The Rabbi Bernard Freundel Criminal Voyeurism Case

     For 25 years Modern Orthodox Rabbi Bernard "Barry" Freundel was the spiritual leader of the Kesher Israel Synagogue in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Former U.S. Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew were members of Rabbi Freundel's congregation.

     A resident of O Street in Washington, the 62-year-old rabbi was known for his success in helping women convert to Orthodox Judaism. An expert on Jewish law Rabbi Freundel held the position of Vice President of the Vaad (Rabbinical Counsel) of Greater Washington. He also worked as a professor at nearby Townson University where he taught courses on Judaism and ethics. As a widely known expert on these subjects the rabbi was a visiting scholar at Princeton, Yale and Cornell and regularly presented guest lectures at Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

     While Rabbi Freundel enjoyed a sterling reputation in academia and among the vast majority of his congregants, concerns were raised in 2012 regarding his treatment of women undergoing conversion under his guidance. Several women going through the process complained the Rabbi enjoyed wielding power over their lives. For example, they felt coerced into performing clerical duties such as organizing his files, opening his mail, paying his bills, taking dictation and responding to emails on his behalf. Moreover, these vulnerable women felt pressured to donate money to the rabbi's favorite causes.

     On October 14, 2014 the roof collapsed on Rabbi Freundel's personal and professional life of privilege and respect when officers with the Washington D.C. Police Department placed him under arrest. He was charged with six counts of misdemeanor voyeurism.

     Rabbi Freundel stood accused of installing a clock radio equipped with a hidden video camera in a synagogue shower room. He allegedly filmed women showering before taking their ritualistic purification baths in a large tub called the Mikvah.

     Jewish women and women converting to Judaism are required under Orthodox religious law to immerse themselves in the Mikvah every month after menstruating and before having sex with their husbands.

     Shortly after Rabbi Freundel's arrest Jewish authorities suspended him without pay from his position at the Kesher Israel Synagogue.

     On October 20, 2014 a Townson University spokesperson announced that the school had opened an internal Title IX investigation to determine if the rabbi had practiced gender or sex discrimination at the university. The school banned the former Judaism and ethics professor from its campus which is located in Maryland between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

     The Freundel voyeurism scandal triggered a discussion and inquiry into the possible widespread abuse of female converts by Orthodox rabbis.

     Rabbi Freundel pleaded not guilty to the charges and was set free after posting his bail. If convicted of all six counts he faced up to six years behind bars.

     On February 11, 2015 several of the rabbi's alleged victims met with federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. The meeting was called to discuss the benefits of a plea bargained deal in the case. Prosecutors, in discussing the Freundel investigation, said that since 2009 the former rabbi had secretly filmed 152 women. Of these crimes 88 were more than three years old and therefore couldn't be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations. Prosecutors did not reveal to the media how the victims at the meeting responded to the idea of a plea bargained deal for the ex-rabbi.

     Freundel, on February 19, 2015, pleaded guilty to having secretly videotaped 52 naked women as they prepared to immerse themselves in the ritual bath.

     On May 16, 2015 after sixteen of his victims--some in tears--addressed the court, Judge Geoffrey Alprin sentenced Bernard Freundel to six and a half years in federal prison. 

The Rebecca Bryan Murder Case

     In 2011 Rebecca "Becky" Bryan, a 51-year-old real estate agent, lived in the Oklahoma City suburb of Mustang with her 53-year-old husband Keith. Keith Bryan, a firefighter since 1981, was chief of the fire department in Nichols Hill, an affluent town north of Oklahoma City. The couple had two grown sons.

     In January 2010 Becky filed for a divorce but didn't follow through with the process. Unhappy in her marriage she was having an affair with a married man she met in 2009 at a real estate conference. The two talked about having a new life together. In early September 2011 Becky texted a message to a friend about inheriting, at some point in the near future, a large amount of money that would allow her to move to another part of the state.

     On Tuesday night, September 20, 2011, Becky Bryan called 911 to report the shooting of her husband by an intruder. To officers with the Mustang Police Department Becky described her horrific experience. She and Keith had been sitting on their living room couch watching television when a hooded man in his 20s or 30s entered the house through the garage door and shot her husband from point-blank range in the back of the head. The victim never knew what hit him.

     According to Becky, after the intruder shot Keith he told her Kieth should have hired him at the fire department. The blond-haired man left the dwelling the way he had entered. He drove from the house in a pickup truck Becky described in detail.

     Keith Bryan died a few hours later at a nearby hospital. On her way to that hospital with a friend Becky showed the acquaintance a cellphone photograph she had taken that day of her lover's genitals. The friend, stunned by Becky's demeanor, chalked it up to stress. The authorities feared that a madman was on the loose with a grudge against the Nichols Hill Fire Department.

     Detectives, pursuant to routine homicide investigation protocol, swabbed Becky's hands for traces of gun powder. According to the gunshot residue analysis she had recently fired a gun with her left hand.

     Just hours after the murder detectives searched the Bryan house. In the clothes dryer officers found, wrapped in a lap blanket, a .380-caliber Ruger LCP handgun, a spent shell casing and a left hand rubber glove. (The glove tested positive for gunshot residue.) The blanket contained four bullet holes. Investigators theorized the killer used the folded blanket to shield himself or herself from the victim's blood. It tested positive for gunshot residue as well. Detectives noted that the utility room that housed the clothes dryer was not along the path the intruder would have taken out of the dwelling.

     Between the mattress and the box springs in the master bedroom detectives found the box the Ruger pistol came in as well as a box of .380-caliber rounds. A state firearms identification expert identified the Ruger found in the dryer as the gun that fired the fatal bullet.

     On September 23, 2011, just three days after Becky Bryan informed the police that an intruder shot her husband, a county prosecutor charged her with first-degree murder. Detectives arrested Becky early that afternoon at the hotel where she was staying. Booked into the county jail in El Reno and denied bond the suspect continued to claim her husband Keith had been murdered by a hooded man.

     The Bryan murder trial began on May 16, 2013 before Judge Gary E. Miller. Assistant District Attorney Paul Hesse believed he could prove, circumstantially with the physical evidence--the blanket, the rubber glove, the .380-caliber handgun identified as the murder weapon and the gunshot residue on the defendant's left hand--her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecutor also had a motive: life insurance and a new start with a lover. Blessed with motive and physical evidence linking Becky to the murder the prosecutor didn't need an eyewitness or a confession. The evidence was circumstantial, but solid.

     After two days of scientific testimony from the medical examiner--a firearms identification expert, an analyst who connected the defendant to the rubber glove through DNA and a blood spatter specialist who explained the purpose of the blanket found in the dryer--prosecutor Hesse made the state's case. For final measure he put on several witnesses on the stand who provided details regarding the defendant's extramarital sexual activities.

     Defense attorney Gary James, without much to work with, tried to keep the intruder theory alive in the minds of the jurors. He presented several character witness from the ranks of the defendant's social circle and family. Her brother testified that "Becky has always been a person who helped people. She was the person who would pick up a wounded puppy." On cross-examination these defense witnesses had difficulty explaining and justifying the defendants inappropriate behavior just after the murder.

     The defense rested without putting Becky Bryan on the stand. Attorney James, in his closing remarks to the jury, tried to paint the detectives on the case as tunnel-visioned and sloppy. The attorney wondered why the crime scene investigator didn't process the clothes dryer for latent fingerprints to rule out an intruder. Moreover, he didn't understand why the police didn't review surveillance camera footage for images of a pickup truck that matched the description provided by his client.

     On May 21, 2013, less than a week after the Bryan trial began, the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. The jurors needed only four hours to come to that conclusion. After the verdict was read, attorney James hugged his client and said he was sorry. (The defense attorney was not responsible for the guilty verdict.) On July 9, 2013 Judge Miller, following Oklahoma law, sentenced Becky Bryan to life without parole.

   In March 2014 Rebecca Bryan filed an appeal citing the unconstitutional admission of certain evidence as well as ineffective counsel. She claimed she had been denied a fair trial. On December 12, 2014 justices with the Oklahoma Court of Appeals upheld the conviction.

Was Kendrick Johnson Murdered?

     Kendrick Johnson attended Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. The thin muscular 17-year-old played on the football and basketball teams. After attending his fourth period class on Thursday, January 10, 2013 Kendrick went missing. The next morning someone discovered the student's body stuffed upside-down inside a rolled-up wrestling mat that stood on its end in the school gymnasium. He was dead.

     Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine, in charge of the death scene investigation, quickly concluded that the high school student's death had been accidental. According to Sheriff Prine Kendrick must have gone into the mat head-first to retrieve a shoe or some other item. The sheriff theorized that Kendrick got stuck inside the mat and suffocated.

     On January 25, 2013 the director of the Valdosta-Lowndes Regional Crime Laboratory where a forensic pathologist performed the autopsy ten days earlier, informed members of the media that Johnson's body "showed no signs of blunt  force trauma." Sheriff Prine assured reporters there were no other signs of a struggle on Johnson's body.

     Kendrick's parents, Kenneth and Jackie Johnson, took issue with the manner of death determination and complained that officials with the sheriff's office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were not talking to them about their son's death.

     In mid-April 2013 Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson told a reporter with the Valdosta Daily Times that Kendrick Johnson's body had been moved before the coroner arrived at the gym. According to Mr. Watson the sheriff waited six hours before informing him of the gruesome discovery. (Under Georgia law the local coroner's office must be notified immediately in cases of sudden, violent or unexplained death.) Regarding the delay in notification and the moving of the body, Coroner Watson said, "Well it compromises my investigation one-hundred percent. I don't know what the county [sheriff's office personnel] did when they got on the scene. The [death] scene, in my opinion, had been compromised."

