The Nicolas Holzer Mass Murder Case

     Some of the most disturbing and puzzling murder cases are ones that even from the killer's point of view make no sense. The good-boy Eagle scout who murders his parents in their sleep or guns down teachers and students at his school falls into this category. A young mother who drowns her baby in the bathtub or a longtime employee who shows up at work one day with mass murder on his mind are cases that defy understanding.

     Out-of-the-blue murders committed by noncriminal types who didn't exhibit symptoms of mental illness are frightening because they can't be predicted and therefore prevented. The murderers in these cases simply blindside their victims. Such cases are insidious in their straightforward banality. The feeling they create is this: no place is safe and no one can be trusted. We are all in danger.

     In 2004, after he and his wife Juana were divorced, Nicolas Holzer gained custody of his two sons who were one and three-years-old. Three years later Mr. Holzer and the boys moved into his parents' house in Goleta, California, a town of 30,000 ten miles northwest of Santa Barbara.

     Just after elven o'clock on the night of Monday, August 11, 2014, 45-year-old Nicolas Holzer called 911 and without emotion informed the dispatcher that he had just killed his family.

     When deputies with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office rolled up to the Holzer house on Walnut Park Lane not far from the University of California at Santa Barbara, they were met at the front door by the composed but bloodstained 911 caller.

     Inside the dwelling deputies discovered the blood-covered bodies of William Holzer, 73, Sheila Holzer, 74, and their two grandsons, Vincent, 10 and Sebastian who was thirteen. They had been stabbed to death by a pair of large kitchen knives.

     A calm and collected Nicolas Holzer informed the officers that he first murdered his father in the den. He then stabbed the boys to death as they slept in their beds. He said he killed his mother last. Officers found her body lying in the hallway outside the boys' bedroom.

     When asked why he had wiped-out his family Nicholas Holzer simply said, "I had to." He added that in killing them he had fulfilled what he believed was his destiny. This, of course, made no sense whatsoever.

     Also dead in the house was the family pet, an Australian Shepherd.

     The Holzer residence had not been visited in the past by police officers responding to domestic violence calls. And detectives, at least in the initial stage of the investigation, found no evidence of prior mental illness.

     Charged with four counts of first-degree murder, Nicolas Holzer was held in the Santa Barbara County Jail without bond. Because California had abolished the death sentence Mr. Holzer, if convicted as charged, faced life behind bars. His attorney, a month after the killings said he planned to plead his client not guilty by reason of insanity.

     Holzer's ex-wife Juana, in August 2016 filed a wrongful death suit against the mass murder suspect.

     In August 2018 a jury in Santa Barbara County, after rejecting the insanity defense, found Nicolas Holzer guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. At his sentencing hearing Holzer's attorney said, "Nicolas Holzer is not evil or heatless and he loved his family very much, but when his delusional beliefs escalated they overtook his ability to be rational.

     The judge sentenced Holzer to four life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The Justin Schneider Sexual Assault Case

     In 2017, 34-year-old Justin Schneider, a husband and father, worked as an Air Traffic Controller at the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska. In August 2017 at an Anchorage service station, he asked a 25-year-old woman he didn't know if he could give her a lift. She said yes and climbed into his vehicle.

     Instead of driving the woman to her destination Justin Schneider took her to a remote area where he grabbed her, put his hands around her throat and threatened to kill her if she screamed. The victim passed out and when she awoke Justin Schneider zipped up his trousers after he had masturbated on her. He gave her tissue to clean off his semen. He told her that he hadn't really intended to kill her, that it was just a threat to keep her quiet. She grabbed her belongings and alighted from the vehicle. As he drove off she had the presence of mind to note his license plate number.

     From the side of the road the victim used her cell phone to call 911 in which she provided the attacker's license plate registration. After being examined at a local hospital the victim picked Justin Schneider out of a police lineup.

     Following his arrest a grand jury sitting in Anchorage indicted Mr. Schneider on counts of kidnapping and felony assault, crimes that together carried a prison sentence of up to 99 years. Shortly thereafter the prosecutor in charge of the case dropped the kidnapping charges because the woman had gotten into Schneider's vehicle willingly. (In Pennsylvania and most other states, simply restraining a person in a vehicle against his or her will constitutes kidnapping.)

     Following the indictment Justin Schneider lost his air traffic control job.

     On September 22, 2018 Assistant District Attorney Andrew Grannik allowed Mr. Schneider to plead guilty to one count of second-degree felony assault. Judge Michael Corey sentenced him to two years in prison then suspended the prison time by giving him credit for a year in jail. The judge sentenced this violent sex offender to a year of house arrest. Moreover, Mr. Schneider was not required to register as a sex offender.

     Justin Schneider did not have to register as a sex offender because under Alaska law "physical contact with bodily fluid such as semen" did not qualify as a sex crime.

     It's not surprising that the disposition of this case caused a public uproar. In defending the state's handling of this case a spokesperson with the Alaska Department of Law announced that the plea deal had been based on an expert's opinion that Mr. Schneider would not re-offend. This absurd rationale did not attenuate the criticism of the prosecutor or the judge.

     In responding to the public outrage over the Justin Schneider case, Alaska's governor Bill Walker said he planned to propose legislation that would make "coming in contact with semen" a sex offense that carried a sentence of two to twelve years in prison plus registry as a sex offender. Even those who believed the word of a politician were still angry about how the authorities had handled this case.

     Justin Schneider said the experience had made him a better person. But what about his victim? How did his "experience" affect her? No one asked because no one in Alaska's criminal justice system seemed to care.

The Case of the Sleeping Judge

     On December 29, 2013, 21-year-old Daquantrius Johnson and two of his friends, Keith Hickles and Quanique Thomas-Hammen, pulled into the drive-through lane at a Taco Bell in Wichita, Kansas. As they waited to put in their orders they witnessed the pickup truck ahead of them suddenly lurch forward and crash into the fast-food speaker.

     The pickup truck's driver, 43-year-old Danielle Zimmerman, lost consciousness from a ruptured brain aneurism. Daquantrius Johnson and his passengers approached the unconscious woman's vehicle. They had no intention of rendering aid. Instead, they saw an opportunity for theft. While Hickles and Thomas-Hammen rummaged through Zimmerman's purse and grabbed her wallet, 

daquantrius Johnson pulled her wedding ring off her finger.

