Collateral Damage in a Botched SWAT Raid

     After their house in Wisconsin burned down in August 2014, Alecia Phonesavanh, her husband and their four children, ages one to seven, moved into a dwelling outside of Cornelia, Georgia occupied by two of Alecia's relatives. The family took up residence with 30-year-old Wanis Thonetheva and his mother. They knowingly moved into a a place where drugs were sold by Wanis who had a long arrest record.

     Wanis Thonetheva had been convicted of various weapons and drug related offenses. In October 2013 a Habersham County prosecutor charged him with possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. The felony in question involved selling methamphetamine. In May 2014 Thoretheva was out on bail awaiting trial in that case.

     Shortly after midnight on Wednesday May 28, 2014 a confidential drug informant purchased a quantity of meth from Thonetheva at his house. Once the snitch made the sale Thonetheva left the premises for the night. Had narcotics officers been surveilling the house they would have known that.

     Based on the informant's drug purchase, a magistrate issued a "no-knock" warrant to search the Thonetheva residence. Just before three in the morning, just a couple of hours after the meth buy, a 7-man SWAT team made up of officers with the Cornelia Police Department and the Habersham County Sheriff's Office approached the Thonetheva dwelling. A family sticker displayed on a minivan parked close to the suspected drug house indicated the presence of children. If a member of the raiding party had looked inside that vehicle the officer would have seen several children's car seats. A used playpen in the front yard provided further evidence that children were in the house about to be forcibly entered without notice.

     According to the drug informant men were inside the house standing guard over the drugs. Against the force of the battering ram the front door didn't fly open. SWAT officers interpreted this to mean that drug dealers were inside barricading the entrance. A SWAT officer broke a window near the door and tossed in a percussion grenade. The flash bang device landed in a playpen next to 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh. It exploded on his pillow, ripping open his face, lacerating his chest and burning him badly. The explosion also set the playpen on fire.

     There were no drug dealers or armed men in the house. The dwelling was occupied by two women, the husband of one of them and four children.

     At a nearby hospital emergency room personnel wanted to fly the seriously injured toddler to Atlanta's Brady Memorial Hospital. But due to weather conditions Bounkham had to be driven by ambulance 75 miles to the Atlanta hospital. In the burn unit doctors placed the child into an induced coma. (The child would survive his injuries.)

     Shortly after the SWAT raid police officers arrested Wanis Thonetheva at another area residence. Officers booked him into the Habersham County Detention Center on charges related to the sale of meth to the police snitch. The judge denied him bail.

     Many local citizens criticized the police for tossing a flash bang grenade into the house without first making certain children were not inside. Critics wanted to know why the narcotic detectives hadn't asked the informant about the presence of children. He had been inside the dwelling just a couple of hours before the raid.

     Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told reporters that SWAT officers would not have used a "distraction device" if they had known that children were in the house. Cornelia Chief of Police Rick Darby said, "We might have gone in through a side door. We would not have used a flash bang. But according to the sheriff, members of the SWAT team had done everything correctly. As a result, he could see no reason for an investigation into the operation.

     As far as Sheriff Terrell was concerned, Wanis Thronetheva was responsible for what happened to Bounkham Phonesavanh. He said prosecutors might charge the suspected meth dealer in connection with the child's flash bang injuries.

     In September 2014, due to public criticism of the raid, a state grand jury began hearing testimony regarding the incident. A month later the grand jurors voted not to bring any criminal charges against the officers involved in the no-knock predawn SWAT raid. 

Michael A. Dotro: A Rogue Cop in a Dysfunctional Police Department

     Michael A. Dotro, a nine year veteran of the Edison, New Jersey Police Department, worked in the internal affairs unit. Since the 36-year-old officer had a history of misconduct complaints, including charges of excessive force, he didn't seem to be the right person for the job. But nothing within the Edison Police Department was right.

     For years, officers on this police force had been engaged in a civil war. Cops were suing each other and there were accusations that detectives in the internal affairs unit were gathering information on local politicians and others and ignoring citizen complaints of police brutality.

     In 2005 a member of the Asian-Indian community who was arrested by officer Dotro accused him of police brutality. Amid citizen protests and a lot of bad publicity Officer Dotro was administratively cleared of wrongdoing.

     Three years after the excessive force complaint Dotro got into a fistfight with his 68-year-old neighbor, Dennis Sassa. Mr. Sassa claimed the then 31-year-old officer punched him in the face six times. The dispute revolved around a shed that sat on Dotro's property. Both men filed assault charges and both were acquitted in municipal court. (Shortly before the fight someone torched a shed on Mr. Sassa's property. Flames from the structure spread to a camper and to Mr. Sassa's house.)

     Edison Police Captain Mark Anderko considered Michael Dotro unfit to be an officer of the law. Captain Anderko and officer Dotro were on opposing sides in the departmental civil war. With 24 years on the force, Captain Anderko served as the top aide to Chief Thomas Bryan. Anderko resided in a two-story colonial home in Middlesex County's Monroe Township with his wife, their two children and his 92-year-old mother.

     At four in the morning of Monday, May 20, 2013, someone firebombed Captain Anderko's home. The family dog alerted Anderko's wife who woke up the other four occupants of the dwelling. No one was injured, but the fire destroyed the front section of the house where the children had been sleeping.

     On Thursday afternoon, May 23, 2013, officers with the Edison Police Department arrested Michael Dotro and searched his Manalapan, New Jersey house. Charged with five counts of attempted murder and aggravated arson, a Superior Court judge set the officer's bond at $5 million. He was incarcerated in the Middlesex County Jail. Following the arrest, Chief Byran placed Officer Dotro on paid administrative leave. (The accused cop received an annual salary of $118,000.)

     In September 2017, after numerous court delays, Michael A. Dotro pleaded guilty to aggravated arson. The judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Sandy Ford's Murder-Suicide Pact

     In 2009 Chris and Mandy Hayes lived with their four children, ages seven, six, three and two in Sylvania Township, Ohio, a community of 20,000 ten miles northwest of Toledo not far from the Michigan state line. Because their 6-year-old son had "behavioral problems" and required extra attention, Mandy Hayes' parents, Sandy and Randy Ford, agreed to temporarily care for and house their other three children. The grandparents resided in west Toledo.

     In the fall of 2012 Chris and Mandy Hayes decided it was time to reunite the family under the same roof. Their troubled son had received a lot of help and was now on medication. This decision, however, did not sit well with Sandy Ford, the 56-year-old grandmother who did not want her three grandchildren leaving her home. Mother and daughter quarreled repeatedly over whether it was safe to return 10-year-old Paige, 6-year-old Logan and 5-year-old Madalyn to their parents' home in Sylvania Township.

     On November 6, 2012, at 5:50 in the evening, officers with the Toledo Police Department responded to a domestic disturbance call at the Ford residence. Mandy Hayes and her mother had gotten into a fight over the children that led to the grandmother being taken to the hospital for injuries to her shoulder and eye. According to the police report, Sandy Ford told officers that the "family crisis is continuing while the children are at the mother's home in Sylvania Township."

     The Hayes children were scheduled to move back into their parents' home on November 7, 2012, but when it came time for the switch the police were summoned when another fight broke out between the children's mother and grandmother. The next day, under police escort, the three children were transferred back to the family home in Sylvania Township. This did not, however, end the domestic feud.

     On November 8, 2012, the day she lost physical custody of her three grandchildren, Sandy Ford and her 32-year-old live-in son Andy began preparing for mass murder and suicide. Early on Monday morning, November 12, 2012, Sandy and her adult son boarded up the doors and windows to the Ford's unattached double garage. Later that morning, at twenty after eight, Mandy Hayes delivered her three children to Whiteford Elementary. Sandy Ford, who was waiting for them in the school lobby intercepted the children and escorted them out of the building and into her car. Sandy transported her grandchildren from Sylvlania Township to her home in west Toledo.

     The grandmother drove her blue Honda Civic into the garage next to the family pickup. She (or Andy) unplugged the overhead garage door operating system and threw the manual locking latch. The children, carrying snacks and coloring books, and accompanied by two dogs and a cat, climbed into the back seat of the car. Sandy, or her son, ran a hose from the pickup truck's exhaust into the Honda via a back seat window. After someone started the pickup Andy and his mother joined the children and the pets in the back seat of the Honda.

     That morning, at ten o'clock, officials from the Whiteford Elementary School in Sylvania Township called Mandy Hayes to report that her children were not in class. At the mother's request a police officer drove to the Ford residence in west Toledo. He knocked on the door and when no one answered he left the scene. (The officer must not have heard the truck running in the unattached garage.) The police returned to the Ford home several times that morning and early afternoon, but did not enter the dwelling.

     Randy Ford, the 60-year-old grandfather, spoke to a police officer stationed outside the house when he arrived home from work at 2:30 that afternoon. Mr. Ford entered the dwelling, and inside found "suspicious" notes from his wife and the grandchildren that suggested murder-suicide.

     At 3:30 that afternoon a member of the fire department broke into the garage with a sledgehammer. The emergency responder discovered Sandy Ford, Andy Ford and the three Hayes children. They had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The pets were dead as well.

     On November 15, 2012 Mandy Hayes told a local television correspondent that "I don't know what happened. They [her mother and brother] weren't in their right minds. That's all I can say. Something snapped...I just can't explain it, really." To the same TV reporter, the children's father said, "I think she [Sandy Ford] really did not want those kids to ever come home is what the deal was there. She felt she was their mother." 