     On May 4, 2013 the authorities finally provided the media with a copy of the autopsy report. According to the forensic pathologist who performed Kendrick's autopsy, the young man died from "positional asphyxia." He suffocated as a result of being trapped upside-down in the rolled-up mat. Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson, based upon this cause of death determination, had no choice but to rule that Kendrick Johnson died as a result of a freak accident.

     Kenneth and Jackie Johnson, convinced that their son had been murdered, and the authorities were involved in a cover-up, asked a judge to authorize an exhumation. In May 2013 the judge granted the request which led to a second autopsy. That postmortem examination was performed by Dr. William R. Anderson, a forensic pathologist with the private firm Forensic Dimensions, a company located in Heathrow, Florida. The Johnsons paid for Dr. Anderson's postmortem review.

     The dead boy's parents were also pressing for a federal investigation into the closed case. In support of this request the Johnson couple alleged that crime scene evidence was either destroyed or tampered with. The sheriff's office also denied the parents the opportunity to view high school surveillance camera footage of their son during the hours before he went missing. The parents also claimed that postmortem photographs of Kendrick revealed lacerations on his face and body.

     On May 23, 2013 Kenneth and Jackie Johnson released copies of two reports that had been written by a pair of paramedics with the South Georgia Medical Center Mobile Healthcare Service. According to the paramedics, Kendrick's body showed obvious signs of a struggle. Moreover, they found the student's body in a pool of blood and vomit. One of the paramedics wrote that he considered the high school gym the scene of a criminal homicide. The sheriff, however, insisted that morning that Kendrick Johnson's death had been a tragic accident.

     The results of the second autopsy performed by Dr. William R. Anderson were released in early September 2013. In his report Dr. Anderson concluded that Kendrick Johnson died from "unexplained, apparent non-accidental blunt force trauma to his right neck and soft tissues."

     The attorney representing the Johnson family told reporters that she was sending a copy of Dr. Anderson's autopsy report to the civil rights division of the U. S. Department of Justice. The cause and manner of Kendrick Johnson's death had not been changed. Officially, he died of a freak accident.

     On October 10, 2013 Kendrick Johnson's parents revealed that when Kendrick's body was exhumed for the second autopsy Dr. Anderson discovered the boy's internal organs were missing. "I feel outraged about them stuffing my son's body with newspaper," Jacquelin Johnson said. The parents told reporters they believe the missing organs was further evidence of foul play and a cover-up in their son's death.

     Michael Moore, the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia announced on October 31, 2013 that the FBI would investigate the circumstances surrounding Kendrick Johnson's death. "We're happy," Jacquelyn Johnson said. "The only thing we ever wanted was the truth."

     In December 2013 FBI agents questioned several of Johnson's Lowndes High School classmates as well as Lowndes County coroner Bill Watson. Agents also spent time with the deceased boy's parents. The parents, in February 2014, filed a lawsuit against the funeral home that handled their son's remains. According to the plaintiffs, funeral home personnel intentionally destroyed his internal organs in an attempt to interfere with the investigation into their son's murder.

     On March 13, 2014, in Macon, Georgia, four of Johnson's classmates as well as students from nearby Valdosta High School appeared before the federal grand jury looking into the death.

     CNN reporters, on March 17, 2014 announced they acquired, through the Georgia Open Records Act, an anonymous email dated January 27, 2014. According to the police tipster one of Johnson's classmates confessed to killing the young man. This person did not, however, confess directly to the email sender. In an effort to identify the tipster a Lowndes County assistant district attorney ordered a communications company to hand over its internet records pertaining to this email.

     In June 2016 an official with the United States Attorney's Office announced there was insufficient evidence of foul play in Kendrick Johnson's death to merit the filing of criminal charges.

     In July 2017 a federal district judge dismissed the Johnson family $100 million civil lawsuit filed six months earlier against dozens of state and local officials.

     In April 2019 the new Loundes County Sheriff, Ashley Paulik, asked the federal government to release its file on the investigation into Kendrick Johnson's death. The request was denied, but after federal officials met with Kendrick's parents the government in November 2020 sent the Loundes County Sheriff 17 boxes of material pertaining to its investigation. 

     Sheriff Paulik, in March 2021, reopened the Kendrick Johnson case.

     In January 2022, after finding no evidence of foul play in Johnson's death the Loundes County Sheriff's Office officially closed the case.

Samuel Cohen: The Unrepentant Con Man

     In 2002 Samuel Cohen, a 44-year-old San Francisco con man, talked the founders of a nonprofit foundation called Vanguard into investing millions into his company, Ecast. Vanguard, created in 1972 by actors Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte, issued grants that helped support environmental, anti-war and other liberal causes.

      Mr. Cohen told his investors that Ecast, the manufacturer of electronic jukeboxes for bars, was about to be acquired by Micosoft and the acquisition would make Vanguard and its donors a lot of money. Relying on Cohen's word the foundation's founders and a hundred other investors gave Samuel Cohen, over a six year period, more than $30 million. He kept the scam going by telling his marks that regulators in the U.S. and Europe were holding up the acquisition. He needed the money to pay the fees and bonds needed to get the deal approved. His victims bought his spiel and the money kept rolling in. In typical con man fashion the product Cohen was selling was himself. And the marks went along because they thought they were going to make a killing.

    Confidence games cannot go on forever, and in 2008, Mr. Cohen's swindle fell apart. A federal prosecutor in San Francisco charged him with wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. His victims were devastated and the Vanguard Foundation collapsed.

     Samuel Cohen pulled off what criminologists call the "long con" by using his ill-gotten money to create a facade of enormous wealth that impressed and influenced his marks. He rented a $50,000 a month mansion in Belvedere, the exclusive enclave just north of San Francisco. The fake financier hung fake art on the walls of his rented palace and bought his wife a $1.4 million diamond ring with money he lifted from his investors. In his rented garage sat a $372,000 Rolls Royce and a $260,000 Aston Martin. Cohen spent $6 million flying around in a rented jet he boasted that he owned. (Two of his celebrity passengers were Elton John and Jennifer Lopez. While they were not marks, they were props.)

     Con man Cohen lured his victims to the mansion where he held lavish parties in their honor while separating them from their money. It was easy. The scam artist even bilked his father-in-law out of his retirement savings. For the con man it's not the money so much as the thrill of making suckers out of trusting people. 

     The federal prosecutor, after a San Francisco jury found Samuel Cohen guilty in November 2011 of 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering and 3 counts of tax evasion, asked Judge Charles Breyer to send this con artist to prison for 30 years, order him to pay $60 million in restitution and fine him $250,000. In justifying what would be the stiffest penalty in the history of white collar crime (Jeff Skilling at Enron got 24 years, 4 months) the prosecutor pointed out that Samuel Cohen, instead of experiencing remorse for his on-going, cold-blooded swindle, blamed everyone but himself for the harm he caused so many victims. (When con men are caught, in their minds, they are the victims.)

     Cohen's attorney, in arguing for a more lenient penalty, requested a prison sentence of under 7 years. The defense lawyer told the judge that 30 years behind bars was excessive punishment for a 53-year-old first time offender. Moreover, Mr. Cohen gave $2 million to charity. (Yes, but with stolen money.)

     Judge Breyer, in May 2012, sentenced Samuel Cohen to 22 years in prison and ordered him to pay $31.4 million in restitution. Calling the con man "nearly sociopathic" (nearly?) the judge said the sentence would have been more severe but for the sentencing guidelines holding him back. If the con man served his full sentence he'd be 75 when he gots out. Many of his victims will be dead and the ones who were not might still be broke.

The Melinda Muniz Murder Case

     In 2013 Mitch Ford, his 25-year-old fiancee Melinda Muniz and his 3-year-old daughter Grace from a previous marriage lived in Plano, Texas, the sprawling suburban community north of Dallas. Ford and his ex-wife Emily Ward were engaged in a custody battle over Grace Ford, their daughter.

     Mitch and Melinda's relationship ran into trouble in late December 2013 when she revealed that she had been cheating on him.

     Early in the morning of January 9, 2014, before he left for work, Mitch Ford told Melinda Muniz that within the next few days she would have to move out of the apartment. The engagement was over. She did not take this news very well.

     Later that day Mitch Ford, concerned about how Melinda was reacting to the break-up, called the the Plano Police Department and asked that officers check on Melinda and his daughter. At one-forty that afternoon when officers showed up for the welfare call they didn't get a response when they knocked on the door. They called Mr. Ford who came to the complex to let them into the apartment.

     In the master bedroom officers found Melinda with her pants down with duct-tape over her mouth. In the toddler's room they found Grace Ford unconscious in her crib. Someone had placed tape across her mouth as well.

     The child was taken by ambulance to the Children's Medical Center in Dallas where doctors pronounced her brain-dead. Physicians put the 3-year-old on life support until her organs could be harvested.

     Melinda Muniz told detectives an intruder forced his way into the apartment and raped her. The rapist covered her mouth and the child's with the tape. She described the intruder as a total stranger.

     Melinda's story quickly unraveled. A medical examination revealed she had not been sexually assaulted. Moreover, a surveillance camera at a nearby store showed Melinda buying duct-tape, zip ties, cotton balls and a pair of scissors. When confronted with this evidence and inconsistencies in her story Melinda Muniz stuck to the intruder story.

