Three Executions

Edward Harold Schad

     In 1968 42-year-old Edward Harold Schad strangled a male sex partner to death in Utah. Ten years later, on August 9, 1978, the paroled killer carjacked Lorimer Grove's Cadillac in Bisbee, Arizona. Police discovered Grove's body along a highway near Prescott, Arizona with a sash-like cord knotted around his neck. 

     After he murdered Mr. Grove, Edward Schad drove around the country in the stolen Cadillac cashing forged checks drawn on the dead man's bank account. Schad also made purchases with the victim's credit cards. A year later a jury found Mr. Schad guilty of first-degee murder. A judge sentenced him to death.

    At ten in the morning of Wednesday, October 9, 2013, at the Arizona State Prison at Florence, the oldest man on the state's death row received his lethal dose of pentobarbital. When the warden asked the 71-year-old if he had any last words, Schad said, "Well, after 34 years [on death row] I'm free to fly away home. Thank you, Warden. Those are my last words."       

Ronald Clinton Lott

     On September 2, 1986 26-year-old Ronald Clinton Lott broke into 83-year-old Anna Laura Fowler's home in Oklahoma City. The intruder beat, raped and strangled the victim to death. On January 11, 1987 Lott broke into the home across the street from Anna Fowler's dwelling. In that house he tortured, raped and murdered 93-year-old Zelma Cutler. 

     A jury in Oklahoma City found Ronald Lott guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to death. 

     At 6:06 in the evening of Tuesday, December 10, 2013 the executioner at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester administered Mr. Lott's lethal injection. The 53-year-old had no last words. Lott was the fifth Oklahoma prisoner to be put to death in 2013. 

Allen Nicklasson

     In August 1994, 22-year-old Allen Nicklasson met a convicted killer named Dennis Skillicorn at a drug rehabilitation center in Kansas City, Missouri. On August 22, 1994 Nicklasson, Skillicorn and a third man, Tim De Graffenreid, decided to drive across the state to St. Louis where they planned to buy drugs. En route Mr. Nicklasson's 1983 Chevrolet Caprice broke down on Interstate 70 near Kingdom City, Missouri. The next day, after a local mechanic worked on the car, the trio of violent losers got back on the road despite the mechanic's warning that the repairs had been temporary. Not long after resuming the trip the Chevy broke down again.

     On August 23 Richard Drummond spotted the three stranded motorists standing on I-70 next to the disabled Chevy. The 47-year-old AT&T supervisor pulled off the highway to help. When Mr. Drummond got out of his Dodge Intrepid Allen Nicklasson put a gun to his head and took him hostage. 

      Nicklasson ordered Drummond to drive the Dodge to a secluded place where he shot the good samaritan execution style in the back of the head. (The victim's body was found eight days later.) Years later, in recalling the moment he killed Drummond, Nicklasson said, "I felt euphoria. I finally got back for all the beatings I took as a child." 

     Two days after he murdered Richard Drummond Allen Nicklasson, with his two degenerate friends in the dead man's car, drove to Arizona where, in the desert, the Dodge broke down. The three men walked in the desert until they came upon a house occupied by Joseph and Charlene Babcock. Once inside the dwelling Nicklasson shot Charlene to death and forced her husband to drive the killers back to the broken down Dodge. It was there Nicklasson murdered Mr. Babcock and stole his car. 

     The three fugitives were caught shortly after the murders by police officers in Arizona. After being found guilty in that state of murdering Mr. and Mrs. Babcock, a judge sentenced Nicklasson to life in prison. Tim De Graffenreid, in return for his guilty plea and cooperation with the authorities, received life sentences in Arizona and later in Missouri. 

     In Missouri, following his conviction for the cold-blooded murder of Richard Drummond, a judge sent Nicklasson to death row. Another Missouri judge sentenced Dennis Skillicorn to death. In 2009 they executed Skillicorn for his role in the Drummond murder. 

     Allen Nicklasson's time finally came at 10:52 in the morning of December 11, 2013. The executioner at the Missouri State Prison in Bonne Terre injected the 41-year-old killer with enough pentobarbital to stop his heart. This murderer of three innocent helpless people had no last words. What could he say? 

The Hannah Overton Murder Case

     Andrew Burd was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on July 28, 2002. The 16-year-old girl who gave birth to him had used, during her pregnancy, meth, crack cocaine, LSD and marijuana. The expectant mother had also consumed alcohol, took Xanax and smoked cigarettes. The baby's 17-year-old father worked for a traveling carnival. This infant should have been taken from his unfit parents at birth.

     Andrew was a year old when his mother took him to an emergency room with a broken arm. A doctor suspected child abuse and called Child Protective Services (CPS). Nothing came of the CPS investigation and the baby was returned to his mother. Eventually, after repeated evidence of child abuse, CPS agents, on the grounds that Andrew was in "immediate danger" took him from his young parents. The agency placed the two and a half-year-old toddler into foster care where he was shuffled from one home to another.

     In 2006 Corpus Christi residents Larry and Hannah Overton heard about Andrew Burd through their evangelical nondenominational church Calvary Chapel of the Coastlands. The couple resided in a modest ranch-style house with their four young children. Twenty-nine-year-old Hannah was six months pregnant at the time. Although the family struggled financially from what Larry Overton earned as a landscape lighting installer the couple expressed interest in adopting Andrew.

     In 1984, when Hannah Overton was seven-years-old, her father, Bennie Saenz, an evangelical preacher, was arrested and charged with murder. Convicted of bludgeoning a 16-year-old girl to death then dumping her body along the shore of Padre Island, the Corpus Christi preacher went to prison for 23 years. 

     Before her marriage to Larry, Hannah worked as a volunteer in an orphanage in Reynosa, Mexico across the border from Corpus Christi. As a married couple Larry and Hannah had performed missionary work for their church. By all accounts they were decent people, loving parents who had never been in trouble with the authorities. Moreover, neither Larry or Hannah had a history of mental illness.

     In the spring of 2006 Andrew Burd joined the Overton family on a six-month probationary basis. On October 2, 2006, not long after the official adoption the four-year-old became suddenly ill. He began vomiting and struggled with his breathing. Hannah, instead of immediately calling 911, telephoned Larry at work. He rushed home. When Andrew became unresponsive the Overtons rushed him to a nearby urgent care clinic. When nurses at the clinic failed to revive Andrew with CPR, paramedics transported the boy to Corpus Christi's Driscoll Hospital.

     Medical personnel at the urgent care clinic, suspicious of child abuse, notified the police shortly after Andrew was admitted to the hospital. Within hours of Andrew's hospitalization police with the Corpus Christi Police Department searched the Overton residence.

     In the evening of October 3, 2006, Andrew Burd died. Dr. Ray Fernandez, the Nueces County Medical Examiner, performed the autopsy. The forensic pathologist, finding some bleeding of the brain, external scratches and bruises and twice the level of sodium in the dead child's blood, ruled the manner of death homicide. Dr. Fernandez identified the boy's cause of death as "acute sodium toxicity with blunt force trauma as a contributing factor." (Dr. Fernandez failed to note that the brain hemorrhaging could have been caused by the sodium content in Andrew's blood.)

     Child Protection Services agents took the other Overton children out of their home and placed them with relatives. (Eventually the children would be placed under the care of Hannah Overton's mother.) A few days after Andrew Burd's death, Corpus Christi detective Michael Hess, an investigator who specialized in child abuse cases, interrogated Hannah Overton at the police station. She had agreed to be questioned without the presence of counsel.

     Detective Hess made it clear that he believed that Hannah, feeling overburdened with so many young children had murdered her adopted son. "I don't see," he said, "what caused the trauma to the brain. I don't see what caused the salt content. Did you at any time strike him?" (At this point, Hannah Overton should have asked for an attorney.)

     The five-hour grilling at the police station ended without a confession. In his report, Detective Hess wrote: "It should be noted that during the entire conversation (conversation?) Hannah Overton showed no emotion." Notwithstanding Hannah Overton's insistence that she had done nothing to harm her adopted son, Nueces County Assistant District Attorney Sandra Eastwood, a child protection crusader, charged the mother of five (she had since had her baby) with capital murder. Under Texas law, if convicted as charged Hannah Overton faced life in prison without the chance of parole.