The Julia Merfeld Murder-For-Hire Case

     Early in 2013, 27-year-old Jacob Merfeld and his wife Julia moved from Keyport, a small Monmouth County town in eastern New Jersey, to Muskegon, Michigan. While they settled into their Muskegon apartment, the couple's two children, a 4-year-old daughter and a boy who was two, were cared for by Jacob's parents in neighboring Wisconsin.

     There was nothing about Jacob Merfeld, a member of the U. S. Coast Guard, or his 21-year-old wife that seemed out of the ordinary. To the outside world they appeared to be a typical middle-class couple doing their best to raise their children and succeed in life.

     In late March 2013 Julia told co-worker Carlos Ramos that she wanted out of her marriage. She said that although her husband was a nice guy who treated her well, she had found someone else, a person she wanted to live with. While Ramos found this revelation mildly provocative, what she said next shocked him.

     Julia, over a period of several days, talked about how her husband's death would be so much better for her than a divorce and all that went with such a prolonged complicated process. For one thing, a divorce would be embarrassing, and it would break Jacob's heart. So this was her plan: She would pay Carlos Ramos $50,000 out of her husband's $400,000 life insurance policy if he murdered him. The money would be paid to the hit man in $10,000 installments.

     When this ordinary unexceptional young wife and mother offered Carlos Ramos $50,000 to commit cold-blooded murder he didn't take her seriously enough to notify the authorities. He figured she was either joking or just blowing off steam. The cool unemotional way Julia discussed having her husband dispatched by a contract killer made the whole proposition, while shocking, seem unreal.

     Carlos Ramos started to change his mind about Julia Merfeld as she continued to talk about her murder-for-hire fantasy and his role in it as her hit man. He eventually decided that she meant business, and that his best course of action involved notifying the Muskegon County Sheriff's Office about her deadly plan. He certainly had no intention of becoming a hired killer. The fact she even considered him a candidate for such an assignment boggled his mind and convinced him there was something profoundly wrong with this woman. She spoke of murdering another human being the way one would speak of squashing a cockroach.

     On April 9 and 10, 2013 an undercover officer with the Muskegon County Sheriff's Office who posed as a hit man met with Julia Merfeld in the officer's car in a Fruitport Township parking lot. With the hidden camera running the murder-for-hire mastermind explained her reasons for such a drastic solution to a common problem: "It's not that we weren't getting along," she said. "But as terrible as it sounds, it was easier than divorcing him. You know, I don't have to worry about the judgment of my family. I don't have to worry about breaking his heart." 

     Julia Merfeld instructed the phony hit man that she didn't want him to kill Jacob as part as a staged burglary that turned violent. Her reason for not wanting him to do that was self-serving: she didn't want to scare off the person she hoped would move into the apartment with her after Jacob's death. Besides, an indoor killing would be, in her words, "messy."

     Julia said she wanted the hit man to do his job in such a way that wouldn't cause Jacob a lot of pain. She recommended the breaking of his neck. (This woman had obviously seen movies featuring trained killers adept at fatally snapping necks. In real life, breaking a person's neck is not an efficient or easy way to commit murder.) The undercover cop remarked that he usually killed people with guns and knives. Throughout the murder-for-hire conversation the officer repeatedly told Julia that he was going to put two bullets in Jacob's "noggin." To that she repeatedly responded, "Okay."

      The murder-for-hire mastermind informed the undercover officer that she did not want to know in advance when he planned to commit the murder. "It would be better if you surprised me," she said. "The more shocked I am when it happens, the better. I just want to make it as non-suspicious as possible."

     At one point during her two meetings with the sheriff's deputy Julia asked, "What happens if you are caught?" The officer assured Julia that as long as he or an associate kept receiving the hit money installments her name would be kept out of the investigation. (It's hard to image anyone stupid enough to believe that a captured hit man would not immediately roll over on the mastermind.)

     Toward the end of their second meeting on April 10, 2013 Julia Merfeld handed the undercover officer $100 in upfront money to show that she was serious about having her husband murdered. She also gave the officer a floor-plan to the apartment, a photograph of  her husband and written directions to the apartment complex where she hoped the hit man would kill Jacob as he walked out of the building. At this point the man Julia thought was a contract killer displayed his badge and placed her under arrest.

     A Muskegon County prosecutor charged Julia Charlene Merfeld with solicitation to commit murder. The local magistrate denied her bail.

     On June 27, 2013, faced with the certainty of a conviction based on the videotapes of her conversations with the undercover officer, Merfeld pleaded guilty to the solicitation charge. Three days later, as she stood before the sentencing judge, the defendant said, "I do not believe I'm above punishment. I know what I did was wrong and I take full responsibility. My tears are for remorse, not pity."

     Julia's husband, the man she tried to have murdered, also spoke at the sentencing hearing. Jacob Merfeld told Judge William C. Marietti that he forgave his wife because she was a "godly woman who did an ungodly thing." Jacob asked the judge not to send his wife to prison.

     Judge Marietti sentenced the murder-for-hire mastermind to six to twenty years behind bars, a light sentence given the circumstances of this case.

The Kayleigh Slusher Murder Case

     In 2014, three-year-old Kayleigh Slusher lived with her mother Sara Krueger, 23 and Krueger's 26-year-old boyfriend, Ryan Scott Warner. The couple and the toddler resided in Unit 7 at the Royal Garden apartment complex in Napa, California.

     Over the past five years Ryan Warner had been in and out of bay area jails for a variety of crimes including assault and possession of drugs. When his former girlfriend Ashley Owens refused to abort their child, Warner sent her a series of threatening text messages that read: "I hope the kid dies," "I will scalp you," and "I will bust out your teeth with a pipe." Warner was obviously a violent man who didn't like children or women.

     Since June 2012 Napa police officers had been called to the Krueger apartment more than a dozen times on reports of domestic disturbance, theft, vandalism and unwanted persons. By any standard Unit 7 at the Royal Garden complex was a dangerous place to raise a child and relatives and neighbors knew this. The only people who seemed oblivious to the situation were the police and the child welfare authorities. Unfortunately these were the only people with the power to protect Kayleigh Slusher.

     On January 27, 2014 a neighbor called the Napa police and requested a welfare check at Unit 7. According to the caller, Kayleigh Krueger and her boyfriend were using drugs and not feeding the little girl. They were also making a commotion and fighting with each other. Police officers visited the apartment that day and didn't find drugs or evidence of narcotics use. The officers observed Kayleigh who seemed okay. The officers did not notify child protective services. They left things as they found them.

     A Krueger relative, worried about the little girl, called the authorities two days later. On January 29 police officers returned to the apartment, examined the girl and left. This would be the last day of Kayleigh Kreyger's short life.

     At 11:50 AM on Saturday, February 1, 2014 a police dispatcher in the bay area city of Richmond received an anonymous call from a man who had "something to get off his chest" about Sara Kreuger and her boyfriend. According to the tipster, a guy named Brian or Ryan had done something bad to Krueger's daughter.

     That day two police officers arrived at Unit 7, knocked on the door and didn't get a response. A neighbor informed the officers that the day before, January 31, 2014, a man and woman, presumably the occupants of the unit, left the apartment. The little girl was not with them. Using a key they acquired from the apartment complex manager the officers entered the dwelling.

     In one of the bedrooms the officers found Kayleigh in bed covered in blankets up to her neck. Next to her body lay a doll. She was dead and cold to the touch. She also had bruises around her eyes and blood in her nostrils. (A forensic pathologist would determine the cause of death to be "multiple blunt impact injuries to the head, torso and extremities." The pathologist also found evidence of prior child abuse and neglect. Manner of death: Homicide.)

     The following day police officers arrested Sara Krueger and Ryan Warner at a BART station in El Cerrito, California. According to the murdered girl's mother, she found Kayleigh dead when she returned to the apartment on the afternoon of January 30, 2014. Krueger said she placed the body into a plastic bag and stored it for awhile in a freezer before tucking the little corpse into the bed.

     Sara Krueger and Ryan Warner were booked into the Napa County Jail on charges of murder and felony assault of a child causing death. If convicted as charged they faced up to 25 years to life in prison.

     On February 25, 2014, at the murder suspects' arraignment before Napa Superior Court Judge Mark Boessenecker, the couple pleaded not guilty. The judge denied both suspects bail.

     In May 2017, separate juries found Ryan Warner and Sara Krueger guilty of first-degree murder. Napa County Judge Francisca P. Tisher, in July 2017, sentenced both defendants to life in prison without parole.

Murdered in Honduras

     Beauty queen Maria Jose Alvarado, as Miss Honduras, represented a country that had the world's highest murder rate for a place not at war. From 2005 to 2013 the murder of Honduran woman and girls increased by 263 percent. The 19-year-old university student resided in Teguigalpa, the Honduran capital. She had been participating in beauty pageants since she was a young girl.

     In Latin America where beauty pageants are popular, winners often become celebrities and TV personalities. While Alvarado hoped to become a diplomat after graduating from the university, she worked as a model on the popular Honduran television game show "X-O Da Dinero." In her spare time she played volleyball and football (soccer).

     On the night of November 13, 2014 Maria Alvarado was at a resort/spa outside of Santa Barbara, a city 240 miles west of her home. She was there to attend a birthday party for her sister's boyfriend, Plutarco Ruiz.

     That night after the party, Alvarado, her 23-year-old sister Sofia Trinidad Alvarado and Plutarco were seen getting into a champagne colored car.

     The next day, when Maria failed to board a plane for London to participate in the early rounds of the  120-contestant Miss World pageant, she and her sister were reported missing.

     On Tuesday November 18, 2014 officers with the Honduran National Bureau of Investigation arrested Sofia Alvarado's boyfriend, Plutarco Ruiz. Pursuant to the arrest the officers seized a champagne colored car and a pickup truck. They also recovered a .45-caliber pistol.