     The Dallas County Medical Examiner ruled Grace Ford's death criminal homicide by asphyxiation.

     Police officers on January 28, 2014 booked Melinda Muniz into the Collins County Jail on the charge of capital murder. She pleaded not guilty. The judge set her bond at $1 million. If convicted as charged she faced life in prison without parole.

     The Muniz trial got underway on January 27, 2015 at the Collins County Courthouse with district judge Mark Rusch presiding. Co-prosecutor Lisa King in her opening remarks told the jury the evidence showed the defendant had carefully planned the little girl's murder. Defense attorney Robbie McClung argued that the state's case was full of holes.

     The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy testified that the victim had been suffocated. As for the defendant, she had not been sexually assaulted as she had claimed. The prosecution also played surveillance camera footage showing the defendant, shortly before the murder, purchasing the duck-tape and the other items. Detectives took the stand and testified that the defendant had staged the home invasion/rape to cover up the murder.

     When it came time for the defense to put on its case the defendant, on the advise of her attorney, did not take the stand on her own behalf. Before the opposing attorneys presented their closing arguments to the jury, attorney McClung asked Judge Rusch to allow the jurors to consider the lesser charge of felony-murder. The judge denied the motion.

     In his closing argument defense attorney McClung emphasized the fact the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial. Moreover, the state had failed to prove a motive in the case. Prosecutor Zeke Fortenberry, when he stood before the jury, said the state did not have a duty to prove motive in order to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, however, the motive was anger and revenge.

     On February 2, 2015, the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. Judge Rusch at a later sentencing hearing imposed the automatic sentence of life without the chance of parole. 

The Ruby Klokow Murder Case

     In 1957 21-year-old Ruby Klokow, a resident of Sheboygan, a Michigan Lake town of 50,000 in southern Wisconsin physically abused and murdered her 6-month-old daughter Jeaneen. Following the baby's suspicious death Klokow told the police the child had fallen off the sofa. Although the autopsy revealed two brain hemorrhages, a partially collapsed lung and three scalp bruises, injuries inconsistent with a fall from a couch, the Sheboygan County Corner ruled the baby's death accidental. As a result of this bogus manner of death ruling the police did not conduct a homicide investigation. This stunning example of criminal justice incompetence (or indifference) was particularly tragic because the dead child had a two-year-old brother and Ruby Klokow would give birth again.

     In 1964 Ruby Klokow's infant son Scott died mysteriously in his crib. Given the suspicious death of her daughter Jeaneen seven years earlier, it was hard to understand why the authorities in Sheboygan didn't investigate the passing of this child. (Had there been an autopsy there would have been signs of past injuries caused by abuse.)  Instead of putting this homicidal mother away for life, local criminal justice personnel made it possible for this woman to continue practicing her sadistic style of parenting.

     Finally, in 2008, Klokow's 53-year-old son James who was two-years-old when his mother murdered his sister Jeaneen, came forward with his own story of parental abuse. According to James Klokow, his mother repeatedly beat him as far back as he could remember. At school he would lie to his teachers regarding how he had collected all of the bruises on his body that included choke marks on his neck. His mother frequently made him stand in a corner all day long during which time she threw knives and scissors at him. She also blinded him in one eye. When he turned thirteen, James, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, ran away from home. After that he was abused by a series of foster parents until the age of eighteen.

     After James Klokow came forward with his story of child abuse, Judy Post, Ruby Klokow's younger sister, told the authorities that Ruby had physically abused her when they were children. Post also reported having seen Ruby throw her infant daughter Jeaneen to the ground.

     In February 2011 a Sheboygan County prosecutor charged the 74-year-old Klokow with second-degree murder for the 1957 death of Jeaneen. A forensic pathologist took the stand at a preliminary hearing and testified that the infant's autopsy revealed injuries too severe to have been caused by a fall from a sofa. Klokow's attorney, after getting her released on bail, delayed matters by claiming his client was not mentally competent to stand trial.

     On February 25, 2013, the day Ruby Klokow was scheduled to go on trial for the murder of her daughter, she entered a plea of no contest to the second-degree murder charge. Klokow, who admitted killing Jeaneen was scheduled to be sentenced on April 15, 2013.

     Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz, pursuant to the plea-bargain agreement worked out between the defendant's attorney and the prosecutor, was asked to sentence Klokow to 45 days in jail and ten years probation.

     To reporters following the no contest plea, Klokow's attorney Kirk Obear said that trying his client for murder after all of these years would be "unfair" because so many witnesses have died. The defense attorney went on to say that Klokow was "dealing with a lot of heartache."

     District Attorney Joe DeCecco, in explaining to the media why he signed-off on the plea deal, mentioned Klokow's age and poor health. The prosecutor also said that because the statute of limitations did not allow him to charge Klokow with the lesser homicide offense of manslaughter, he had to prove a case of murder which, under the circumstances, may have been difficult. 

     It's not that the prosecution in this case didn't have evidence. In addition to the defendant's confession, the district attorney had her sister's testimony and a compelling witness in her son, James Klokow. This prosecutor, in the name of justice, should have pushed forward with the trial. What did he have to lose? What was the point of 45 days in jail and ten years of probation?

    Judge Sutkiewicz, apparently disgusted with the lenient plea deal sentenced Ruby Klokow to ten years in prison. While judges rarely disregard the terms of a plea deal, in this case such an action was justified.

David Ranta's Wrongful Conviction

     In 1990 following a botched robbery of a diamond courier in Brooklyn, New York, the robbers carjacked and murdered Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a survivor of the Holocaust. A few days after the highly publicize murder police officers picked up a 35-year-old unemployed drug addict named David Ranta.

     Following his interrogation by NYPD detective Louis Scarcella, Mr. Ranta signed a confession in which he admitted helping plot the diamond robbery. A boy who witnessed the crime picked Ranta out of a police line-up.

     A few months later a Brooklyn jury, relying on the defendant's confession and the line-up identification, found David Ranta guilty of murdering the Rabbi. The judge sentenced him to 35 years in prison.

     The Conviction Integrity Unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office took up the old Werzberger murder case after it became apparent the evidence against David Ranta was unreliable. Years after the conviction the young eyewitness of the diamond robbery informed investigators that detectives had coached him into picking Ranta out of the line-up. Evidence also surfaced that cast serious doubt on the reliability of the confession.

     On March 21, 2013 David Ranta walked free after serving 23 years behind bars. He was 58,

     Louis Scarcella, the retired NYPD detective who was in charge of the case, told an Associated Press reporter that Brooklyn prosecutors pressured him to bring the Rabbi's killer to justice quickly. "I caught a lot of cases and I got confessions," Scarcella said. "I was called in and I did my job and I got confessions." (A detective's job is to get the truth.) Scarcella denied coaching the boy into the line-up identification and said he continued to stand behind his role in the case.

     There was no evidence to suggest that Detective Scarcella had intentionally framed an innocent man. Moreover, the prosecutor in the case also bore responsibility in this wrongful conviction. But because of public pressure to catch the killer of a Holocaust surviving Rabbi, the prosecutor went ahead and put the burden of determining the guilt or innocence of this defendant on the jury. And he did it with unreliable evidence. Many jurors assume, even in weak cases, that because the defendant is being prosecuted he must be guilty. It appeared that neither the detective nor the prosecutor were interested in digging deeper into the case. If they had, Ranta would have been exonerated and the real perpetrators brought to justice.

     Two days after he walked out of prison David Ranta suffered a massive heart attack. He survived his illness and in February 2014 settled his $150 million lawsuit against the city of New York for $6.4 million. 

The Life and Death of Serial Killer Israel Keyes

     Israel Keyes, a 34-year-old part time carpenter and bank robber, traveled around the country randomly targeting women to abduct, rape and murder. He owned property in upstate New York and had lived in the states of Washington and Oregon. (As a teenager he had kidnapped and sexually assaulted an Oregon girl, his first rape victim.) In 2012 the tall thin killer lived in Anchorage, Alaska.

     At eight o'clock on the night of February 1, 2012, 18-year-old Samantha Koenig was closing up shop at the Common Grounds Expresso coffee stand on Tudor Road. Keyes walked up to the kiosk and ordered a cup of coffee. After Koenig prepared his drink Keyes pulled a gun and entered the stand where he used zip ties to secure the employee's hands behind her back. A surveillance camera caught Keyes and his victim as they walked toward his white pickup truck parked in the nearby Home Depot parking lot. Using Koenig's cellphone Keyes sent a text message to her boyfriend saying that she, after having a bad day, was leaving town for the weekend.

     At his home that night Mr. Keyes raped his victim. The next morning he strangled Koenig to death, put her body into a shed on his property and flew to Houston, Texas where he embarked on a two-week cruise.

     Keyes flew back to Anchorage on February 17, 2012. He tied up Koenig's body and posed it to make it appear that she was alive. He took a Polaroid photograph of the dead girl that included a newspaper dated February 13. On the back of a photocopy of this picture Keyes typed a ransom note demanding $30,000 from Koenig's family. He followed up the ransom note with a text message instructing her father to deposit the money in a bank account Keyes could access with Koenig's debit card. The family complied with the kidnapper's demands.

     After making a withdrawal from the Koenig bank account Keyes dismembered Koenig's body and hauled the remains to Matanuska Lake north of Anchorage. Using a chainsaw he cut a hole in the ice and slipped the body parts into the water.