     The televised Hannah Overton murder trial got underway in Corpus Christi in August 2007. Prosecutor Eastwood, in her opening remarks to the jury, said, "We don't know precisely how she [the defendant] got [the salt] down Andrew, but we know that he [the child] was very, very, obedient."

     Dr. Ray Fernandez, the Nueces County Medical Examiner testified that he had seen "burn-like scarring" on Andrew's arm that had likely been caused by "contact with a hot surface." Judge Jose Longoria had ruled that Dr. Fernandez could not testify that blunt force trauma had contributed to Andrew's death. The judge, due to insufficient scientific evidence to back up this part of the pathologist's report, ruled it inadmissible.)

     Dr. Alexander Rotta, a pediatric critical care specialist from Indianapolis, Indiana, testified that "There were so many bruises and scratches [on Andrew's body] that it would be difficult to describe them all." Dr. Rotta told the jurors that the sodium content in Andrew's blood amounted to six teaspoons of salt. In the doctor's expert opinion Andrew Burd's death had not been accidental.

     After Detective Michael Hess played a video of the defendant's interrogation, one of the nurses who had performed CPR on Andrew at the urgent care clinic testified that the defendant, during the emergency did not behave like a panic-stricken parent. In fact, she often had a smile on her face. Two other urgent care clinic employees took the stand and gave similar testimony. One of these witnesses said that she heard the defendant tell someone at the clinic that the boy had stopped breathing after he had been "punished." (While children are "punished" all the time, jurors probably interpreted this comment as evidence of child abuse.)

     At the close of the state's case defense attorneys David Jones and Chris Pinedo brought Harvard educated forensic pathologist Dr. Judy Melinek to the stand. Dr. Melinek identified the sores on Andrew's body as being consistent with mosquito bites that had been excessively scratched. The witness, on the issue of  how all of that sodium had entered Andrew's system, said that in all probability the child suffered from a rare eating disorder called pica. Children with this malady have an uncontrollable desire to consume inappropriate substances such as salt.

     Hannah Overton, who took the stand on her own behalf, did not come off as a convincing or even sympathetic witness. Her attorneys felt they had no choice but to put her on the stand. At this stage of the trial, given the testimony of the medical examiner, the pediatrician from Indiana and the urgent care clinic personnel, the jurors had probably made up their minds.

     The three-week trial came to an end when the jury, after deliberating eleven hours, found Hannah Overton guilty of capital murder. (She would eventually be sent to the maximum security women's prison outside of Waco, Texas.) Overton's attorneys, shortly after the verdict polled the jury. The defense attorneys were stunned to learn that all of the jurors had found the defendant guilty because she had not sought immediate medical help after her son's injury. None of the jurors had been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had poisoned her child with salt.

     Two days after the guilty verdict, Dr. Edgar Cortes, the emergency room physician on duty at Driscoll Hospital the day Andrew arrived and the pediatrician who had resuscitated the patient before he was sent to the intensive care unit, wrote a letter to the Overton defense team. Dr. Cortes informed the lawyers that while he had been scheduled to testify for the prosecution, prosecutor Sandra Eastwood never called him to the stand. The doctor wasn't called because in his opinion Andrew Burd's death had been accidental. Dr. Cortes, had he taken the stand, would have testified that Andrew had been a hyperactive child who suffered from an autism spectrum disorder. (Dr. Cortes had studied Andrew's medical records.) This would account for the boy's inappropriate eating habits, obsessive scratching and picking, and head banging.

     In the months following the guilty verdict three prominent appellate attorneys--Cynthia Orr, John Raley and Gerry Goldstein--took an interest in the Overton case. The attorneys filed an appeal alleging newly discovered exonerating evidence, ineffective legal representation at trial and the withholding of exculpatory evidence from the defense by prosecutor Sandra Eastwood.

     In 2009 the Texas Circuit Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the Overton capital murder conviction. The justices found no proof that the state had known of Dr. Edgar Cortes' cause and manner of death opinion. The appellate judges also rejected the newly discovered evidence and ineffective counsel claims.

     In the spring of 2010 the Overton appellate team petitioned for the right to have access to the prosecution's file on the case. Prior to the trial prosecutor Eastwood, when asked by defense attorneys for access to documents related to Andrew's stomach contents, claimed that such a report didn't exist. The appellate attorneys, when they were given the opportunity to examine the prosecution's file found the gastric contents report. According to this document Andrew's stomach contents did not reveal elevated amounts of salt when he arrived at the urgent care clinic.

     Hannah Overton's appellate team also learned that prosecutor Eastwood had scheduled, for testimony, Dr. Michael Moritz, the clinical director of pediatric nephrology at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Dr. Moritz specialized in children's kidney diseases and in 2007 had published a paper on accidental child salt poisoning cases. Dr. Moritz had found that a vast majority of these cases involved boys between the age of one and six. Moreover, they had all had been in foster care or were from abusive homes. All of these boys suffered from the eating disorder, pica.

     Dr. Moritz told the appellate team that he had waited days in the Corpus Christi courthouse for his turn to take the stand. When the doctor told prosecutor Eastwood that he had to return to Pittsburgh she arranged for a video deposition that because of time was not completed. Had he taken the stand Dr. Moritz would have testified that in his expert opinion Andrew's death had been accidental.

     Appellate attorney Cynthia Orr, about the time of the Dr. Moritz revelation, received a letter from Anna Jimenez, the former Nueces County prosecutor who had worked on the Overton case with Sandra Eastwood. Regarding whether Eastwood had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, Jimenez wrote: "I fear she [Eastwood] may have purposely withheld evidence that may have been favorable to Hannah Overton's defense.

     In April 2011 Cynthia Orr petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for an evidentiary hearing on the Overton case. Ten months later, in February 2012, appellate judge Cathy Cochran ordered the Corpus Christi trial court judge to hold such a proceeding to entertain the appellate team's assertion that Hanna Overton, an innocent person, had been wrongfully convicted of murder.

     The evidentiary hearing began on April 24, 2012. Chris Pinedo, one of Overton's trial attorneys, took the stand. Pinedo testified that he had asked prosecutor Sandra Eastwood for a sample of Andrew's gastric contents that had been acquired by Driscoll Hospital personnel. Attorney Pinedo wanted to have an independent scientist analyze this evidence for sodium content. The defense attorney was told that such evidence did not exist. Because he acquired photographs of the stomach contents that had been taken at the Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office, attorney Pinedo knew that he had been lied to.

    Forensic pathologist Dr. Judy Melinek testified that because Neuces County medical examiner, Dr. Ray Fernandez, had failed to adequately analyze Andrew's hypothalamous and pituitary glands, his cause and manner of death conclusions were questionable.

     Dr. Edgar Cortes, the emergency medicine pediatrician who had attended to Andrew at Driscoll Hospital before the boy's death took the stand and described how he had waited at the courthouse to testify as a prosecution witness. "I told Assistant District Attorney Sandra Eastwood, 'I hope you're going to come forward with some other [homicide] charge than capital murder because I don't think this was capital murder.' " When asked by attorney Orr why prosecutor Eastwood did not put him on the stand Dr. Cortes said, "I felt like the prosecution had its own theory about what happened." (That is fine as long as the prosecution's theory is backed up by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.)

     Dr. Michael Moritz, the clinical director of pediatric nephrology at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, one of the nation's leading experts on salt poisoning, took the stand on day two of the Overton evidentiary hearing. Dr. Moritz said he believed that if Andrew Burd had ingested a lethal dose of salt he had fed it to himself. The doctor testified that intentional, force-fed salt poisoning was extremely rare.

     Day three of the Overton hearing featured the testimony of former prosecutor Sandra Eastwood. In 2010 Eastwood had been fired from the Nueces County District Attorney's office after she had informed the district attorney that she had been romantically involved with a sex offender. During the Overton trial in 2007, Eastwood, an alcoholic, had been functioning under the influence of alcohol and prescription diet pills. Her responses to Cynthia Orr's questions were vague, confusing and often contradictory. The witness said that her drinking and pill taking had destroyed her memory of the Overton case. As a witness Sandra Eastwood came off more pathetic than evil.