     The next day Danielle Zimmerman died at a nearby hospital.

     Daquantrius Johnson and his friends, as they stripped the unconscious woman of her valuables, were recorded on a Taco Bell surveillance camera.

     Not long after Johnson, Hickles and Thomas-Hammen picked their victim clean, they were taken into custody. About a year later Hickles and Thomas-Hammen pleaded guilty to theft and were sentenced to nine and nineteen months respectively.

     In March 2015 Daquantrius Johnson went on trial for aggravated robbery. Following a short deliberation the jury found him guilty as charged. Sedgwick County Judge Christopher Magana sentenced Johnson, who at the time was on probation for burglary, to eleven years in prison.

     In 2016, while serving time for the Taco Bell depravity, Daquantrius Johnson was in a Sedgwick Country courtroom again, this time as a defendant in an unrelated firearms case. On the first day of the proceeding trial judge Benjamin Burgess fell asleep on the bench.

     While everyone in court witnessed the judge's nap the trial went forward and Daquantrius Johnson was found guilty. Judge Burgess sentenced him to eight months in prison, time to be served after he completed his Taco Bell sentence.

     Attorneys representing Daquantrius Johnson in the firearms case appealed his conviction to the Kansas Court of Appeals on grounds that following his nap Judge Burgess should have declared a mistrial.

     In 2017 the three-judge appellate panel in a 2-1 decision denied Mr. Johnson a new trial.

     Johnson's lawyers contested the state appeals court ruling before the Kansas Supreme Court. In November 2019 the state's highest court ruled that while Judge Burgess' courtroom snooze constituted "regrettable misconduct," it did not justify grounds for a new trial. Daquantrius Johnson's firearms conviction would therefore stand.

     While legal scholars argued over the supreme court's decision, very few commentators expressed sympathy for the man who had ripped a wedding ring off a dying woman's finger. There are some crimes that cannot be forgiven, and this was one of them.

The Rise And Fall Of The Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rudy Eugene: The Case Of The Naked Flesh Eater

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

Excited Delirium Syndrome

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

Rudy Eugene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did Pastor Richard Shahan Murder His Wife?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The "Tiger King" Murder-For-Hire Case

      From February to June 2006 the animal rights group PETA conducted an investigation into the activities of a big cat breeder and private zoo owner named Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage. The 42-year-old owner of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, a ramshackle petting zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, called himself "Joe Exotic." Maldonado-Passage, in addition to owning the zoo, supplied tiger cubs to the cruel petting zoo industry. 

     PETA activists had tried to shut down Maldonado-Passage's operation for several years. The PETA investigation revealed the Wynnewood zoo's tigers were beaten, deprived of food and denied basic veterinary treatment. As a result the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined Maldonado-Passage $25,000 for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act. 

     In 2011 the Humane Society conducted an investigation of Maldonado-Passage's animal park. An undercover Humane Society investigator, after working at the private zoo for four months, reported that tigers were beaten and whipped during training. Moreover, visitors to the zoo were bitten and attacked by tiger cubs that were too old to be near people. Tiger cubs that were so young they hadn't opened their eyes were handled by park visitors, traumatizing the animals.

     The results of these investigations did not result in the shutting down of Maldonado-Passage's operation.

     Joseph Maldonado-Passage, in 2015, ran for the office of U.S. President as an Independent candidate. He had also run for Governor of Oklahoma, a race he also lost.

     In 2016, after the deaths of 23 tiger cubs at the Wynnewood Animal Park, PETA members rescued 39 abused tigers, two bears and two baboons from the zoo. The place was still not shut down.

     Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist and owner of Big Cat Rescue, a 69-acre animal sanctuary in Tampa, Florida had tried to put Maldonado-Passage out of the big cat breeding and petting zoo business. She sued Maldonado-Passage for his unauthorized use of her Big Cat Rescue's trademark and in 2016 won a million-dollar civil judgment against him.

     As his debts mounted Maldonado-Passage harassed Baskin with online videos in which he accused her of all sorts of criminal behavior. In order to escape his financial responsibilities Maldonado-Passage transferred ownership of the animal park to his mother. A federal judge ruled this transfer of ownership void, an attempt by Maldonado-Passage to defraud his creditors. 

     Enraged and desperate, Joseph Maldonado-Passage in November 2017 paid an unnamed man $3,000 to travel to Tampa, Florida and murder his nemesis, Carole Baskin. The murder-for-hire mastermind promised to pay the hit man an additional $7,000 when he finished the job. For some reason the would-be assassin failed to carry out his assignment.

     In December 2017 Maldonado-Passage reached out to another unnamed man and asked him to murder the animal rights activist. This person went straight to the FBI. Later that month Maldonado-Passage and an undercover FBI agent met. At one point during the recorded conversation Maldonado-Passage said, "Just follow her into a small parking lot and just cap her and drive off." Maldonado-Passage offered to pay the FBI agent $10,000 for the hit.

     On September 5, 2018 Timmothy J. Downing, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma acquired an indictment against Joseph Maldonado-Passage charging him with two counts of murder-for-hire, several counts of violating the Endangered Species Act and multiple counts of crimes against wildlife.

     FBI agents, two days after the indictment arrested Maldonado-Passage in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He was booked into the Santa Rosa County jail to await extradition back to Oklahoma. 

     The Maldonado-Passage murder-for-hire trial got underway on March 25, 2019. After six days of testimony in which the defendant took the stand and claimed that he hadn't been serious when he solicited Carole Baskin's murder, the jury found him guilty as charged. 

     Several months after the conviction the federal district judge sentenced the 56-year-old Maldonado-Passage to 22 years in prison. Attorneys for Maldonado-Passage said they would appeal.

     Following Maldonado-Passage's sentencing Carole Baskin, on her Big Cat Rescue website, posted this: "Because of his constant threats to kill me, I have found myself seeing every bystander as a potential threat. My daughter, my husband, my mother, my staff and volunteers have all been in peril because of his obsession with seeing me dead."