     On March 6, 2012 Keyes flew from Anchorage to Las Vegas where he withdrew more money from the ransom account. From Nevada he traveled to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Later that month police in Lufkin, Texas arrested Keyes when he used Samantha Koenig's debit card to take out more ransom money. The police also seized the disguise props Keyes had used when making his ransom withdrawals. Keyes also possessed several rolls of cash.

     While in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Facility, Keyes admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering Samantha Koenig. On April 2, 2012 divers recovered her remains from Matanuska Lake. Keyes also confessed to having kidnapped and murdered Bill and Lorraine Currier (he raped Lorraine) in June 2011. (Their bodies were not recovered.) In the course of discussing his life as a serial lust killer Keyes took credit for the rape and murder of five other women whose names he either didn't recall or chose not to reveal.

     Scheduled to be tried for Samantha Koenig's murder in March 2013 Keyes said he planned to kill himself long before his trial. As a result officials at the correctional facility placed him on suicide watch. (Keyes was one of 23 inmates in the jail's segregation unit where the prisoners did not have cellmates.) In August 2012 Keyes talked the psychiatric staff at the jail into taking him off suicide watch. After that a guard checked Keyes' cell every 30 to 45 minutes.

     During the early morning hours of Sunday, December 2, 2012 Keyes cinched one end of a sheet around his neck and tied the other end to his ankle so that when he extended his leg the sheet tightened around his neck. He climbed into his bunk, and using a razor blade attached to a pencil, slit his left wrist. During the night the guard checking on his cell thought the inmate was sleeping.

     The next morning at six when the guard couldn't rouse Keyes out of bed the prison authorities discovered that the prisoner had committed suicide. Since inmates were required to return razors after shaving no one was sure how Keyes had come into possession of the blade.

     Israel Keyes, without the freedom to rape and murder women, had no reason to live. Instead of waiting around ten years for the state to kill him he decided to execute himself. By committing suicide this killer also expressed the sociopath's contempt for society, the law and his victims. 

Karen Sharpe: The Grandmother From Hell

     Karen Sharpe, a 54-year-old resident of New Straitsville, Ohio in the southeastern part of the state was as far from Norman Rockwell's version of a grandparent as you can get. Sharpe, who strikingly resembled a hungover Winston Churchill in a long ratty wig, had custody of her daughter's two girls, ages 13 and 11. A person like grandma Sharpe having custody of her granddaughters meant that the girls' mother must have been dead, homeless, in drug rehab or in prison.

     The oldest of Sharpe's granddaughters had a metal plate in her head as a result of abuse from another family member. This fact did not deter grandma Sharpe, on January 19, 2014, from punching the 13-year-old in the face. Ten days after that assault, the monster grandparent took out her rage--perhaps drunken--on the younger sister. Unbeknownst to Sharpe the 13-year-old recorded that assault on her cellphone.

     When the 11-year-old granddaughter accidentally stepped on Sharpe's sore foot the grandma forced the girl to the floor and stuffed a pair of heavily soiled men's underwear into her mouth. [Whose underwear?] Grandma Sharpe added to the girl's misery and horror by taping the disgusting garment into place, then ordering the child to swallow the fecal matter. 

     The domestic depravity continued. When Sharpe removed the tape the girl vomited on the floor. The sadistic grandmother responded by ordering the child to lick up the mess.

     The victim's sister, after secretly recording her grandmother's obscene cruelty, called the police. Police officers, after reviewing video, immediately arrested Karen Sharpe. Child services personnel placed the girls into temporary foster homes.

     A Hocking County prosecutor charged Karen Sharpe with kidnapping (a felony which includes unlawful confinement) and misdemeanor counts of assault and child endangerment. The thoroughly disgusted officers booked the suspect into the Southeastern Regional Jail. The judge set her bond at $1.1 million.

     The next day at the Hocking County Municipal Court Sharpe pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted of kidnapping she faced up to ten years in prison.

     Hocking County sheriff's deputy Ed Downs told a reporter with the Columbus Dispatch that the crime was the "most disgusting, heinous" case of child abuse he'd ever seen."

     On June 3, 2014 Karen Sharpe was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser offense of endangering children. Hocking Common Pleas Judge John T. Wallace sentenced the degenerate to three years in prison.

     The public officials responsible for this guilty plea should have been thrown out of office. For a crime against nature like this there are no mitigating circumstances. Such a case makes a mockery of our criminal justice system.

Don't Flip the Judge

     Your fingers can get you into a lot of trouble. Citizens who flip-off police officers are often arrested for disorderly conduct. School kids who make firearms gestures with their hands are suspended. And if you raise your middle finger while standing before an arraignment judge they will haul you off to jail. If you don't believe this, ask Penelope Soto.

     On February 4, 2013, 18-year-old Penelope Soto, having been charged with the illegal possession of Xanax stood before Miami-Dade County Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat. Pursuant to the judge's decision regarding the amount of Soto's bail he inquired about her assets. When the judge asked Soto specifically how much her jewelry was worth she laughed.

     Visibly annoyed by Soto's casual attitude in his court room, the judge said, "It's not a joke, you know. We're not in a club, be serious about it."

     "I'm serious about it," Soto replied. "You just made me laugh. I apologize. It's worth a lot of money."
     "Like what?" the judge asked.

     "Like Rick Ross. It's worth money."

     Judge Rodriguez-Chomat, who had no idea who Rick Ross was [a south Florida rapper], again became annoyed. He asked Soto if she had taken any drugs in the past 24 hours.

     "Actually, no," she replied.

     Judge Rodriguez-Chomat set Soto's bail at a very low $5,000. Moving onto the next case, he said, "Bye, bye."

     Instead of thanking the judge for his leniency, Soto replied, "Adios."

    Obviously irritated by Soto's flippant response and dismissive attitude the judge summoned her back to the bench and upped her bail to $10,000, still a relatively low amount.

     Now it was Soto's turn to be angry. "Are you serious?" she exclaimed.

     "I am serious," he replied.

     As she was being escorted out of the court room Soto turned back to the judge, blurted "F-you," and flipped him the finger.

     Shocked and obviously angered by this prisoner's disrespect Judge Rodriguez-Chomat cited Soto for contempt of court. He sentenced her on the spot to thirty days in jail.

The Vincent Viafore Murder Case

     In 2011 Vincent Viafore, a 1986 graduate of Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappinger, New York, met 31-year-old Angelika Graswald at the Pickwick Pub in Poughkeepsie. At the time Mr. Viafore was going through a divorce. Angelika Graswald, a native of Lativa (maiden name Lipska) had been previously married.

     In 2015 the engaged couple planned to get married in Europe on the Baltic Sea.

     At four in the afternoon of Sunday April 19, 2015, Vincent and Angelika entered the choppy waters of the Hudson River in Kayaks. They were en route from Plum Point in the Cornwall-on-Hudson area to Bannerman's Island.

     Three hours and forty minutes after they set out on the Hudson River in Kayaks Angelika Graswald called 911 to report that, forty minutes earlier, her fiancee had fallen out of his kayak into the river. She capsized as well and was rescued by a boater. Mr. Viafore was still missing.

     As Graswald received treatment for hypothermia at a local hospital police and rescue crews launched a search for Vincent Viafore. According to her, Mr. Viafore was not wearing a life jacket.

     The next day while searchers continued to look for Vincent Viafore's body Graswald went on Facebook to thank everyone for reaching out to her with sympathy. "Please keep your prayers for Vince," she wrote. "Miracles ARE possible. The authorities are doing everything they can." Graswald also posted a number of photographs of herself and Viafore captioned: "I miss you my love."

     On April 21, 2015, with the search for Viafore still underway, Angelika Graswald spoke to a local television reporter about how she and her fiancee had fallen out of their kayaks into the cold, choppy waters of the Hudson River. According to her, he had said, "I don't think I'm gonna make it." She responded, "What are you talking about? Of course you will."

     Detectives questioned Graswald on April 28, 2015, nine days after the still missing Viafore capsized on the Hudson. Investigators came away from the interview doubting Graswald's account of the incident.

     On Tuesday April 30, 2015, New York State Police Major Patrick Regan announced at a press conference that Angelika Graswald had been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of the still missing Vincent Viafore. "Initially," he said, "we believed Graswald to be a survivor of a tragic accident."

     Without elaborating, Major Regan said, "Graswald made statements to us that implicated herself in the crime. We believe we know what happened."

     Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, regarding the absence of a corpse, told reporters that "It's not unheard of presenting a murder case without a body." (True, but with an autopsy providing a cause of death the case against the accused would have to be very strong. With no eyewitness, confession, a strong motive or physical evidence linking Graswald to the murder, the prosecutor had an uphill battle.)

      As the investigation progressed Angelika Graswald was held in the Orange County Jail without bond on the second-degree murder charge.

     On May 3, 2015 Angelika Graswald gave another television interview, this time from the Orange County Jail. She said the police arrested her after reading entries in her diary in which she had written that at times she wished her fiancee dead. She explained that these passages had been written "during tough times under stress." The murder suspect insisted she loved Viafore and would never have caused him any harm.

      Angelika Graswald, on July 24, 2017, pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. Under the plea agreement she received a sentence of 15 months to four years in prison. She spent 27 months in jail awaiting her trial and was released from custody in December 2017.

     Mr. Viafore's body has not been found. 

