The Candice Walton Arson-Murder Case

     Tasha Vandiver lived in Monroe County Georgia a few miles southwest of Forsyth, a rural town of 3,700 in the central part of the state. The 46-year-old resided in a house with her 21-year-old learning disabled son Gerald Walton and her 16-year-old daughter Candice Walton.

     At three-thirty in the morning of Thursday February 27, 2020 someone reported a fire at the Vandiver/Walton house. When firefighters arrived at the scene the structure was fully involved.

     Firefighters while sifting through the debris found two bodies. Tasha Vandiver and her son Gerald were identified as the fire scene casualties. A cause and origin investigator determined that the house fire was incendiary--intentionally set. From this point on the case was investigated as an arson-murder. The fire was started on the living room couch and spread so fast the occupants of the dwelling, Tasha Vandiver and her disabled son Gerald Waltan, were unable to get out of the house in time. The victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning. 

     Notably missing from the destroyed house was 16-year-old Candice Walton. Because the family car, a 1967 white Chevrolet Malibu was also missing from the dwelling, investigators assumed that the teenager had taken off with the car. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) opened a missing person case and issued broadcast alerts for the girl's apprehension.

     At three in the afternoon that Thursday, about 12 hours after firefighters put out the fire, a sheriff's deputy in McCracken County, Kentucky near the city of Paducah spotted Candice Walton sitting at a gas station in the white Chevrolet Malibu. The deputy detained the girl until U. S. Marshals took her into custody. She was arrested 450 miles northwest of her home in Monroe County, Georgia.

     The day after Walton's arrest GBI agents questioned her at the McCracken County Juvenile Detention Center. A search of the white Chevrolet Malibu produced evidence that connected the teenager to the house fire and deaths of her mother and brother.

     A Monroe County, Georgia prosecutor charged Candice Walton with two counts of murder, one count of arson and several counts of theft.

     At her arraignment in McCracken County the suspect refused to waive extradition. That meant the state of Kentucky had 60 days to hold an extradition hearing. In the meantime, Candice Walton was held in Kentucky without bail.

     Once back in Georgia, Candice Walton was held at the Macon Regional Youth Detention Center. The Monroe County prosecutor indicated that Walton would be prosecuted as an adult.

     After confessing to stealing cash from her mother's tax rebate, Candice Walton said she set the fire and stole her mother's car so she could drive to Oregon to start a new life with her boyfriend. In February 2022 she pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole when she turned 48. 

Homicidal Schizophrenics: Individual Rights Versus Public Safety

     In February 2009 Joseph Hagerman III, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, stopped taking his antipsychotic medication. He had stopped taking his medicine twice in the past and had experienced psychotic episodes. This time, however, he decapitated his 5-year-old son and injured his wife who tried in vain to protect the boy.

     Following his arrest Mr. Hagerman in a jailhouse interview with a local TV reporter said he had killed his son because he believed the boy had become the antichrist.

     A few months after the homicide, a jury in Virginia Beach Virginia found the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity. Under Virginia law this meant that Mr. Hagerman would be sent to a mental institution instead of prison. He would remain at the hospital until his doctors and a judge declared him sane enough to rejoin society.

     In late 2016 doctors at the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg Virginia recommended to the court that Joseph Hagerman be granted conditional release from the institution. According to the psychiatrist, this patient, over the past few years had been given 48-hour passes that had not caused any problems. He had been, according to the hospital staff, a model patient.

     A Virginia circuit judge acting upon the psychiatric recommendation ordered that Mr. Hagerman be given two independent mental health evaluations.

     On May 9, 2017, following the testimony of two psychiatrists and Mr. Hagerman's father, the judge ordered the patient's conditional release from the mental hospital. Pursuant to this decree Mr. Hagerman was required to live at an adult foster care facility during the week. On weekends he would reside with his parents.

     Under the judge's order Mr. Hagerman would also receive periodic visits from social workers and psychiatrists who would check to make sure he was still taking his antipsychotic medication.

    At the conclusion of the sanity hearing Mr. Hagerman's sister told a local television correspondent that, "I just want to let the community know that my brother is a very loving, generous, Christian man. He had a wonderful family, and it was an unfortunate incident. [Italics mine.] Everyone needs to get educated on mental illness."

     The fact that a child died because his mentally ill father, for the third time, had stopped taking his medication was perhaps cause for concern. Compassion for the mentally ill is well and good but so is the need to protect people who cross this man's path. One doesn't need to be highly educated on the subject of mental illness to know that the behavior of a homicidal schizophrenic is extremely unpredictable. 

Donald Harvey: America's Worst Angel of Death

     In 1975, after working briefly as a hospital orderly in Lexington, Kentucky, 23-year-old Donald Harvey took a job with the Veteran's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. As the years passed a pattern emerged. When Harvey was on duty patients died. Finally, after ten years and the deaths of more than 100 patients on his watch, the orderly was fired. He was terminated because several hospital workers suspected he was poisoning patients under his care. After he left the medical facility the death rate plummeted. Terminating Donald Harvey turned out to be good medicine, at least at the VA hospital.

     Shortly after his firing Mr. Harvey was hired across town at Drake Memorial Hospital where the death rate began to soar. As he had done at the VA facility, Donald Harvey was murdering patients by either lacing their food with arsenic or injecting cyanide into their gastric tubes. The deaths at Drake Memorial, like those at the VA hospital, were ruled as naturally caused fatalities. While suspicions were aroused it was hard to imagine that this friendly helpful little man who was so charming and popular with members of his victims' families could be a stone-cold killer.

     As clever and careful as Donald Harvey was, he made a mistake when he poisoned John Powell, a patient recovering from a motorcycle accident. Under Ohio law victims of fatal traffic accidents must be autopsied. At Powell's autopsy an assistant detected the odor of almonds, the telltale sign of cyanide. This was fortunate because most people are unable to detect this scent. The forensic pathologist ordered toxicological tests that revealed that John Powell had died from a lethal dose of cyanide. Donald Harvey had been the last person to see Mr. Powell alive, and John Powell would be the last person he would murder.

     The Cincinnati police arrested Donald Harvey and searched his apartment where they found jars filled with arsenic and cyanide and books on poisoning. Notwithstanding this evidence the Hamilton County prosecutor believed that without a confession there might not be enough evidence to convince a jury of Harvey's guilt. The suspect, on the other hand, was worried that if convicted he would be sentenced to death. So the serial killer and the prosecutor struck a deal. In return for a life sentence Donald Harvey confessed to the murders he could remember. Over a period of several days he confessed to killing, in Kentucky and Ohio, 130 patients.

     When asked why had he murdered all of those helpless victims, the best answer Harvey could muster was that he must have a "screw loose." Forensic psychologists familiar with the case speculated that the murders had given Harvey, an otherwise ordinary and insignificant person, a sense of power over the lives of others. Harvey pleaded guilty to several murders and was sentenced to life.

     On March 28, 2017 Donald Harvey was found severely beaten in his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution at Toledo, Ohio. Two days later the 44-year-old died from his injuries. In May 2019 fellow inmate James Elliott was charged with Mr. Harvey's murder.

Team Stomping and Kicking

     California University of Pennsylvania, one of 14 schools in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Learning, sits on 290 acres in California Borough 35 miles south of downtown Pittsburgh. A good number of its 8,600 students came from southwestern Pennsylvania. (California University is now part of the three-campus Penn West University made up of Edinboro and Clarion Universities.)

     Shortly after midnight on Thursday October 30, 2014 California University student Shareese Asparagus, a 22-year-old from West Chester, Pennsylvania, walked out of a restaurant on Wood Street in the college town. She was with her 30-year-old boyfriend, Lewis Campbell, also from West Chester. He did not attend the university.

     The trouble started outside the restaurant when a California University football player, accompanied by four of his teammates, said something to the young woman that offended her. This led to an exchange of angry words that prompted Lewis Campbell to step in to defend his girlfriend.

     The football players reacted to the situation by punching and kicking Mr. Campbell to the pavement. As he lay injured on the ground, the assailants kicked and stomped him into unconsciousness. As the teammates strolled away from their battered victim, they chanted, "football strong!"

     As paramedics loaded Mr. Campbell into a medical helicopter they noticed a shoe print on his face. Emergency personnel flew the unconscious man to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh where physicians determined that the lower part of Mr. Campbell's brain had shifted 80 degrees. The beating had caused the victim serious brain damage.

     Later on the day of the gang assault in front of the off-campus restaurant, as Mr. Campbell lay in the intensive care unit, police officers showed up at football practice armed with arrest warrants for four California University players. Taken into custody that afternoon were: James Williamson, 20, from Parkville, Maryland; Corey Ford, 22, from Harrisburg, Rodney Gillin, 20, from West Lawn, Pennsylvania; and D'Andre Dunkley, 19, from Philadelphia.

     Police officers booked the four college football players into the Washington County Correctional Facility on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, harassment and conspiracy. The judge set each man's bail at $500,000.

     On Friday October 31, 2014, interim California University President Geraldine M. Jones issued the following statement: "California University does not tolerate violent behavior, and the four student-athletes charged in connection with this incident [incident?] will face university sanctions, along with any penalties imposed by law. The police investigation is continuing and the rights of these accused will be upheld. But in light of these allegations, I asked Coach Keller to cancel Saturday's game [with Gannon University]. Behavior has consequences, and all Cal U students, including student-athletes, must abide by our Student Code of Conduct if they wish to remain a part of our campus community. [Aggravated assault hardly falls into the category of a college code of conduct violation.] At the same time, it must be clearly understood that the actions [crimes] of a small group of individuals are not representative of our entire student body, nor of all Cal U student-athletes. [Then what do these "actions" represent?] I ask our entire campus community to recommit to our university's core values, and to demonstrate through their words and their actions the best that our university can be."

      This was a mealy-mouthed public relations department response to a vicious attack worthy of a violent street gang. Where was the outrage in this statement?