     Under police interrogation Mr. Ruiz confessed to murdering his girlfriend and her sister, the beauty queen. After he and the women left the party Plutarco Ruiz and Sofia Alvarado got into a heated argument regarding the fact she had been dancing with another man. At some point, out of a jealous rage, Ruiz pulled out the .45-caliber handgun and shot her in the head. He shot Maria twice in the back as she tried to flee the scene.

     Ruiz and an accomplice loaded the two corpses onto the back of a pickup truck and hauled the bodies to a remote spot along the banks of the Aguagual River near the town of Arada 25 miles from Santa Barbara.

     On Wednesday November 19, 2014, police officers recovered the bodies lying on top of each other in a shallow grave near the river. Maria Alvarado was wrapped in a brown plastic sheet.

     Officers with the Honduras National Bureau of Investigation, on the day they arrested Ruiz, took five suspected accomplices into custody. The officers arrested Aris Maldonado Mejia, Antonio Ruiz Rodriguez, Ventura Diaz, Elizabeth Diaz and Irma Nicolle.

     In June 2017, after a jury found Plutarco Ruiz guilty of double murder, the Honduras judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison. The others involved in the murders were convicted and sent to to prison for sentences ranging from five to ten years.

Criminal Investigation As A Thinking Person's Game

     Successful investigators are intelligent, analytical people who like to solve problems and figure things out. They are also curious, competitive and well-organized in their work habits. They are unafraid of complexity, pay attention to detail, are articulate and can express themselves on paper. Dedicated investigators are lifelong students, people who embrace new challenges and tough assignments. They are not only intelligent, they train themselves to think clearly, draw relevant conclusions and keep bias out of their calculations.

     Individuals who make first-class detectives are often not suited for general police work, and a good cop will not necessarily turn into a competent investigator. The fields of law enforcement (peace keeping and order maintenance) and criminal investigation are vastly different functions that appeal to different kinds of people. The uniformed officer, often having to act quickly and decisively, instead of thoughtful discretion, is more likely to behave pursuant to a detailed code of rules and regulations committed to memory. Training a police officer is therefore nothing like preparing someone for criminal investigation. For that reason criminal investigators should be recruited from an entirely different pool of candidates. For example, there is no reason to require trainee investigators to be as physically fit as uniformed police officers. Moreover, there is no reason to train future investigators on how to issue traffic tickets, handle drunks, bust drug suspects or deal with domestic disturbance situations.

     The gap between policing and criminal investigation widened as law enforcement agencies, focused on drug enforcement, and concerns with terrorism, became more paramilitary in nature. Even small police departments field SWAT teams that keep sharp by arresting deadbeat dads, bad check passers and shoplifting suspects. As the police have become less interested in criminal investigation, the public, having been educated by the O. J. Simpson case and hooked on TV shows like "CSI," "The New Detectives" and "Forensic Files," have become increasingly more interested in and knowledgeable about the art and science of criminal investigation. This has widened another gap, one between public expectation and police performance.

     Until general policing and criminal investigation are recognized and treated as separate vocations, criminal investigations of major, difficult crimes will continue to be regularly bungled. It is becoming increasingly difficult to think of a celebrated case that hasn't suffered from what could be at best termed mediocre detective work. In America, people who commit criminal homicide, not a particularly clever group of criminals, have a one-third chance of either avoiding detection or arrest. One in a hundred arsonists end up in prison and child molesters have a field day. For the law breaker, America is the land of opportunity. And it is not because the U. S. Supreme Court has handcuffed detectives. Blaming democracy and due process for investigative failures has become second nature to investigators unwilling to face up to their inadequacies.

     Crime solution rates reveal just how bad our criminal investigators are doing. Only 20 percent of all criminal cases lead to an arrest. The crime solution rate hasn't changed since the FBI started keeping crime records in 1933. The reason for this has to do with the fact that criminal investigation, as a function of the American criminal justice system, has never been a priority. This reality has created decades of public frustration and disillusionment. Instead of fixing the problem, the law enforcement community has tried to indoctrinate the public into believing that solving one out of five crimes is the best that can be expected. It's the old war-is-hell excuse. Even in baseball batting 200 is considered mediocre.

     Investigative trainees are not only drawn from the wrong well, they are improperly trained by instructors who emphasize methods and techniques designed to resolve cases quickly rather than correctly. The emphasis is on the acquisition of direct evidence in the form of eyewitness identification and the confession rather than the more time consuming and complex gathering and interpretation of physical evidence; an endeavor that requires special training and more complicated thinking. Perhaps this is why so many crime scenes are either ignored or improperly processed. This also explains why there are so many false confessions and people sent to prison on the strength of questionable line-up and mug shot identifications. Another method of quickly getting a case off the books involves the use of unreliable jailhouse informants who testify against defendants to get off the hook themselves. The plea bargaining process that accounts for 90 percent of the convictions in this country masks how police detectives go about their business. Because there are so few criminal trials there is no way to know how many confessions are illegally acquired, or how many searches are not based upon adequate probable cause.

     Because most detectives are not accustomed to digging deeply into a crime, that is peeling away layers of leads, they are often stumped when merely scratching the surface of a case fails to reveal the perpetrator. There is also the problem of what could be called the veteran rookie, the uniformed cop who after fifteen years on patrol is rewarded with detective duty. These veteran rookies are not only ill-equipped to be investigators, they are often burned-out bureaucrats eyeing retirement.

     The use of task forces and team investigations attenuate investigative responsibility and produces poor results. A single competent investigator will out perform a team of fifty amateurs without direction or vision spinning their wheels around a case.

     Only a handful of college level criminal justice programs include credible courses on criminal investigation. Most criminal justice courses are in the areas of policing, corrections and the sociology of crime. Too many criminal investigation courses are taught by academics teaching out of textbooks, or worse, by retired cops earning a little part time money by regaling students with war stories. This begs the question: can a qualified practitioner/lecturer teach college students how to become competent, well-rounded criminal investigators? Even if the classroom is filled with serious students who want to become investigators, the answer is, unfortunately, no. The most a criminal investigation professor can do is educate students about the art and science of criminal investigation. While this will not turn criminal justice majors into detectives, it might enhance a student's police training and the all-important apprenticeship that should follow the police academy.

     At the very least, besides the basic crime solving techniques--crime scene work, interviewing, interrogation and the like--students should be exposed to a philosophy or theory of crime solution that includes the proper attitude, mind set and core investigative values that competent detectives possess. They can be taught how to recognize the elements of a solid investigation and identify cases that are incomplete or flawed. If nothing else, students should come away from the course knowing the basic dos and don't of criminal investigation. Outstanding criminal investigators are the products of a solid education, good training, a long internship, close on-the-job mentoring and relevant experience.         

The Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore Murder Case

     In 2006 an illiterate 37-year-old part time sanitation worker from Lakeland, Florida named Abraham Shakespeare (an ironic name) won the state's $30 million jackpot lottery. Mr. Shakespeare elected to accept the $17 million lump-sum payout. Soon after winning the money he purchased fancy cars, jewelry, furniture and a $1.7 million mansion in his hometown. Over the next two years the soft-touch millionaire who couldn't tell $6,000 from $60,000, spent, lent and gave away 90 percent of his fortune. Like so many big lottery winners before him, Abraham Shakespeare was beleaguered and overwhelmed by needy relatives, greedy acquaintances, grifters and complete strangers begging him for hand-outs. The money took over his life and brought him problems he hadn't had before hitting it big.

     In late 2008 the confused, depressed and vulnerable lottery winner met a 36-year-old predatory fortune-hunter named Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore who befriended him with the claim she was writing a book about how people took advantage of lottery winners. (Such as by claiming to be writing a book on how people take advantage of lottery winners.) Mr. Shakespeare fell for the ploy and by early 2009 Dorice Moore, as his financial advisor, was looting what was left in his bank accounts.

     On April 6, 2009 the former millionaire, now with just $14,000 in the bank, disappeared. His family, however, didn't report him missing for seven months. During this period Dorice Moore paid people to tell Shakespeare's mother they had spotted her son around town in the company of a woman. Moore even paid one of the missing man's friends to send the mother a forged letter from Abraham. (Since he couldn't write, this should have raised eyebrows.) Moore also hired an impersonator to fake a phone call to Shakespeare's mom.

     By November of 2009 police started investigating Dorice Moore as a suspect in Mr. Shakespeare's disappearance. Officers, while searching her home in Plant City, Florida found the missing man's mummified remains in her backyard beneath a thirty-by-thirty foot slab of concrete. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy dug two .38-caliber slugs out of the corpse. Mr. Shakespeare died from being shot twice in the chest.

     Following her arrest on February 3, 2010 Dorice Moore told her police interrogators that Shakespeare had been murdered by five shadowy drug dealers. She knew two of them by the names Ronald and Fearless. The others she didn't know. The detectives questioning her, because they had been investigating the murder, didn't believe the drug dealer story.

     The Moore murder trial got underway on November 29, 2012 in Tampa, Florida before Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Emmett Battles. In his opening remarks to the jury prosecutor Jay Pruner said that Moore, after stealing $1.3 million from Shakespeare, shot him to death on April 6, 2009. She and an accomplice buried his body behind her house then poured concrete over his grave.

     In addressing the jurors, defense attorney Bryon Hileman said his client had been trying to protect Shakespeare's dwindling fortune from people trying to take advantage of him, and that the lottery winner had fallen in with dealers who had killed him over a drug deal. Regarding the prosecution's case, Hileman pointed out that the state could not link the defendant to the .38-caliber revolver used in the crime. Moreover, Dorice Moore had not confessed, and no eyewitnesses would be testifying against her. According to the defense attorney the prosecution's case was weak and circumstantial.