     Eastwood's former assistant in the Overton case, Anna Jimenez, followed her to the stand. According to Jimenez, Eastwood had made the following comment to her: "I will do anything to win this case." Jimenez testified that in her opinion Sandra Eastwood's behavior during the Overton murder trial was "so far out." The witness testified further that she believed that Hannah Overton should have been charged with a lesser homicide offense. Regarding Eastwood's claim that the boy's gastric contents evidence did not exist, Jimenez said, "She is not truthful."

     On the sixth and final day of the Overton evidentiary proceeding, David Jones, one of Overton's trial attorneys, broke down on the stand. "I failed miserably," he said. "There's probably not a day since this verdict that I don't regret spending more time on this case. I should have done more."

     On June 1, 2012, a month after the conclusion of the Overton hearing, District Court Judge Jose Longoria issued his recommendation to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In a 14-page opinion Judge Longoria explained why he saw no new evidence that would have altered the outcome of Overton's murder trial. "The court," he wrote, "concludes that all of the supposedly newly discovered evidence actually was clearly known and discussed at the time of the trial."

     Hannah Overton's appellate team, as well as a large group of people who believed she was an innocent mother who had been railroaded into prison by an overzealous prosecutor, were stunned by Judge Longoria's opinion. The imprisoned woman's fate rested with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In making their decision on whether or not to grant Overton a new trial, the appeals court justices were not bound by District Court Judge Longoria's recommendation.

     On September 18, 2014, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 7 to 2 to grant Hannah Overton a new trial. The appellate judges cited problems associated with prosecutor Sandra Eastwood and criticized Overton's trial attorneys for not calling to the stand a salt poisoning expert.

     The Nueces County District Attorney, after losing the appeal, had four options. He could charge Overton again with capital murder, file lesser charges against her, offer a plea deal or simply dismiss the case. The prosecutor chose to try Overton again for capital murder.

     On December 16, 2014 a Nueces County judge set Overton's bond at $50,000. She posted her bail and was released from prison to await her second trial.

     In February 2016 Hannah and Larry Overton appeared on an episode of the Dr. Phil Show. The couple, in response to pointed questions by the host, denied intentionally poisoning Andrew or delaying his emergency medical care. They also denied abusing the boy. The show featured portions of the video taped police interrogation of Hannah that showed her laughing several times during the detective's questioning. She explained that it was nervous laughter. In defending what appeared to be examples of harsh treatment of Andrew, the couple pointed out that he had been an extremely difficult child to raise. Dr. Phil did not seem convinced the Overtons had been good to the boy, asking them if they had treated him worse than their biological children.

     In May 2017, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzales dropped the murder charge against Hannah Overton and declared her innocent in the death of her four-year-old son. Because she had been wrongfully convicted and behind bars for seven years, the Texas comptroller, on March 7, 2018, informed Overton that she would receive a check from the state in the amount of $573,333.33.

How Criminal Friendly Politicians Create Crime

     Legislators, state and federal, are famous for writing laws affecting subjects they know nothing about. That's why so many laws produce what they call unintended consequences. This is particularly true regarding laws pertaining to crime, criminals and criminal justice.

     In 2014, legislators in California passed the Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act, a misleading title given to a statute that in fact had nothing to do with reducing crime. Politicians passed the law to keep non-violent criminals out of prison. These boneheaded legislators apparently didn't know that a lot of non-violent crimes are serious enough to destroy the quality of life in a community. In this context non-violent does not necessarily mean petty.

     Prior to the 2014 legislation the theft of property worth more than $450 constituted a felony that carried a prison sentence. If, for example, a shoplifter stole ten items from a store that added up to more than $450 in merchandise value that crime was a felony even though each individual item fell below the misdemeanor-felony cutoff.

     Pursuant to California's new law, for an act of shoplifting to qualify as a felony, the stolen merchandise had to exceed $950, and, that sum could not represent the total value of the things stolen. In other words, if out of thirty stolen items, not one piece of merchandise was worth more than $950, the theft was still a misdemeanor even though the total loss to the store amounted to, say, $2,700. Stupidity of this degree can only come from government. 

     Statewide in California, after the passage of the Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act, the rate of shoplifting crime went through the roof. And why wouldn't it? If a shoplifter or a gang of shoplifters got caught they'd pay a fine and go free. And quite often the fine was far less than the value of the items stolen. In California and other states with similar laws shoplifting simply became, particularly for organized retail theft gangs, a profitable business. However, owning a store was no longer a profitable enterprise. And who was to blame for that, the geniuses in the California state legislature.

      California's decriminalization of retail theft led to a new crime wave of what could be termed "organized retail looting." That crime wave hit cities like Vacaville, California. Vacaville, a suburban community in Solano County in the northern part of the state 35 miles west of Sacramento, became vulnerable to gangs of hooded criminals who entered stores, overwhelmed the staff and make off with armloads of stolen merchandise. These so-called grab and dash rings targeted stores in shopping centers located near major freeways. One minute they were in the store looting the place and the next minute they were gone, lost in freeway traffic. These criminals did not have to worry about being pursued by police cars because departmental policy prohibited high-speed freeway chases.

     Since the 2014 passage of this criminal friendly legislation, annual store shoplifting losses more than tripled in the state.  

     The California legislature in effect created a new category of organized crime that has turned suburban shopping centers and downtowns into blighted zones. 

The Meth Contaminated Home

     Methamphetamine is an addictive synthetic stimulant that causes the brain to release a surge of dopamine that depending upon how it is ingested and its potency creates a high that lasts from a few minutes to 24 hours. Meth comes in two forms, powder and rock. The powder can be snorted, smoked, eaten or dissolved into a drink. Rock, the crystalized form of the drug, is usually smoked or injected. One hit of the drug costs between $25 and $80. 

     Meth is addictive because it depletes the brain of dopamine. Once this happens users are unable to experience pleasure without the chemicals. Addicts who try to quit become depressed and in some cases psychotic. The prolonged use of meth permanently destroys the brain and can cause heart attacks and strokes.

     Manufacturing or "cooking" meth is a multi-step operation that takes 48 hours to complete. The process produces toxic fumes and there is always the potential for an explosion. There are a handful of large commercial super labs and thousands of small home laboratories. Super labs, like the one featured on the AMC TV series "Breaking Bad" are staffed by trained chemists who purchase the key ingredients--ephedrine and pseudoephedrine--in bulk from chemical suppliers. A super lab can manufacture more than 100,000 does per cook.

     Amateur meth cooks who operate home labs use chemicals derived from over-the-counter cold, cough and allergy medicines. These shade-tree chemists acquire ingredients such as ammonia and lye from everyday household items. For example, they can obtain red phosphorus by scraping it off matches. The operator of a home meth lab can only produce about 300 doses a cook, enough product for himself and a few sales.

     The vast majority of meth factories raided by narcotics officers are amateur operations. In 2011, drug enforcement agents in the U.S. seized 10,287 residential meth labs. (One of the largest meth lab raids occurred in San Jose, California where, in March 2012, DEA agents seized 750 pounds of meth with a street value of $34 million.) Because of the highly toxic nature of meth production these sites have to be professionally scrubbed.

The Bates Family

     Unfortunately for John Bates, his wife Jessie and their 7-year-old son, the state of Washington didn't have a meth disclosure law in 2007 when they purchased a house for $235,000 in Suquamish, a town near Seattle. Shortly after moving into the dwelling their son Tyler developed breathing problems. Mr. Bates developed a variety of unexplained symptoms and his wife kept getting horrible skin rashes. The family and their physicians didn't have a clue what was causing these ailments until a neighbor, 18 months after the onset of the illnesses, casually mentioned that the former occupant of the home had made his living cooking meth.

     A state inspection of the Bates home revealed that toxic chemicals had soaked into the carpets, walls, studs and flooring. Instead of shelling out $90,000 to replace the contaminated areas of the house, the Bates demolished the place and built a new home on the two-acre lot. The project cost them $184,000.