     The charges against James Williamson were dropped after surveillance footage revealed that he had not participated in the beating. In response, Williamson filed a lawsuit against the district attorney, the police and the borough. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

     After doctors placed Lewis Campbell into an induced coma, he was discharged several days later with serious brain injuries. 

     Corey Ford, on June 7, 2016, pleaded no contest to assault. He received, in return, a sentence of one to two years in prison. (Ford had earlier pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run that killed a bicyclist in Washington, D.C. In that case the judge had sentenced him to 36 months in federal prison.)

     In July 2016 Rodney Gillin and D'Andre Dunkley, in return for their guilty pleas, received sentences of probation.  

The Kayden Powell Kidnapping Case

     On February 2, 2014, 18-year-old Brianna Marshall gave birth to a six-pound 20-inch boy she and her boyfriend Bruce Powell named Kayden. The couple resided in Beloit, a town of 7,700 50 miles south of Madison, Wisconsin near the Illinois border.

     At four-thirty in the morning of Thursday, February 6, 2014 Brianna Marshall called 911 and reported that Kayden was missing. The mother told responding officers with the Beloit Police Department that when she checked the baby's crib, located in the room where she and her boyfriend slept, the infant was gone. Police officers found no evidence of a break-in and there was no ransom note.

     According to the parents they last saw Kayden at one-thirty that morning when their houseguest, Brianna's half-sister, Kristen Rose Smith, left Beloit en route to her home in Denver, Colorado.

     A police officer reached Kristen Smith by calling her cellphone. At five-thirty that morning she pulled into the Kum and Go gas station off Interstate 80 in West Branch, Iowa. From the gas station and convenience store 180 miles from Beloit she flagged down a local police officer.

     After searching Smith's car and finding baby clothing but no infant, officers with the West Branch Police Department took the half-sister into custody on an outstanding warrant issued from Texas. She was wanted in that state on charges of tampering with government records and fraud. Officers booked Kristen Smith into the Cedar County Jail.

     Back in Beloit, 40 officers representing the FBI, Rock County Sheriff's Office and the Beloit Police Department were working on the missing persons case.

     The missing baby's mother, in speaking to a local CNN reporter on Friday, February 6, 2014, said: "I held that baby one time and that was the last time I seen that baby and held him." Brianna Marshall said that she, her boyfriend and the infant were about to move to Denver, Colorado. She and the baby had planned to ride there in her half-sister's vehicle. That explained the baby clothing in Kristen Smith's car.

     At a press conference held on the afternoon of Friday, February 7, 2014 Beloit chief of police Steven Kopp announced that Baby Kayden Powell had been found alive and well that morning. The infant had been swaddled in blankets inside a tote bag in an exterior storage crate at the Kum and Go gas station in West Branch. The baby had survived for 29 hours in subzero temperatures.

     After being taken into custody in Iowa, Kristen Smith agreed to take a polygraph test. When she denied abducting the baby she failed the exam. Following the infant's recovery, she admitted she had taken the baby and was pretending to be pregnant. Before flagging the police car at the gas station she hid the baby for later retrieval. Police officers had disrupted that plan by taking her into custody on the Texas warrants.

     Remarkably, the baby had no signs of frostbite or hypothermia. A physician at the University of Wisconsin Health Center explained that infants possess a thin layer of fat they can metabolize into heat.

     A federal prosecutor charged Kristen Smith with kidnapping.

     In July 2014 a jury sitting in the Madison, Wisconsin federal court found Kristen Smith guilty of kidnapping baby Kayden Powell.

    United States District Court Judge James Peterson, in October 2014, before sentencing Kristen Smith, said, "You would have let him die rather than admit you had taken him. Your life is a pattern of misrepresentation which frankly continues even now." The judge sentenced Smith to 25 years in prison.

Parents Versus State: Control Over a Child's Healthcare

     In Ohio, doctors at Akron Children's Hospital in April 2013 diagnosed 10-year-old Sarah Hershberger with lymphoblastic lymphoma, an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Amish girl's parents, Andy and Anna Hershberger, when told that 85 percent of the patients treated for this illness survive, agreed to a two-year chemotherapy program. After the first round of the chemotherapy the tumors on Sarah's neck, chest and kidneys were diminished.

     In June 2013, after a second round of chemotherapy treatment made their daughter extremely ill, the Hershbergers decided to stop the treatment. They took this action against the advice of cancer doctors who warned them that without the chemotherapy Sarah would die.

     The hospital authorities, believing they were morally and legally bound to continue treating the girl, went to court to take away the parents' right to make medical decisions on their daughter's behalf.

     Andy and Anna Hershberger, in September 2013, took Sarah to an alternative cancer treatment center in Central America where doctors put the girl on a regimen of herbs and vitamins. When the family returned to the United States hospital scans showed no signs of the lymphoma.

     On October 13, 2013 an Ohio appellate court judge granted Maria Schimer, an attorney and licensed nurse, limited guardianship over Sarah Hershberger. The guardianship included the power to make medical decisions on her behalf over the objections of her parents.

     Shortly after the court ruling the guardian sent a taxi out to the family farm near the village of Spencer, Ohio to fetch Sarah and take her to the hospital in Akron for additional chemotherapy. When the cab arrived at the Medina County home, located 35 miles southwest of the Cleveland metropolitan area, the family was gone.

     A few weeks later, pursuant to a welfare check on Sarah Hershberger, deputy sheriffs went to the farm and found the place still unoccupied. No one in the Amish community seemed to know where the Hershbergers had gone. If members of this Amish enclave knew the family's whereabouts they weren't cooperating with the authorities. Attorneys for the Hershberger family appealed the guardianship ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court on issues related to religious freedom.

     If Sarah Hershberger's fate remained in her parents' hands and she died from cancer, Mr. and Mrs. Hershberger could face negligent homicide charges. Moreover, people who helped them avoid the authorities could be charged as accomplices to the crime. The right of religious freedom did not match the right of a child to receive life-saving healthcare. Being given vitamins and herbs as a cancer cure, while less painful than the immediate aftermath of chemotherapy, did not qualify, in the eyes of the medical profession and the law, as adequate healthcare.

     On December 6, 2013, according to media reports, the court appointed guardian decided not to force Sarah Hershberger to undergo further chemotherapy treatments. The family's whereabouts were still unknown.

     In October 2015 MRIs and blood work performed at the Cleveland Clinic revealed that Sarah Hershberger showed no signs of cancer and appeared to be in perfect health. As a result of these medical tests the family judge ended the court-ordered guardianship of the Amish girl. 

     As of this writing Sara Hershberger is still healthy and cancer-free.

Cop Killer Ronell Wilson

     New York City detectives James V. Nemorin and Rodney J. Andrews arranged an undercover gun buy to take place on Staten Island on March 10, 2003. The officers purchased a .357-Magnum revolver from Ronell Wilson the day before. The detectives showed up at the meeting place with $1,200 in cash to buy a Tech-9 handgun from Wilson. Instead of making the deal, Wilson, who intended all along to rob the undercover officers, shot each of them in the head with a .44-caliber handgun.

     Ronell Wilson was convicted of the murders in 2005 and sentenced to death. But his death sentence was set aside a few years later when New York State's death penalty statute was declared unconstitutional.

     In December 2006 Wilson was found guilty in a federal district court in Brooklyn of murdering the police officers. The judge sentenced him to death under the federal law. Wilson's attorneys challenged the death sentence on the grounds that Wilson was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the lethal injection. Wilson's lawyers presented his case before a Brooklyn federal judge in November 2012.

     In August of 2012 prison informants at the Metropolitan Detection Center, a federal lock-up in Brooklyn, told correction authorities that Ronell Wilson had been having sex with a female guard named Nancy Gonzales. (Gonzales and Wilson had been having sex since March 2012.) In an effort to avoid the death sentence, Wilson intended to impregnate the corrections officer. (Not bad thinking for a mentally retarded guy.) In a letter to another inmate, Wilson wrote, "I just need a baby before the pigs try to take my life."

     The 29-year-old prison guard, in a recorded telephone call to her boyfriend, an inmate in a New York state prison, admitted having sex with Wilson in his cell. "I took a chance because I was so vulnerable and wanted to be loved," Gonzales said. "And now I am carrying his child."

     On February 5, 2013 FBI agents arrested the eight-month pregnant prison guard at her home in Huntington, Long Island. At her Brooklyn arraignment the judge charged Nancy Gonzales with having sexual intercourse with an inmate. If convicted of this federal offense she faced up to 16 months in prison.

     On Wednesday February 6, 2013 the 72-year-old father of NYPD detective Rodney Andrews in speaking to a reporter with the New York Daily News said he didn't believe the man who murdered his son should receive mercy just because he impregnated a female corrections officer. "Put him to death for what he did. If he had 20 children I wouldn't change my mind. That baby will be better off with that father not being around."

     In February 2014 at Nancy Gonzales' sentencing hearing following her guilty plea, the defendant told the judge that she had been sexually abused as a child by family members. Moreover, she claimed to have been sexually assaulted while serving in the National Guard. The judge sentenced Gonzales to a year and a day in prison.

     Ronell Wilson was on death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

     In March 2016 a federal appeals judge ruled that because Ronell Wilson was "mentally handicapped" he was ineligible for the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment doctrine. He is now serving his life sentence in a federal prison in Waymat Pennsylvania. 

The Suspicious Deaths of Max Shacknai and Rebecca Zahau

     Rebecca Zahau was born on March 15, 1979 in the town of Falam in northwestern Burma. Her family moved to Nepal and then to Germany before coming to the United States in 2000. The family settled in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

     In 2008 Rebecca Zahau was living in Scottsdale, Arizona and married to a man named Neil Nalepa. At this time she started dating 50-year-old Jonah Shacknai, the CEO and founder of Medicis Pharmaceutical Company. The unmarried mogul with a pair of former wives lived in Scottsdale. In 2011 Jonah Shacknai moved into a historic mansion in Coronado, California that had been built in 1908 by John D. Spreckel. Mr. Spreckel had owned the nearby Hotel del Coronado as well as other southern California real estate. The 13,000 square-foot dwelling featured 27 rooms and a guest house.