     Following several days featuring prosecution witnesses who testified that the defendant had paid them to cover-up Shakespeare's disappearance, the state rested its case.

     Defense attorney Hileman did not put Dorice Moore on the stand to testify on her own behalf. During Hileman's closing argument to the jury she sat at the defense table and sobbed loudly. On December 11, 2012, following a three-hour deliberation the jury found Moore guilty of first-degree murder.

     Before sentencing the 40-year-old Moore to the mandatory life sentence without parole, Judge Battles called her "cold, calculating and cruel." According to the judge, she was "probably the most manipulative person this court has ever seen."

     In less than three years Abraham Shakespeare's good luck turned into a nightmare that led to his murder. This case is a good example how, when it comes to money, big winners can quickly turn into big losers. Mr. Shakespeare should have secured good financial advice, found a way to avoid all of the freeloading beggars, then paid someone to teach him how to read and write. 

Anthony Giancola: From Teacher to Cocaine-Crazed Spree Killer

     Anthony (Tony) Giancola, as a student at Boca Ciega High School in Gulfport, Florida just south of St. Petersburg in Pinellas County, showed a lot of promise. He played football, was class president and had the lead role in the school play, South Pacific. Although accepted for admission at West Point he attended the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

      Mr. Giancola began his teaching career in 1991 at the Dorothy Thomas Exceptional Center, a K-12 school for at-risk children with special needs. By 2005 he was head of the school. In the summer of 2006 Pinellas School District administrators made Tony Giancola principal at the Van Buren Middle School in Tampa. Although he made $90,000 a year he had a $100-a-day cocaine habit. In February 2007 the principal purchased cocaine, in his school office, from an undercover narcotics officer. After the drug transaction the officer arrested Giancola and searched his car where he found marijuana and two glass pipes containing traces of cocaine. The narcotics arrest ended Mr. Giancola's education career and led to a year in jail followed by three years of probation.

     In 2009 Tony Giancola's wife divorced him and a year later, in St. Petersburg, police arrested him as he sat in his car at three in the morning. He was charged with violating his probation by prowling and loitering. At this point in his life Mr. Giancola was a mere shadow of his former self and living on the fringes of society.

     On Friday, June 22, 2012 at 10:45 AM in Lealman, Florida, a Pinellas County town 20 miles west of Tampa, Tony Giancola walked into a group home and stabbed 27-year-old Justin Vandenburgh who died at the scene. Next, he stabbed Mary Allis, 59, who would die later that day at a local hospital. Giancola, using the same knife attacked 25-year-old Whitney Gilber and Janice Rhoden, 44. These women survived their stab wounds.

     After stabbing four people at the group home Mr. Giancola drove to nearby Pinellas Park, and at the Kenvin's Motel, attacked the man and woman who ran the place with a hammer. The married 57-year-olds were taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. Both of these victims, however, survived.

     At 11:30 on the morning of the Kenvin's Motel rampage, Tony Giancola pulled his Ford sedan up to a house in Penellas Park and asked a group of people sitting on the front porch where he could meet a prostitute. When they told him to get lost he plowed his car into the porch, injuring three women and a man. A witness at the scene took down his license number.

     As Giancola drove from the hit and run scene he struck a 13-year-old boy riding a bicycle. Kole Price, who received minor injuries from the collision, was struck again by Giancola who was intentionally trying to run him down. The boy found protection behind a telephone pole.

      After trying to kill the boy on the bicycle, Giancola drove to a nearby Egg Plotter restaurant where he called his mother. Shortly after the call she and his sister put the blood-covered Giancola into their car and drove him to the mother's house. When Giancola climbed into the car he said, "You'll be proud of me, I just killed 10 drug dealers."

     When Tony Giancola and the two women arrived at his mother's house she called the sheriff's office. But before deputies arrived at the dwelling he was gone. A short time later police officers found Giancola hiding in a clump of brush next to a canal in St. Petersburg.

     In the course of Giancola's crime spree, the former school principal had stabbed four people, killing two of them. He attacked the two motel operators with a hammer, injured four people on the porch and ran over a boy on a bicycle. The Pinellas County prosecutor charged Tony Giancola with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and several counts of aggravated assault. If convicted as charged he faced the death penalty.

     Other than being high on cocaine, investigators don't know why Mr. Giancola attacked these eleven people. There was nothing connecting the groups of victims to each other or to him. Police believed the murders and assaults were spontaneous and random.

     In September 2013, to avoid death by lethal injection, Anthony Giancola was allowed to plead guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to several life sentences, terms to run consecutively.

Erika Murray's Squalid House of Horrors

     In 2001 17-year-old Erika Murray met a 25-year-old McDonald's employee from Framingham, Massachusetts named Ramon Rivera. They moved into his parents' home where less than a year later she gave birth to their first child. Three years later, when they were expecting their second child, they moved into a home a few blocks from the police department in Blackstone, Massachusetts, a town of 10,000 on the Rhode Island state line 50 miles southwest of Boston. The dwelling was owned by Rivera's sister who resided there as well. At that time Rivera had a job at a Staples office supply store as a sales clerk.

     In 2006 Rivera's sister moved out of the house. A year after that a social worker with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) visited the house on St. Paul Street following a complaint of filthy living conditions. The DCF employee recommended some household upgrades. Because the children didn't seem in danger the social worker closed the case.

     After Ramon Rivera made it clear to Erika Murray that he didn't want any more children, Erika, in 2011 gave birth to a girl. Somehow she had managed to keep the birth a secret. To conceal the true identify of the infant she told Rivera she was babysitting the child for another woman. In April 2014, Murray, in secret, gave birth to the couple's fourth child. She explained away that baby with the same babysitting story. As a result of the secrecy surrounding the births of her last two children there are no official records of their existence.

     On August 28, 2014 the second oldest child in the house went to a neighbor and asked, "How do you get a baby to stop crying?"

     The neighbor entered the house on St. Paul Street with the 10-year-old boy and was shocked by what she encountered. The crying 5-month-old was covered in feces. Inside the dwelling there were piles of trash one to two feet deep that included used diapers. The neighbor called the police.

      Police officers and DCF personnel found the interior of the Murray/Rivera house infested with flies, various other bugs and mice. The four children were immediately removed from the dwelling and placed into temporary foster care.

     Officers also found, in the basement of the house, a marijuana plant beneath a grow-light. Officers also came across jars of marijuana buds and bags of cannabis. Officers booked Ramon Rivera into the Worcester County Jail on charges of possession and cultivation of marijuana with the intent to distribute.

     On Wednesday night, September 10, 2014, police officers in Hazmat suits armed with a search warrant returned to the 1,500 square foot house. Amid the squalor they found a dead dog and two dead cats. In a closet they discovered the remains of a baby. The following day searchers recovered the bodies of two more infants.

     On September 10 at his marijuana charges arraignment, the judge released the 37-year-old Rivera from custody on his own recognizance.
 
     The younger children, the two born in secret, spent their lives inside that house. The 3-year-old had poor muscle tone and couldn't walk. The baby showed signs of having lived entirely in the dark and had maggots in its ears.

     Murray's court-appointed attorney, Keith Halpern, said this to reporters about his client: "She was frozen in this nightmare. She couldn't get out of it." The attorney telegraphed his defense by suggesting that Murray was mentally ill.

     On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Worcester County prosecutor John Bradley announced that at least two of the infants whose remains were found in Murray's house had been alive for some period of time. The children were dressed in onesies and diapers. A third infant was found in a backpack.

     The judge, at Erika Murray's October 14 bail hearing set the 31-year-old mother's bond at $1 million. Earlier, at her arraignment, she pleaded not guilty to all charges.

     Murray's boyfriend and the father of her children, Ramon Rivera, claimed that he did not know about the dead infants. The authorities did not charge him in connection with the gruesome discoveries inside his house. According to the prosecutor, Erika Murray had instructed her two oldest children to lie to their father about the babies.

     On December 29, 2014 a grand jury sitting in Worcester, Massachusetts indicted Erika Murray on two counts of murder, one count of fetal death concealment related to the remains of the three babies and two counts of assault and battery in connection with the neglected and abused children. According to prosecutor John Bradley, two of the dead babies had lived from one week to a month.

     In speaking to reporters the prosecutor said that the defendant admitted to investigators that knowing that her boyfriend didn't want any more children after the first two, they continued to have unprotected sex. She gave birth to all of the babies in the home's only bathroom and birthed the children herself. She hid their tiny corpses among the trash in the squalid dwelling.

     At her arraignment hearing Erika Murray pleaded not guilty to all five of the grand jury charges. Her attorney, Keith Halpern, argued that the prosecution had no physical evidence regarding how long the babies had been alive or how they had died. He said, "The forensic pathologist testified before the grand jury that it was impossible to determine the cause of death of all three dead infants. The evidence of severe harm to the younger children is clear. The issue in this case is Ms. Murray's state of mind. The children were not the only ones that never left that house. She lived in those conditions for years and hardly ever left that house."

     Outside the courthouse in speaking to reporters, the defense attorney said that his client had laid one of the babies down for a nap, came back an hour or two later and found the infant dead.

     On December 22, 2016 defense attorney Helpern argued at a preliminary hearing that the police search of the defendant's house on September 10, 2014 exceeded the scope of the warrant and was therefore unconstitutional. As a result, according to the attorney, the evidence recovered pursuant to that search was inadmissible

     On March 13, 2017, Judge Janet Kenton-Walker denied the defense motion to suppress the evidence produced by the search in question. That meant that the murder case would proceed to trial. In the meantime, Erika Murray was held, without bond, at the Western Massachusetts Regional Correctional Center in Worcester. 