     The Bates regained their health and the state of Washington passed a residential meth lab disclosure law.  

Shawn Parcells: Forensic Imposter

     The history of forensic science is also the history of pseudoscience, phony experts and bogus courtroom testimony. Fakes and charlatans have flourished in the fields of handwriting identification, DNA analysis, forensic toxicology, firearms identification, latent fingerprint analysis, blood spatter interpretation and forensic pathology.

     These forensic pretenders work in crime labs, police departments and in coroners' and medical examiners' offices. They also practice as private consultants and independent contractors. Within the private sector these experts from hell often charge less than their qualified counterparts and tailor their findings to meet the needs of the people paying their fees.

     Most forensic impersonators work in the shadows until they become involved in a celebrated case. Once in the public limelight they are often exposed for who they are. That doesn't mean, however, that they slink, disgraced, into forensic oblivion. When the smoke clears most of them return with revised, phony credentials and continue to screw up the criminal justice system with their bogus work. They get away with this because in the U.S. there is very little oversight in the field of forensic science.

Shawn Parcells

     Shawn Parcells, after graduating in 2003 with a degree in life science from Kansas State University, was accepted into a medical school in the Caribbean. He did not attend the school because he and his wife were expecting a baby. So instead of becoming a physician and acquiring extra training in forensic pathology, Mr. Parcells started a company in Overland Park, Kansas called Regional Forensic Services.

     Mr. Parcells, calling himself a forensic pathologist's assistant, offered his services to police departments, coroners and medical examiners. He was not certified as a forensic pathology assistant because no such field is recognized within the forensic science profession.

     In Kansas and Missouri Parcells testified in homicide trials as an expert witness on issues dealing with forensic cause of death. Even more disturbing, he performed autopsies without the presence or supervision of a real forensic pathologist.

     On his Linkedln page Shawn Parcells claimed to be an adjunct professor at Washburn State University in Topeka, Kansas. He also claimed to have earned a master's degree from New York Chiropractic College. (Like that would qualify him to perform autopsies.)

     A deputy sheriff in Missouri claimed that Parcells held himself out to be a doctor. If true, this comprised a criminal offense. The laws in Missouri and Kansas were not clear on whether it was legal for a person without a medical degree to perform an autopsy.

     In August 2014, in the wake of the Michael Brown police-involved shooting case in Ferguson, Missouri, Shawn Parcells came out of the shadows when he assisted Dr. Michael Baden perform an autopsy on Mr. Brown at the request of his family. (Dr. Baden was a world renowned forensic pathologist and Fox News contributor.)

     Following the Brown autopsy Mr. Parcells made himself a TV authority on the 18-year-old's death by appearing on CNN, Fox News and several other television networks. In watching those interviews very few people would be under the impression that Dr. Baden's assistant was not a forensic pathologist. He came off as being quite authoritative on the subject of Michael Brown's shooting death.

     Parcells' media exposure ultimately led to an investigation by CNN regarding his credentials as a cause of death expert. On November 24, 2014 Shawn Parcells sat for a television interview conducted by a CNN correspondent. He admitted having performed autopsies on his own, and when asked how he had acquired his expertise, said, "by watching pathologists and assisting them at various morgues." In some cases he was paid, other times not, he said.

     Parcells, when asked about his master's degree from the chiropractic school said he couldn't produce the diploma because it had not arrived in the mail. According to the CNN interviewer, when an inquiry was made at Washburn State University regarding his adjunct professorship a spokesperson for the school said he "is not now and has never been a member of the Washburn University faculty." According to the school official Parcells had once spoken to two groups of nursing students about the role of a forensic pathologist's assistant. He was not paid for his presentation.

   Over the next several years Shawn Parcells continued to function and do business as a forensic pathologist, and by 2019 his false claims and deceptive business practices caught up to him. In March 2019 a judge in Shawnee County, Kansas temporarily banned Parcells and his Topeka based company, National Autopsy Services, from conducting autopsies and forensic pathology services. The shutdown would remain in place until a lawsuit against Parcells filed by the state attorney general Derek Schmidt was resolved. The suit alleged violations of the state's consumer protection and false claims act.

     In April 2019 the Kansas Board of Healing Arts filed a suit against Shawn Parcells in connection with his alleged false claims of being a physician, a pathologist and a medical examiner. The board asked a judge to shut down Parcells' operation.

    The above administrative actions were prompted by an investigation conducted by journalists with the Kansas City News Channel, KCTV5. Reporters spoke to families who had hired Parcells to perform private autopsies in disputed cause and manner of death cases. According to Parcells' accusers he took their money in return for autopsy reports that were full of errors and completely useless. Some of his accusers said Parcells didn't even give them a report. All of his victims were under the impression Parcells was a certified forensic pathologist.

     Shawn Parcells, in an email to the KCTV5 investigative team, defended himself by claiming the complainants misunderstood him; that he did not offer "medical reviews" but "scientific reviews." He wrote: "People are missing the point here and it's hurting science. It is only delaying us and because I do work for the defense no one likes me and wants me gone because I actually make the other side do their job." Parcells called his forensic reports "pathophysiological" reports, documents that merely offered his analysis on why a person died. According to Parcells this was not work that required a medical doctor.

     Shawn Parcells must have known, however, that the families who hired him needed a valid autopsy for insurance and other legal reasons, something his so-called pathophysiological report didn't accomplish.

     In Wabaunsee County, Kansas Shawn Parcells faced criminal charges of theft and desecration of bodies. Moreover, the state attorney general had filed a civil case against him for violating the False Claims and Consumer Protection Acts. The state had also shut down Parcells' National Autopsy Services in Topeka.

     In May 2019 reporters with the CBS television affiliate in Kansas City, accompanied by Parcells,  toured his closed Topeka forensic lab. In the facility reporters saw a large quantity of tissue specimens and body parts from autopsies he conducted in Kansas and other states.

     In Illinois, Kane County Coroner Rob Russell, president of the Association of Illinois Coroners and Medical Examiners, told the CBS reporters that in his state, where Shawn Parcells had performed autopsies, it was illegal for a non-physician to do such work. On Parcells' website he listed an office in a Naperville funeral home. While the Naperville funeral director had allowed Parcells to conduct autopsies there, Parcells didn't maintain an office at that location. The funeral director told the reporters that he had been under the belief that Parcells was a physician.

     In November 2019, based upon an order from a Shawnee County, Kansas judge, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment took control of Parcells' closed National Autopsy Services in Topeka. The agency was ordered to conduct an inventory of the biological samples and release them to requesting families. The rest would be held in storage. Parcells' attorney Eric Kjorlie did not oppose the takeover because his client was no longer able to maintain the facility.

     At this point in the Shawn Parcells saga, one would assume the forensic pretender's career was over. This, however, given the history of such cases, was not a safe assumption.

     In April 2020, not one to miss an opportunity to make money in a field in which he was not qualified, Shawn Parcells was back at it again. He was caught trying to sell coronavirus tests to people desperate to known if their loved ones had died of COVID-19.

     On grounds Parcells' COVID-19 testing violated the conditions set by the Kansas judge that prohibited him from working with human remains the Kansas attorney general, on May 6, 2020, filed a restraining order preventing this practice.

     In November 2020, a federal grand jury sitting in Topeka, Kansas indicted Shawn Parcells of wire fraud in connection with his firm National Autopsy Services. According to the indictment, he had charged clients $3,000 upfront for pathology reports. At least 375 clients had paid him more than $1 million in fees between May 2016 and May 2019. He faced up to 20 years in prison and fines of $250,000 on each fraud count. Following his arrest he was released on bail. 

     In December 2020, Mr. Parcells filed notice that he intended to plead guilty to the federal charges. A few months later he was arrested and placed into federal custody for violating the terms of his federal bond.

     In May 2022 Shawn Parcells pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud and related offenses. Seven months later the judge sentenced him to five years nine months in prison.