     In February 2011 Rebecca Zahau divorced Neil Nalepa and moved into the San Diego County mansion with Jonah Shacknai and Max, his 6-year-old son from his second wife. The 32-year-old live-in girlfriend worked as a technician in an ophthalmologist's office.

     On July 11, 2011 Rebecca Zahau and her visiting 13-year-old sister Xena were in the Coronado mansion looking after 6-year-old Max Aaron Shacknai. That morning Rebecca called 911 to report an accident. Max, while running down an elevated hallway or balcony above the lobby-like entrance to the house had gone over the banister.  Next to his body lay the large chandelier that had hung from the ceiling not far from where the boy had fallen. Investigators with the Coronado Police Department assumed the boy had grabbed the chandelier to break his fall. He suffered spinal cord injuries and serious head trauma and slipped into a coma.

     The next day Rebecca Zahau drove Xena to the airport for her flight back to Saint Joseph, Missouri. She also picked-up Jonah Shacknai's brother Adam who had arrived on a flight from Memphis. That evening, Zahau, Adam, Jonah and a friend of Jonah's ate dinner at a McDonald's. Adam and Rebecca returned to the mansion while Jonah and Max's mother, Dina Shacknai (nee Romano), sat at their son's bedside. Later that night Jonah Shacknai called Rebecca to report that Max wasn't going to make it. They were taking the boy off life-support.

     The next day, July 13, 2011 at 6:45 in the morning Adam Shacknai called 911 and reported that he had discovered Rebecca Zahau hanging by the neck from the balcony. She was nude. Acting on instructions from the 911 dispatcher Adam cut down the body.

     Deputies from the San Diego Sheriff's Office found the dead woman lying on the back lawn of the mansion. She had been gagged with a blue, long-sleeve cotton T-shirt that was also wrapped around her neck with the sleeves tied into a double knot. Her hands were bound behind her back with a length of red rope. Her ankles were also tied together with a piece of the red cordage. On a bedroom door not far from where Adam Shacknai found Rebecca hanging, someone in cursive writing using black paint had written: "She saved him you can save her."

     Dr. Jonathan Lucas, the San Diego County Medical Examiner, performed Rebecca Zahau's autopsy. He found four hemorrhages under her scalp (but no lacerations) and evidence of tape residue on her legs. The forensic pathologist found traces of blood on her legs as well.

     On July 16, 2011 Max Shacknai died. Ten days later Dr. Lucas announced that the boy had died from brain swelling and cardiac arrest. The medical examiner determined the manner of death to be accidental. Dr. Lucas's ruling in the death was immediately questioned by a trauma physician who had treated the boy. In this doctor's opinion someone had tried to suffocate the child before throwing him off the balcony. In other words, he had been murdered.

      With news of Rebecca Zahau's bizarre death people began speculating about whether or not a murderer had staged a suicide. Some of these commentators said that no woman had ever taken off her clothes, gagged herself, bound her hands and ankles then hanged herself. Late in July, 2011 San Diego Sheriff's Office Sergeant Roy Frank said this to a reporter: "There are documentations of incidents throughout the country where people have secured their feet and hands to commit suicide. They do it to make certain they can't escape if they change their minds."

     On September 2, 2011 San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore, amid rampant speculation of foul play, announced that Rebecca Zahau's death was a suicide. Distraught over Max Shacknai's accident on her watch she had hanged herself. The sheriff's office had therefore closed the case.

     Four days after Sheriff Gore's press conference Dr. Jonathan Lucas, in response to a massive wave of skepticism regarding his manner of death ruling, issued the following statement regarding the hemorrhages under Zahau's scalp: "Because there was evidence that she went over the balcony in a non-vertical way she may have struck her head on the balcony on the way down." In addressing the blood on Zahau's legs, the forensic pathologist identified the cause as either her menstrual period, or an intrauterine device. The medical examiner offered no explanation for the presence of the tape residue on her legs.

     The next day, September 7, 2011, Dr. Maurice Godwin, a private forensic consultant from Fayetteville, North Carolina with a Ph.D in criminal psychology told a reporter that Zahau's death had all the earmarks of a "ritualistic killing" and that the suicide had been staged. In Dr. Godwin's opinion someone had dazed Zahau with a blow to the head then tossed her off the balcony.

     In the same newspaper article Dr. Lawrence Kobilnsky, a DNA expert who taught at City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, opined that the medical examiner's suicide manner of death determination was "premature." Dr. Kobilnsky said he believed that someone had delivered a substantial blow to Zahau's head. The forensic scientist said, "The chances of bumping into the railing, going over the balcony and hitting your head four times is highly unlikely."

     Dr. Werner Spitz, a highly respected forensic pathologist, in the same piece, said he thought the San Diego medical examiner's manner of death ruling in the case made sense.

     In the summer of 2011 Rebecca Zahau's family hired a lawyer from Seattle named Anne Bremner to represent their interests in the case and to pressure the San Diego Sheriff's Office to re-open the investigation of Zahau's death. According to one of Zahau's sisters, a nurse practitioner who had spoken to her almost every day, Rebecca had no psychiatric history and had never attempted suicide. Attorney Bremner, pursuant to the family's quest to have the case re-investigated, asked the San Diego County District Attorney and the state Attorney General to get involved. The district attorney's office and the attorney general declined.

     On November 15, 2011 Dr. Cyril Wecht, the well-known forensic pathologist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, appeared on the "Dr. Phil" television show to voice his professional opinion regarding the cause and manner of Rebecca Zahau's strange and sudden death. Dr. Wecht, at the behest of attorney Anne Bremner, had performed a second autopsy of the victim's exhumed body. While he found Dr. Lucas' initial autopsy thorough, Dr. Wecht questioned the medical examiner's suicide manner of death determination. Wecht said the four hemorrhages beneath the scalp could not have been caused by hanging. "You have to have blunt force trauma for that," he said. "You have something of a rounded, smooth surface that impacts against the scalp, this not producing a laceration." According to Dr. Wecht, Rebecca Zahau could have been knocked unconscious which would explain why her body did not have any defense wounds from a struggle. The former coroner of Allegheny County agreed that the woman had died from hanging, but believed her manner of death should be changed from "suicidal" to "undetermined."

     Dina Shacknai, Max Shacknai's mother, in order to acquire the boy's autopsy photographs filed a suit against the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office on April 12, 2012. Dina and her supporters were looking for proof that someone had murdered the 6-year-old boy. They did not believe the wounds on his head had been caused by the fall. (It's not clear if they suspected Rebecca or her sister Xena or what motive they assigned to the homicide.)

     On July 16, 2012, the one-year anniversary of Max Shacknai's death, Dina Shacknai and her attorney Angela Hallier held a press conference in Phoenix. According to the lawyer the family possessed information from "privately retained experts" that proved the 6-year-old had been murdered at the Coronado mansion.

     On August 6, 2012 a spokesperson for the Coronado Police Department confirmed they had met with Dina Shacknai and her attorney regarding Max Shacknai's death. Police investigators agreed to read the report containing the opinions of forensic scientists who believed the boy could have been murdered. One of those experts, Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist with the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office, reportedly believed that Max was too small to have gone over the balcony railing. Moreover, she believed his head injuries were not consistent with a fall.

     So, what happened to Max Shacknai and Rebecca Zahau? Within a period of two days they both went over different balconies in the same house. What were the odds of that? If Rebecca had killed herself over the boy's fall why did she do it in such a bizarre and suspicious way? And what was the meaning of the message painted on the bedroom door? And who wrote it?

     Assuming that Max had been thrown off the balcony to his eventual death, who did it, and why? If Rebecca had been murdered was it in revenge for the boy's homicide? And finally, will these questions ever be answered?

     On September 10, 2012, a spokesperson for the Coronado police announced there would be no reinvestigation of 6-year-old Max Shacknai's death. 

     In July 2013 Rebecca Zahau's family, believing that her death was the result of criminal wrongdoing, filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against Adam Schackai. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant battered Rebecca then hanged her from the mansion's balcony.

     On March 11, 2016, following a flurry of defense motions in response to the plaintiffs' suit, a San Diego Superior Court judge ruled there was sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial. 

     In January 2019 the jury in the wrongful death case found Adam Schackai responsible for Rebecca Zahau's death. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $5 million in damages.

The Beth Potter/Robin Carre Murder Case

     At six-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, March 31, 2020 a jogger in Madison, Wisconsin came upon the bodies of a man and a woman lying in a ditch. The man was dead and the woman was near death. She died a few hours later in a nearby hospital.

     Dr. Beth Potter, 52, and her partner Robin Carre, 57 were found on the University of Wisconsin campus near the entrance to a 1,200 acre arboretum (a place where many kinds of trees are grown for exhibition and study). The park-like area was also a popular recreational site

     The Dane County Medical Examiner's office issued the rather vague statement that the manner and cause of the couple's death was "homicide related trauma." (The couple had been shot to death with a handgun.)

     Dr. Potter had been director of the Winga Family Medical Center operated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Robin Carre had worked as an independent educational consultant who helped high school students and their parents with the college admissions process. He had also been director of a local youth soccer organization. The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter.

     Detectives with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department took charge of the double murder investigation. A spokesperson for the department told reporters that the victims had not been randomly killed. They had been, in his words, "targeted."

     On Friday, April 3, 2020 police officers arrested 18-year-old Khari Sanford. A senior at Madison West High School, Sanford knew the murdered couple's children who attended the same school. The victims' daughter, according to her Facebook page, had been in a relationship with the murder suspect.

