The Juan Elias Garcia MS-13 Gang Double Murder Case

     In 2010, 17-year-old Juan Elias Garcia, a resident of the Long Island community of Central Islip, New York belonged to the street gang MS-13, also known as the Mara Salvatrucha Gang. This violent, criminal organization with ties to several Mexican drug cartels had a strong presence on Long Island with more than a dozen chapters. The gang also flourished in other areas of the U.S. with substantial Salvadoran populations such as in southern California, Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia.

     The five-foot-four inch Garcia, nicknamed "Cruzito," dated 19-year-old Vanessa Argueta. A problem developed in their relationship when Garcia learned she had ties to two rival gangs, the Latin Kings and the 18th Street Gang. Pursuant to gang culture Argueta's association with the rival groups amounted to "disrespecting" MS-13.

     To save face Juan Garcia acquired permission from a gang leader named Heriberto Martinez to have his girlfriend murdered.

     On February 4, 2010, Garcia, as part of the murder plot invited Vanessa Argueta to dinner in Central Islip. She accepted his invitation and arrived with her 2-year-old son. From their meeting place Garcia forced Argueta and the boy to accompany him to a nearby wooded area where they were met by a pair of gang assassins, Rene Mendez Meja and Adalberto Ariel Guzman.

     Meja shot the mother to death in front of her son, then, as the boy cried in terror, shot him in the head as well. The bodies were discovered the next day. To avoid arrest Juan Garcia fled to El Salvador.

     In 2012 Heriberto Martinez, the gangster who sanctioned the murder, was convicted for his role in the assassinations. The judge sentenced him to life plus 60 years. A year later Meja and Guzman were found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They each received the same sentence.

     Juan Garcia, the gang member behind the killings, remained at large in Central America.

     In February, 2014, one day after the fugitive turned twenty-one, a federal grand jury sitting in Central Islip indicted the fugitive Garcia for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The FBI, on March 26, 2014 placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted List. Two days later Garcia turned himself in to law enforcement authorities in Nicaragua. After being briefly detained at the U.S. Embassy in Managua, FBI agents took Garcia into custody. He was immediately extradited to America.

     A U.S. District Court judge on March 31, 2014 ordered Juan Garcia held without bail. Speaking through an interpreter the suspect entered a not guilty plea.

     In October 2014 Garcia changed his plea to guilty. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

     In May 2018, in referring to the growing incidents of MS-13 brutality in the United States, President Donald Trump called these sadistic rapists and murderers "animals." Trump's sob-sister adversaries in politics and the media immediately criticized this characterization as inhuman and cruel. What's inhumane and cruel is the fact that government authorities had allowed these gangs of illegal aliens to flourish in the United States.

     Suffolk County (Long Island) District Attorney Timothy Sini, in December 2019, announced that as a result of a two-year investigation his office charged and arrested 96 MS-13 gang members for a variety of crimes including murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, and aggravated assault.

True Detective Magazines: The Golden Era

     The period 1920 to 1940 marked the golden age of the fact crime magazine. Aimed at the adult male reader, the pulp art covers--often featuring sexy women in distress--promised stories of salacious violence and mayhem. Unlike many writers for crime fiction periodicals such as Black Mask who went on to become famous authors of mystery novels, the literary contributors to the fact-crime magazines remained relatively unknown. Exceptions included writers Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson and Alan Hynd.

     True crime magazines usually featured ten murder cases per issue. (Occasionally there were accounts starring con men, counterfeiters, safe crackers, forgers, pickpockets and extortionists.) Because true crime readers were armchair detectives, good investigative work comprised a major element of each story. Editors liked cases solved by the emerging forensic sciences of latent fingerprint identification, blood stain analysis, tire impression evidence, biological time of death estimation, handwriting identification and forensic ballistics. It also helped if the homicides were exceptionally gruesome such as one cover-story that featured a woman tied to a tree to be eaten alive by hyenas.

     True crime magazines in the golden era reflected the history of crime in America. In the 1920s and 30s the magazines featured depression era bank robbers like John Dillinger, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, "Baby Face" Nelson and Ma Barker and her degenerate son Fred. Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, Alvin Karpus and "Machine Gun" Kelly all made regular appearances between the covers of fact-crime publications. In 1931 True Detective Mysteries started a regular feature called "Line Up." Police departments across the country sent in mug shots and descriptions of criminals on the run. Readers who recognized these fugitives and turned them in received small cash rewards. By 1944 "Line Up" had been responsible for the apprehension of more than 300 criminals. The magazine also ran an ongoing piece called "Crime Doesn't Pay" consisting of photographs of bad guys who had been recently brought to justice. (Crime did pay for True Detective Mysteries.) Many of the men shown in this feature were destined for the electric chair.