     In March 2020 Maldonado-Passage, while serving his time at a federal prison in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, filed a $94 million civil suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agent and a former business partner he blamed for his arrest and conviction.

     Netflix, in March 2020 aired "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness," a several part documentary that made Maldonado-Passage a pop culture celebrity. The following month the animal abuser and murder-for-hire mastermind was featured on the cover of People Magazine.

     In June 2020 a federal district judge granted Carole Baskin and her animal rescue group control of Maldonado-Passage's Oklahoma zoo. Homes were found for all of the abused animals.

The Michael Nolan Murder-Suicide Case

     Michael Nolan resided in his 86-year-old father's house in Brentwood, New Hampshire, a town of 4,200 in the southern part of the state. The 47-year-old son and his father, Walter Nolan, shared the two-story house in a tree-shaded neighborhood restricted to people 55 and older.

     At four in the afternoon of Monday, May 12, 2014 a neighbor on Mill Pond Road called 911 to report shouting and screams coming from the Nolan residence. Ten minutes later officer Stephen Arkell, a part time 15-year veteran of the Brentwood Police Department, pulled up to the scene and was let into the house by Walter Nolan, the owner of the dwelling.

     Four minutes after officer Arkell entered the Nolan house Derek Franek, an officer with the Fremont Police Department, arrived at the scene. Inside the house officer Arkell, as he spoke to the older man, was shot and killed by Walter Nolan's son Michael. When officer Franek entered the dwelling through the front entrance Michael Nolan opened fire on him. Both the Fremont officer and the senior Mr. Nolan managed to escape the house without being shot. Once outside officer Franek radioed that an officer was down and that he had been fired upon by someone inside the Nolan dwelling.

     Officer Franek's urgent call brought a New Hampshire state SWAT unit and the Seacoast Regional Emergency Response Team. Walter Nolan, in a state of shock and unable to communicate coherently with police officers was taken by ambulance to Exeter Hospital.

     Inside the police-surrounded house Michael Nolan poured gasoline throughout the dwelling, lit a match then began shooting out a window at the SWAT officers. When the SWAT police fired back a bullet hit a propane gas line that touched off a massive explosion.

     At six o'clock that evening, thirty minutes after the propane blast blew off a third of the roof, firefighters began dousing the charred structure with water. Firefighters remained on the scene until nine-thirty that night.

    Cause and origin arson investigators combing through the debris found Michael Nolan's remains. Lying next to his body the officers found three handguns, three rifles and a cache of ammunition.

     Brentwood police officer Stephen Arkell, killed in the line of duty, left behind a wife and two teenage daughters. He was 48-years-old.

     Although a forensic pathologist performed an autopsy on Michael Nolan the medical examiner's office did not immediately reveal if he had been shot to death by the SWAT police, died in the fire or had killed himself.

     According to neighbors Michael Nolan rarely spoke to anyone and spent most of his time in his room watching television. Police officers had not been called to the Nolan residence in the past and Michael did not have a criminal record.

     In May 2015 the authorities, under pressure from the local media, released the results of the joint investigation of the case by the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, the State Police Major Crime Unit and the ATF. According to the report Mr. Nolan shot himself to death before the house exploded. In the report he was described as a "stressed out" alcoholic gun enthusiast.

The Lawrence Capener Knife Attack

     On Sunday morning, April 28, 2013, all hell broke loose inside St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The mass had just ended and the choir had begun its final hymn when a 24-year-old man who had been nervous acting and fidgety throughout the service vaulted over several pews toward the front of the church. Lawrence Capener, the crazed churchgoer, possessed a knife which he used to stab the choir director, Adam Alvarez, several times.

     Gerald Madrid, the church flutist, came to Adam Alvarez's rescue by attempting to put Lawrence Capener into a bear hug. During the scuffle, Mr. Capener, before collapsing to the church floor under the weight of other churchgoers who mobbed him, stabbed the flutist five times in the back. Daren De Aquero, an off-duty Albuquerque police officer put the subdued assailant into handcuffs.

     Greg Aragon, an off-duty Albuquerque Fire Department Lieutenant treated the choir director, the man who came to the director's aid and a female member of the choir who was slashed by Capener's knife. None of the victims incurred life-threatening injuries.

     As Lawrence Capener was led out of the church an elderly parishioner spoke to him. She said, "God bless you, forgive yourself."

     "You don't know about the Masons," the attacker replied.

     Later that Sunday a local prosecutor charged Lawrence Capener with three counts of aggravated battery. A magistrate set his bail at $250,000.

     After detectives advised Mr. Capener of his Miranda rights the subject informed his interrogators that he was "99 percent sure" that the choir director was a Mason involved in a conspiracy "that is far more reaching than I could or would believe." He apologized for stabbing the flutist and the woman in the choir.

     While Mr. Capener did not belong to the 3,000-member church, his mother was an active parishioner. He had recently graduated from a community college and had started a new job. According to people who know him, Lawrence Capener struggled with mental illness.

     In February 2014 Carpener's attorney petitioned the court to lower his bail so he could live at home under the supervision of a GPS device. The judge, after hearing from Carpener's victims, denied the request. The trial was scheduled for September 2014.

     On September 29, 2014, pursuant to a plea deal a judge sentenced Lawrence Capener to five years in prison with one year credit for time spent in jail. 

     In June 2016, five days before he was scheduled for early release, Capener punched a prison guard. The assault kept him behind bars until his release on parole in April 2017. 

     The man who almost murdered three people and assaulted a prison guard served less than three years in prison. 

Serial Killer Samuel Little

     In 2012, FBI agents arrested 72-year-old Samuel Little at a Kentucky homeless shelter on narcotic charges that had been filed in Los Angeles. DNA samples taken from Little in Los Angeles linked him to three unsolved murders committed in the city from 1987 to 1989. The three female victims had been beaten and strangled, their bodies dumped in an alley, a dumpster and a garage. Convicted of these murders in 2014, Mr. Little, with a history of crime going back to 1956, was sentenced to three consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole.