     Khari Sanford was booked into the Dane County Jail on two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. The magistrate denied him bail.

     In late 2019 the high school football player, when his foster parents were visiting Africa, disabled the home surveillance cameras and drove off in the family car. Because he wasn't allowed to use the vehicle, a relative notified the police. A few days later officers located Sanford in the Madison area sleeping in the vehicle.

     Charged with auto theft, Khari Sanford was admitted into a deferred prosecution program that involved counseling and community service. Once he completed the program the charge would be dropped and his record wiped clean. In January 2019, while still going through the deferred prosecution program, Sanford posted on his Facebook page a photograph of himself posing with a pistol. He also posted comments about policing the police.

     In 2018 Khari Sanford had written the following on his Facebook page: "We gon (sic) change this world, cause it's time to let our diversity and youth shine over all oppressive systems and rebuild our democracy.

     On the day of Khari Sanford's arrest University of Wisconsin Chief of Police Kristin Roman said this about the double murder: "It was calculated, coldblooded and senseless."

     On April 4, 2020 the University of Wisconsin Police Department spokesperson announced that on Saturday, the day after officers took Khari Sanford into custody, they arrested his friend, Ali'jah J. Larrue. The 18-year-old was booked into the Dane Count Jail on two counts of being a party to first-degree intentional homicide. Larrue also attended Madison West High School.

     On April 7, 2020 Khari Sanford and Ali'jah Larrue were arraigned via a video-conducted hearing. Assistant District Attorney William Brown testified that on the night before Dr. Potter and Mr. Carre were found in the arboretum ditch, Sanford and his accomplice entered the victims' home to rob them. Sanford allegedly shot both victims in the back of the head while they slept. After what the prosecutor labeled "an execution," Sanford and his accomplice hauled the deceased Mr. Carre and the dying Dr. Potter to the arboretum where they were found the next morning. Dr. Potter was wearing pajamas and socks. Robin Carre was found in his underwear.

     The Dane County magistrate set the suspects' bail at $1million each. 

     Ali'jah Larrue in May 2022 pleaded guilty to two counts of felony murder and kidnapping. Later that month he testified for the prosecution at Khari Sanford's first-degree murder and kidnapping trial that resulted in a conviction on both charges. In September 2022 the judge sentenced Larrue to eight years in prison followed by ten years of probation. Khari Sanford received a sentence of life in prison.

Lara Prychodko's Mysterious Death

     In the decade prior to 2015, 46-year-old Lara Prychodko lived the life of a wealthy, New York City socialite. Her husband, David Christopher Schlacet, was co-founder of a New York City construction company called Taocon, Inc. The couple owned a condominium in Toronto, two homes in the Hamptons and a pair of apartments in New York City. But by 2016 there was a problem: Lara Prychodko's drug and alcohol problem had caught up with her. In 2012 she was convicted of driving while intoxicated and in 2015 lost custody of her ten-year-old son, Talin. As part of the custody settlement with her estranged husband the domestic court judge ordered Prychodko to undergo regular drug and alcohol testing which she regularly failed.

     In 2016 Lara and her husband separated and began the process of going though a divorce. That year, Mr. Schlacet's construction company Taocon, Inc. filed for bankruptcy. The firm owned creditors $3.4 million and had assets of $550,000.

     Lara Prychodko resided in a luxury apartment in Union Square, Manhattan called Zeckendore Towers.  By 2018 she and Mr. Schlacet were trying to work out how to divide the marital property.

    At 4:10 in the afternoon of July 18, 2018 one of Lara Prychodko's neighbors on the 27th floor of Zeckendore Towers heard a noise coming from the hallway. When the neighbor stepped out of her apartment to investigate, she saw a purse sitting on the carpet near the door to the trash compactor chute. (The handbag was later identified as Lara's.)

     A Zeckendore Towers maintenance employee, at 4:40 that afternoon, came upon the topless body of a woman inside the basement trash compactor. Responding New York City police officers pronounced the woman, identified as Lara Prychodko, dead at the scene.

     As part of the sudden, unexplained death investigation, detectives viewed a Zeckendore hallway surveillance video that showed, about the time the 27th floor neighbor heard the noise near the trash compactor door, Lara Prychodko stumbling about the hallway in what appeared to be a state of intoxication. Based on the dead woman's history with drugs and alcohol, and what appeared on the surveillance video, detectives wound up the investigation by concluding she had died as the result of a "drunken accident."

     On September 18, 2018 New York City Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson ruled Lara Prychodko's death from the 27-floor plunge into the trash compactor, "Undetermined." In her report the medical examiner wrote: "The circumstances around this death are unclear; however, there is no suspicion of foul play."

     Following the New York City Medical Examiner's cause and manner of death rulings the Manhattan District Attorney's Office closed the case.

     Lara Prychodko's father, Nicholas Prychodko, who believed his daughter might have been murdered, asked the famed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden to review the official autopsy inquiry into the death. Dr. Baden agreed to take the case at no charge.

    After studying the autopsy report, X-rays, laboratory results and death scene photographs, Dr. Baden, in a July 15, 2019 letter to Mr. Prychodko wrote: "Lara Prychodko may have died because of homicidal ligature strangulation and placed in the garbage chute." Dr. Baden considered the fact the victim's blouse was off as possible evidence of violence. He also found on Prychodko's body what he considered physical signs of a struggle.

     In February 2020 Dr. Baden expressed his views on Lara Prychodko's death to an interviewer on Fox News

     The Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the investigating officers with the New York City Police Department continued to maintain no foul play in Lara Prychodko's death. The case remained closed.

     Nicholas Prychodko at a press conference said, "I no longer accept the validity of their [the New York City Medical Examiner's Office] autopsy report and its conclusions." Mr. Prychodko announced that he had hired a private investigator to look into the case.

     In July 2023 Lara's father, Nicholas Prychodko filed a wrongful death suit against Christopher Schlachet alleging that he, for financial gain, hired an un-named hit man to kill his estranged wife. The plaintiff alleged further that Mr. Schlachet had installed software on his wife's computer to track her whereabouts. 

     As of August 2024 the civil case had not come to trial and the case had not been re-opened as a criminal investigation. 

The Brittany Killgore Sex Dungeon Murder Case

     After two years of marriage to Lance Corporal Cory Killgore, 22-year-old Brittany Killgore, on April 11, 2012 filed for divorce. The Marine was serving in Afghanistan. Brittany lived in Fallbrook California, a San Diego County town of 38,000 not far from Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine base.

     At two in the afternoon on Saturday April 14, 2012 one of Brittany Killgore's friends called the San Diego County Sheriff's Office to report her missing. The caller had last seen Killgore at 7 PM the day before when she stopped by her friend's apartment to borrow a dress. Killgore said she was going on a date with a 45-year-old Marine staff sergeant named Louis Ray Perez who was picking her up in less than an hour. They were going into downtown San Diego.

     At 7:45 that Friday evening the friend received a text message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Help." The friend texted back, "What? R U okay?" When Brittany didn't respond the friend texted "Brittany are U okay? I am freaking out here." At 8:05 PM the friend received another message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Yes I love this party." The worried friend considered this text suspicious because Killgore always used the word "yeah" instead of "yes" in her text messaging. That was the last the friend heard from Killgore's phone. (A transient in downtown San Diego later found Killgore's cellphone in the doorway of a Comfort Inn.)

     A detective with the San Diego Sheriff's Office called Marine Sergeant Louis Perez (who didn't have a criminal record) and asked if he'd come in for questioning regarding the Killgore missing persons case. Louis Perez showed up at the sheriff's office shortly after the call.

     According to the 16-year veteran of the Marine Corps he had gone to Killgore's apartment at four o'clock Friday afternoon to help her pack for her upcoming move to another place. He asked her if she'd like to go out on a dinner-dance boat that evening in downtown San Diego. Killgore declined, saying that she was tired. Soon after Perez left Killgore's apartment at 5:10 PM she sent him a text saying she had changed her mind. Perez returned to her place at 7:30 for the date.

     According to the Marine's statement he dropped Brittany off in downtown San Diego in front of a club called the Whisky Girl Night while he looked for a place to park. Fifteen minutes later, when he arrived at the club on foot he couldn't find her. Perez looked around for 30 minutes then headed home to the house he shared in Fallbrook with his girlfriend, 36-year-old Dorothy Grace Marie Maraglino and her friend, Jessica Lynn Lopez, 25.

     The deputy who interviewed Perez that afternoon asked if he could take a look inside the white Ford Explorer the Marine had driven to the sheriff's office. Perez said he had no problem with that.

     The first thing the detective noticed about Perez's car was the fresh mud caked on the underside of the vehicle and in its wheel wells. The Marine's shoes were also muddy. Perez told the officer that the car had gotten that way when he recently collected firewood near Camp Pendleton. The deputy took a plastic bag from inside the car that contained a pair of blue latex gloves which appeared to be blood-stained. (A presumptive luminal test confirmed it was blood and later DNA analysis identified the blood as Brittany Killgore's.) Perez also possessed a stun gun that had a human hair follicle attached to it. At this point in the investigation Sergeant Perez became a suspect in Brittany Killgore's disappearance and possible murder. The deputy, after recovering a stolen AR 15 assault rifle from Perez's Ford Explorer, arrested him on a charge of theft. The "person of interest" in the Killgore case was taken to jail where he was incarcerated under $500,000 bond.

     From Perez's cellphone investigators collected messages sent from his phone to Killgore's. The first message, sent at 9:20 PM on Friday, April 13, almost two hours after Killgore's "help" text, said, "Your friends are calling me worried." Later that evening at a time investigators believe Killgore was dead Perez had texted, "Now I am worried too."

     When the San Diego detectives questioned the suspect's housemate, Dorothy Maraglino, the 37-year-old said Perez had returned home Friday night sometime between 10 PM and midnight. He remained in the Fallbrook house until he left for San Diego the next day in response to the call from the sheriff's office.

