued for his arrest. On his Facebook page, Kuhn wrote: "Now facing prison time for a crime I didn't commit." A few days later, police officers took Kuhn into custody at his mother's home in Cortez.

     At Kuhn's August 2015 probation revocation hearing, Judge Walker allowed the defendant to plead guilty to the revocation charges in return for a promise to undergo drug treatment.

     If one didn't know better, one would suspect that Kuhn was the judge's son.

     In November 2016, Montezuma County citizens voted to give Judge Walker another term in office. He won 62 percent of the vote.

     Judge Walker retired in June 2022.