     Following Samuel Little's DNA matches in Los Angeles, authorities in LA asked the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) to work up a full criminal profile of him. This background inquiry linked Little to several more murders of women.

     In early 2018 Samuel Little revealed to FBI interrogators that between 1970 and 2005 he murdered 93 women. He confessed to killing these victims in California, Kentucky, Florida and Ohio. These women were marginalized vulnerable prostitutes addicted to drugs. He said his M.O. involved knocking out his victims then strangling them. He dumped their bodies in alleys and other hidden places.

     Because this serial killer's victims were not shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death, many of their deaths went into the books as drug overdoses, accidents or natural causes. Some of the bodies remained unidentified and most of these deaths did not generate criminal investigations.

     The Samuel Little case illustrates that serial killers, due to who they kill, how they kill and where they kill, often escape detection. While DNA science has helped connect multiple homicides to a single killer, without confessions these cases often remain unsolved. 

     On December 30, 2020 the 80-year-old serial killer died in a California hospital of heart failure.

The Great Milwaukee Stradivarius Heist

     At twenty after ten on the night of January 27, 2014, violinist Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Orchestra, walked toward his car in the parking lot outside Wisconsin Lutheran College's auditorium where he had just performed a chamber concert. As the 49-year-old musician neared his car a man emerged out of the darkness and stunned him with a taser gun.  Mr. Almond and his violin fell to the ground. The robber picked up the 300-year-old Stradivarius and jumped into a minivan driven by a woman.

     Almond's Lipinski Strad was given to him on "permanent loan" in 2008 by an anonymous patron. As one of 650 of Antonio Stradivari's instruments still in existence, the stolen violin was valued at $5 million.

     Milwaukee detectives immediately began viewing surveillance camera footage in search of clues. FBI agents assigned to the bureau's art theft unit were dispatched to act as consultants in the case. Investigators notified authorities with Interpol in the event the thieves tried to sell the stolen violin in Europe. A $100,000 reward went up for any information leading to the recovery of the instrument.

     On Monday, February 3, 2014 Milwaukee detectives assigned to the high-profile case arrested two men and a woman. One of the men, 41-year-old Salah Salahadyn, had pleaded guilty in 2000 to possessing a $25,000 sculpture that had been stolen from a Milwaukee art gallery in 1995. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison.

     The second man taken into custody, a 36-year-old suspect who went by the name Universal Knowledge Allah, had no criminal record. Both suspects were charged with robbery, an offense in Wisconsin that can bring up to 15 years in prison.

     Court Commissioner Katherine Kucharski set Salahadyn's bail at $10,000, an extremely low amount given the fact he had a lengthy criminal history that included bail jumping. The magistrate set Allah's bond at $500.

     Charges against the suspected female get-a-way driver were dropped. The authorities did not release this woman's name.

     On Wednesday, February 5, 2014, two days after the arrests, Milwaukee chief of police Edward A. Flynn announced that one of the suspects led detectives to the stolen Stradivarius. The violin was found in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Milwaukee. The stolen instrument had never left the city. (Perhaps the woman driver in the case was the one who cooperated with detectives in return for her dropped charges.)

     In July 2014 Universal Allah was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. The Milwaukee County judge, in November 2014, sentenced Salah Salahadyn to seven years behind bars.

A Short History Of Scientific Criminal Identification

     In 1901 Scotland Yard became the first law enforcement agency in the world to routinely fingerprint its arrestees. Fingerprint identification came to America in 1904 when the St. Louis Police Department established its fingerprint bureau. Before fingerprinting, arrestees were identified by sets of eleven body measurements, a system created in the 1870s by the Frenchman Alphonse Bertillon. By 1914, the year of Bertillon's death, fingerprinting had replaced anthropometry or Bertillonage in every country except the United States where, in many jurisdictions, the outdated system was used until the 1920s.

     Because a set of inked, rolled-on fingerprint impressions can be classified or grouped into ridge patterns--loops, whorls and arches--arrestees who use aliases can be physically identified. Through centralized fingerprint repositories comprised of millions of fingerprint data, individual arrest histories can be maintained on habitual offenders. These fingerprint collections have been responsible for the apprehension of tens of thousands of fugitives.

     Beyond the use of fingerprinting to maintain crime records and catch repeat offenders and fugitives, crime scene finger marks--so called latent fingerprints--constitute one of the most common methods of linking suspects to the sites of their crimes. While latents can be made visible by various chemicals, iodine fuming and laser technology, the most popular method of identifying and preserving fingerprints, particularly on hard surfaces, involves the use of fingerprint powder and special lifting tape.

     Crime scene latents can be scanned into a massive computer--the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)--and matched to single fingerprints in the data base. Identifying unknown crime scene latents involves the ability to prove who committed the offense.

     Perhaps the three most significant developments in the history of law enforcement are fingerprint classification, AFIS and the cutting edge science of DNA "fingerprinting" that burst upon the scene in the mid-1990s. 

Breaking Into a House Can Be Fatal

     Eighty-year-old Thomas Greer lived in Bixby Knolls, a neighborhood in Long Beach, California. Mr. Greer came home at nine o'clock on the night of July 22, 2014 and found two burglars in his house. He shot and killed one of them who, prior to being shot, said, "Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby."The homeowner shot her anyway.

     At a press conference regarding the shootings Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the woman, 28-year-old Andrea Miller, showed no outward signs of being pregnant.

     Officers arrested Andrea Miller's accomplice, 26-year-old Gus Adams on charges of residential burglary and murder. Because Miller had been killed during the commission of a felony perpetrated by Mr. Adams, he was charged with criminal homicide under the felony-murder doctrine. The judge set Adams' bail at $1 million.

     Both Andria Miller and Gus Adams had criminal histories involving burglary. Investigators believed the couple broke into Mr. Greer's home three times before. When Mr. Greer returned home that night and encountered the intruders the suspects attacked him, hitting him with their fists and body slamming him to the floor, breaking his collar bone.

     While Gus Adams tried to pry open Mr. Greer's safe, the burglary and assault victim snuck into a room and grabbed his .22-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As Mr. Greer opened fire the burglars fled through the garage and into an alley. The homeowner chased after them firing his gun. One of his bullets hit Andrea Miller who died in the alley.