     On April 15, 2012 San Diego deputies searched the Perez/Maraglino/Lopez house in Fallbrook where they suspected Brittany Killgore had been murdered. The searchers discovered that one of the rooms in the dwelling had been set up as a "sex dungeon" equipped with a variety of "sex apparatuses, toys and tools" such as handcuffs, whips, leather restraints and chain shackles. When asked about this sadomasochistic playroom Dorothy Maraglino and Jessica Lopez explained that they participated in erotic master-servant and master-slave role-playing. Dorothy identified herself as the dominatrix and said that Louis Perez enjoyed spanking women.

     The Killgore missing persons/murder investigation took an even more bizarre turn on April 16, 2012 when investigators learned that Master Dorothy and her slave Jessica had checked into the Ramada Inn located in the Point Loma section of San Diego. Deputies showed up at room 105 at 9:30 that morning. Lopez, in a drowsy voice, told the officers she was too exhausted to come to the door to let them in. When a deputy cracked the door open as far as the interior door chain would allow the officer saw blood on the floor. Another officer kicked the door open and the police stormed into the motel room.

     The sheriff's deputies found Jessica Lopez, naked from the waist up and covered in blood from self-inflicted superficial knife wounds on her neck and wrists. (Maraglino had left the motel.) A message in lipstick scrawled on the mirror above the dressing table read: "PIGS READ THIS." Below this message lay a 7-page handwritten murder confession signed by Jessica Lopez.

     In the confession Jessica Lopez admitted using a ligature in the sex dungeon in the Fallbrook house to strangle Brittany Killgore to death. She killed the victim out of fear Louis Perez would be seduced by her. After half-hearted attempts to dismember Killgore's body Lopez doused the naked body with bleach to destroy physical evidence. She wrote that she "hid the body of that whore in almost plain sight" near Lake Skinner, noting that the police would find handcuff marks on the victim's wrists. Lopez said she had deposited the knife she had used in her attempts to "chop her up" in a beach restroom in Oceanside. The police would also find a pair of handcuffs with the knife. In her statement/suicide note Lopez said she was taking full responsibility for Brittany Killgore's murder.

     At 2:30 that afternoon, searchers located Killgore's naked remains lying in the brush along the side of a road near Riverside County's Lake Skinner, 23 miles north of Fallbrook. The police arrested Jessica Lopez on April 17, 2012 on the charge of first-degree murder. Louis Perez, already in custody on the gun theft case, was charged with first-degree murder as well. Dorothy Maraglino, also charged with first-degree murder, was taken into custody on May 10, 2012. The three suspects were held on $3 million bond and all pleaded not guilty.

     At a Killgore murder case preliminary hearing that got underway on March 11, 2013 in Vista County Superior Court the victim's best friend Elizabeth Hernandez testified that she and Killgore became acquainted with Marine Sergeant Louis Perez, Jessica Lopez and Dorothy Maraglino in 2011 after Hernandez responded to an ad selling a fertility monitor on a website used by military families. Hernandez said she befriended Maraglino because the two of them were trying to get pregnant. After that Brittany Killgore regularly visited the house where Maragalino resided with Lopez.

     Hernandez testified that Sergeant Perez, Lopez and Maragalino openly discussed their sexual lifestyle that involved Perez as the master, Maragalino as the mistress and Jessica Lopez as the slave. In their sex dungeon they had painted a giant spider web on the wall and bars on the ceiling. According to the preliminary hearing witness Elizabeth Hernandez and Killgore made it clear they were not going to participate in the sex games.

     In 2012 Elizabeth Hernandez and Britany Killgore had a falling out. At that time Killgore was preparing to divorce her husband, Lance Corporal Cory Killgore. Hernandez testified that she discussed the souring of their friendship with Louis Perez, Lopez and Maragalino. After that Jessica Lopez and Dorothy Maragalino began referring to Killgore as "the disease" and "herpes." According to Elizabeth Hernandez, Perez and Maragalino said they could get rid of Killgore but they wouldn't because they knew Hernandez would miss her. Hernandez said she thought they were joking.

     On March 14, 2013 Deputy Medical Examiner Craig Nelson testified that the victim had been strangled with some kind of ligature and that her body had been moved to where it was found near Lake Skinner. The forensic pathologist said there were two marks on Killgore's neck and tiny hemorrhages in her eyes that indicated strangulation as the cause of death. Dr. Nelson had also discovered cuts on the victim's left wrist and left knee that suggested that someone had attempted to dismember the body. The cut to the left leg was so deep it reached the bone. The bone contained tool marks that indicated a saw had been used in the dismemberment attempt. This had occurred postmortem.

     A woman followed Dr. Nelson to the stand who said she had lived in the Maraglino house for three months in late 2010. According to this witness she had been Dorothy Maraglino's sex slave for a time and knew that Maraglino and Louis Perez enjoyed choking their sex partners.

     On March 16, 2013 Vista Superior Court Judge K. Michael Kirkman ruled that the prosecution in the Killgore case had presented enough evidence against the defendants to justify a murder trial.

     On April 8, 2014, murder defendant Dorothy Maragalino, represented by the fourth attorney assigned to her since 2012, was back in court filing motions that would delay the progress of the case. Initially Maragalino had insisted on representing herself then changed her mind. After dismissing her next two lawyers the judge assigned her a public defender who asked to be removed from the case. Attorney Jane Kinsey, the fourth defense attorney, needed more time to prepare. Judge Kirkman granted the motion.

     That April Jessica Lopez's attorney, Sloan Ostby, asked the judge for more time to study the 7,345 pages of documents he acquired from the prosecution on discovery. Ostby said he also had to review 165 DVDs that had been supplied by the state. The judge granted this motion.

     Attorney Brad Patton, representing Louis Perez, the accused sex dungeon master, filed a series of pretrial motions in 2014 that slowed progress in the case. On December 12, 2014, perhaps in an attempt to move things along, the district attorney's office announced it would not seek the death penalty against the defendants.

     On June 6, 2015, at a pre-trial hearing, Judge Kirkman denied a motion by defense attorney Sloan Ostby to exclude writings by Jessica Lopez that described, in detail, the victim's torture, murder and dismemberment. Attorney Ostby, characterizing the writings as the product of his client's fantasies, argued that the material was so gruesome it would unduly prejudice a jury. Judge Kirkman said he would allow the writings into evidence with deletions of the most disturbing parts.

     The handwritten "Pigs Read This" document had been found in the hotel room along with Jessica Lopez's suicide note. In denying the motion to completely suppress this evidence, Judge Kirkman said, "It is a document that very much has relevance."

     In earlier court related statements prosecutor Patrick Espinoza compared the defendants to the Manson family. Defense attorneys objected to this and asked the judge to forbid such comparisons in the future. Judge Kirkman granted that request.

     On August 14, 2015 the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office released its Brittany Killgore autopsy report. The document confirmed that Killgore had been strangled. Moreover, attempts had been made to dismember her body. The victim was initially identified by a small tattoo on her left wrist. According to notes made by Deputy San Diego Medical Examiner Dr. Craig Nelson, "On the left side of the [victim's] neck and face were two small, paired brown marks that were suggestive of use of an electrical weapon…The victim's left knee had a large but bloodless incised wound suggestive of attempted dismemberment."

     On September 8, 2015, in Vista, California, jury selection began in the Dorothy Maraglino, Louis Perez and Jessica Perez murder trial. Two months later the defendants were convicted of murder and kidnapping. The judge sentenced all three to life in prison without the chance of parole.

The Bill Cosby Sexual Assault Saga

     Bill Cosby, married to his wife Camille for more than 50 years, was one of the most recognizable comedians in the world. A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia where he starred in track, the 77-year-old, in 2014, still resided in eastern Pennsylvania. When the former TV star began criticizing certain aspects of black culture he became a somewhat controversial figure. While many considered him a courageous speaker of the truth, liberals and some members of the black community considered him a traitor to his race.

     In November 2014 Mr. Cosby's good name and wholesome image came under public attack in connection with allegations of past behavior that violently clashed with his longstanding public persona. On November 16, 2014 64-year-old Joan Tarshis told a CNN interviewer that Cosby, in 1969 when she was nineteen, knocked her out with a drugged drink and raped her.

     Tarshis said she met Bill Cosby in 1969 over lunch in Los Angeles. She accompanied him back to his bungalow on the set of "The Bill Cosby Show" to work on some comedy routines. After she drank a Bloody Mary he had mixed for her she passed out. She awoke to find him removing her underwear. In an effort to avoid being sexually assaulted she told him she had an infection that he'd pass on to his wife. Instead of raping her Mr. Cosby allegedly forced her to give him oral sex. She did not tell anyone, not even her mother, about what had happened.

     Cosby later called Tarshis at her home in New York to invite her to watch him perform at The Theater at Westbury. She accepted drinks at Cosby's hotel and in his limousine before the performance. While at the theater she began to feel drugged. She asked the chauffeur to take her home. She passed out in limo. The next morning she woke up naked in a hotel bed next to Cosby.

     Out of "guilt and shame," Joan Tarshis did not reveal that Cosby had sexually assaulted her for the second time. She didn't think that anyone would take her word over a man revered as America's dad.

     On Saturday November 16, 2014 Scott Simon, in an interview on NPR, repeatedly asked Cosby if the rape allegations were true. Each time Cosby simply shook his head no.

     The Cosby rape allegation scandal intensified the next day when a reporter with Village Voice wrote about a comedy routine on a 1969 Cosby album involving "Spanish Fly," a drug that supposedly made women beg for sex. As part of the comedy bit Bill Cosby joked that when he visited Spain he tried to acquire the drug.