Reckless Crime Reporting

     In the world of sloppy crime reporting guns shoot "rounds," indictments are "squashed," homes are "robbed," crime scenes are investigated by "criminologists" and negligent drivers are charged with "wreckless driving." Also, criminal suspects are "allegedly arrested."

     Rifles and handguns shoot bullets not rounds. The bullet is the projectile, the round is comprised of the bullet (usually lead made from a used car battery) and the cartridge case which contains the gun powder. The round is the whole package. In semi-automatic handguns--pistols--cartridge cases are automatically ejected and can become crime scene evidence. In revolvers cartridges remain in the handgun. The term "firearm" generally applies to revolvers and pistols.

     Criminal indictments, "true bills" handed down by grand juries, are quashed. Bugs are squashed. An indictment is an early step in the criminal justice process which merely indicates there is enough evidence to justify moving the case forward to the trial stage. Indicted subjects are still presumed innocent.

     Since the crime of robbery is theft by force or threat of force, a crime against persons--homes and cars cannot be robbed. Homes can be burglarized. Burglary is an unlawful intrusion into a dwelling or occupied structure motivated by the intent to commit a crime--usually theft. It is a crime against property. Cars are broken into for purposes of theft.

     Reporters often use "murder" and "arson" inappropriately. These are legal terms. An intentionally set fire--an incendiary fire--is not an arson until someone is found guilty of unlawfully setting it. A killing or homicide becomes murder after someone is found guilty of unlawfully and intentionally taking a life.

     A criminologist is a sociologist interested in criminal subgroups such as juvenile delinquents, prison inmates and prostitutes. They are usually academics who think about the causes of crime and invent terminology crime writers consider mealy-mouthed and vague such as "anti-social behavior" which runs from first-degree murder to littering. Criminalistics (an unfortunate term coined in 1947 by Dr. Paul Kirk) refers to a form of forensic science practiced by crime scene investigation experts interested in latent fingerprints, blood stains, bullets, cartridge cases, tire tracks and other types of physical evidence commonly found at the scenes of crime.

     Criminalists analyze physical evidence for the purpose of interpreting the crime scene and identifying the people who were there. Criminologists are usually found in the classroom, criminalists are found at crime scenes, in crime labs and in courtrooms.

     A wreckless driver is a careful one who has not had a wreck. A grossly negligent driver can be charged with reckless driving.

     Criminal suspects who are taken into custody have not been allegedly arrested. The arrests are facts. Until proven guilty they are the alleged perpetrators of the charges against them.

The Brenda Delgado Murder-For-Hire Case

     At quarter to eight on the night of Wednesday September 2, 2015, 35-year-old dentist Dr. Kendra Hatcher parked her car in the garage of her upscale Dallas, Texas apartment complex. As Dr. Hatcher did so a man hiding in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee driven by a woman jumped out of the vehicle and approached her. It was at that moment the assailant shot the dentist one time with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol, killing the victim on the spot. After stealing two of Dr. Hatcher's purses the shooter climbed back into the Jeep and was driven off by his driver.

     On Friday, September 4, 2015 detectives with the Dallas Police Department arrested 23-year-old Crystal Cortes on suspicion she was the person behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee. Cortes, during her interrogation, confessed to her role in the robbery-murder. She also identified the shooter as 31-year-old Kristopher Love.

      After a week into the Hatcher murder investigation detectives came to believe that robbery had not been the motive behind the killing. The officers suspected the slaying was the culmination of a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by a 33-year-old dental hygiene student at Stanford-Brown College named Brenda Delgado.

     Two months before the murder Delgado, a Mexican citizen, and her boyfriend, 38-year-old dermatologist Dr. Ricardo Panigua, broke up following a two-year relationship. After the split Dr. Panigua began dating Dr. Kendra Hatcher. Detectives suspected that Delgado had the dentist murdered out of jealousy and rage.

     When questioned by investigators the murder-for-hire suspect admitted lending Crystal Cortes the Jeep Cherokee and meeting with Cortes and the suspected hit man, Kristopher Love. She met with the murder suspects at a Dallas apartment complex a few days before the killing. Delgado, however, denied being the mastermind behind a plot to have her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend murdered. That, she claimed was Kristopher Love's idea.

     On September 11, 2015 a Dallas County prosecutor charged Crystal Cortes with capital murder. Police officers booked her into the Dallas County Jail under $500,000 bond. Cortes' attorney, George Ashford III, told reporters that his client, before what she believed was just going to be a robbery, tried to call and warn Dr. Hatcher of the hold-up plot. The lawyer said that after the killing Mr. Love had threatened to kill Cortes' 6-year-old son if she went to the authorities.

     According to Crystal Cortes, Brenda Delgado promised her and the hit man free prescription drugs if they robbed Dr. Hatcher. Also, Delgado allegedly paid Cortes $500 to drive Kristopher Love to the robbery scene. Just before Love climbed out of the Jeep in the victim's parking garage Cortes asked him how much money Delgado paid him to commit the robbery. Love replied, "That's none of your business."

     On October 3, 2015 Dallas detectives arrested Kristopher Love on suspicion of capital murder. At the time he was taken into custody he was still in possession of the murder weapon. A magistrate set his bail at $2.5 million. In Texas a capital murder conviction can lead to the death penalty.

     About the time Kristopher Love was arrested a Dallas County prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Brenda Delgado. At that time the murder-for-hire suspect's whereabouts were unknown.

     In speaking to reporters regarding Delgado, Major Max Geron of the Dallas Police Department said: "Ms. Delgado was involved in the planning and the commission of Kendra Hatcher's murder."

     On April 7, 2016 a spokesperson with the FBI announced that murder-for-hire fugitive Brenda Delgado had been placed on the bureau's "Ten Most Wanted" list. A day later the authorities in Torreon, Mexico took the fugitive into custody.

     In October 2018 a jury sitting in Dallas, Texas found Kristopher Love guilty of murder. The judge sentenced the hitman to death.

    Before Delgado could be extradited back to Texas the U.S. prosecutor agreed not to pursue the death penalty against the suspect. According to the Mexican authorities in charge of the case it could take up to a year to complete the extradition process.

     On June 7, 2019 a jury in Dallas, Texas, after deliberating only twenty minutes, found Brenda Delgado guilty of the plot to murder Dr. Kendra Hatcher. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

Robert Durst: Money, Madness and Murder

     Robert Durst, born in April, 1942 into a wealthy family, grew up in Scarsdale, New York. His father, Seymour Durst, got rich investing in real estate. In 1949 when Robert was seven he saw his mother fall to her death from the roof of the family mansion. The authorities ruled her death a suicide. Although young Robert received extensive psychological counseling his doctors worried that this childhood trauma would lead to future mental illness. (Robert's brother Douglas claimed in 2014 that Robert did not witness their mother's death, that the lie was nothing more than a ploy to gain sympathy.)

     After graduating from Scarsdale High School and Lehigh University, Robert Durst started graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles. After acquiring a first-class education he entered the family real estate business but hit a roadblock in 1995 when his brother Douglas assumed control of the enterprise. This led to Robert's permanent estrangement from his family.

     In January 1982 Robert Durst's wife Kathleen, a woman he'd married ten years earlier, suddenly disappeared. Robert waited several days before reporting her missing and didn't bother notifying her family. The police suspected foul play but without the body the homicide investigation hit a dead end.

     In 2000, with Kathleen Durst still missing, the New York State Police re-opened the 18-year-old case as a cold-case murder investigation. Detectives suspected that Mr. Durst murdered his wife and disposed of her body.

     Not long after the renewed police interest in Kathleen Durst's disappearance, someone murdered, execution-style, Susan Berman in her home in Benedict Canyon, California. Because Berman had been Robert Durst's longtime friend and confidant, detectives believed she had knowledge of Kathleen Durst's disappearance. Investigators speculated that she had been killed because she was a potential witness against Robert Durst. The Beverly Hills police were alerted to Berman's murder by the writer of an anonymous, hand-printed note telling them of a "cadaver" in Berman's house. The writer, in addressing the envelope, misspelled Beverly as "Beverley." Handwriting experts did not have enough document evidence to identify Robert Durst as the writer of the so-called "cadaver note."

     Although interrogated by detectives as a suspect in the Berman murder, Robert Durst was not charged. The two cases remained unsolved.

     In 2000 Robert Durst moved to Galveston, Texas to get away from the criminal investigations of his missing wife and his murdered friend, Susan Berman. About this time he took up cross-dressing.

     In 2001 the body parts of 71-year-old Morris Black, Robert Durst's apartment complex neighbor, were found floating in Galveston Bay. When questioned by the police Durst claimed that Mr. Black had entered his apartment, grabbed a gun hidden in the room and pointed it at him. According to the 60-year-old Durst the gun went off accidentally when he tried to disarm his neighbor.

     While he denied murdering Mr. Black in cold blood, Durst admitted that after the killing he used a paring knife, two saws and an axe to dismember the victim's corpse before dumping the body parts into Galveston Bay. The authorities booked Durst into the county jail on the charge of murder.

     Free on bail until the Morris Black murder trial, Durst missed a preliminary court hearing on the case. The judge issued an arrest warrant for the bail-jumper whose whereabouts were unknown. A month or so later police officers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania took him into custody outside a supermarket after he shoplifted a chicken sandwich, Band-Aids and a newspaper. Durst had $500 in his pocket and $37,000 in cash stashed in his car along with two guns, marijuana and Morris Black's driver's license.