     On July 29, 2014 police officers arrested Gus Adam's 49-year-old mother, Ruby Adams on suspicion she had acted as a lookout in the burglary of the Greer home. The judge set her bail at $175,000.

     The authorities also announced that according to the medical examiner's office Andrea Miller was not pregnant.

     In January 2015 the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute Thomas Greer for killing Andrea Miller.

     Ruby Adams, in April 2016, pleaded no contest to residential burglary. The judge sentenced her to three years in prison.

     In August 2016 a jury acquitted Gus Adams of felony-murder but found him guilty of first-degree residential burglary and elder abuse. The judge sentenced him to 12 years behind bars.

Actor Lillo Brancato's Role In A Police Officer's Murder

     In 1993 a 17-year-old actor from the Borough of Yonkers in New York City named Lillo Brancato Jr. starred with Robert DeNiro in the movie "A Bronx Tale." Brancato, in 2000, appeared as a minor character in the HBO series "The Sopranos."

     On December 10, 2005 Mr. Brancato and an accomplice, Steven Armento, broke a window at an unoccupied home in Pelham Bay Queens. The 29-year-old actor and Armento were looking for drugs.

     Daniel Enchautegui lived next door to the house Brancato and Armento broke into. The 28-year-old New York City patrolman with three years on the force just arrived home following his 8  PM to 4 AM shift. When the officer heard the sound of breaking glass he called 911 and went outside to investigate. It was 5:15 in the morning.

     Steven Armento, when confronted by Daniel Enchautegui, shot the officer in the chest. Enchautegui returned fire, wounding both of the intruders. Shortly thereafter physicians at the Jacobi Medical Center pronounced the police officer dead.

      Lillo Brancato and Steven Armento were tried separately for the officer's murder in 2008. A jury found Armento guilty of first-degree murder. A judge in 2009 sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole.

     At Lillo Brancato's trial the defendant admitted breaking into the house with Steven Armento to score drugs. Mr. Brancato also testified that he was going through heroin withdrawal that day.

     Pursuant to the felony-murder doctrine, if a person is killed during the commission of a felony, all of the participants of the crime can be held culpable for the death. Under the law the fact Mr. Brancato wasn't the one who pulled the trigger did not exempt him from legal culpability for the officer's killing.

     The jury acquitted Brancato of burglary and felony-murder. They did find him guilty of attempted burglary. The judge sentenced Mr. Brancato to ten years in prison but gave him credit for the three years he spent in jail awaiting his trial.

     Lillo Brancato, on December 31, 2013, after agreeing to a five-year period of parole that included a ten PM curfew, walked out of the Hudson Correctional Facility.

     Brancato's early release angered members of the New York City Police Department as well as relatives of the slain police officer. In speaking to reporters a spokesperson for the New York Patrolman's Benevolent Association said: "It is our firm belief that Lillo Brancato is guilty of the murder of police officer Daniel Enchautegui even though he was only convicted of attempted burglary."

     Enchautegui's sister, Yolanda Rosa, said, "I'm still upset that Brancato was not convicted of murder and that he did not serve enough time."

    In 2018, Lillo Brancato starred in the Netflix documentary, "Wasted Talent," a film that chronicled his time in prison, his decision to get off heroin and his struggle to redeem himself.

The Eye-Drop Poison Case

     Dr. Harry Johnston since June 2009 had treated Thurman Nesbitt for a mysterious illness. The 45-year-old patient, a resident of McConnellsburg in central Pennsylvania, suffered from nausea, low blood pressure and breathing difficulties. Dr. Johnston, suspecting that his patient was being poisoned, had his blood analyzed. On July 27, 2012 the serology tests revealed the presence of tetrahydrozolin, a chemical found in over-the-counter eye-drops.

     On August 10, 2012 troopers with the Pennsylvania State Police arrested Thurman Nesbitt's girlfriend, Vickie Jo Mills. The 33-year-old McConnellsburg woman, on probation for forgery, admitted putting Visine drops into her boyfriend's drinking water. Vickie Mills told her interrogators that she had been making Nesbitt sick since June 2009. She said it was not her intention to poison her boyfriend to death. To the obvious question of why she had done this she explained that she made Mr. Nesbitt sick in an effort to get him to pay more attention to her.

     Most women who use illness to attract attention make themselves sick pursuant to a syndrome called Munchausen. In Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy these women make their children sick. It's not clear why Mills thought poisoning her boyfriend would improve their relationship.

     The Fulton County prosecutor charged Vickie Jo Mills with ten counts of aggravated assault which carried a combined maximum sentence of 240 years in prison and a $300,000 fine. Shortly after her arrest the authorities released her on a $75,000 surety bond.

     On October 16, 2002 the district attorney dropped nine of the ten counts in return for the defendant's guilty plea. A Fulton County judge on February 14, 2013 sentenced Vickie Jo Mills to two to four years in prison.

     It's odd that something you can put into your eyes will make you sick if you put it into your stomach.

Criminal Voyeurism

     The act of voyeurism runs the gamut of watching reality TV to window peeping to the use of hidden and clandestine cameras for one's sexual gratification. In an era of adult entertainment it seems odd that so many teachers, clergymen, politicians, bosses, lawyers and physicians have been caught using covert devices like pen cameras to satisfy their sexual curiosities.

     A man (this is not a crime usually committed by women) who risks his family, career and position in society by secretly videotaping females (and young boys) changing clothes, showering, using the restroom or merely going about their daily activity must possess a powerful sexual compulsion that by any standard is deviant. Because this form of pathological voyeurism is also a crime, the clandestine video-taper also risks going to prison. The risk/reward imbalance inherent in this bizarre behavior suggests that these voyeurs are beyond the reach of counselors and medication.

Richard Watkins

     In March 2010 an elementary school teacher in Calne, a town of 13,000 in southwest England was caught using a pen camera to video-record boys as they changed their clothes for physical education class. Richard Watkins had been doing this for two years and had thousands of clandestinely acquired images on his home computer.

     The 28-year-old teacher and former children's entertainer (said to possess "circus skills") pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of criminal voyeurism. The judge sentenced Watkins to four years in prison.