     Janice Dickinson, the 59-year-old former supermodel sat for an interview conducted by "Entertainment Tonight" co-host Kevin Frazier that aired on November 18, 2014. According to Dickinson, Bill Cosby had sexually assaulted her in 1982 after they had dinner in Lake Tahoe. He had invited her there to open a show for him. After dinner at his hotel he gave her a pill and a glass of red wine. She passed out. "The last thing I remember," she said, "was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me."

     Dickinson told the "Entertainment Tonight" interviewer that she wanted to expose Cosby in her 2002 memoir, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel. The publisher, however, got cold feet when Cosby and his lawyers threatened a lawsuit.

     Cosby's lawyer, Martin Singer, in a letter to the Associated Press, claimed that Dickinson's allegations were "false and outlandish." According to the lawyer she contradicted her story in her memoir where she described stopping at Cosby's hotel room door after they had dinner. When she declined to enter the room he said, "After all I've done for you, this is what I get."

     On November 19, 2014 a detailed and damaging article about Bill Cosby and another alleged rape victim, 41-year-old Andrea Constland, came out in the Internet publication, "Mailonline." In November 2002 the 29-year-old former Temple University basketball star met Bill Cosby. She became a regular dinner party guest at his home and considered him a mentor.

     Constland, while visiting Cosby at his home in January 2004 told him she had been stressed at work. To help her relax Mr. Cosby allegedly gave her what he called a "herbal medication." Shortly after consuming the three blue pills she became dizzy and her knees began to shake. A little later she was unable to move her arms and legs. At that point Cosby gave Constand another drug. He led her to the sofa where she passed out. When she awoke her outer clothes and her underwear were in disarray.

     Constand waited a year before reporting that Bill Cosby had raped her. She had returned to Canada, her native country. It was there she reported the assault.

     Bruce Castor, the then district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the site of the alleged rape, was informed by the Canadian authorities of Constand's allegations. He launched an investigation. In the "Mailonline" article the former prosecutor lamented the fact he didn't have enough evidence to file charges against Bill Cosby. "I wanted to arrest Cosby,"  he said, "because I thought he was probably guilty." But being able to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt and thinking that a suspect is guilty are two different things."

     Mr. Castor, in the "Mailonline" piece, pointed out that Constand's one-year delay in reporting the crime hurt the case. "We couldn't test for hairs, fibers, DNA and drugs that might have linked the victim to Cosby or his house."

     In March 2005 Andrea Constand sued Bill Cosby for causing her "serious and deliberating injuries, mental anguish, humiliation, embarrassment, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, sleeplessness, anxiety and flashbacks." The plaintiff asked for $150,000 in damages. Her attorney had rounded up thirteen other women who supported her claim that Bill Cosby was a rapist.

     In 2006 Bill Cosby settled the Constand civil suit out of court. Given the damaging publicity the trial would have brought him, and the relatively small amount asked for by the plaintiff, this was not surprising. Some took this as a sign of his guilt while others simply considered it a good business decision on his part.

     Shortly after the "Mailonline" article came out executives at Netflix postponed Cosby's comedy special that was scheduled to air on November 28, 2014. NBC followed suit by scrapping a Bill Cosby project that was in development. TV Land cable network stopped airing reruns of "The Bill Cosby Show."

     On Friday night, November 21, 2014 Bill Cosby appeared at the Maxwell C. King Center For The Performing Arts at Eastern Florida State College in the central Florida town of Melbourne. Following his 90-minute set he received a standing ovation from an adoring audience. One of the male attendees to the show, in speaking to a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, said, "If he raped all these woman why did they not say something before?"

     The University of Massachusetts Amherst, where Cosby earned his master's and doctorate in education in the 1970s, cut ties with the comedian on November 28, 2014. According to a university spokesperson "Bill Cosby has agreed to resign as an honorary co-chair of UMass Amherst's Capital Campaign. He no longer has any affiliation with the campaign nor does he serve in any other capacity at the university."

     In late 2014 the unsealed records of the Constand civil suit revealed that Cosby, in a deposition, admitted using the sedative methaqualone in connection with having sex with several young women. He also acknowledged knowing that using the drug in this way was illegal. Cosby incriminated himself this way because he was told by the district attorney this information would not be used to prosecute him.

     In December 2015, the new district attorney of Montgomery County, believing that he was not bound by the former district attorney's promise to Cosby, charged him with the aggravated indecent sexual assault of Andrea Constand. 

     The Cosby/Constand criminal trial in June 2017 ended in a mistrial.   

    On September 25, 2018 following his second trial, Cosby was convicted of the 2004 aggravated sexual assault of Andrea Constland. The judge sentenced him to three to ten years in prison. Following the sentencing hearing he was led out of court in handcuffs. 

      Bill Cosby would serve his time as prisoner number NN7687 in a single cell at Montgomery County's State Correction at Phoenix 20 miles from his former home.

     In May 2021 the Pennsylvania Parole Board denied Cosby's request for early release on grounds he had refused to participate in the prison's sex offender programs.

     On June 30, 2021 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, on a procedural issue of due process, vacated Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction. According to the state's highest court, Mr. Cosby had not received a fair trial because the second district attorney had violated the terms of the former prosecutor's agreement regarding the use of Cosby's incriminating civil trial testimony. (In effect he had been induced to incriminate himself under false pretenses.) Moreover, pursuant to the 5-4 decision, Mr. Cosby could not be retried on the same charges. The 83-year-old walked out of prison a free man. 

     Unsurprisingly, Cosby's release from prison was not popular with many people, including friends, relatives and supporters of the 60 women who accused him of sexual abuse.

Hands-On Sex Education at Destrehan High

     Destrehan, Louisiana is located 25 miles east of New Orleans on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Destrehan High School, part of the St. Charles Parish School District, consists of grades 9 through 12.

     Shelly S. Dufresne, a 32-year-old 11th-grade English teacher graduated from the high school in 2000. In 2005 she graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) with a BS Degree in secondary education. The daughter of 29th Judicial Judge Emile St. Pierre, she began teaching at Destrehan High in 2006. Dufresne resided in Montz, Louisiana with her husband and three children.

     Destrehan High's 10th-grade English teacher, 23-year-old Rachel Respess, graduated from the high school in 2008. Shortly after earning her education degree from LSU in 2012 she joined the faculty of her Alma Mater. Respess lived in Kenner, Louisiana.

     On September 26, 2014 school officials were informed that a 16-year-old Destrehan male student had bragged to his friends that he and the two English teachers, on two occasions, had engaged in threesome sex. Deputies with the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office, after receiving the complaint from the school, questioned the boy.

     According to the student the first three-way tryst took place in early September in Kenner at Rachel Respess' apartment. The second episode occurred after a Friday night football game on September 12, 2014 at Shelly Dufrense's house in Montz. Deputies reportedly acquired videotapes of the sexual encounters.

     On September 30, 2014 officers booked Dufresne and Respess into the Jefferson Parish Jail on felony charges of carnal knowledge of a juvenile. The teachers posted their bonds but were under house arrest except for mental health counseling, doctor visits and church attendance. The school district suspended the suspects without pay.

     In August 2016, the parents of the student sued the two teachers and the St. Charles Parish School District.

      Shelly Dufresne, following her confession to the police, pleaded guilty in December 2016 to the minor offense of obscenity. In exchange for the plea the judge sentenced her to 90 days at an inpatient mental health facility. The former teacher also received three years probation and was fined $1,000. According to Dufresne she had instigated the sexual encounters with the student.

     Shelly Repass pleaded guilty to the minor offense of failing to report the commission of a felony. For this she received one year of probation.

     Several questions come to mind in cases like this. How stupid or desperate must a teacher be to place her career, marriage, reputation and freedom into the hands of a 16-year-old boy who can be counted on to spill the beans to his friends? Why would these teachers consent to being videotaped committing sex offenses? Were these teachers emotional basket cases or simply stupid? If they were not very bright, do they reflect the caliber of people entering the teaching field? 

The High School Chem Lab Bombing Case

     On Monday, April 29, 2013 a 16-year-old girl in a high school chemistry class in the central Florida town of Bartow mixed a couple of household products in an eight-ounce plastic bottle. When Kiera Wilmot, a student with good grades and no history of trouble-making, shook the mix a mild explosion blew off the bottle cap. (She might have placed cough drops or Tylenol pills into a bottle of soda.) The result of the experiment startled the student more than anyone.

     No one was hurt, the tiny explosion caused no property damage and the student had not intended anything malicious. (In the past when mischievous kids got too old to put tacks on teachers' desk chairs a few of them dropped cherry-bombs into school toilets. Getting caught blowing up a public commode usually resulted in a paddling and a brief expulsion. Unless the student was a known juvenile delinquent the matter was handled in-house. Police and prosecutors did not get involved.)

     The administrators at Bartow High School following Wilmot's harmless chemistry experiment called in the authorities. Notwithstanding the student's background, lack of criminal intent and the absence of physical harm or property damage a local prosecutor charged the student with possession and discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device. Having been charged with these felonies school administrators had no choice but to expel the suspected bomber. If convicted of these crimes Kiera Wilmot would have to finish her high school years in an expulsion program.

     Kathleen Nolan, author of Police in the Hallways, told an education reporter that the Wilmot case "...is an example of the absurdity of zero tolerance and the over-use of police intervention in schools....This young woman, all because of misguided curiosity, now faces expulsion and felony charges which could negatively impact her future opportunities and alter the course of her life."

     When looking for the source of such insanity you usually don't have to look beyond the U. S. Congress. In 1994 Congress passed a law that forced states that received federal education funds to enact legislation that required mandatory one-year expulsions for students who brought firearms to school. As one can be expect school officials and criminal justice practitioners took this law and went to hell with the joke.

     The beauty of a zero-tolerance enforcement policy is that it exempts bureaucrats from having to think. It also protects them from making decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions. It's a policy for people without the guts to lead.