Christopher Deedy: The Federal Agent Tried for Murder

     On November 4, 2011, 27-year-old Christopher Deedy, a U. S. State Department Special Agent from Arlington, Virginia, was in Hawaii as a member of the State Department's Diplomatic Security unit. Deedy and the other federal agents were in Honolulu to protect Hilary Clinton and President Obama at the upcoming Asian Pacific Economic Conference scheduled for November 7 through November 13.

     On the night of November 4, Agent Deedy and a couple of his friends were bar-hopping in the city. At 2:30 the following morning the off-duty agent, dressed in shorts, flip-flops and a dress shirt that covered the 9 mm Glock pistol on his hip, was having coffee at a McDonalds. Kollin K. Elderts, a 23-year-old Hawaiian man who had been arrested in 2008 for disorderly conduct, and in 2010 for driving under the influence, was giving a white McDonalds customer he didn't know a hard time. Elderts called this man, Michael Perrine, a "haole," a Hawaiian word used by the locals as a racial slur against Caucasians of European decent. Perrine, who had been minding his own business, said he didn't understand why Elderts was singling him out for this verbal abuse. "I'm a local, too," he said. "I live here."

     Agent Deedy walked over to Elderts' table and asked him why he was picking on Mr. Perrine. Mr. Elderts did not appreciate the interference. Angry words escalated into a physical confrontation. What happened next depended upon who was telling the story. The only facts not in dispute were these: Agent Deedy and the Hawaiian man fought. At some point in the confrontation the agent pulled his gun and fired three shots. One of the bullets hit and killed Mr. Elderts.

     The Honolulu coroner retrieved a single bullet from Elderts' body. Detectives dug two slugs out of a McDonald's wall. The autopsy report revealed that Kollin Elderts had recently consumed marijuana and cocaine. He also had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12, a percentage well above the state's legal limit for driving.

     Not long after Mr. Elderts' death a state grand jury in Honolulu indicted agent Deedy for second-degree murder. Assistant deputy prosecutor Janice Futa choose not to include, as a backup charge, the lesser offense of manslaughter. That meant it was second-degree murder or nothing. 

Christopher Deedy posted his $250,000 bail and returned to Virginia to await his trial.

      Mr. Elderts shooting death exacerbated racial tensions in Hawaii. The local media compared the killing of an unarmed man of color by a white man with the Treyvon Martin case that was unfolding at the time in Florida. According to narrative created by reporters and correspondents in the print and television media, Treyvon Martin had been killed by a wannabe cop; Elderts had been shot to death by a federal law enforcement officer. For Christopher Deedy the timing was not helpful.

     The Deedy murder trial got underway in a Honolulu courtroom in mid-July 2013. Circuit Court Judge Karen Ahn oversaw the selection of seven men and five women for the jury. Six of the jurors were of Hawaiian decent. The other members of the jury were Caucasian. Prosecutor Futa, with the defendant's wife and parents looking on, delivered her opening statement to the jurors. In the prosecution's version of the facts Deedy's first shot missed Mr. Elderts. The second shot, fired before the two men fell to the floor and fought, killed the victim. The defendant's third shot missed.

     In describing her theory of the case, Prosecutor Futa said, "The defendant...draws from his right hip area the gun. Kollin [Elderts] turns around and sees him and the defendant is within three feet of Kollin Elderts and fires his gun. He misses Kollin. Now having been shot at by the defendant, Elderts lunges toward him reaching for the gun. They grapple in front of the [McDonalds] counter and [another] shot rang out. After the shots, Kollin falls on top of the defendant onto the floor. The third bullet was fired. After the third bullet was fired, the gun jams."

     In her opening statement, the prosecutor portrayed Christopher Deedy as an inexperienced agent (George Zimmerman was a wannabe cop) who had consumed alcohol against State Department policy while carrying a firearm. Deedy had "stuck his nose" in the situation at McDonalds "that was not his business." Futa informed the jurors that the McDonald surveillance videotape of the incident was "frustratingly fuzzy."

     The defense version of the shooting differed from the prosecution's theory. According to the defense, it was the third shot, fired when the two men were fighting on the floor, that killed Mr. Elderts.

     Defense attorney Brook Hart, in addressing the jury, said, "The evidence will show that the defendant used a number of measured steps to try to sway Mr. Edlerts...from his violent assault. Referring to Elderts' racial slur, Hart said, "These are now fighting words. This is a threat of violence. This is what Deedy is trained to respond to, although he wasn't here to respond to the laws of harassment or bullying. He's a federal agent and his job is to serve the community." (His job was to protect Clinton and Obama.)

     According to the defense attorney, when the defendant showed Elderts his State Department badge and credentials, Elderts said, "What, you gonna shoot me? You got a gun? Shoot me. I'm gonna gut you."

     Attorney Hart informed the jurors that the State Department authorizes its agents to carry weapons when they are off-duty. She said that her client, on the night of the shooting, was not intoxicated.

     As in the Treyvon Martin case where George Zimmerman's head injuries proved valuable to the defense, Attorney Hart pointed out that Agent Deedy's nose had been broken and his face badly pummeled. In summing up, the defense attorney said, "Special Agent Deedy was compelled to discharge his gun resulting in the death of Elderts. Agent Deedy acted responsibly and in self-defense."

     On August 6, 2013, following 18 days of prosecution testimony, attorney Hart put the defendant on the stand. Agent Deedy testified that on the night in question Mr. Elderts had drawn his attention with his "hysterical laughing" and taunting of Mr. Perrine. When Elderts ignored the McDonalds cashier's request to leave Mr. Perrine alone, Deedy walked over to Elderts' table and asked him what was going on. Sounding a bit self-important, the witness said, "From my trained perspective I believed it was appropriate for me to intervene, to further assess the situation because this was not a mutual interaction going on."

     When Agent Deedy interceded on Mr. Perrine's behalf Mr. Elderts called him a "haole." According to the witness, "I needed to portray a stronger command presence." This is when he identified himself as a federal law enforcement officer. (The surveillance footage shows Deedy displaying his badge and credentials.) Not impressed, Mr. Elderts continued to taunt the agent. When Elderts slid out from behind his table, the agent knew there would be trouble. In describing this moment to the jury, Deedy said, "I think I was in actual shock. This was very quick, there was a lot going through my head. My brain was going in a thousand directions."

     Attorney Hart asked her witness, "Why didn't you just leave the restaurant?"

     Deedy answered that because he was a trained law enforcement officer, he couldn't responsibly back down. "I injected myself into the situation because I sensed the propensity for violence. For me at this point to run would be irresponsible."

     Agent Deedy described to the jury how he had tried to disable Elderts with a kick to his left shin. He missed and hit the meaty part of his opponent's thigh. At that moment the agent knew he was in for a fight. When his attacker tried to grab his gun the defendant said he had no choice but to utilize deadly force in defense of his life.

     The defense rested after three days of the defendant's testimony. The case went to the jury on August 15, 2013. On Monday, August 19, the jury foreman advised Judge Ahn that the panel could not reach an unanimous verdict. Judge Ahn declared a mistrial. The defendant was free to accompany his wife and his parents back to Virginia. His second trial was set for the spring of 2014.

     Following the verdict, prosecutor Futa told reporters that she was "very disappointed." She said she didn't regret not giving the jury the manslaughter option. Defense attorney Hart, in speaking to the press, said that her client "pleaded not guilty and is not guilty. "The jury," she said, "did not find him guilty."

     Because the jury did not acquit agent Deedy he was not home free. Not only that, Kollin Elderts' family sued him for wrongful death. Even if Christopher Deedy was eventually acquitted, he would have been better off calling the police and walking out of McDonalds that night.

     At his second trial in 2014, jurors found Deedy not guilty of murder but deadlocked seven to five in the defendant's favor on the manslaughter charge.

     When the prosecutor ordered a third trial, Christopher Deedy appealed on the grounds of double jeopardy. In December 2017 the Hawaii Supreme Court rejected the defendant's double jeopardy claim. Deedy's attorneys appealed that decision to the (federal) 9th Court of Appeals which ruled that Mr. Deedy, under the double jeopardy doctrine, could not be re-tried for manslaughter. Prosecutor Futa appealed that decision to the United States Supreme Court.