     In May 2019 Erika Murray was allowed to plead guilty to child assault and animal abuse. Judge Kenton-Walker sentenced her to six to eight years in prison with credit for the four plus years served while awaiting trial. Following her release from prison she would be on probation for five years during which time she could not be alone with children under the age of ten.

Can A Liar Beat the Polygraph?

     In order for a polygraph (lie detection) test result to be accurate, the instrument must be in good working order; the polygraph examiner must be properly trained and experienced in question formation and line-chart interpretation; and the subject of the test--the examinee--must be a willing participant in the process. Not  everyone is suited for polygraph testing, including people who are ill, on drugs, under the influence of alcohol, extremely obese, retarded or mentally unbalanced. (In America that's a lot of people.) Criminal suspects who are emotionally exhausted from a police interrogation do not make good polygraph subjects. Children and very old people should not be placed on the lie detector either.

     The polygraph instrument measures and records the examinee's involuntary, physiological (bodily) responses to a set of ten yes or no questions. The examinee should know in advance what he will be asked. Based upon changes in the examinee's blood pressure, heart rate, breathing patterns and galvanic skin response, the examiner will draw conclusions on whether the subject told the truth or lied. Polygraph examiners are not recognized in the criminal court system as expert witnesses, therefore polygraph results are not admissible as evidence of guilt in criminal cases.

     Congress passed a federal law in 1988 that prohibited the use of the polygraph as a private sector pre-employment screening measure. It is widely used, however, in law enforcement as an investigative tool and as a way to screen job applicants.

     Over the years more and more local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have required job applicants to submit to polygraph tests. These law enforcement job candidates are typically asked if they've ever sold drugs, stolen significant amounts of money or merchandise from their employers or are in serious debt. Employment candidates may also be asked if they have omitted anything important from their resumes or job applications.

     Not everyone is a fan of the polygraph technique. Generally, there are two kinds of polygraph critic. There are the anti-polygraph people who object to this form of lie detection because they believe the instrument and the technique is junk science and therefore no more reliable than a flip of a coin. The other group objects to polygraph use because they believe the instrument is utilized to violate the privacy of those tested. Critics in this camp accuse polygraph examiners, and the people who hire them, of abusing the process by digging for dirt that is unrelated to the job application process.

     Over the years there have been numerous high-profile examples of FBI and CIA spies who avoided detection for years even though they were subjected to regular polygraph testing. Aldrich Ames, the counterintelligence CIA officer convicted of spying in 1994 must have found a way to beat the polygraph screening test. (I do not believe that suspects in criminal cases can lie to competent examiners and get away with it.) This was also true of FBI agent Robert Hanssen who was convicted of thirteen counts of espionage in 2001.

     Russell Tice, the National Security Administration whistleblower who was one of the first to leak evidence of the NSA's spying on U.S. citizens, revealed that during his 20-year career in counterintelligence he beat the polygraph a dozen times. Mr. Tice believed that due to political correctness and lawsuits, polygraph tests have become easier to manipulate. He has said that beating the employment screening examination had become easy. Over the years Mr. Tice and others published, in print and online, instructions on how to mislead polygraph examiners.

     Polygraph examiners ask what they call relevant, irrelevant and control questions. Irrelevant questions such as "Have you ever eaten pasta?" are intended to set the baseline of a truthful response. Control questions are designed to create a baseline or point of reference for deceptive responses. To do that, polygraph examiners ask subjects questions likely to produce deceptive answers. In other words they want the subject to lie. For example: "Have you ever lied to your parents?" or "Have you ever cheated on a test?" Most subjects, when they answer "no" to these questions are lying. Relevant questions are ones that directly address the point of the polygraph examination. In a national security employee screening test an employee with access to classified information might be asked if he or she has leaked classified documents to a journalist. To determine if the subject is telling the truth about not leaking information the polygraph examiner compares the physiological responses to the relevant query with the subject's responses to the control and irrelevant questions.

     According to those who have made it their mission to teach people how to beat the polygraph, manipulation techniques, or so-called "countermeasures," center around how the examinee should respond to the control and relevant questions. In answering a control question designed to produce a deceitful physiological baseline, the subject, while telling the expected lie, should bite his tongue. The idea here is to cause the polygraph instrument to record a strong physiological reaction to the subject's lying. When asked a relevant question the answer to which will be a lie, the subject is instructed to find a way to distance himself from the question by daydreaming, counting backward or slowing down his breathing.

     If this countermeasure works the relatively mild responses to the relevant questions, when compared to the wild reactions to the control questions, might lead the polygraph examiner to conclude that the examinee told the truth.

     Law enforcement job applicants are better off simply telling the truth and hoping for the best. Very few people have the presence of mind and discipline to successfully employ these polygraph manipulation tricks. As for national security employees who are either spies or future whistleblowers, they have nothing to lose by trying these techniques. Notwithstanding Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen and Russell Tice, fooling a competent polygraph examiner is a lot easier said than done. And that is the truth.

The Glen Hochman Murder-Suicide Case

     In January 2015 52-year-old Glen Hochman took a disability retirement from the White Plains Police Department after missing four months of work due to an ankle injury suffered while helping a motorist. Mr. Hochman had been on the suburban New York City force 22 years. He resided in an upper-middle-class home in Harrison, a small town twenty miles northeast of Manhattan with his wife Anamarie DiPietro-Hochman and their three daughters and three dogs. Following his retirement Glen Hochman and his wife engaged in a "family discussion" about separating.

     At nine-thirty in the morning of Friday February 20, 2015, Anamarie Hochman visited the Harrison Police Department where she reported that she and her husband just had an argument over an $80 cellphone bill. Because he hadn't threatened her and didn't became violent, she asked the department not to act on this information. She said she was merely "documenting" the incident.

     Later on the day Anamarie went to the police department she, her oldest daughter and a friend left Harrison by car on an overnight excursion to an area casino. That left two of her daughters--17-year-old Alissa, a Harrison High School senior and Deanna, a 13-year-old student at the Windward School in White Plains--at home with their father.

     The next day, Saturday February 21, at three-fifty in the afternoon Alissa's boyfriend at Anamarie's request went to the Hochman house to check on the girls. In the garage he found Mr. Hochman lying dead on the floor with a pistol in his hand. 

     The stunned boyfriend called Mrs. Hochman who was driving home from the casino. He then dialed 911. Anamarie's friend, a passenger in her car, called 911 as well.

     At the Hochman residence officers with the Harrison Police Department, in addition to Mr. Hochman, discovered the bodies of Alissa and Deanna in their rooms. The girls had been shot in the head at close range. The family pets had been shot to death as well.

     On Sunday February 22, Harrison Police Chief Anthony Marraccina, without saying it directly at the press conference, revealed that Glen Hochman had killed his daughters, shot the dogs then committed suicide. He had left behind a 5-page note that explained why he had "taken his daughters away."

     According to Chief Marraccini, Glen Hochman had no history of mental illness or domestic violence and was not in financial trouble. The chief, however, did not reveal the exact contents of the suicide note. Autopsies were performed by a forensic pathologist with the Westchester County Medical Examiner's Office. Friends and relatives of the family said they had not seen this coming.

The Deadly Bay Area Limousine Fire

     On Saturday, May 4, 2013, Nerizo Fojas, a recently married 31-year-old registered nurse from Fresno, California entertained eight of her friends and fellow nurses at a bachelorette party in Oakland. At nine that night the newlywed and her guests climbed into a white 1999 Lincoln stretch limousine en route to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City, the site of her bridal shower. Orville Brown, the 46-year-old who had been driving as a chauffeur for two months, picked up the nine women for the 40-mile trip from Oakland to Foster City.

     At ten o'clock, as the limousine crossed the San Mateo Bridge on Highway 92 about 20 miles southeast of San Francisco, one of the passengers tapped on the partition that separated the driver from the passengers. At first Orville Brown couldn't hear what this passenger was saying over the car music. When he heard others in the back yelling, "smoke, smoke!" he pulled out of the westbound lane and brought the Town Car to a stop at the side of the bridge.

     In a matter of seconds after Mr. Brown exited the limo the rear passenger and trunk areas of the vehicle burst into flames, engulfing the passengers. Four of the women managed to escape the sudden inferno by crawling through the 3 foot by18 inch driver's partition opening. Five of the nurses, including Nerizo Fojas, were burned to death as they waited to squeeze through the partition opening.

     The dead women were so badly burned they had to be officially identified through dental records. Two of the women who survived the fire were in critical condition.

     Nerizo Fojas had worked at the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno for two years. Prior to living in Fresno she resided in Oakland. She and her husband planned to travel to her native Philippines in June for a second wedding ceremony.

     San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault told reporters that "it was almost impossible for [the victims] to get out as the fire was moving so fast." Cause and origin experts investigated the fire scene while forensic pathologists performed the autopsies and ordered toxicology tests.

     It is rare for a motor vehicle not involved in an accident to burst into flames. The fact the fire spread so fast suggested that something highly flammable had been near its origin. (A good many car fires that are not incendiary are electrical in nature.) According to the chauffeur, he had informed his passengers that smoking in the vehicle was prohibited. Orville Brown and other witnesses reported that the fire was not accompanied by an explosion.

     On May 7, 2013, Nelia Arelllano, one of the passengers, told a television reporter from San Francisco that the driver of the limo ignored her when she first yelled at him to stop. By the time Mr. Brown pulled over the fire had engulfed the rear area of the vehicle. (Stretch limousines have doors at the front and back but not along the elongated section of the car.) The San Jose company that operated the limousine, Limo Stop, was licensed and insured.