     Although Kiera Wilmot didn't bring a firearm or a bomb to school, Bartow High administrators notified law enforcement authorities. Once the knucklehead prosecutor decided to treat the student as a terrorist the school had to kick her out. With Wilmot expelled from school the mindless school administrators and the crusading prosecutor could tell themselves that Bartow High was now a safer place.

     When comparing the Wilmot story to the tale of government incompetence, inaction and political correctness that led to the Boston Marathon Bombings, it's hard not to conclude that the people in charge of protecting our country possess weird priorities and have no sense of proportion.

     Following Wilmot's ten-day suspension and thousands of dollars in legal costs the prosecutor dropped the criminal charges against the student. In June 2014 the chemistry lab bomber graduated from high school, and no thanks to the local prosecutor looked forward to attending college.

Investigative Malpractice

     Ryan Coleman-Farrow joined London, England's Metropolitan Police Department (commonly referred to as Scotland Yard) in 2000. As a bright and ambitious officer he rose to the rank of junior detective then became a detective constable (DC). Assigned to the Kingston-upon-Thames area in southwest London, DC Coleman-Farrow, as a member of a specialized unit, investigated sexual offenses.

     In late 2005 the detective and his wife were divorced, and less than a year later, Coleman-Farrow was diagnosed with skin cancer. Problems in a police officer's personal life are not supposed to affect his professional duties, but in this officer's case they did affect his performance as a sex crime investigator.

     In 2010 investigators with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), in addressing numerous citizen complaints that DC Coleman-Farrow had neglected his professional responsibilities and had attempted to cover-up his failings, launched an investigation. The internal inquiry focused on 32 of DC Coleman-Farrow's cases during the period January 2007 to September 2010.

     Investigators with the IPCC, in reviewing DC Coleman-Farrow's work in the 32 cases involving rape and pedophilia, found that he deliberately sabotaged prosecutable crimes just to lighten his caseload. In several instances the Scotland Yard detective had falsely informed victims that their cases had been dropped for lack of evidence. Coleman-Farrow had also reported to his supervisors that victims in these cases had withdrawn their criminal complaints. The detective failed to submit crime scene evidence for crime lab analysis and fabricated forensic reports that indicated negative results.

     When questioned by IPCC investigators, Coleman-Farrow admitted that he had lied to his supervisors and to crime victims. He also confessed to destroying physical evidence and to fabricating crime lab reports. The author of the IPCC report described Coleman-Farrow as "a rogue officer who deceived his colleagues and concocted evidence to cover his tracks."

     The IPCC findings led to DC Coleman-Farrow's dismissal from Scotland Yard. In May 2012, a month after his firing, the Crown's Prosecution Service charged the former officer with 13 counts of misconduct in public office. According to prosecutor Mark Heywood the defendant had "willfully engaged in conduct amounting to an abuse of the public's trust."

     In September 2012 the 30-year-old former sex crime detective pleaded guilty to the 13 counts of public office misconduct. At his sentencing hearing on October 23, 2012 Coleman-Farrow's defense counsel, Robert Atchley, in arguing for leniency before Judge Alistair McCreath, said, "This was not corruption and not even laziness. These failures were due to poor health over part of three years. His [Coleman-Farrow's] major failing is not sharing it [his health problems] with anyone else, and in particular those he worked for." (It seems to me this officer's "major failing" was letting rapists and child abusers off the hook. One of these offenders had raped his 96-year-old mother.)

     Judge MCreath, before handing down his sentence said this to the defendant: "In all 13 cases you failed to take steps that were appropriate and necessary for a full and proper investigation whether by failing to take statements or to gather exhibits [physical evidence] or to pass material on to other agencies for further investigation or analysis."

     Judge McCreath sentenced Ryan Coleman-Forrow to sixteen months in prison.    

The Kevin Harris Bomb Case

     Kevin Harris lived by himself in a modest one-story house in a quiet residential neighborhood in the southern California city of Costa Mesa. The 52-year-old, by covering his home in aluminum foil, attaching copies of his anti-government newsletters to a front yard tree and videotaping his neighbors revealed that he was strange and probably mentally ill. He had also established himself as an anti-social loner with his Internet writings that included the statement: "I am the only one who can get into my house. I think it may be dangerous for you to come to my house alone."

     In America we have more than our share of oddballs. Most of these people, usually men, are harmless eccentrics. Some of them, however, are psychotic, paranoid and dangerous. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, fell into this category. Unfortunately there's no sure-fire way to distinguish the Ted Kaczynski types from the common garden variety conspiracy kooks. When the distinction becomes clear it's usually too late.

     Mr. Harris, in a 17,000-word Internet-published manifesto called, "The Picker: A True Story of Assassination, Terrorism, and High Treason," described the nefarious and clandestine activities of government agents. The author of this rambling manifesto had obviously convinced himself that secret government operatives were using a weapon called a "picker," a device that deposited germs on a victim's skin on contact. Government agents armed with these secret devices were infecting dissenters with illnesses like cancer and AIDS. According to Harris government agents also used the deadly tool to cause various enemies of the state to die in freak accidents.

     The Costa Mesa conspiracy theorizer, in his manifesto, said: "I have had personal experience with both domestic and foreign operatives using pickers within the U. S. at the request of the U. S. Government. The rationale stated here should give you a reasonable indication that pickers are used in this country, but it is not absolute proof. The diseases of the ex-spouses, which I will describe, provide a proof so strong that some of these attacks will have to stop....

     "Many years ago I met a woman who had just divorced a government agent. She had also just had a radical mastectomy. She was afraid of her ex-husband, afraid for her life. That a woman should have to live (and die) in fear of this 'public servant' struck me as very wrong. Since then I have met a couple of other women who have broken off marriages with government agents. In each case the woman was diagnosed with cancer within a year of breaking up...

     "These women didn't get cancer because divorce and mortal fear are stressful. Emotional stress as a factor in carcinogenesis can account for a few percentage points at most. That is too small an influence to be reliably detectable. This is a cancer rate that is thousands of percent too high. Among other things, several attempts on my own life have confirmed to me that these cancers are intentional assaults..."

     At six-fifteen in the evening of Sunday, April 14, 2013 several of Kevin Harris' neighbors called 911 to report  that he was sprawled out on his front lawn. After the ambulance rolled up to the aluminum-wrapped house, Mr. Harris refused treatment. The paramedics drove off and Mr. Harris disappeared inside his strange looking dwelling.

     Ninety minutes following the medical emergency neighbors called 911 again to report a powerful explosion at the Harris house. Police arrived to find the front entrance to Harris' dwelling shattered from an explosion. The resident of the home lay dead in the doorway. Near his corpse Costa Mesa police officers saw an unexploded pipe bomb.

     Dozens of homes in the neighborhood were evacuated as FBI agents, the Orange County Bomb Squad and a Huntington Beach hazardous materials team searched the Harris dwelling for additional bombs and explosive substances. They found three more pipe bombs on the premises.

     Because Kevin Harris was alone in the house when one of his pipe bombs detonated the authorities had no way of knowing if he had killed himself intentionally or had accidentally triggered one of his explosive devices. Perhaps he had mistakenly set-off a booby-trap of his own making.

     One of Mr. Harris' brothers told a reporter that Kevin was the youngest of five boys. Although all of his siblings were highly educated professionals Kevin was the smartest one in the family. (His manifesto suggested that Kevin had been well-educated as well, possibly in the hard sciences.)

     The day after the Costa Mesa house explosion, terrorists detonated two bombs at the Boston Marathon. 

NFL Players, Their Crimes, The Media and The Law

    The number of people killed by intoxicated drivers has been on the decline for a decade. Since the FBI doesn't keep track of this kind of killing specifically, no one knows how many drunk drivers are convicted of homicide. 

     Under state law an intoxicated driver who causes a fatal traffic accident is guilty of an unintentional criminal homicide called, depending on the jurisdiction, involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide or vehicular manslaughter. Defendants convicted of this lesser degree of homicide usually receive sentences that range from five to fifteen years in prison. The severity of punishment in these cases depends upon the driver's DUI history, the degree of intoxication and the recklessness of the driving. Over the years, however, judges have become increasingly less lenient in vehicular homicide convictions.

     Every year police in the United States make about 1.5 million DUI arrests, and unless they pull over someone famous these events are not newsworthy. The same is true for the vast majority of vehicular homicide cases which do not receive much media notice. However, when a drunk driving fatality involves several children, an entire family or a car full of teenagers the media pays more attention. But these cases are still treated as local or regional news stories.

     In the early morning hours of December 8, 2012 near the southern California town of Victorville, a man named Ilich Ernesto Vargas, while driving the wrong way on I-15 crashed head-on into another vehicle. The 28-year-old driver of the other car, David Ahmed of Fort Irwin, received minor injuries. But the accident took the life of Vargas' passenger, 50-year-old Kellie Sue Hughes. The California Highway Patrol officer who took the drug-crazed Vargas into custody at the scene had to employ his taser. Vargas had broken a leg in the crash.

     This fatal traffic accident on I-15 generated two paragraphs in the Los Angeles Times and a mention the next day on local television news. There was no follow-up by the Los Angeles media.

     On the morning Ilich Vargas crashed his car and killed his passenger in southern California, Josh Brent flipped his Mercedes and killed his passenger in Dallas, Texas. While the police in both fatal traffic accidents suspected that the drivers were intoxicated, and therefore potential vehicular homicide defendants, the crash in Dallas attracted national media attention. The Dallas case was big news because the driver, Josh Brent, played football for the Dallas Cowboys. The fact that his 25-year-old passenger, Jerry Brown, was a teammate made the story even more media significant, particularly in the wake of the recent murder-suicide involving Jovan Belcher, an NFL player for the Kansas City Chiefs.

     As a potential vehicular homicide case there was nothing in the Josh Brent accident that set it apart from all the other fatalities beyond the identities of the driver and his dead passenger. From the standpoint of the victims' families in these cases all of these accidents were tragic. And to varying degrees, these fatalities ruined the lives of the intoxicated drivers. But this wasn't enough by itself to make these cases newsworthy. In the Josh Brent case the added ingredient was sports. It was mainly a sports story.