     In June 2020 the Supreme Court declined to hear the Deedy case. That meant the appellate court decision would stand. Following that decision a spokesperson for the Honolulu Prosecutor's Office announced that Mr. Deedy's case had been closed.  

Victor White's Police Custody Death

     Victor White III grew up as part of a large family (8 siblings) in Alexandria, Louisiana. He played the drums and sang in the choir of the local Baptist Church where his father served as pastor. In late 2013 Victor White moved two hours south of Alexandria to New Iberia where the 22-year-old had a job at a Waffle House restaurant. According to his girlfriend he was saving money so he could afford an apartment for himself and her and their one-year-old son.

     On his day off on March 2, 2014 Mr. White and his friend Isaiah Lewis walked to the Hop-In gas station and convenience store to buy cigarillos. While they were in the store a fight broke out in the parking lot. Someone called 911.

     A deputy with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, in responding to the 911 public disturbance call, spotted White and Lewis walking along the street about six blocks from the scene of the fight, a melee involving young black men. Since Victor White and his friend were black the deputy sheriff pulled over and confronted them.

     The officer, pursuant to the street inquiry patted down Victor White to determine if he was armed. In so doing the deputy felt a bag in White's pocket that contained marijuana. At this point the officer placed White under arrest, handcuffed him behind his back and gave him his Miranda rights. A more thorough body search uncovered a small packet of cocaine. The officer placed the arrested man into the back of the police car and drove to the sheriff's office.

     At the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, according to the police version of what happened, Victor White refused to exit the vehicle. The deputy summoned help. That's when officers heard a gun go off from inside the patrol car. Deputies found Mr. White slumped over in the back seat.

     Shortly after being rushed to a nearby hospital Victor White died from a single bullet wound in his chest. Following the shooting death of a handcuffed man in police custody the Iberia County sheriff called in the Louisiana State Police to conduct an investigation of the incident.

     According to early news accounts of the case Victor White had committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a gun the deputy sheriff had missed in his frisk and full body search.

    In August 2014 Iberia County Coroner Carl Ditch provided the White family with a copy of the autopsy report. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy determined that the fatal bullet had entered the right side of White's chest, perforated his lung and heart then exited near his left armpit.

     According to the autopsy report the entrance wound was not surrounded by gunpowder stains usually found in cases of close range shots associated with self-inflicted shootings. The forensic pathologist noted abrasions around White's left eye. According to the toxicology report the dead man had alcohol and marijuana in his system.

     In a news release Coroner Carl Ditch announced the manner of Victor White's death as suicide. The coroner said he had reached this conclusion after "every other manner of death in the case was ruled out." Obviously aware that questions would be raised regarding how, under the circumstances of this case Mr. White could have shot himself in the chest, the coroner noted that because of the dead man's physique he would have been able to manipulate the gun to a position consistent with the entrance wound. The forensic pathology did not explain what it was about Victor White's body that allowed him to pull off that feat.

     In early September 2014 a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police said the results of that agency's investigation had been turned over to the Iberia Parish District Attorney's Office. When reporters asked District Attorney Phil Haney if he was charging anyone in connection with White's death, the prosecutor said he was not.

     The White family was not satisfied with the coroner's manner of death ruling. Moreover, there was deep distrust of the state police investigation. The family added attorney Benjamin Crump of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown fame to the family's legal team.

     In October 2017, United States Magistrate Judge Patrick Hanna ruled out criminal wrongdoing in Victor White's Death. Victor White's family in March 2018 settled their federal lawsuit against the sheriff's office for $325,000.

Justin Bieber And The Great Calabasas Egging Caper

     What do you get when you mix youth, wealth, fame and a dose of sociopathy? You get a kid like Justin Bieber, the baby-faced singer with the big hair, tattooed arms and oversized Jacqueline Onasis sunglasses. You get a bored, narcissistic jerk who doesn't have a clue how to deal with his vacuous life.

     If you're a rich person who is not young, stupid or famous, having a celebrity like Bieber move into the mansion next to you is not a good thing. It's not a good thing for the entire neighborhood. But what can you do? There is no such thing as zoning ordinances that keep entertainment celebrities out of communities.

      In 2013 when the 19-year-old singer moved into the sprawling house on Prado del Grandioso Drive in Calabasas, California, neighbor Jeffrey Schwartz's nightmare began. With Bieber came the loud music and the all-night parties. Moreover, the celebrity himself became a huge pain-in-the-butt. In one confrontation with Mr. Schwartz Justin Bieber allegedly spit on him.

     On a more serious level, Mr. Schwartz and the other non-celebrities in the community accused the teen singer of endangering children by driving recklessly around the neighborhood in his luxury vehicles.

     Late Thursday night, January 9, 2014, Mr. Schwartz called the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office to report acts of vandalism against his home. According to the complainant, while standing on his second-floor balcony, he saw Justin Bieber throw at least twenty raw eggs at his house. The eggs permanently stained custom wood and venetian plaster that would cost Mr. Schwartz an estimated $20,000 to restore. The extent of the damage qualified the crime as felony vandalism. Detectives launched an investigation into the allegation, but did not take suspect Bieber into custody.

     At eight in the morning of Tuesday, January 14, 2014, pursuant to the egg assault case, twelve deputies out of the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station showed up at Bieber's mansion armed with a battering ram and a search warrant. As it turned out, the officers gained entry without using the battering ram. Eight people, including Bieber, were in the house when the police showed up at the door.

     Soon after entering the dwelling deputies saw, in plain view, what they thought was a quantity of cocaine or the drug Ecstasy. In connection with the drugs, deputies arrested a 20-year-old rapper who called himself Lil Za. Za was not only Bieber's friend, he had been living in the singer's house for several months.

     Deputies hauled Lil Za, real name Xavier Smith, to the Lost Hills Station lockup in Agoura. Later that day after posting his $20,000 bond Mr. Smith was about to be released when officers discovered he had destroyed the wall phone in the holding cell. Charged with felony vandalism, the judge raised the rapper's bail to $70,000. After posting the upped bond Smith tweeted to his fans that he was doing just fine. What a relief.

     Crime lab personnel identified the substance seized in the Bieber house search as MDMA--a form of Ecstasy commonly known as "molly." In California Ecstasy possession carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail. (Cocaine possession carried a maximum sentence of three years.)

     Bieber's egg throwing caper opened a can of worms for his drug possessing friend. However, while these alleged offenses provided rich material for the entertainment media, they were small potatoes crime-wise. When all is said and done few celebrities ever go to jail. Look what it took to put O. J. Simpson and Phil Spector behind bars--and they committed murder.  Lindsay Lohan, another celebrity jerk, spent a few hours in jail and you'd think the world had come to an end.

     On Thursday, January 23, 2014 at four in the morning, police in Miami Beach, Florida arrested the bad-boy cutie for drag racing and driving under the influence of alcohol. He was racing his Lamborghini. He posted his bond, was released from custody and later paid a fine.

     Regarding the great egging case, Mr. Bieber pleaded no contest to vandalism in return for two years on probation. 

     At some point after the house-egging caper the pop singer paid his neighbor $80,000 to cover the cost of the damage to the house. (They must have been really big eggs.) Mr. Schwartz, however, was not satisfied. The egging victim gave Bieber an ultimatum--fork over $1million or face a lawsuit.

     In response to the lawsuit threat Justin Bieber's people told Mr. Schwartz to suck an egg. As a result, in March 2015, Schwartz filed suit claiming the egg incident destroyed his reputation as an online auto leader. According to the plaintiff, he was known around the world as the guy Justin Bieber had egged and spit on. Exactly how that destroyed his business reputation was unclear. One would think that if anyone's reputation took a hit in the egging case, it was Bieber's.

     In November 2018 Bieber and Schwartz settled the long-running suit for an undisclosed amount.
       

The Randolph Maidens Murder Case

     In April 2013 Dr. Rachael F. Maidens, a successful orthodontist, resided with her husband Randolph and their two-year-old daughter Natalie in a $900,000 home inside a gated 600-acre subdivision in Brentwood, an affluent suburb outside of Nashville, Tennessee. The Brentwood native had attended Father Ryan High School, Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham Alabama and the University of Florida College of Dental Medicine. She began practicing orthodontics in her hometown in 2006.