     In 1933, True Detective Mysteries started a series of articles by the famous Seattle criminalist Luke S. May. All of these pieces involved criminals who were outfoxed by scientific crime detection. By 1940 Luke May was also writing a regular question and answer column about forensic science. Mr. May also authored several books featuring his most interesting cases.

     True Detective Mysteries, first published by Bernard MacFadden in 1924, is considered the first fact-crime magazine. Within a few years MacFadden would publish several true crime periodicals including Master Detective. At his peak MacFadden was selling two million magazines a month. In the 1930s a true crime buff could choose between 100 magazines with titles like, Front Page Detective, Official Detective, Baffling Detective, True Gangster, Detective Yarns, Spicy Detective, Current Detective and Detective World.

    By the end of World War II the golden era of the true detective magazine came to an end. Mass market paperbacks and television finishrd off the last of the true crime magazines. MacFadden Publications, in 1971, sold off  True Detective Mysteries to a British firm. In the summer of 1995 the company ceased publication altogether. In the 1960s, MacFadden managing editor Marc Gerald said, "Our readership of blue-hairs, shut-ins, Greyhound bus riders, cops and axe murderers are old and dying fast."

     Today, true crime buffs (mostly women), have access to mass market paperbacks, cable television and the internet. Patterson Smith, the antiquarian bookseller doing business in New Jersey, had a database of 30,000 articles out of 2,000 fact-crime magazines. To request a search of this repository the crime researcher could submit the name of the crime victim, the name of the perpetrator, the location of the crime, the year it took place or a brief account of the case. 

Steven L. Nelson: Born to be Executed

     When he was 3-years-old Steven L. Nelson set fire to his mother's bed. His father abused the boy and by the time he was ten Steven was being medicated for attention deficit disorder. But the child's emotional and personality problems were deeper than that, and the drugs only made him more hyperactive and impossible to control.

     As a teen Steven continued to be a disciplinary problem in school and got into trouble with the law. He seemed to enjoy disturbing the peace, causing trouble and inflicting pain on others. He ended up in juvenile detention centers in Oklahoma and Texas. One didn't have to be an expert in deviant behavior to predict bad things for this young man as well as the people unfortunate enough to cross his path. Had he been accidentally run over and killed by a bus it would have been a gift to society.

     On March 3, 2011 in North Arlington, Texas the 25-year-old sadistic sociopath, in the course of robbing a Baptist church murdered the pastor, 28-year-old Clint Dobson. He beat, bound, then with a plastic bag suffocated his victim. Nelson also viciously assaulted Judy Elliott, the church secretary. Left for dead, she survived the attack.

     A week after the murder of Pastor Dobson and the attempted murder of his secretary, the police arrested Nelson. Although this cold-blooded killer was off the street he was still an extremely dangerous man. While incarcerated in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth, Texas, Nelson, while in the recreation area of the lockup attacked another inmate. Nelson beat 30-year-old Jonathan Holden with a broom handle, then strangled the mentally retarded man to death with a blanket. After murdering Mr. Holden, Nelson showed-off to inmates who had witnessed the homicide by doing the Chuck Berry hop, using the broomstick as his guitar.

     Knowing that he was going to be convicted for murdering Pastor Dobson, Steven Nelson, with nothing to lose, had killed another man just for the thrill of it.

     On October 8, 2012 after a week-long trial, a jury in Fort Worth, Texas found Steven Nelson guilty of capital murder in the brutal, sadistic killing of Pastor Dobson. Following the verdict the penalty phase of the murder trial got underway before the same jurors. The jury would have to decide whether to sentence this man to life in prison without parole or condemn him to die by lethal injection.

     After a week of testimony from prosecution witnesses Nelson's defense attorneys put experts on the stand in a futile attempt to make their client slightly more sympathetic than the vicious, recreational murderer that he was.

     Dr. Antoinette McGarrahan, a psychiatrist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, labeled Nelson a violent psychopath and said he will pose a danger to people exposed to him in prison. This prosecution witness also debunked Nelson's claim that he had multiple personalities. On October 16, 2012, the jury, after deliberating Nelson's fate for 90 minutes, issued their verdict: death by lethal injection.

     Nelson, true to form, was not done creating havoc. After sheriff deputies placed him into a courthouse holding pen he flooded the cell and the courtroom, with black fire-retardant infused water from the sprinkler head he had broken. Courthouse personnel scrambled to save boxes of evidence from being ruined by the foul-smelling liquid. As the courthouse people rushed to save the evidence they could hear Nelson howling like a wolf in his cell. Firefighters who responded to the scene shut off the water to the sprinkler system.