     It should come as no surprise that in a country where a single NFL football game generates three times more media attention than the typical crime, weather, political, war or business related story that Josh Brent's status as a professional football player made his case so important. Print journalists and cable TV correspondents, as well as sports broadcasters and pundits babbled on and on about the effect of the tragedy on the other players, and of course the team. 

     Correspondents and reporters in the news and sports media used the Josh Brent case and the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide as a jumping off point for discussions on the possible effects of head trauma in the NFL. Had the sport of football become too violent? Was football responsible for player depression, off-the-field domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and murder? 

     In American culture professional athletes are special people and as such are treated differently than ordinary citizens. Their problems are our problems, indeed, our responsibility. Prior to the intense media coverage of their tragedies most people never heard of Josh Brent, Jerry Brown or Jovan Belcher. Had these men not been professional football players most people still wouldn't know their names.

     While we are in theory all equal under the law, we are not equal under the glare of the media. This may not have been a good thing for Josh Brent. The magistrate set his bail at $500,000.

     In January 2014 a jury found Josh Brent guilty of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to 180 days in jail and ten years of probation. The fact he played professional football probably explains the light sentence.

Donte Johnson: Playing the Stupid Card

     At one in the morning after watching a movie at a friend's house, 20-year-old Sabina Rose O'Donnell borrowed a bicycle to ride to her north Philadelphia apartment a few blocks away. She never made it home. Later that day, June 2, 2010, police discovered her body in a trash-littered lot behind her apartment building. At the scene investigators found jewelry, a camera and an uncashed paycheck made payable to the victim. With her bra wrapped tightly around her neck, the victim had been raped, beaten and strangled to death. The killer had left his bloody undershirt near her body.

     According to video-tapes from neighborhood surveillance cameras police were able to place 18-year-old Donte Johnson in the area at the time of the murder. After two Philadelphia officers arrested Johnson on June 10, 2010 he admitted biking around the neighborhood that night but denied any knowledge of the murder. His interrogators explained to him how DNA analysis of his sperm could link him the the dead woman's body. Upon hearing this Johnson said he and the victim had consensual sex two days before her death. When the detectives questioned that story Johnson tried another way of neutralizing the DNA evidence: he said that after stumbling across her body he had masturbated over the corpse. The interrogators explained that this didn't explain away the bloody undershirt. At this point Johnson confessed to the rape and murder.

     Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax charged Donte Johnson with first-degree murder, rape and robbery. Soon after Johnson's court-appointed defense attorneys entered the case the suspect took back his confession and turned down a negotiated guilty plea. The defense challenged the reliability of the DNA evidence linking Johnson to the body and the murder site, and made the argument that the prosecution couldn't use his recanted confession. Johnson was now claiming that at the time of Sabina Rose O'Donnell's rape and murder he was at home with his family.

     At a pre-trial hearing on April 30, 2012 to determine if the prosecution could introduce Johnson's confession, defense attorney Gary Server put a private forensic neuropsychologist on the stand. Dr. Gerald Cooke testified that Johnson, with a damaged brain and an IQ of 73, had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. Because the suspect was retarded his interrogators could have easily manipulated him into confessing to a crime he didn't commit.

     In arguing for the exclusion of Johnson's confession attorney Server said, "The detective speaks to Mr. Johnson and he thinks he's talking to an adult, when in reality he's speaking to a child." The defense attorney also noted that when questioned by the police his client had been drunk and high on drugs.

    The police officers who arrested Johnson took the stand and testified that the suspect, sober and coherent, knew exactly what was going on when they took him into custody. According to the police officers Johnson did not act or speak like an 11-year-old child. The judge, after hearing both sides of the argument ruled that the prosecutor could introduce Johnson's confession at his trial. The defense attorneys could make the false confession claim to the jury.

     On May 1, 2012, after opening statements to the jury from both sides, the prosecutor presented the state's case. Surveillance cameras placed the defendant in the vicinity that night, Johnson had confessed to the rape and murder and DNA linked him to the bloody shirt and the victim's body. From a prosecutor's point of view, as murder cases go, this was about as good as it gets.

     By comparison the defense--that DNA analysts made mistakes, the confession was false and Johnson's family said he was at  home with them that night--was weak.

     To convince the jury that police interrogators had taken advantage of Johnson's feeble mind to wrangle a false confession out of  him, the defense attorney showed the video-taped testimony of the neuropsychologist, Dr. Gerald Cooke. According to Dr. Cooke--who earned $9,300 for his I.Q. testing and testimony--Donte Johnson had trouble solving problems, reasoning and thinking quickly. His mother had given birth to Donte when she was 16; early in his youth he had suffered some kind of brain damage; and since turning 14 he had been using drugs and binge drinking. According to the psychologist this simpleton never held a job and had sex with scores of women.

     Donte Johnson's attorneys chose not to put their client on the stand. Perhaps they didn't want to risk a witness box confession like in one of those old Perry Mason TV episodes. Moreover, having tried to make the jurors feel sorry for the defendant, the attorneys wanted to keep him under wraps. Following the closing arguments and the judge's instructions the case went to the jury.

     Jurors, after deliberating four hours, found Donte Johnson guilty of first degree-murder and rape. The judge sentenced him to life plus 40 to 80 years. In speaking to the judge after receiving his sentence, Johnson said, "How can you clearly say I did anything? If I did something I would take responsibility."

The Nachman and Raizy Glauber Hit-And-Run Case

     Nachman and Raizy Glauber were members of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jewish community in the Williamsville section of Brooklyn, New York. He was studying to become a rabbi and she worked at a hardware distribution store. The 21-year-olds had been married a year, paired by a matchmaker. Raizy was seven months pregnant with their first child.

     On Saturday, March 2, 2013 Raizy became worried because she could no longer feel the baby. The couple didn't own a car so Nachman called a car service to drive them to Long Island College Hospital. Around midnight Pedro Nunez Delacruz arrived at the Glauber apartment in his livery vehicle. The couple climbed into the back seat of his black 2008 Toyota Camry. Raizy was seated behind the driver.

     A few minutes after being picked up by Delacruz, the livery car, while moving through a Brooklyn intersection was struck by a 2010 gray BMW traveling 60 miles per hour. Ejected from the livery cab Raizy's body came to rest beneath a parked tractor-trailer. Nachman was left pinned inside the crushed Toyota. (The Toyota's engine ended up in the back seat where Raizy Glauber had been sitting.)

     Following the collision the driver of the BMW, 44-year-old Julio Acevedo, climbed out of the sedan and sat on the curb to collect himself. A few minutes later he returned to the mangled BMW and helped a female passenger out of the car. Acevedo and his companion walked away from the crash, disappearing into the gathering crowd.

     Raizy Glauber, who spoke to paramedics, died in the ambulance as it sped to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Pronounced dead on arrival, doctors delivered her baby by cesarean. The premature baby was born alive.

     Doctors pronounced Nachman Glauber dead on arrival at Manhattan's Beth Israel Hospital.

     The next day a spokesperson for the New York Medical Examiner's Office announced that the Glaubers had been killed by blunt-force trauma. At 5:30 on the morning of the crash the baby died from the same cause.

     The livery car driver, 32-year-old Pedro Delacruz, was released from Bellevue Hospital on Monday, March 4 2013 after being treated for minor injuries. In the meantime New York City detectives had learned that the BMW was registered to a resident of the Bronx named Takia Walker. The 29-year-old told detectives that Julio Acevedo had borrowed the vehicle from a mutual friend who had possession of her car. She said she had never met Acevedo.

    Julio Acevedo had a long history of crime and incarceration. He had spent eight years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of a Brooklyn hood named Kelvin Martin. Martin was the original "50 Cent," the inspiration for the rapper of the same name.

      Once out of prison Mr. Acevedo continued to run afoul of the law. Police on various occasions arrested him for such crimes as robbery, reckless endangerment and possession of a weapon. On February 17, 2013 officers pulled Acevedo over in Brooklyn for driving erratically in a 1997 BMW bearing Pennsylvania plates. With an alcohol blood content level of .13, the officers charged the ex-con with driving under the influence. Acevedo told the arresting officers that he had consumed a couple of beers at a baby shower. The next day, following his arraignment, the judge released Acevedo with a court appearance scheduled for April 10, 2013.

     Acevedo's last known address was in a Brooklyn public housing project where his mother resided. One of his friends told reporters that the hit-and-run suspect wanted to turn himself in because "he has remorse." A reward of $15,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest.

     Isaac Abraham, a spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish community, called for the maximum punishment for Acevedo. "We in the community are demanding that the prosecutor charge the driver of the BMW that caused the death of this couple and infant with triple homicide. This coward left the scene of the accident, not even bothering to check on the people in the car."

     On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Julio Acevedo, while hiding from the police, spoke to a reporter with the Daily News of New York. According to the fugitive, just before the accident he had been speeding away from a gunman who was trying to kill him. Acevedo said he had met with a lawyer who was arranging his surrender to the authorities.

     Acevedo, on Wednesday evening, March 6, 2013 turned himself in to police officers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He approached the officers as they sat in their cars in front of a convenience store. The next day Mr. Acevedo, charged with negligent homicide, three counts of assault, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless driving was arraigned in a Brooklyn court. Judge Stephen Antignani suspended his drivers license and denied him bail. The suspect's wife and young daughter were in the court room with him.

     In July 2013 the New York City Department of Transportation installed a traffic light at the Brooklyn intersection where the Glaubers had been killed.

     A jury sitting in Brooklyn, in April 2015 found Julio Acevedo guilty as charged. Judge Neil Firetog sentenced him to 25 years to life. According to the judge, Acevedo had "forfeited his right to be a part of our community."