James Mucha

     In March 2011 James Mucha, an employee of a small manufacturing company in Avon Lake, Ohio, was caught using a pen camera in the women's restroom. A female employee noticed a pen standing upright behind the door after she closed it. Thinking this was an odd place for a writing instrument the woman picked it up, unscrewed the cap and found a mini-camera.

     The 43-year-old pen camera owner was charged in August 2011 with three counts of voyeurism. (The company fired him.) Three months later the judge sentenced Mr. Mucha to 150 days in the county jail followed by one year of probation. The judge also fined him $2,000. (Voyeurs who video adult women usually get lighter sentences than men who record children.)

Joshua Waguespack

     In April 2012 in LeLand, Florida, police officers arrested Joshua Waguespack, a seventh grade math teacher at St. Peter's Catholic School. The 33-year-old had used a pen camera to take videos of two girls, ages 12 and 13, who used his teacher's storage closet to change into their gym clothes. He had downloaded these images onto his iPhone and iPad.

     After pleading no contest to two counts of criminal voyeurism in February 2013 the judge sentenced Mr. Waguespack to five years in prison. (This is a relatively heavy sentence for a defendant who pleaded guilty which suggests that Waguespack had a criminal history the judge didn't like.)

Dr. Adam Levison

     Having studied at the University of California Berkeley, Georgetown University and the New York Medical College where he graduated at the top of his class, Dr. Adam Levison taught robotic surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital's School of Medicine in Manhattan. The 39-year-old assistant Professor of Urology lived in a posh West Greenwich Village apartment. Dr. Levison had prestige, good-looks and money. From all appearances this man had it all. He also had a lot to lose.

     On Tuesday, August 2, 2012 a New York subway transit officer, acting on a tip from two passengers riding on the train with Dr. Levison, arrested the urologist for using a pen camera clipped to a folded newspaper to take shots up women's skirts. Taken into custody at the Union Square Station during the evening rush-hour, the doctor did not protest or proclaim his innocence.

     At his arraignment the day after his arrest the judge charged Dr. Levison with second-degree unlawful surveillance. If convicted he faced a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Dr. Levison posted bail and was released.

     A search of the doctor's pen camera video footage confirmed the suspicions of his fellow subway passengers and the arresting transit officer.

     Mount Sinai Hospital, two months after the subway arrest, announced that the physician was no longer employed by the institution.

     In January 2014 Dr. Levison pleaded guilty in return for a sentence of five years probation. 

The Fatal Lie: A Police Ruse Gone Wrong

Note: The reportage upon which this account is based did not include the names of the parties involved. Names have been assigned for clarity.

     On May 25, 2018, in Seattle, Washington, Tom Nelson, a former drug addict trying to turn his life around was involved in a fender-bender traffic accident where no one was injured. Before police arrived Mr. Nelson left the scene of the mishap.

     The accident investigator acquired an address for Mr. Nelson through his vehicle registration information. Since the address was on the other side of the city the traffic investigator called the precinct covering that area and asked that someone from that station go to the listed address and obtain a statement from Mr. Nelson.

     Later that day Seattle police officers Robert Niles and John Rhodes showed up at the address in question and spoke to Mary Harris, the woman who lived there. She informed the officers that she had allowed Tom Nelson to register his car at her address because he did not have a permanent place of residence. She said that Mr. Nelson was at the moment staying at a friend's house, however, she did not know that address.

     Earlier, on their way to Mary Harris's house, Officer Niles told his partner that in order to get Tom Nelson's cooperation he planned to employ what he referred to as a ruse--he would tell him that a woman had been seriously injured in the accident and wasn't supposed to live. "It's a lie," Officer Niles said, "but it's fun."

     Just before Officer Niles asked Mary Harris for Tom Nelson's phone number he told her that Mr. Nelson was a suspect in a hit-and-run case involving a woman who had been seriously injured and was not expected to live. 

     After the police officers left her house Mary Harris tracked down Tom Nelson and informed him of what she had just learned from the Seattle police officer. He became extremely distraught over the news. Perhaps he had struck a pedestrian without him knowing it. Mary Harris suggested he hire an attorney.

     Tom Nelson, in an effort to find out more about the seriously injured woman, searched the Internet but came up with nothing. Maybe for some reason the police were intentionally withholding this information. This just added to his worry about the woman, his angst over having caused her suffering and what might happen to him as a result.

   A few days after the accident Tom Nelson went to a friend's house and in his garage left a bag containing his possessions and some cash. He also left a note that read: "If you don't see me, keep this stuff."

     On June 3, 2018, a week after the minor traffic accident, the man whose house Tom Nelson was living in went to his room and found him dead. He had committed suicide. (The reportage of his death did not include how he had killed himself.)

     After the suicide Mary Harris and Tom's friend decided to conduct their own inquiry into the traffic accident. While the police were not particularly cooperative, Mary Harris and her investigative partner were able to determine that no one had been injured in the fender-bender. Seattle police officer Robert Niles had lied to her about that and she had passed that false information on to Mr. Nelson. And now he was dead.

     On March 12, 2019 Mary Harris filed a formal complaint against Officer Robert Niles with the watchdog group Office of Police Accountability (OPA). Investigators with the OPA questioned officer Niles and Officer Rhodes who gave different accounts of their encounter with Mary Harris. Officer Niles said that had he not employed the ruse Mary Harris would not have cooperated with their inquiry into Tom Nelson's whereabouts. Officer Rhodes gave a different story. According to his account Mary Harris would have cooperated fully without the lie.

     Following the OPA inquiry, the watchdog group recommended that Officer Robert Niles be disciplined for the inappropriate use of a ruse in the course of an investigation. (Officers are only authorized to lie in the course of criminal interrogations of people suspected of serious crimes.)

     In November 2019 Seattle Police Officer Robert Niles was placed on unpaid administrative leave for six days.

A Strange If Not Suspicious Death

     Brooke Baures, a 21-year-old social work major at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota, worked part time across the Mississippi River at WingDam Saloon & Grill in Fountain City, Wisconsin. From 2011 to 2014, the native of Chetek, Wisconsin excelled as a member of the university's gymnastics team. As a bar and beam gymnast, the senior competed three times at national gymnastic events and was named an All-American gymnast three years in a row.