     Steven L. Nelson was executed on February 5, 2025. He was 38-years-old and to the end maintained his innocence. 

The J. Everett Dutschke Ricin Poison Case

     Ricin is a naturally occurring protein found in the caster oil plant. The pulp from just eight caster beans can kill an adult. As little as 500 micrograms of the poison, an amount that would fit on the head of a pin, can be fatal. Delivered through the air, injected or swallowed, ricin is 6,000 times more toxic than cyanide. There is no antidote for this poison.

     In 1978 an assassin used ricin to kill Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian writer, dissident and defector. The killer used the tip of an umbrella to deliver the ricin as Markov waited for a bus in London. The victim died four days after being pricked by the deadly umbrella.

     Ricin was used as a warfare agent in Iraq during the 1980s. In 2004 someone sent a ricin-laced letter to U. S. Senator Bill Frists. The letter was intercepted at a mail sorting facility outside of Washington, D. C. The sender was never identified.

     On April 16, 2013, the day after the Boston Marathon Bombings, postal workers at a mail-handling facility outside of Washington discovered a suspicious letter addressed to U.S. Senator Roger Wicker. The letter to the senator from Mississippi turned out to be laced with ricin. Dated April 8, 2013 and postmarked Memphis, Tennessee, the envelope did not include a return address.

     A second ricin letter, one addressed to President Obama was also intercepted at an off-site D.C. area mail-handling center. Both letters were signed, "I am K.C. and I approve of this message."

     FBI agents, on April 17, 2013, arrested a 45-year-old man from Corinth, Mississippi on federal charges related to the two ricin mailings. The suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis, had used the phrase "I am K. C. and I approve of this message" on his Facebook page. Curtis had a history of mental illness and a handful of misdemeanor arrests. When he wasn't posting online political rants Curtis worked as an impersonator of celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bon Jovi and Prince.

     On April 23, 2013 after searches of the suspect's home, vehicle and computer failed to provide incriminating evidence, the charges against Mr. Curtis were dropped. A federal judge ordered his release from jail. Following his release from custody the father of four told reporters he had been framed by J. Everett Dutschke, a long-time personal enemy from Tupelo, Mississippi.

     According to media reports Mr. Dutschke was awaiting trial on a child molestation charge. In 2007 he ran for a seat in the Mississippi state legislature. In that race he lost to the incumbent. FBI agents searched Dutschke's house for evidence linking him to the case.

     A third ricin letter, one that linked Paul Kevin Curtis and Everett Dutschke to the case, actually reached its intended target. The receiver of this piece of mailed poison was an 80-year-old Mississippi judge. In 2004 Judge Sadie Holland presided over an assault case that sent Curtis to jail for six months. Judge Holland was linked to Mr. Dutschke through a long-running political feud between their families.

     After opening the threatening letter, Judge Holland called the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The judge was not poisoned by the letter.

     FBI agents, on April 27, 2013, arrested Everett Dutschke in connection with the ricin poison cases. In May 2014, following his guilty plea, U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock in Aberdeen, Mississippi, sentenced J. Everett Dutschke  to 25 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

Persecuting Robert Kraft: The Asia Day Spa Case

     Robert Kraft, a Harvard Business School graduate and paper products tycoon worth about $6.6 billion, purchased the NFL's Boston Patriots franchise in 1994 for $176 million. In New England Mr. Kraft and his team were loved, everywhere else they were not. He was probably the highest profile team owner in the league. What happened to him in 2019 made him known even to people who don't follow professional football.

      On February 22, 2019 the chief of the Jupiter, Florida Police Department held a press conference to announce the results of a 6-month prostitution sting involving a local massage parlor called Asia Day Spa.

     According to the Asia Day Spa's website the spa offered a "variety of massage modalities" that included services that cost patrons $59 for a half-hour and $79 for a full hour.

     Several female employees of the spa had been charged with prostitution. Twenty-five suspected johns had been charged as well. These men were charged with soliciting another to commit prostitution, a misdemeanor that carried, for the first time offender, up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. That was not big news. That was not the real reason the chief of police called a press conference.

     The big news, the bombshell, was that Robert Kraft was one of the johns caught up in the vice dragnet. According to the chief of police the 78-year-old visited the spa on two occasions in January 2019. He allegedly was recorded on hidden police surveillance cameras engaging in sexual activity with two Asia Day Spa employees.

     Robert Kraft when he was in Florida lived in a double apartment in a luxury waterfront development he owned in Palm Beach. According to the police report he made the two 35 -minute trips to Jupiter in a chauffeur driven car.

     A spokesperson for Mr. Kraft told reporters that "We categorically deny that Mr. Kraft engaged in any illegal activity."