     At Durst's 2003 murder trial for killing Morris Black, his three attorneys--the best legal defense team money could buy--argued self defense. Following seven weeks of testimony the jury shocked everyone by finding Robert Durst not guilty. After this stunning verdict, lead investigator Cody Gozalas told reporters that he'd rarely had a more clear-cut case of murder against a defendant. "I believe," the investigator said, "that Mr. Durst walked up behind Mr. Black and shot him in the back of the head. There was nothing to suggest self defense. Mr. Durst never mentioned self defense until after the defense attorneys took over the case."

     The Durst case jurors, widely criticized for the acquittal, said it had been a difficult verdict for them to arrive at. While they knew the defendant had cut up Mr. Black's body, they weren't convinced he committed a premeditated murder. The jurors bought the defense theory that Durst suffered from a psychological disorder that caused him to cut up and dispose of Mr. Black's body amid a state of panic.

     At the time of Durst's murder acquittal the Durst family fortune was valued at more than $2 billion.

     Prosecutors, having lost the Morris Black murder case, charged Durst with two offenses related to Mr. Black's murder--bail jumping and evidence tampering. To avoid going through another trial Mr. Durst pleaded guilty to the lesser charges. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison. Durst served one year of that sentence. Pursuant to the terms of Durst's 2005 parole he had to obtain official permission to travel any significant distance from his home.

     In December 2005 Robert Durst made an unauthorized trip to a shopping mall near the apartment complex where he killed Morris Black. In the mall he had the bad luck to run into the judge who had presided over his murder trial. The judge, suspecting a parole violation, notified the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. Corrections authorities sent Durst back to prison on the parole violation. He remained behind bars until March 2006.

     In 2011 Robert Durst purchased a townhouse in Harlem, New York. Three years later in Houston, Texas he exposed himself at a CVS drugstore then urinated on a rack of candy. A Harris County prosecutor charged him with criminal mischief and indecent exposure.

     In February 2015 the HBO television network aired the first episode of a six-part series about Robert Durst and his connection to his wife's disappearance and the Susan Berman murder. The show was called "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst." In making the documentary New York City producers Marc Smerling and Andrew Jarecki spent 25 hours interviewing Mr. Durst on camera.

     In the course of their research the producers acquired from Susan Berman's stepson a hand-printed letter Durst had sent to her a year before her murder. On the envelope Durst had misspelled Beverly as "Beverley."

     Believing that the identical misspellings in the Berman letter and the "cadaver note" indicated that Durst had hand-printed the note sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department, the TV producers asked New York City forensic document examiner John Osborn to analyze the handwriting evidence. After comparing the note to the Berman letter and 40 specimens of Durst's known hand-printing, Mr. Osborn concluded that Durst was the writer of the cadaver document. The producers notified the authorities in Los Angeles.

     In Louisiana at eleven at night on Saturday March 14, 2015, the day before the airing of the final episode of "The Jinx," deputies with the Orleans Parish arrested Robert Durst in his room at the J. W. Marriott Hotel. A prosecutor in Los Angeles had charged him with the first-degree murder of Susan Berman.  Durst had been preparing to fly to Cuba.

     The next evening, when the final episode of "The Jinx" aired, Robert Durst was seen being confronted by producer Jarecki with the two pieces of hand-printing featuring the identical misspellings of Beverly. Durst admitted writing the Berman letter, but in obvious distress, denied writing the cadaver letter to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     At the conclusion of the filmed interview of Durst in the New York City offices of producers Smerling and Jarecki, Robert Durst asked to use their restroom. With his microphone still hot, he began talking to himself. "There it is," he said. "You're caught. What a disaster. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

     On March 17, 2015 the authorities in Orleans Parish announced that Robert Durst had been charged in Louisiana with possession of a firearm by a felon, a felony that carried a maximum ten year sentence. It was not clear how this charge would affect the progress of the Berman murder case in Los Angeles.

     While Robert Durst sat in a Louisiana jail cell, police officers and FBI agents, on March 17, 2015, searched his apartment in a 17-story condominium located in a posh Houston, Texas neighborhood. His attorney, Dick DeGuerin, called the search a publicity stunt orchestrated by the Berman case prosecutor in Los Angeles.

     In January 2016 Robert Durst pleaded guilty to the federal gun charge. The judge in Louisiana sentenced him to 85 months to be served at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

     On November 7, 2016 the 73-year-old was arraigned in the Los Angeles Superior Court for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. At that hearing Deputy District Attorney John Levin announced that the state would not seek the death penalty in the case. Durst, who pleaded not guilty, sat in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace.

     On February 26, 2020, in a Los Angeles, California court room, a jury of eight women and four men were selected in the Susan Berman murder case. 

     On May 22, 2021, following a 14 month COVID-19 delay, Robert Durst went on trial for the murder of Susan Berman. A week into the trial, the judge put the proceeding on pause when the 78-year-old defendant was hospitalized. On June 13, 2021, after doctors declared Durst fit for court, the murder trial continued over the objection of the defendant's attorneys. 

     In July 2021 the Durst trial was put on hold for two weeks due to the defendant's re-hospitalization. 

     Robert Durst, on August 11, 2021, took the stand on his own behalf, and regarding his wife Kathleen, said that he has changed his mind several times on whether or not he had seen her enter the commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in January 1982. He also testified that he lied when he told investigators he had later spoken to her on the phone. Days after Kathleen's disappearance the defendant told a detective he had called and spoken to her at her apartment in Manhattan. "That was also a lie," he said. "I was imagining that she was out someplace having fun. It hadn't occurred to me that anything had happened to her."

     While on the stand Mr. Durst also said that Kathleen fabricated and exaggerated stories about his abusing her. 

     On August 17, 2021, on the fifth day of Durst's testimony, pursuant to being cross examined by prosecutor John Lewin, the witness admitted that he would lie to save his own skin. "If you had in fact killed Susan Berman," the assistant district attorney asked, "would you tell us?"

     "No," the witness replied.

     "If you said you've taken the oath to tell the truth but you've just told us that you would lie if needed, can you tell me how that would not destroy your credibility?"

     "Because what I'm saying is mostly the truth. There are certain things I would lie about, certain very important things." While on the stand Durst admitted writing the "cadaver note" with the misspelling of Beverly and sending it to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     On September 8, 2021 the Robert Durst trial entered the closing arguments stage during which time the prosecutor called the defendant's testimony "cockroach soup" and called him a "narcissistic psychopath." 

     The jury retired to deliberate the defendant's fate on September 14, 2021.

     On Friday, September 17 the jury returned with a first-degree murder verdict. The jurors also found Durst guilty of the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing a witness. This finding carried a mandatory life sentence. The convicted murderer's sentence hearing was scheduled for October 2021.

     After being sentenced to life in October 2021 Robert Durst tested positive for COVID on November 21, 2021 and was placed on a ventilator. He died on January 10, 2022. He was 78.

The Harold Montague Ax Murder Case

     In 2010 33-year-old Harold E. Montague lived in a single-story house with his wife Erricca, their two grade school children and Erricca's disabled mother, Monica O'Dazier. The family resided on San Pedro Avenue in the central valley area of Las Vegas. Erricca worked outside the home while her husband cared for her mother who had cerebral palsy and suffered seizures. Harold had been his mother-in-law's principal caregiver for the past five years.

     At eleven-forty on the morning of Thursday, February 11, 2010, Harold Montague removed a medieval-style battle ax that hung on a wall in his house and used the weapon to hack his mother-in-law twenty times. Leaving the gravely wounded O'Dazier bleeding in the rear bedroom of the dwelling, Montague, with the bloody battle ax in hand walked out onto Pedro Avenue where he encountered a young mother pushing her 4-month-old son in a stroller.

      Mr. Montague walked up to Sonia Castro and her son Damian and started swing the weapon. He quickly hacked the baby to death, then struck the mother several times in the head and hands as she tried to protect herself. During the murderous rampage Sonia Castro begged her attacker to stop. Instead of letting up he laughed in her face. With the dead baby under the overturned stroller and the infant's mother on the ground with her jaw hanging loosely from her face, Harold Montague walked back into his house.

     A neighbor, 52-year-old Teresa Garner, witnessed the attack and called 911. After making the emergency call Garner ran to the victims. She found the baby dead and Sonia alive but horribly disfigured and bleeding profusely.

     Paramedics rushed the unconscious Monica O'Dazier to the University Medical Center. Sonia Castrol was taken to the same facility where she was listed in "extremely critical" condition. Both women would survive Montague's vicious attacks.

     Following a brief scuffle, Las Vegas officers arrested Harold Montague at his house. He told the officers that he had no memory of the assaults. They booked him into the Clark County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

     The next day, at Montague's arraignment, the judge denied him bail. At that hearing defense attorney Norm Reed characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. The lawyer said he would have his client examined by a psychiatrist, and depending upon the results of that examination, make a decision as to whether he would plead his client legally insane.

     In October 2010 attorney Reed informed the court he planned to put on an insanity defense. The judge set the trial for June 2011.

     By 2013, due to several postponements, the Montague case had not come to trial. At a preliminary hearing on December 6, 2013 attorney Reed put a Reno, Nevada psychiatrist named Dr. Tom Bittker on the stand. Dr. Bittker said that several interviews of Mr. Montague had given him a profile of this disturbed man's life. For example, as a child he had been beaten, raped and emotionally tormented by his drug-abusing parents. At age six someone murdered the boy's father.