     At the restaurant and bar in Fountain City one of Baures' jobs involved taking food and drinks from the dumbwaiter that ran between the first floor kitchen and the second floor eating and drinking area. The opening to the food elevator measured three feet wide and three feet tall. This opening was not designed for human access.

     At eight in the evening of Monday December 1, 2014 the Buffalo County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call regarding a young woman stuck or trapped in the shaft of a restaurant food elevator. The victim turned out to be Brooke Baures. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.

     Law enforcement authorities quickly ruled out foul play in the strange death. (Since 2003 only two people in the U.S. had died in food elevator accidents.) The no-foul-play announcement, before autopsy and toxicological results, seemed premature.

     After questioning half of the customers and all of the restaurant employees investigators did not find an eyewitness to the incident. Apparently nobody saw Baures enter the food elevator shaft. Fountain City Police Chief Jason Mark told reporters that, "I highly doubt that Baures was using the dumbwaiter to move herself." He said she was probably using the elevator to shuttle food and drink.

     Eliminating the possibility of foul play before a thorough death investigation was self-defeating and amateurish. Moreover, it produced a lot of questions and raised suspicion of a cover-up. For example, who discovered Baures and how long had she been dead? What was the position of her body and exactly how did she die? How could this have happened? Are dumbwaiters that dangerous?

     On December 6, 2014 Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Schmidtknecht told reporters that Baures' death was probably a freak accident. He said investigators believe she possibly pushed the down button then noticed something and reached in and got caught and was dragged down into the shaft by the elevator. 

     The authorities on December 9, 2014 released the results of Baures' autopsy. According to the report the cause of death was "extensive destruction of the brainstem and the left side of the cerebellum." Manner of death: accident.

The William and Christopher Cormier Murder Case

     Sean Dugas was an active participant in the community of enthusiasts devoted to the role-playing fantasy game "Magic: The Gathering," a more violent version of "Dungeons & Dragons." The 30-year-old former reporter with the Pensacola Journal News shared a house in Pensacola with 31-year-old twins William and Christopher Cormier. At one time the brothers had been part of the so-called "Magic community" but had lost interest.

     According to the police version of events, during the early morning hours of August 27, 2012 the Cormier twins murdered Sean Dugas by bludgeoning him with a hard object. Motivated by the intent to steal Dugas' $25,000 to $100,000 collection of Magic game cards, the murder took place in the rented Pensacola dwelling.

     Later on the morning of Sean Dugas' death, his girlfriend, with whom he had made plans to have lunch, stopped by his house. She knocked on the door and when no one answered left a note. Over the next couple of days Mr. Dugas did not return his girlfriend's phone calls or text messages.

     On September 7, 2012 Dugas' girlfriend returned to his house to find it unoccupied and, except for a TV set, empty. She couldn't believe Dugas had moved out of the house without telling her. According to a neighbor two men four days earlier had been at the house with a U-Haul truck. The girlfriend, after another week of not hearing from Mr. Dugas reported him missing.

     On September 3, 2012 the Cormier twins, after buying a large plastic container at Walmart for Dugas' body, loaded up the U-Haul truck. Later that day they rolled up to their father's house in Winder, Georgia, a small town 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. They dug a hole in their father's backyard, lowered in the plastic container holding Dugas' body then filled the grave with concrete. (The brothers told their father they had buried a dog.)

     Police investigators in Pensacola learned that the Cormier twins sold Magic fantasy cards in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. People who knew Sean Dugas told the police that he had recently spoken of moving to Georgia with William and Christopher Cormier.

     On October 8, 2012 detectives in Pensacola asked the police in Winder to locate the twins. At the Cormier house officers noticed the fresh digging in the backyard. Shortly thereafter a crew unearthed Dugas' concrete entombed remains.

     Police arrested the Cormier brothers the day the remains were uncovered. They were initially charged with concealing the death of another. Two days later, after a forensic pathologist identified Mr. Dugas' body through dental charts and facial bone CT scans, a prosecutor in Pensacola charged the defendants with first-degree murder. Pending extradition to Florida the brothers were held without bail in Georgia.

     In February 2014 the Cormier twins, in separate Pensacola murder trials, were found guilty as charged. In William Cormier's case the jury deliberated only thirty minutes before reaching its verdict. The judge sentenced William Cormier to life without parole. His brother received a sentence of twenty-five years to life.

Donald Eugene Borders: The "Three Women" Murder Case

     In 2003, 85-year-old Lottie Ledford lived by herself in a low-income neighborhood in Shelby, North Carolina, a town of 20,000 fifty miles west of Charlotte. As a younger woman Lottie had worked in the region's textile mills. On August 23, 2003 a relative discovered Lottie lying dead on her bed. Because of her age the police didn't suspect foul play. The Cleveland County Coroner ruled that Lottie Ledford had died of a heart attack.

     Bobby Fisher, Ledford's nephew, believed that his aunt had been murdered. Based upon his own observations and what the funeral director had seen and noted, Mr. Fisher knew that Ledford's face and arms had been covered in bruises. (Almost ten years later, in January 2013, Bobby Fisher's widow Barbara Ann, in speaking to a reporter said, "It looked as if someone had taken two fingers and pinched her nose and held her across the mouth.") The fact that someone had cut Ledford's telephone line also suggested homicide. Bobby Fisher pleaded with the Shelby police to launch a murder investigation but they ignored his request.

     On September 20, 2003, six weeks after Lottie Ledford's death, Margaret Tessneer's daughter and son-in-law went to Margaret's house at ten that morning. She didn't live far from Ledford's house. The couple brought Tessneer a biscuit from Hardee's. The visitors found Margaret Tessneer's front door ajar. The couple entered the dwelling where they encountered the 79-year-old lying face-up on her rumpled bed. The dead woman had bruises on her face, arms and legs. Someone had pulled the telephone drop-line away from her house.

     The forensic pathologist who performed the Tessneer autopsy noted the bruises and concluded that the victim had been raped. While he ruled the manner of death in this case homicide, the pathologist classified Tessneer's cause of death as"undetermined." 