    In 2014 fire scene investigators from San Mateo and Alameda Counties determined that the fire was started by a "catastrophic failure" of the 1999 converted Lincoln Town Car's suspension system that caused the drive shaft to rub on the vehicle's undercarriage, producing friction and sparks that started the fire in the rear passenger section.

     The California Public Utilities Commission fined Limo Stop $20,000 for having nine passengers in the vehicle, one over the limit. On appeal the fine was reduced to $5,000.

     In 2014 and 2015, families of four of the five women who died in the limo settled lawsuits with numerous companies associated with the vehicle fire. In May 2016 the husband of the fifth victim, Aldrin Geronga, filed a wrongful death suit against the Ford Motor company. According to this plaintiff's attorney, "Ford knew there were problems fifteen years ago."

     The jury considering the Aldrin Geronga $37 million wrongful death suit against the Ford Motor Company deliberated four days before finding for the defendant. Jurors determined that the Ford Motor Company had not been responsible for the vehicle defect that had caused the deadly fire.

The Chinese Sex Dungeon Murder Case

     In August 2009, 33-year-old Li Hoa and his wife lived in a apartment complex in Luoyang City, a municipality in central China's Henan Province. Li, a former firefighter, worked in the city's Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau. That August Li Hoa finished building, beneath his apartment building's basement, a three-level living complex that consisted of a flight of stairs that led down to a tunnel/crawl space that dropped to a pair of adjacent rooms four meters beneath the basement floor. The tunnel dropped a few feet then made a right angle turn into the living quarters.

     Li Hoa furnished the rooms, each the size of a small jail cell, with a bed, a chair, a toilet and a hot plate for heating food. He also wired these underground boxes for electricity and supposedly did all of this work in a clandestine fashion. (According to Li, his wife thought he had an extra job working as a night watchman.)

     Between August 2009 and September 2011 Li Hoa kidnaped six women in their twenties from area nightclubs, karaoke bars and salons and held them captive in his underground rooms. Li raped his prisoners, forced them to perform in pornographic web videos that viewers could upload for a fee, and escorted the women into the city where they worked for him as prostitutes.

     In 2010 Li forced three of his sex slaves to help him beat one of their fellow captives to death. He did this to instill fear and discipline into them. He buried the victim's body beneath one of the cells. Less that a year later he and three of his women murdered a second prisoner. They buried her body near the first murder victim.

     Li Hoa's sex dungeon operation came to an end in September 2011. One of his unsupervised prostitutes, instead of returning to the underground prison with money, went to the police. When the captive didn't return to her subterranean quarters as scheduled Mr. Li realized she had escaped and that his days as a sex slave master were over. He borrowed 1,000 yuan from his sister to help finance his flee from the police but got caught before leaving the city. (The sister later pleaded guilty to harboring a criminal in return for a probated sentence.)

     Li Hoa faced charges of murder, rape, kidnapping, running a prostitution enterprise and the distribution of pornography for profit. The three women he coerced into helping him commit the two murders were convicted of criminal homicide. The judge sentenced two of these defendants to probation and the third to three years in prison.

     On November 3, 2012 a judge in Luoyang City sentenced Li Hoa to death. Unlike in America where death row inmates often live decades beyond their convictions, Li Hoa died by firing squad on January 21, 2013.

     Although there is much that is unknown about this case it's hard to believe that Li Hoa's wife wasn't aware of what he was doing beneath the apartment building. Moreover, it's hard to believe that Li built his underground dungeon in secret. The case reeks of official corruption. In the cases of the missing bar girls, the police were probably not working that hard to find them.      

John Mark Karr's Confession in the JonBenet Ramsey Murder

The Ramsey Case  

      A 5:52 AM emergency call that a child had been kidnapped brought a pair of Boulder, Colorado police officers to John and Patsy Ramsey's 3-story house on December 26, 1996. Patsy Ramsey said she found a handwritten ransom note inside on the stairs. Fearing that her 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet, had been kidnapped for ransom she had called 911. After a cursory sweep of the 15-room dwelling the patrolmen called for assistance.

     During the next two hours, amid friends and relatives who came to console the family, police set up wiretap and recording equipment to monitor negotiations with the kidnappers. At one in the afternoon Boulder detective Linda Arndt asked John Ramsey to look around the house for "anything unusual." Thirty minutes later he and one of his friends discovered JonBenet's body in a small basement room. Her mouth had been sealed with duct tape and she had lengths of white rope coiled around her neck and right wrist. The rope around her neck was tied to what looked like the handle of a paintbrush. Breaking all the rules of crime scene investigation, John Ramsey removed the tape, carried his daughter up the basement steps and laid her body on the living room floor. Detective Arndt picked up the child, placed her body next to the Christmas tree and covered the body with a sweat shirt. Because the police did not conduct a thorough and timely search of the house there would be no crime scene photographs.

     In the months following the murder the police, prosecutors, media and most Americans believed that someone in the family killed JonBenet Ramsey. But if this were the case then who had written the two and a half page ransom note? Forensic document examiners eliminated John Ramsey as the ransom note writer, and all but one handwriting expert concluded that Patsy had probably not authored the document. Also, evidence surfaced that an intruder could have come into the house through a broken window in the basement.

John Mark Karr

      After a 13-year battle with ovarian cancer, Patsy Ramsey died on June 14, 2006. She was 49. The media that helped police and prosecutors portray the Ramseys as child murderers treated the death as a one-day news event, giving it less attention than the passing of a supporting actor on an old TV sitcom. In April 2006, two months before her death, the Ramseys flew from their home in Michigan back to Boulder where they met with district attorney Mary Keenan (later Lacy), who asked them if they had ever heard of a man named John Mark Karr. The Ramseys said they had not--neither the name nor the description of this man rang a bell. What did he have to do with the case?

     Karr, a 41-year-old American itinerate elementary school teacher, had lived in Bangkok, Thailand since 2002. He recently corresponded with Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado. Karr's interest in the JonBenet murder had drawn him to the Boulder professor who produced three television documentaries favorable to the the theory the crime had been committed by an intruder. The emails from Karr, sent under the pseudonym Daxis, became quite bizarre, reflecting more than just a morbid interest in the case. After receiving a series of disturbing phone calls from this man, Professor Tracey alerted the district attorney's office. The calls were traced to John Mark Karr in Bangkok.

     After Daxis confessed to Mr. Tracey that he accidentally killed JonBenet while inducing asphyxia for his sexual gratification, he became a suspect in the murder. Karr revealed over the phone that when he couldn't revive JonBenet he struck her in the head with a blunt object. He told the professor he had engaged in oral sex with the victim, but had not performed sexual penetration. Aware that Tracey was writing a book on the Ramsey case, Karr offered the author the inside story from the killer's point of view. In the event the book became a movie, Karr wanted to be played by Johnny Depp.

     Having taken over the Ramsey case investigation from the Boulder Police Department, the district attorney's office began investigating John Mark Karr. District attorney investigators spoke to the authorities in Bangkok and read the emails Karr sent to the professor. One of the messages suggested that Karr had a general knowledge of forensic science. "The DNA might not match, but you can't trust the test," he wrote.

     As Ramsey case investigators gathered details of Karr's life and background it became clear that he was not an ordinary man, and that his strangeness was not inconsistent with the profile of a person who might commit a Ramsey-type crime. After Karr's parents divorced when he was nine, he went to live with his grandparents in Hamilton, Alabama. In 1983, one year after graduating from Hamilton High School, Karr, then 20, married a 13-year-old girl. The marriage ended nine months later in an annulment. In 1989 Karr married 16-year-old Lara Marie Knutson. In four years he and his wife had three sons. While pursuing a teaching degree through an online teacher's college, Karr opened a licensed day-care center in his home. Although he didn't have a teaching degree he also worked as a substitute teacher at Hamilton High School. He acquired a college degree in 1999 and that year closed his day-care business. A year later, Karr and his family were residing in Petaluma, California where he taught as a substitute in six schools in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District.

     One year after arriving in Petaluma, while teaching at the Pueblo Vista Elementary School, Karr was arrested by investigators from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. They had found child pornography on Karr's computer and arrested him on five misdemeanor counts of possessing such material. Karr's bail was reduced after he spent six months in the county jail awaiting trial. He was released on October 2001. While in custody Karr wroye a letter to Richard Allen Davis who had been convicted of kidnapping and murdering Polly Klaas in Petaluma. When Karr failed to show for a court appearance in the pornography case the judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest, making him a California fugitive from justice.

     During the child pornography investigation detectives in Sonoma County came across writings and notes Karr had made pertaining to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. In these musings he had speculated on the killer's thoughts as he committed the crime. Although these were not confessions, the Sonoma detectives took the writings seriously enough to notify the authorities in Boulder. Although there were follow-up discussions between investigators in California and Colorado, nothing came of the discovery.

     After Karr divorced his wife she and their children moved back to Hamilton, Alabama. Following his release from the Sonoma County Jail Karr fled the country. He taught in Honduras and Costa Rica and worked as a children's nanny in Germany, the Netherlands and South Korea. In December 2005 he arrived in Bangkok where he landed a grade-school teaching position.