     Randolph Maidens, the 34-year-old orthodontist's husband, worked for a biotech firm called Dendreon as a regional pharmaceutical sales manager. Rachael, her family and Randolph Maidens' fellow employees were concerned that the 42-year-old salesman had, over the past several weeks, lost control of himself. Maidens had been drinking heavily and fighting with his wife. In February 2013 police in Brentwood arrested him for driving under the influence.

     Randolph and Rachael Maidens while attending a Dendreon Company conference at the Dolphin Resort at Walt Disney World argued in front of other pharmaceutical company employees and their spouses. Randolph, in a drunken rage, smashed glasses and screamed that he was going to kill Rachael. The out-of-control sales manager, when fellow employees tried to settle him down, started throwing punches. The police came and took Mr. Maidens into custody. Charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct he spent the night in jail. Three days later Mr. Maidens returned to work.

     At 5:50 PM on Sunday April 21, 2013, Rachael Maidens' mother, Elizabeth Frisbi, concerned that Randolph had become suicidal, asked officers with the Brentwood Police Department to make a welfare check at the couple's home in the Governors Club subdivision.

     When the officers entered the house they encountered two-year-old Natalie who said, "Daddy gone. Daddy gone." In a second floor bedroom they found Rachael who had been shot to death. Randolph was not in the dwelling.

     In the kitchen police officers discovered a note in which Randolph apologized for what he had done to his wife. In the murder scene note Randolph Maidens had allegedly written that he wanted his daughter Natalie placed into the custody of Rachael's parents.

     Fearing that an armed madman was on the loose, police officers evacuated the homes in the vicinity of the murder and locked down the subdivision. At 6:30 the next morning officers arrested Randolph Maidens when he returned to his house on Governors Way. He did not resist arrest and was not armed.

     In the trunk of Maidens' car officers discovered $87,200 in cash. In the house they had found $8,500 in 100-dollar bills.

     Charged with first-degree murder, two counts of evidence tampering and child neglect, officers booked Maidens into the Williamson County Jail. Two days later a judge set his bail at $2.5 million.

     Shortly after Maidens' arrest his attorneys petitioned the court for a bail reduction. In June 2013 the judge reduced Maidens' bail to $750,000. With the help of a bonding agency Maidens gained his release by posting his bail. Corrections officers fitted the suspect with a GPS tracking device and the judge prohibited Maidens from contacting his daughter or members of his dead wife's family.

     At a preliminary hearing on June 25, 2013 Mr. Maidens pleaded not guilty to all charges. In November a Williamson County judge announced that in December 2013 a date would be set for Maidens' murder trial.

     On January 7, 2014 Williamson County Judge Timothy Easter revoked Randolph Maidens' bond and sent him back to jail. The judge took this action because on December 10, 2013 Davidson County Sheriff Office deputies arrested Maidens at his apartment complex for public intoxication. (The charge was later dropped.) District Attorney Kim Helper had filed the revocation motion on grounds that Maidens was a threat to public safety.

     On September 15, 2014 Randolph Maidens pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killing of his wife Rachael. In his plea statement he said, "And to Rachael, I promised to love and cherish you and I betrayed all of that. I will live with the anguish forever. No prison is worse than what I inflicted on myself. To all of Rachael's family and friends, I am truly sorry for all the pain and for all the moments that could have been."

     Judge Timothy Easter sentenced the 35-year-old Maidens to 25 years in prison. 

Did Jeffrey Pyne Murder His Mother?

     On the surface it looked like 22-year-old Jeffrey Pyne had a great life with a promising future. He had graduated from the West Highland Christian Academy in Milford, Michigan as class valedictorian. After high school he attended the University of Michigan-Flint where he majored in biology. But at home in Highland Township Jeffery Payne had serious problems with his 51-year-old mother, Ruth.

     In 1998, when Jeffrey was 8-years-old, Ruth Pyne was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Over the next decade she became increasingly difficult to live with, and violent. For some reason, Jeffery had become the prime target of his mother's wrath which had subjected him to physical and verbal abuse. In July 2010, after the police arrested Ruth for trying to manually strangle her son, Jeffrey's father, Bernie Pyne, filed a petition with the court to have his wife institutionalized. In the commitment petition Mr. Pyne wrote: "She has invented a religion that deems all medication a form of sorcery and will not take her medication for that reason."

     Ruth Pyne's refusal to take her bipolar medicine, the cause of her bellicose behavior, created most of the friction between mother and son and led to many heated arguments. Following in-patient treatment at a Michigan mental health facility in 2010 Ruth Pyne returned home. But nothing changed. She refused to take her medication and continued to torment her son.

     On May 27, 2011, at 2:30 in the afternoon, Bernie Pyne and his ten-year-old daughter Julia came home to find Ruth dead in the garage. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed. Because nothing had been stolen from the garage or the house, and the victim had not been sexually assaulted, it didn't seem likely that this woman had been murdered by a stranger.

     According the the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, Ruth Pyne had received at least 12 vicious blows to the head from a two-by-four. Her attacker then stabbed her in the neck 16 times. It was possible that the stab wounds were postmortem. The overkill nature of the assault led investigators to believe the victim had been murdered by someone who knew her well, and hated her guts.

     Crime scene technicians found traces of the dead woman's blood on faucet handles in the laundry room where they believed the killer had washed his or her hands. The crime scene investigators found no blood on the inside knob of the garage man-door which was standing partially open. Had the killer left the garage through this doorway, the door operating knob would have contained traces of the victim's blood. Inside the dwelling crime scene technicians found no signs of blood or other physical evidence of the killing. Detectives speculated that the killer believed that he or she had enough time after the murder to clean up the house before Mr. Pyne and his daughter returned home and discovered the body.

     Since Ruth Pyne's murder appeared to be an inside job, suspicion immediately fell on Jeffery Pyne who had been, as far as anyone could tell, the last person to see his mother alive. On the day of the murder, detectives with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office questioned Jeffery at police headquarters. The suspect, when asked to account for himself that afternoon, said, "She got home from grocery shopping. I helped her bring the groceries in." According to Jeffery his mother was alive when he left the house at one-thirty that afternoon to plant lilac bushes at the home of one of his former high school teachers. After working at the teacher's house he drove to his part time job at Spicer Orchards.

     Crime scene investigators, on the day of the murder, combed Jeffrey Pyne's car for physical traces of the murder. They found nothing. A forensic analysis of Jeffrey's clothing also produced negative results.

     When officers questioned Jeffrey at the sheriff's office that afternoon, detectives noticed fresh blisters on both of his hands. When asked about the blisters, Jeffrey said he had gotten them earlier in the day planting lilacs at the teacher's house.  In response to a question about his relationship with his mother, Jeffrey said, "I've never had a problem with her. The only issue I had is I wanted her to take her medicine." At the conclusion of the interview detectives were certain Jeffrey Pyne had fatally bludgeoned and stabbed his mother.

     In October 2011, five months after the murder, Oakland County District Attorney John Skrzynski charged Jeffrey Pyne with first-degree murder.

     The Pyne murder trial got underway in Pontiac, Michigan on November 16, 2012. In his opening statement to the jury, prosecutor Skrzynski said, "This was an angry killing that was the result of years of living with a difficult person who was bipolar." The defendant's attorney, James Champion, pointed out that the state could not link his client to the murder through physical evidence and that the prosecution's proof was circumstantial, and weak.

     The strongest witness for the prosecution turned out to be the school teacher who had hired Jeffrey to do odd jobs around her house. According to her testimony, Jeffrey had planted the lilacs four days before his mother's murder. This was a credible witness who broke the defendant's alibi.

     The testimony phase of the Pyne murder trial came to a sudden close on December 14, 2012 when defense attorney Champion announced that he did not have any witnesses to present. In Champion's mind he didn't need any witnesses because the prosecution had failed to carry its burden of proof.