     On November 10, 2003 in the same part of town a neighbor discovered Lillian Mullinax lying dead in her own bed. The 87-year-old's body was covered in bruises, her front door had been left ajar and someone had cut her phone line. Following the autopsy Mullinax's cause of death went into the books as "undetermined."

     One didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to conclude that these three elderly women had been raped and murdered in their homes by the same man.

     In early 2004 local detectives investigating Margaret Tessneer's September 20, 2003 death became interested in a 53-year-old man named Donald Eugene Borders. After graduating from high school in 1977 Borders got married, worked in the region's textile mills and fathered two children. But in the 1990s he turned to crime and was arrested dozens of times for robbery, burglary and assault. In 2001 Borders was sent to state prison on a conviction for breaking and entering a home. After his release from custody in January 2003 he lived as a homeless man on the streets of Shelby.

     On March 20, 2004, after publicly asking for help in locating Donald Borders, detectives found him living in a homeless shelter in Charlotte. Armed with an arrest warrant pertaining to a matter unrelated to the so-called "three women" murder case, Shelby officer James Brienza took the suspect into custody. Before hauling him to jail Brienza let the prisoner have a cigarette. When Borders finished his smoke Brienza saved the evidence for DNA analysis.

     A state forensic scientist, in August 2004, found trace evidence from Margaret Tessneer's underwear that revealed she had been raped. Following the passage of more than five years a DNA analyst matched the Tessneer murder scene evidence with the saliva on Border's cigarette butt.

     A Cleveland County Grand Jury, on December 28, 2009, more that six years after Margaret Tessneer's rape and killing, indicted Donald Eugene Borders for first-degree murder. He was taken into custody and held in the Cleveland County Jail without bond.

     Borders' trial got underway in Cleveland on January 5, 2013. On January 28 the jury, after deliberating three hours, found the defendant guilty as charged. The judge sentenced Donald Eugene Borders to life in prison without the chance of parole. 

     While Borders was not charged with the murders of Dottie Ledford and Lillian Mullinax, the authorities believed he had murdered and raped these victims as well.

The Rachel Fryer Child Abuse Murder Case

     In November 2013, Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF) reunited Rachel Fryer with her five children. They had been taken away on May 13, 2011 when her infant son Tavont'ae Gordon died. A forensic pathologist determined that the baby's death was accidental. Fryer claimed to have rolled over on the child. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death mechanical asphyxiation, a so-called "co-sleeping" fatality. The DCF took the five remaining children from the house due to evidence of substance abuse. Besides drugs, the 32-year-old mother had other problems. She was depressed and abusive, and for years had been in trouble with the law. But after completing a parenting program her five children were returned to her.

     Fryer, a resident of Sanford, Florida, a town of 53,000 in the Orlando metropolitan area, served six months in jail in 2012 for violating the terms of her drug probation. Police in Seminole County arrested her in December 2013 for failure to appear in court. Over several years she had been charged with resisting arrest, battery of a law enforcement officer, petty theft and possession of marijuana.

     On Monday morning, February 10, 2014, one of Fryer's neighbors, worried about the wellbeing of the Fryer children called the DCF and requested a welfare check at the Fryer home. A caseworker arrived at the house to find Rachel gone. The social worker removed four of Fryer's children from the dwelling. The fifth child, 2-year-old Tariji, Tavont'ae's twin sister, was missing. Concerned about the welfare of the toddler, the caseworker called the Sanford Police Department. Detectives launched a missing persons investigation.

     That Monday night, Rachel Fryer showed up at the Sanford police station with a disturbing story. She claimed that on Thursday, February 6, when she tried to wake up her 2-year-old daughter, the toddler was unresponsive. She spent the next thirty minutes trying to revive the little girl with CPR. When that failed, and it became obvious that the child had stopped breathing, she wrapped the body in a blanket. She did not call 911, the police department or anyone else.

     After placing the dead girl into a leopard-print suitcase, a friend drove Fryer and Tariji to Crescent City, Florida, a town of two thousand in Putnam County northeast of Sanford. In the front yard of a house on Madison Avenue, Rachel Fryer buried her daughter in a shallow grave.

     In searching Fryer's cellphone detectives discovered text messages that revealed the mother's state of mind in the days leading up to Tariji's death. In one message she had texted: "I'm bout to have a nervous breakdown. I can't take it no more…My child is retarded, I don't know what else to do…I need my depression medicine ASAP. This is too much, I'm about to lose it."

     From Fryer's 7-year-old daughter detectives learned that Fryer regularly hit her children with a broom handle, a mop and shoes. The 7-year-old said her mother had beaten her the day before her younger sister disappeared.

     On Tuesday, February 11, 2014, police officers in Crescent City, in the front yard of the house on Madison Avenue, saw a child's shoe sticking out of a freshly dug grave. Beneath the dirt officers found the corpse of a young girl wearing clothing that preliminarily identified the remains of Tariji Fryer. The leopard-print suitcase lay nearby.

     After a prosecutor in Sanford charged Rachel Fryer with aggravated child neglect, she was booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility. The judge denied her bond. In the meantime investigators waited for the results of the girl's autopsy.

     On Tuesday, February 11, detectives questioned Tariji's father, 28-year-old Timothy Gordon. The DCF had not reunited Gordon with his children because he had not taken the required parenting counseling in May 2011 following the death of Tavont'ae.

     The Seminole County Medical Examiner's Office, on February 27, 2014, reported that Tariji Gordon had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Some of the victim's injuries included, according to a south Florida forensic dentist, bite marks linked to the suspect. The medical examiner ruled the girl's death a criminal homicide. Following that ruling a local prosecutor charged Rachel Fryer with murder and aggravated child abuse.

     At the suspect's murder arraignment she pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors told reporters that in this case they were seeking the death penalty.

     On March 12, 2014 a Seminole County grand jury indicted Fryer for first-degree murder and several lesser offenses. According to detectives who interrogated the suspect she confessed to murdering her daughter.

     Rachel Fryer in June 2016 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. The judge sentenced her to 30 years in prison.