     According to Dr. Bittker, Harold Montague didn't go beyond the fifth grade and grew up in and out of a Las Vegas juvenile detention center. As an adult he married Erricca and fathered two children with her. She worked out of the house while he stayed at home, unable to hold down a job. In 2004 he began taking care of Erricca's mother.

     Dr. Bittker testified that in his expert medical opinion, when Mr. Montague attacked Monica O'Dazier, Sonia Castro and little Damian, he was in the midst of a psychotic episode that included the delusion that God was speaking to him directly.

     Erricca Montague took the stand at the hearing and testified that for several days before the attacks her husband's behavior had been bizarre. He hadn't slept for days, stopped eating and refused to drink water. He spent his nights pacing the house and talking to himself.

     Following the preliminary hearing the judge ruled the defense had produced enough evidence to go forward with an insanity defense. (In Nevada as in most states, legal insanity is a so-called affirmative defense which means the defendant has the burden of proving, with a preponderance of evidence, that the defendant was insane at the time of the alleged criminal act.)

     On May 22, 2014 the Montague case came to an abrupt conclusion when attorney Reed announced that his client pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and battery of a police officer. Under the plea agreement the defendant was sentenced on July 30, 2014 to life in prison without the chance of parole. In prison he would receive treatment for his mental illness.

     The plea agreement meant that Sonia Castro would not have to testify at Montague's trial. Earlier, at a April 2010 preliminary hearing, she testified that when she begged him to stop his murderous assault he laughed at her. After the rampage her jaw had to be surgically reattached. The attack had also left her with an irreparably damaged eye.

     Montague's guilty plea also spared eyewitness Teresa Garner from the ordeal of re-living the crime in court. After Montague's ax-wielding madness she suffered a nervous breakdown.

     Harold Montague, on anti-psychotic medication, expressed a desire to apologize to his victims and to explain that he had acted out of a psychotic delusion. I doubt that his apology and explanation helped his victims, people who were permanently scarred physically and emotionally as a result of his bloody rampage.

Judge Michael Thornsbury

     There are many jurisdictions in the United States that have earned reputations of being awash in governmental corruption. For example, nothing is politically on the level in the states of Louisiana and Nevada and the cities of Detroit and Chicago. But to varying degrees, governmental fraud, dishonesty, crime and abuse of power on the federal, state and local levels flourishes everywhere in America. Whenever you have government, big or small, you have corruption. Government is nothing more than organized lying. Government and corruption go together like pancakes and syrup. You can't have one without the other. And corruption is not just limited to big cities and states. It exists in places like Mingo County West Virginia. 

     Mingo County, home to 27,000, is located on the state's southern border with Kentucky. This place, going all the way back to its Hatfield and McCoy days, has a history of violence and political corruption. In 1997 the people of Mingo County elected Michael Thorsbury to the office of circuit judge. As the only common pleas judge in the county he held a position of power and influence. He was the proverbial big fish in the small pond. Unfortunately he was a piranha.

     In 2008 Judge Thornsbury became romantically involved with his married secretary. A couple of months after he begged her to leave her husband, Robert Woodruff, she ended her relationship with the judge. This is when things started to get bad for Mr. Woodruff.

     Judge Thornsbury, in a effort to railroad Mr. Woodruff into prison, asked a friend to plant drugs in a magnetic box under his car. The judge, thinking that his friend had carried out the assignment tipped-off the local police.

     Having failed to set Mr. Woodruff up for a phony drug bust, Judge Thornsbury tried something else. After carefully cultivating a friendship with a West Virginia State Trooper, the judge asked the officer to file a false complaint accusing Mr. Woodruff of grand larceny. The cop followed through by accusing Woodruff of stealing drill bits from his coal company employer. Mr. Woodruff had salvaged old drill bits, but with the company's permission. Mingo County prosecutor Michael Sparks intervened on Woodruff's behalf and a local magistrate dismissed the case. The state trooper, the next year, was named West Virginia State Trooper of the Year. 

     Determined to get Robert Woodruff out of the way in order to get to his wife, Judge Thornsbury, in an effort to dig up dirt on his target, appointed a friend to the position of foreman of a Mingo County Grand Jury. This gave the Judge's friend the power to issue subpoenas as part of a fishing expedition in search of information the judge could use against Mr. Woodruff. When the recipient of one of these bogus subpoenas refused to cooperate the Judge's scheme fizzled out.

     In 2012 Mr. Woodruff was assaulted outside a convenience store by two men, one of whom brandished a handgun. Judge Thornsbury tried to turn Mr. Woodruff from being the victim of the assault to its perpetrator. Once again the county prosecutor refused to go along with the phony case.

     On August 15, 2013 FBI agents arrested Judge Thornsbury in Williamson, the Mingo County seat. The jurist was under indictment by a federal grand jury for "conspiring to violate Robert Woodruff's right not to be deprived of his liberty without due process of law." If convicted as charged the 57-year-old judge faced up to 20 years in prison.

     On the day of Judge Thornsbury's arrest the West Virginia Supreme Court suspended him without pay and lifted his license to practice law.

     Judge Thornsbury, after posting his $10,00 bond, insisted that he was innocent and predicted that he would be vindicated when his case went to trial.

     On October 2, 2013 Mr. Thornsbury entered a plea of guilty of conspiring to deprive Robert Woodruff of his constitutional rights. He also resigned from office. The federal judge sentenced Mr. Thornsbury to 50 months in federal prison.

Outsourcing Contract Murder

     Murder-for-hire cases fall generally into one of two categories: criminal homicides in which the contract for the killing is carried out and crimes in which, due to law enforcement intervention in the form of an undercover operative playing the role of the assassin, no one is killed. While still a serious felony the latter offense is one of criminal solicitation.

     The cast of a murder-for-hire plot features three principal characters: the instigator/mastermind who solicits the criminal homicide, the hit man (or the undercover cop playing the role of triggerman) and the victim, the person targeted for death. Supporting players might include a cast of go-betweens and accomplices such as people who put the mastermind in touch with the hit man or the undercover cop, and helpers brought into the scheme by the triggerman.

     A few years ago hit men in China added a new player to the traditional cast of murder-for-hire characters: The subcontractor.

     In 2013 in Nanning, China, Tan Youhui, a highly successful owner of a real estate company, hired a hit man named Xi Guangan to kill a business competitor. The murder-for-hire mastermind provided his hit man with the murder target's business card, his cellphone number and his vehicle registration information. Tan Youhui also paid Xi Guangan two million yuan ($385,000) to do the job.

     Instead of pulling off the hit Xi subcontracted the assignment to another assassin named Mo Tianxiang and kept half of the murder fee for himself. Mo, the new hitman, decided to hire a man called Yang Kangsheng to kill the murder-for-hire target. Mo gave Yang 270 yuan ($52,000) upfront and promised $96,000 when he finished the job.

     Yang Kangsheng, the second murder-for-hire subcontractor, also decided to outsource the murder assignment to a third hit man named Ling Xiansi. Yang promised this assassin 100,000 yuan ($19,000) once he completed the task.

     Ling Xiansi, the final hit man in the outsourcing chain, decided not to get his hands bloody for a mere $19,000. Instead of killing Tan Youhui's business rival, Ling went to the murder-for-hire target to convince him to fake his own death. Ling could then collect his fee from Yang without resorting to murder.

     The murder-for-hire target approached by Ling Xiansi had no intention of faking his own death. Instead, he reported Tan Youhui's plot against his life to the local police.

     Following the criminal investigation into this bizarre murder-for-hire scheme where all of the hit men wanted the blood money without spilling any blood, Nanning police officers arrested the murder-for-hire mastermind Tan Youhui and his original hit man, Xi Guangan. The authorities also took into custody all of the subcontractors in the case.

     Upon his conviction for soliciting murder, Tan Youhui received a sentence of five years in prison. The others were each sentenced to two years and seven months behind bars.

The Warning Shot: Reckless Endangerment or Self-Defense?

     On Saturday night, October 19, 2013 when questioned at her apartment complex in Woodbridge, Virginia, Lakisha Gaither told Prince William County police officers that she and her daughter had been set upon that night by a gang of boys. As Gaither and Brianna, her 15-year-old daughter walked to their apartment ten boys approached them in the parking lot.

     According to the 35-year-old mother, one of the boys insulted and swore at them. Brianna, who was five-foot-nine and 160 pounds, did not back down. This led to an exchange of face-to-face insults. When the boy grabbed Brianna's shirt and started hitting her Ms. Gaither unholstered her handgun and fired a shot into the air.

     The warning shot ended the parking lot confrontation.

     Police officers arrested Lakisha Gaither for the reckless use of a weapon, a misdemeanor offense. None of the boys were charged with a crime. The next day Lakisha took Brianna to Fairfax, Virginia to stay with the girl's grandmother. Lakisha feared that the boys she had run off with the gunshot might retaliate.

     In speaking to a local reporter a Prince William County spokesperson said, "Ms. Gaither should have called the police instead of taking matters into her own hands. She may have been trying to break up the fight, but that's not the proper course of action to take."

     The gun-owning mother told the same reporter that, "I didn't feel like I was wrong. I wanted to protect my child. I just wanted this group of guys to disperse. I didn't know what they were going to do. I wanted him to stop hitting my child."

     A week after the confrontation and warning shot a Prince William County Police Department spokesperson issued a modified account of the incident. According to investigators, Brianna and the boy in question had been involved in an ongoing dispute over rumors that had been spread about her. That night, Gaither and her daughter sought out the boy near his home where the fight and warning shot took place. The boy claimed Brianna threw the first punch.