The Arrest and Confession

     On August 11, 2006, four months after district attorney Mary Lacy learned that the Ramsey email writer and telephone confessor was John Mark Karr, police and immigration authorities in Thailand informed her that Karr was living in a downtown Bangkok apartment. In less than a week he would be starting a new teaching job at the New Sathorn International School in the city. Because the authorities didn't want this man interacting with young girls at this school, the Thai police planned to arrest and deport Karr within the next five days. This development presented District Attorney Lacy with a dilemma. If she did nothing, a man who had confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey would slip away upon his return to the United States. If she filed charges against Karr and had him extradited back to Colorado the probable cause supporting the arrest warrant would be based entirely on his emails and his telephone confessions. Lacy's investigators had not linked Karr to the ransom note through his handwriting, could not place him in Colorado on or about December 26, 1996, and had not matched his DNA to a pair of foreign bloodstains on JonBenet's underwear.

     Operating on the theory that John Mark Karr was not a false confessor, and that his DNA would eventually connect him to the victim, Mary Lacy presented her case to a Boulder judge who issued a warrant for Karr's arrest on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. The district attorney also dispatched one of her investigators to Bangkok.

     After surveilling Karr's apartment building for five days, police and immigration officials took him into custody on August 16, 2006. In response to a Thai police officer who informed Karr that he had been charged with first-degree murder in Boulder, Karr declared that his killing of JonBenet had been accidental, and therefore the charge should more appropriately be second-degree murder. He had confessed again.

     After being flown to Los Angeles from Bangkok, Karr arrived in Colorado on August 24, 2006 where he was incarcerated in the Boulder County Jail. Four days later the John Mark Karr phase of the Ramsey case came to an abrupt end when Mary Lacy announced that because Karr's DNA didn't match the crime scene evidence the charges against him would be dropped. Moreover, he had not written the ransom note. The case quickly fell out of the news and John Mark Karr slipped back into obscurity.

The 1999 Indictments

     The JonBenet Ramsey case shot back into the news in October 2013 when a Colorado judge ordered the release of indictments returned against the Ramseys in 1999. The Boulder County Grand Jury alleged that each parent "did permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's life or health which resulted in the death of JonBenet Ramsey." The grand jurors also alleged that the Ramseys "did render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution and punishment of said person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death."

     Boulder district attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign off on the indictments because the charges were not supported by sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

     In speaking to reporters, the Ramsey family attorney, L. Lin Wood, called the indictments "nonsensical." According to Wood, "they reveal nothing about the evidence reviewed by the grand jury and are clearly the result of a confused and compromised process."

     Regarding the old indictments, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Tobin, in pointing out the indictments merely showed that a majority of the grand jurors felt there was probable cause to charge the parents--a lower standard than proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt--said, "it doesn't precisely say that the grand jury thought the parents killed JonBenet. It's not precisely clear what they thought."

     In September 2016, the JonBenet Ramsey case shot back into the news with television documentaries revisiting the murder and shedding new light on the case. Notwithstanding the new media attention, the case remained unsolved. 

     There have been no arrests in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. As for John Mark Karr, he slipped back into obscurity. 

The Brock Allen Turner Sexual Assault Case

     During the early morning hours of January 18, 2015 in Palo Alto, California, two Stanford University students came across a man lying on top of a woman near a fraternity house dumpster. The man and the woman had passed out from excessive alcohol consumption.

     The Stanford student on top of the partially clad woman was 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, an all-American high school swimmer from Dayton, Ohio. He had met the woman found beneath him at a fraternity party that night. (Her identify was not made public.)

     Turner had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. The 23-year-old woman was three times over the legal limit for intoxication.

     After being examined at a hospital in San Jose a deputy sheriff told the woman she may have been the victim of a sexual assault.

     Brock Turner, when questioned by the police, admitted that he had sexually fondled the unconscious woman but did not rape her.

     Shortly after being questioned by detectives a Santa Clara County prosecutor charged Brock Turner with three felonies that included the sexual assault of an unconscious woman and assault with the intent to commit rape. If convicted as charged he faced up to 14 years in prison.

     Following his arrest on the three felony charges Brock Turner withdrew from the university.

     The Turner sexual assault case went to trial in Palo Alto in March 2016. Prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci in her opening remarks to the jury called the defendant the "quintessential face of campus assault." The victim had consumed four shots of whisky before attending the party as well as a quantity of vodka at the fraternity house. As a result of her intoxication she had been unable to consent to having sex. Lack of consent constituted the legal basis for the prosecution.

     Brock Turner took the stand on his own behalf and testified that the woman had been a willing participant in the sexual activity. Following his testimony, and the closing arguments, the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. He faced up to 14 years in prison.

     At the convicted man's sentencing hearing on June 2, 2016 his defense attorney asked Judge Aaron Persky to sentence his client to probation. The defendant's father, Dan Turner, took the stand and said, in reference to his son spending 14 years behind bars: "That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life."

     The female Santa Clara County probation officer who had conducted Brock Turner's pre-sentencing investigation took the stand and said: "When compared to other crimes of similar nature, this case may be considered less serious due to Mr. Turner's level of intoxication." The probation officer also pointed out that the former Stanford student did not have a criminal record, was young and unlikely to re-offend. The county agent concluded her testimony by saying that Mr. Turner had "expressed sincere remorse and empathy for the victim." The probation officer recommended a short jail term followed by a period of probation.

     Prosecutor Kianerci, in her pre-sentencing statement to the court, noted that Mr. Turner experienced a run-in with the police in November 2014. He had, according to police reports, run from an officer after the officer spotted him and other young men drinking on campus. Turner also admitted to possessing a fake driver's license. The prosecutor wondered out loud how the defendant could be so remorseful and empathetic when he had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutor Kianerci asked Judge Persky to sentence the defendant to six years in prison.

     The most dramatic phase of the pre-sentencing hearing occurred when the victim took the stand and read from her lengthy victim impact statement. She read, in part: "You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence and my own voice, until today. The damage is done, no one can undo it. And now we both have a choice. We can let this destroy us, I can remain angry and hurt and you can be in denial, or we can face it and head on: I accept the pain, you accept the punishment, and we move on."

     Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner to six months in the county jail followed by three years' probation. Turner would also have to register as a sex offender. With good behavior the convicted man was expected to serve three months behind bars.

     Judge Persky's sentence in the Turner sexual assault case created a firestorm of protest from an angry and vocal segment of society that considered the sentence a mere slap on the wrist. Others more sympathetic to the offender believed that making the young man register as a sex offender was, by itself, severe punishment. This group argued that the sexual assault conviction had essentially ruined his life.

    Judge Persky's sentence immediately prompted a movement to recall him from office. Under California law the California Assembly could impeach Judge Persky after which he could be removed from office on a two-thirds vote in the state senate. Moreover, the State Commission on Judicial Performance could censure or remove the judge from the bench. This action would be subject to a review by the state supreme court.

     Those outraged by the Persky sentence called for Stanford University to apologize for the sexual assault. The activists also demanded that the school bolster its effort to prevent campus rape and other sexual offenses. In response the university issued a statement that deflected criticism of its handling of the Turner case.

     Following the national uproar over the judge's sentence a group of prospective Santa Clara County jurors refused to serve in Judge Persky's courtroom. The judge and members of his family also received death threats.

     The national publicity associated with the Turner case prompted several politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden, to express concern over the sentence and the problem of campus rape and other sexual crimes.  

     While the California Commission on Judicial Performance found no wrongdoing in Judge Persky's sentencing of Brock Turner, voters recalled the judge in June, 2018. 

The Rise And Fall Of The Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility

     Mount McGregor is a mountain in Saratoga County in upstate New York. In 1913 in the mountain town of Moreau, the state built a tuberculosis treatment retreat called The Sanatorium On The Mountain. The facility closed in 1945 and remained unused until the New York Department of Corrections in 1976 converted the abandoned complex into a medium security prison for men. The McGregor Correctional Facility, because of a series of prison escapes, became known as "Camp Walkaway." In 2014 the state closed the penitentiary.

     The Grant State Historic Site sits on the grounds of the empty prison. The main tourist attraction on the site is Grant's Cottage where Ulysses S. Grant spent the last weeks of his life finishing his memoir. Grant died of throat cancer in 1885. (To this day Grant's memoir is considered the gold standard in the genre.)

     On July 23, 2014 a WNYT-TV crew led by reporter Mark Mulholland showed up at Grant's Cottage to film a piece in honor of his death. The next day the television crew returned to the historic site to finish the project.

     As the TV crew shot footage of Grant's Cottage that just happened to include, in the background, a view of the former prison, a New York state collections officer drove up to inform Mulholland that he was not allowed to film anything on Mount Gregor. The officer, who identified himself as Lieutenant Dom, said, "No filming."

     The stunned reporter replied, "We're doing a story on Grant's Cottage."

     Lieutenant Dom, apparently under the illusion that the television people were on the mountain to clandestinely film and do a story on the closed prison, said, "You're up here for different purposes. You'll have to leave the mountain."

     "Are you telling me we can't visit a historic site?"

     "You can visit but you can't film at Grant's Cottage," the officer replied.

     When reporter Mulholland and his colleagues tried to film the cottage from another spot, other corrections officers came onto the scene and blocked their access to the site.

     As Mulholland and his crew started to drive off McGregor Mountain they were stopped by a state trooper who demanded they turn over the footage they had shot of Grant's Cottage. Mulholland couldn't believe a state police officer wanted to confiscate the footage of a public tourist attraction.

     The reporter, after making calls to his TV station and other officials with the state, left the mountain with his Grant's Cottage footage.

     A few days later a spokesperson for the New York Department of Corrections told a WNYT-TV correspondent that Mr. Mulholland and his people had "blatantly disregarded a state police officer who informed them they were trespassing." Moreover, according to this corrections bureaucrat, "department regulations state that photographs and video taken on prison grounds require prior permission." This policy, according to the spokesperson, was for the "safety of all staff, visitors and prisoners."