     On December 18, 2012, the jury found the defendant guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. Judge Leo Bowan had the option of sentencing Jeffery Pyne to up to 60 years behind bars. He could also hand down the minimum sentence of seven years in prison.

     Jeffrey Pyne  maintained his innocence. The bloody clothes he would have worn when he killed his mother were not recovered. Those who believed Jeffrey Pyne innocent argued there were no bloody clothes to recover.

     On Saturday January 12, 2013, the CBS crime series "48 Hours," in an episode called "The Perfect Family," aired an account of the Pyne case. The segment featured interviews of Ruth Pyne's sister and Jeffrey's father.

     Judge Bowan on January 29, 2013 sentenced Jeffrey Pyne to twenty years in prison.

The Girl the State of Georgia Failed to Protect

     In 2004 prosecutors in Gwinnett County Georgia charged Emani Moss with assaulting his girlfriend. The couple had a one-year old girl who was named Emani after her father. Because Mr. Moss attacked his girlfriend in front of their daughter the prosecutor also charged him with second-degree child cruelty. In return for his guilty plea the judge sentenced Mr. Moss to probation.

     Six years after the domestic assault, Emani Moss and his daughter resided in Lawrenceville, an unincorporated suburb of Atlanta. Mr. Moss's new girlfriend, Tiffany Nicole Brown lived in the apartment with them. In March 2010 the six-year-old girl told a teacher at Cooper Elementary School that she was afraid to go home with her bad report card.

     Emani's fear of being punished at home prompted an inquiry by the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. After finding evidence of abuse the child protection agency turned the case over to the Gwinnett County Police Department.

     Gwinnett County investigators determined that Tiffany Brown had repeatedly beaten the girl with a belt. On Emani's body doctors found scars, abrasions, scabs and bruises on her chest, arms, back and legs. A Gwinnett County prosecutor charged Tiffany Nicole Brown, an elementary school teacher, with first-degree child cruelty. The girl's father was charged with child cruelty as well.

     Pursuant to an agreement with the prosecutor Tiffany Brown was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree child cruelty in return for probation. Because the couple promised to take parenting classes the charges against Mr. Moss were dropped. (The child services agency had signed-off on the plea bargain.) Everybody came out ahead in the deal except the child who remained exposed to abuse. 

     In July 2012 Gwinnett County detectives opened another child abuse case involving Mr. Moss and Tiffany whom he had since married. When investigators were unable to find sufficient evidence to back up the girl's claim that she had been beaten and denied food as punishment, the police closed the case. Shortly after being abandoned again by the government the nine-year-old ran away from home. After finding her the authorities not only returned the child to her private hell, they charged her as a runaway juvenile.

     At four in the morning on Saturday November 1, 2013 Mr. Moss called 911 from the Coventry Pointe apartment complex in Lawrenceville. He told the 911 dispatcher that his daughter had consumed some kind of poison and died. He said he was thinking of committing suicide.

     Gwinnett County police officers encountered Mr. Moss standing in the breezeway outside the apartment complex. The 30-year-old led the officers to a trash can in the recreation area. Inside the garbage bin officers discovered the badly burned body of a girl. The girl in the trash was ten-year-old Emani Moss.

     The county medical examiner's office ruled the girl's death a homicide. According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy she died of starvation. Her body had been burned postmortem. The medical examiner did not believe she had been poisoned.  (A toxicology report would later confirm the lack of poison in the girl's system.) According to the pathologist the dead girl had endured periods of up to twelve days without food. She had been dead about three days.

     Emani and Tiffany Moss, charged with first-degree murder, cruelty to children and concealing a body, were booked into the Gwinnett County Detention Center. The magistrate denied them bail.

     On June 8, 2015 Emani Moss pleaded guilty to the charge of felony-murder. As part of the plea bargain deal he agreed to testify against his wife Tiffany. Detectives believed that Tiffany had been the driving force behind the murder. Mr. Moss, according to investigators, had played a passive role in his daughter's torture and death. He had failed to protect her. In return for his plea Emani Moss was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If found guilty Tiffany Moss faced the death penalty.

     In November 2017 Tiffany Moss fired her two state appointed attorneys after they recommended that she plead guilty in return for a life sentence. She asked the court to allow her to represent herself.

     In May 2022, after representing herself at the murder trial, the Gwinnett County Jury found Tiffany Moss guilty as charged. Her sentence: death by lethal injection.

Jose Manuel Martinez: Cartel Hit Man

     Most contract killers are inexpensive amateurs who get caught after their first murder. Their more professional counterparts, career criminals, mostly carry out their murder assignments for organized crime bosses. These hit men are harder to catch because they operate in the shadows of the underworld. But every so often a cold-blooded killer like 51-year-old Jose Manuel Martinez emerges from the shadows.

     In late 2013 authorities on the Mexican-Arizona border arrested Martinez as he tried to cross into the U.S. A warrant for his arrest had been issued out of Lawrence County, Alabama where he had been charged with murdering a man execution style in 2013. According to the authorities in Alabama, Manuel Martinez shot the victim because of a disparaging remark he had made about Martinez's sister.

     Authorities in Florida also wanted Martinez in connection with a pair of murders in 2006. In California, where Martinez spent brief periods in state prison for drug and theft convictions, the police considered him a suspect in a series of home-invasion robberies. These crimes took place in late 2012 and early 2013.

     Martinez lived on and off in Richgrove, California, a small farming community in Tulare County in the central part of the state about 40 miles north of Bakersfield.

     While incarcerated in the Lawrence County Jail in Alabama where he awaited his June 2014 murder trial, Martinez told detectives that over the past 35 years he had operated as a hit man for a Mexican drug cartel. According to Martinez he had murdered forty men since 1980.

     On April 8, 2014 prosecutors in two central California counties--Tulare and Kern--charged Martinez with eleven contract killings committed between 1980 and 2011. Nine of the murders took place in Tulare County and two in Kern County. A prosecutor in Santa Barbara County in southern California charged Martinez with the ninth California murder. 

     Manuel Martinez confessed to the following contract killings:

     On October 21, 1980 Martinez shot 23-year-old David Bedolla to death near Lindsay, California. Bedolla was driving to work with his wife, brother and brother-in-law in his car.

     Martinez, on October 1, 1982 shot two ranch workers near Santa Ynez, California. Thirty-year-old Sylvester Ayon died in the shooting. The other ranch hand, a 17-year-old, survived his bullet wounds.

     On October 19, 1982, 22-year-old Raul Gonzales disappeared from his home in the Tulare County town of Earlimart. A rancher in nearby Portersville found Gonzales' body in a field two days after Martinez had shot him to death.

     Another resident of Earlimart, 29-year-old Domingo Perez, went missing from his home on April 8, 1995. Six weeks later a farm worker stumbled upon his bullet-ridden body in an orange grove north of Martinez's home town of Richgrove.

     On the night of February 14, 2000, Manuel Martinez entered the Pixley, California home of 56-year-old Santiago Perez and shot him to death as he slept in his bed. The victim's four young children were in the house when Martinez murdered him.

     Jose Alvarado, a 25-year-old from Kern County, was found shot to death on a dirt road outside of McFarland, California. Martinez had executed him by shooting him point blank in the head. This murder took place on February 15, 2007.

     Also in Kern County, Martinez, on March 23, 2009, shot 52-year-old Juan Baustista to death. Martinez committed this murder in an orange grove near McFarland, California.

     On September 27, 2009, in Earlimart, Martinez abducted 45-year-old Joaquin Baragan. Three days later a rancher found the victim's body on the bank of the Deer Creek Canal outside of town. Baragan had been shot in the back of the head.

     Gonzalo Urquieta, another Earlimart resident, was kidnapped by Martinez on February 15, 2011. Two days later, the 54-year-old's body was found in an orange grove near Richgrove. He had been shot numerous times at close range.

     In June 2014 Manuel Martinez pleaded guilty to the 2013 murder in Alabama. The Lawrence County judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison.

     In October 2015 Martinez pleaded guilty in California to the nine Tulare County murders. He also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of another man in that jurisdiction. On November 3, 2015 the Tulare County judge sentenced this serial killer to ten consecutive life sentences.