     Most people believe that citizens have the right to defend themselves when threatened with bodily harm. There is something profoundly satisfying about dispersing overwhelming force with a shot into the air. However, if the person claiming self-defense instigated the confrontation, there is a lot less sympathy for the shooter.

     The day after being taken to her grandmother's house in Fairfax Brianna went missing. Lakisha filed a missing persons report with the police. "I don't know where she is," said the mother. "I don't know if she's okay. I don't know if she's hurt. There's been no action on her Facebook."

    Four days later on October 24, 2013 Brianna returned home. Her mother, without revealing where her daughter had been, used Facebook to thank the people who had been looking for her.

     

     Lalisha Gaither was found guilty of the misdemeanor and paid a small fine.

Excited Delirium Syndrome: The Taser-Proof Man

     In the Guinness Book of World Records there seems to be a record for just about everything. But there is no mention of the man police used their Taser guns on 71 times within a span of thirty minutes. This had to be a world record in the category of repeatedly shocking someone who didn't die from it. The tasered man who holds this unofficial record will simply be referred to as Bob.

     Bob, a 25-year-old veteran of the Afghanistan War who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, after being allegedly disowned by his family in Phoenix, moved in with a relative in Flagstaff, Arizona. One evening in July 2010 after taking PCP and bath salts, Bob entered a Cheveron gas station and store on Highway 89 in Doney Park just north of Flagstaff. Barefoot, he wandered about the place leaving muddy footprints then approached the cashier and asked to be reported to the police.

     When Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Officer Brian Barnes arrived at the Cheveron station he encountered Bob in the parking lot in front of the store. As the officer approached the suspect Bob ran toward the entrance of the station with the officer in close pursuit. When Bob slammed into the closed door he bounced back into the officer and they both fell to the ground. Bob jumped up, this time opened the door and ran inside. After shooting Bob with his Taser gun Officer Barnes and a bystander managed to handcuff the out-of-control man. His hands, however, were not restrained behind his back.

     Bob settled down a bit, but the moment Coronino County Deputy Sheriff Don Bartlett arrived he started acting up. To hold him down the 260 pound deputy sat on his legs, but when that didn't stop the violent thrashing and kicking Deputy Barnes gave Bob a taste of his Taser. When that didn't help he zapped him two more times.

     As the DPS Officer and the deputy struggled with the drug-crazed man in the Cheveron station, EMT and firefighters arrived at the scene, followed by Sheriff's Office Sergeant Gerrit Boeck. During the next thirty minutes Deputy Bartlett used his Taser twenty more times on Bob with Officer Barnes helping out with his Taser.

     Finally, the three police officers, with the help of several firefighters, strapped the handcuffed man onto a gurney, but as they slid him into the ambulance Bob managed to grab Deputy Bartlett's belt. Sergeant Boeck, thinking that Bob was trying to get ahold of the deputy's gun, started punching him in the arm. It took several officers to pry Bob's fingers from the Deputy's belt.

     Once they got Bob into the ambulance a paramedic injected him with a tranquilizer used to control animals. The drugs kicked in and Bob settled down.

     At the Flagstaff Medical Center,a doctor diagnosed Bob as being in a state of excited delirium that gave him superhuman strength and rendered him impervious to pain. After a few days hospital personnel discharged Bob. The authorities decided not to charge him with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer or disorderly conduct. (The county prosecutor was probably concerned with the Taser overuse, and decided to let a sleeping dog lie.)

     Regarding the issue of excessive force, the DPS referred the case to the county attorney's office for investigation. That Bob survived all that electricity, especially when in a state of excited delirium, was miraculous. Had he died the medical examiner would probably have listed the cause of his death as excited delirium syndrome.

     These officers were presented with an extremely difficult situation, and when their Taser guns didn't work, ran out of good options. Sometimes the police encounter situations they are not equipped to handle. When it became obvious their Tasters weren't working the officers should have stopped using them.

     The officers were cleared by the district attorney's office of any wrongdoing in the case.

Randall Price: The Cost Of Hiring a Loose Cannon Cop

     Along a dirt road in Cottageville, South Carolina on May 16, 2011, Officer Randall Price of the Cottageville Police Department shot and killed Bert Reeves, a local construction company owner and the town's former mayor. They were both 40-years-old, had an antagonistic history between them, and, at the time of the shooting were engaged in physical combat. The backgrounds of both men involved conflict and trouble. Reeves, shot in the chest, died from his wounds at a local hospital. The chief of the six-man police department, consisting of only two full-time patrol officers, placed Officer Price on paid administrative leave pending the investigation of the shooting by detectives with the state.

     Mayor Reeves, in 2004, scolded a town officer for not writing enough speeding tickets to pay for his job. ( With 10,000 vehicles passing through town every day on a major route between Charleston and Waterboro, Cottageville was a notorious speed trap.) In March 2006 a sheriff's deputy arrested the mayor for driving 103 mph in a 55 mph zone. Three months later another deputy warned Mayor Reeves for driving 71 in a 55 mph area. In July 2006 Mr. Reeves suffered a serious brain injury after flipping his pickup. That November the mayor reported his wife and children missing. He said they had been taken against their will by unidentified people angry at him over some business deal "turned ugly." As it turned out the wife and kids left on their own volition to get away from Mr. Reeves. A month later, after the state revealed that Bert Reeves had traces of marijuana in his blood when he wrecked his truck he resigned from office. About a month before the fatal shooting Mr. Reeves complained about Officer Price's arrest of one of his relatives on an alcohol related charge.

     Officer Randall Price, before joining the Cottageville force in May 2008 had, two years earlier, been fired from the Blockville Police Department over a claim of excessive force. In 2001 he was fired from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office for criminal domestic violence, and in 1999 from the McCormick County Sheriff's Office for unsafe driving. During an eleven year period Mr. Price held jobs with eight different law enforcement agencies. He was the quintessential small town gypsy cop.

     In September 2011 Cottageville Mayor Margaret Steen laid off Officer Price. The police department, she said, couldn't afford to keep him on paid administrative leave pending the completion of the shooting investigation.

     In September 2012 Bert Reeves' ex-wife Ashley, on behalf of their two children, filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the town of Cottageville and other defendants. According to her attorney, Mullins McLeod, on the day in question officer Price drove out to Nut Hatch Lane where he blocked the former mayor in with his patrol car before shooting him in the chest. The plaintiff accused the defendant town of negligently hiring a cop with a history of police brutality. According to the lawsuit, because town officials knew that Officer Price was out to get Mr. Reeves they were negligent in not firing him.

     In August 2013 Lake Summers, the attorney representing the town, released civil suit documents that portrayed Bert Reeves, in the years before his death, as a mentally unstable and dangerous man. One of these documents included Mayor Margaret Steen's deposition transcript. Steen, the dead man's aunt, testified that shortly before the shooting, while she was at work in the town's municipal building he pulled his car up behind Officer Price's cruiser and started blowing his horn. The mayor, in an effort to defuse the situation told the officer to ignore Reeves and go about his business. After Officer Price drove off Mr. Reeves informed the major he had been "this close to getting" Officer Price.

     According to Mayor Steen, Reeves looked as though he was under the influence of drugs that day. She testified that he was "acting wild and crazy." The mayor advised her nephew to take his complaints about Officer Price to the chief of police. Bert Reeves did not take her advice. In recalling that moment the mayor said, "and he [Reeves] got this look on his face and he pointed and said, 'I'm going to get him now' and took off like a bat."

     The mayor, worried that there would be a dangerous confrontation involving her nephew and the police officer, immediately notified chief of police John Craddock of the situation. A short time later Chief Craddock informed the mayor that Officer Price had killed Bert Reeves.

      Bert Reeves' brother, Mercer Reeves, in his civil suit deposition revealed that his brother, in November 2006 was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility after he threatened to harm members of his family. According the brother, Bert Reeves threatened to kill his cousin and talked about harming a police officer.

     Ashley Reeves, in responding to attorney Summer's deposition transcripts admitted that her ex-husband had gone through a rough period before and immediately after their June 2007 divorce. In 2006 he threatened to burn down their house. The family court judge granted the divorce on grounds of Bert's adultery. Although the children remained with her, the judge granted her ex-husband visitation rights. "He was a really good father to his children," Ashley said. The plaintiff further asserted that her husband's difficulties with mental illness had nothing to do with his being wrongfully shot to death by Officer Price.

     According to a state toxicology report Bert Reeves, at the time of his death, was not under the influence of illicit drugs. However, he did have in his system, at "therapeutic levels," three prescription drugs designed to treat anxiety.

     There was no third party witness to this police-involved shooting. Moreover, the event was not caught on videotape. As a result all investigators had to go on was Randall Price's version of the incident. This and the fact Bert Reeves was mentally disturbed and angry in the hours before his death resulted in no criminal charges against the former police officer.

     On October 2, 2014 testimony in Ashley Reeves' wrongful death suit against Randall Price, the town and its police department got underway in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout the trial plaintiff's attorney McLoad painted Randall Price as a loose cannon cop who had been frequently disciplined and fired for his on-duty bad behavior with several law enforcement agencies.

     The federal jury on October 15, 2014, finding that the village of Cottageville had been negligent in hiring Randall Price, awarded the Reeves family $97.5 million. This award, punitive in nature, was a staggering financial blow to the community.

     In March 2015, to avoid an appeal that could take years, the plaintiffs agreed to accept $10 million in damages.