     It didn't matter that the prison seen in the background didn't have prisoners or institutional visitors. Perhaps the corrections officials were worried that the TV crew was doing an expose about a vacant prison that still employed 76 corrections officers.

     In October 2017 the state of New York announced that it had halted efforts to find a new use or a buyer for the shuttered prison. The state police used the site's old shooting range, and SWAT teams utilized the abandoned buildings for training.

     In 2019 state governments across the country continue to close prisons. These closures in part reflect the trend in American criminal justice to put fewer convicted criminals behind bars. Critics of this policy were alarmed that going soft on criminals would contribute to the rise of crime rates. And it did.

Rudy Eugene: The Case Of The Naked Flesh Eater

     As a nation of drug addicts and alcoholics, have we created a class of taser-resistant monsters and flesh-eating zombies?

Excited Delirium Syndrome

     According to  Dr. Deborah Mash, the University of Miami neurologist who coined the term Excited Delirium, men who are high on drugs and/or alcohol, and are mentally ill, can  fly off the handle when placed under stress. Their body temperatures soar to 103-5 degrees and their hearts race. When in this state these men also possess supernatural strength and can be resistant to taser shocks. Many of these men, often overweight, die of cardiac or respiratory arrest when fighting with the police. Among forensic pathologists in the United States, Canada and England, Excited Delirium Syndrome has become a recognized cause of death.

Rudy Eugene

     At two in the afternoon on Saturday, May 26, 2012, Larry Vegas while riding his bicycle on the MacArthur off-ramp to Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, saw a naked man on top of another nude man on the pedestrian walkway. The area under the causeway, populated by homeless people, was littered with cardboard mats, personal belongings, syringes and broken bottles. The person on the pavement wasn't moving as the man on top chewed away at his face. The witness on the bicycle yelled at the attacker to stop. This man, with pieces of bloody flesh hanging out of his mouth, raised his head, looked at Mr. Vegas and growled.

     Mr. Vegas, now joined by other horrified witnesses, flagged down a Miami Police officer who ordered the attacker to desist. The attacker, paying no attention to the cop, the rubber-necking motorists and the witnesses gathering at the scene, continued to tear away his victim's face. Obviously stunned and repelled by what he saw the officer shot the attacker. When the bullet didn't stop the gruesome assault the officer fired again, three times, killing the flesh eating predator.

     Paramedics rushed the bloody badly mauled victim to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. The homeless victim, whose face had been chewed beyond recognition, was in critical condition.

     The man shot to death by the Miami police officer was a 31-year-old man named Rudy Eugene. Police theorized that Mr. Eugene was under the influence of "Cocaine Psychosis," a condition which causes the body to heat-up. Perhaps this was why the attacker was nude.

     Forensic pathologists, police officers, emergency room doctors, EMS personnel and people who treat drug abusers had been aware of Cocaine Psychosis since 1987. Cocaine causes dopamine levels in the body to rise, causing euphoria. The dropping of the dopamine level when the drug wears off can cause schizophrenic-like symptoms and/or extremely violent behavior. Cocaine Psychosis was  common in longtime drug abusers.

     At two in the morning on the day of the attack, Rudy Eugene, while at his girlfriend's house, rifled through his clothing and hers, then drove off in his purple Chevy sedan. He told a friend he was going to Miami Beach to attend a Memorial Day party. Later in the day his car broke down and as he walked across the 3-mile causeway he stated taking off his clothes. Police found his clothing and his driver's license along the road.

     As the investigation progressed, detectives began to suspect that Mr. Eugene had been under the influence of a LSD-like synthetic drug called "bath salts." His former wife, Jenny Ductant said this to a reporter: "I wouldn't say he had mental problems but he always felt like people were against him."

     The authorities identified the victim as 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a man who lived under the causeway and had been homeless for 30 years. He was a 1964 graduate of New York City's elite Stuyvesant High School. Before hitting the skids Mr. Poppo worked as the guidance officer at Stuyvesant. He had lived in Florida 40 years, during which time he had been arrested for petty crimes. Before the Miami police officer shot and killed Rudy Eugene the attacker had been chewing on Poppo's face for 18 minutes. When the ambulance took the victim from the scene, he had lost 80 percent of his face including his nose, cheeks, lips and an eye.

     Rudy Eugene's girlfriend told detectives that she met him in 2007. Since that time she and Rudy Eugene had an on-again off-again relationship. The man she portrayed, a guy who read from a Bible he carried everywhere with him, did not comport with a man who had eaten a stranger's face. While the girlfriend admitted that Mr. Eugene smoked pot, she believed that on the day he was shot by the police he had been unknowingly drugged. She also floated the possibility that someone put a Voodoo curse on him.

     In 2004 Mr. Eugene was arrested for battery after he threatened his mother and smashed her furniture. He had also threatened the responding police officer who shot him with a taser device.

     Toxicological tests revealed that Rudy Eugene, when he attacked the homeless man, was not under the influence of bath salts. He was, however, high on marijuana. Exactly what caused Mr. Eugene to do what he did to a complete stranger went with him to the grave.

Did Pastor Richard Shahan Murder His Wife?

     In 2013 Richard Shahan, the 53-year-old associate pastor of the First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama lived in Homewood, Alabama with his wife Karen. Reverend Shahan functioned as the church's children and family pastor and facilities director. Karen Shahan had a job at a nearby Hobby Lobby store. The couple lived in a rental house owned by the church.

     After graduating in 1985 from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Richard Shahan joined the staff at the First Baptist Church in Bryon, Texas where he was the Associate Pastor of Education and Family Development. From 1989 to 1999 he served at the Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham. In 2000 he became Associate Paster in Education and Administration for the Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina where he worked seven years. From 2007 to 2009 he was employed by the Kimble Knight Ministries in Brentwood, Tennessee. From Brentwood in 2009 he and his wife moved back to Birmingham where he joined the First Baptist Church in that city.

     In 2003, while working in Charlotte, North Carolina, Richard Shahan formed his own company, an Internet-based curriculum provider called One Vine, Inc. In 2010, while living in Birmingham, Pastor Shahan and his wife filed for personal bankruptcy. According to court records the couple listed $443,500 in assets and $505,665 in debts. At the time they had a monthly income of $5,874 which did not include a $2,516 monthly housing allowance from the church.

     In September 2012 Pastor Shahan took a leave of absence from the First Baptist Church in Birmingham to travel to Kazakhstan where he acquired a visiting professor position at the Bible Institute in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He returned to Birmingham in May 2013.

     On July 23, 2013 Karen Louise Shahan's co-workers at Hobby Lobby became concerned when the 52-year-old pastor's wife didn't show up for work. Calls to her home went unanswered. At 11:15 that Tuesday morning police officers with the Homewood Police Department pursuant to a welfare check made a gruesome discovery. The officers found that someone had stabbed Karen Shahan to death in her bedroom. The victim's blood had been spilled throughout the dwelling. A crime scene investigator told reporters that this was the most brutal murder site he ever witnessed.

     Pastor Richard Shahan was not home the morning police discovered the body of his repeatedly stabbed wife. Detectives believed that the victim was murdered Monday night or early the next day. There were no signs of forced entry and nothing from the house had been stolen. The victim had not been sexually assaulted. Suspicion immediately fell upon the husband. The fact he was a pastor meant nothing to homicide detectives who know there is no such thing as an unlikely murder suspect.

     Detectives on August 7, 2013 questioned Pastor Shahan at the Homewood police station. When asked to account for his whereabouts that Monday night and Tuesday morning he said he had been out of town visiting one of the couple's two sons.

     On August 8, 2013, the day after the station house interrogation, detectives took Richard Shahan into custody "for investigative purposes." Under Alabama law a suspect could only be held for investigation 48 hours. If the arrestee was not charged with a crime he or she must be released.

     Following the suspect's 48 hours behind bars the authorities released him because the prosecutor didn't have enough evidence to level a homicide charge. Because he was a suspect in his wife's brutal murder officials at the First Baptist Church placed Pastor Shahan on paid administrative leave.

     A Jefferson County prosecutor, shortly after Pastor Shahan announced on December 16, 2013 that he would be leaving the United States to do three years of mission work in Germany, charged him with first-degree murder. On New Years Day, 2014 police officers in Nashville, Tennessee arrested the pastor as he was about to board a plane to Germany.

     Jim Roberson, chief of the Homewood Police Department told reporters that, "Once he [Shahan] got over to Germany or Russia the chances of extraditing him are pretty nil. We can't get Snowden [the NSA leaker], probably wouldn't get Shahan back either."

     On January 7, 2014 Richard Shahan, though his attorney said that he would waive his right to an extradition hearing. Less than a week later the authorities in Alabama booked the murder suspect into the Jefferson County Jail.

     The Shahan case prosecutor did not reveal what evidence the state had against the defendant. Some of the unanswered questions in the case involved whether investigators had identified the murder weapon. Also, did physical evidence connect Mr. Shahan to the bloody murder scene; and did detectives break the suspect's alibi? It appeared the motive in the case was money.

     On October 23, 2014 a local grand jury indicted Richard Shahan for the murder of his wife. The suspect avoided jail by posting his $100,000 bond. He was, however, due to the terms of his release, under house arrest at his mother's dwelling in Homewood, Tennessee.

     In March 2016 a Jefferson County judge postponed Richard Shahan's murder trial nine months to January 9, 2017. The judge did not reveal the reason for the delay. In murder cases delays often help the defense at the expense of the prosecution.

     The defendant's murder charge was dismissed on April 10, 2017 when the Alabama Attorney General's Office declared there was not enough evidence to prosecute the former pastor.