     On May 9, 2019 Palm Beach County Judge Joseph Marx sealed more than 100 hours of Asia Day Spa police video recordings, including footage allegedly depicting Robert Kraft's sexual activities. The judge wrote: "Defendants are guaranteed a fair and impartial trial by jury, and not a trial by community or in the press."

     Judge Marx, on May 20, 2019, decided that prosecutors in the Asia Day Spa case could not use the video recordings of Robert Kraft and the others as evidence at their trials. The judge ruled the "dragnet" videos violated the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of lawful spa customers.

     On December 28, 2019 Florida's attorney general asked for a three-judge appellate panel to reverse the lower court's exclusion of the Asia Day Spa videos. The attorney general argued that without hidden surveillance cameras prostitution sting operations would be impossible. Without this evidence the state had no case.

     Robert Kraft issued a statement that in part read: "I know I have hurt and disappointed my family, my close friends, my co-workers, our fans and many others who rightfully hold me to a higher standard."

     Every year in the United States, undercover vice cops arrest roughly 7, 500 men for patronizing adult prostitutes. They do this at a time when jurisdictions like the state of California have essentially legalized retail theft, the public use of heroin and parole violation. Prosecutors in several big cities do not prosecute people for breaking into cars, robbery, possession of heroin and resisting arrest.

     In September 2020 the prosecutor dropped the charges against Robert Kraft and the other alleged johns.

     Lei Wang, the manager of the Asia Day Spa pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of soliciting another to commit prostitution. The 41-year-old was sentenced to one year probation and fined $5,000. Three other female spa employees pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses and received probation. 

     Prosecuting men who patronize prostitutes, in a nation overwhelmed with serious crime, is an outlandish waste of law enforcement resources. Nothing destroys faith in a criminal justice system more than selective and heavy-handed law enforcement.  

The Randy Alana Murder Case

     In 2013 50-year-old Sandra Coke, a capital case investigator for the federal public defender's office headquartered in Sacramento, California resided in Oakland with her 15-year-old daughter. As a federal investigator in cases involving death row inmates who appealed their sentences, Coke interviewed them, their family members and acquaintances for the public defenders office in the Eastern District of California. The job often involved travel around California and into other states.

     In May 2013 someone broke into Sandra Coke's home and stole her beloved cocker spaniel, Ginny. After that, in her spare time, Sandra ran down leads regarding her pet's whereabouts by posting missing dog flyers around her neighborhood. The posters offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to Ginny's return.

     On Saturday, August 3, 2013 someone called Sandra with information about the dog. At eight-thirty the following evening she left her house to meet with the person who called about Ginny. Before leaving the dwelling Sandra told her daughter that she'd be gone no more than thirty minutes. When she did not return to the house as promised her daughter reported her missing to the Oakland Police Department.

     Doing some detective work of her own, the missing woman's daughter tracked her mother's two iPhones using a GPS application. One of the phones had been dumped along a highway near Richmond, California. The other device had been ditched in Oakland.

     At seven-forty-five the evening following Sandra Coke's disappearance, an Oakland police officer found her 2007 Mini Cooper convertible parked two miles from her home. In a quest for leads regarding her whereabouts officers removed bags of evidence from the Coke residence. Included among the items seized were two laptop computers.

     A few days into the missing person's case investigators developed a suspect from Oakland named Randy Alana. The 56-year-old career criminal had been seen with Sandra Coke on the night she went missing. The two had dated twenty years earlier.

     In June 2012 Alana was paroled from a fifteen-year prison sentence for armed robbery. He also had convictions for kidnapping and rape and was registered in California as a high-risk sex offender. The fact he and SandraCoke had been together on the night she went missing raised the possibility of murder.

     For Randy Alana this was not the first time he became a suspect in a murder case. In September 1983 Alameda County, California prosecutor Russ Giutini charged the then 26-year-old criminal with using a hammer to beat to death Marilyn Pigott, a woman he had known since elementary school. Pigott had been murdered on August 13, 1983 in her North Oakland apartment.

     In June 1984, while awaiting his murder trial in the Alameda County Jail, Alana and a fellow inmate named James Hodari Benson were accused of killing 40-year-old Al Ingram. The victim had been stabbed 93 times. Alana and Benson were members of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang. They killed Ingram under the false belief he was a police informant.

      In the fall of 1984, the jury in the Marilyn Pigott murder trial deadlocked 9-3 in favor of convicting Alana. In his second trial the jury acquitted him because the witnesses who testified against him were "street types." In the Pigott case, Prosecutor Giutini managed to convict Alana of receiving stolen property in connection with his possession of the murder victim's ring.

     In 1986, as a defendant in the Al Ingram murder trial, the jury couldn't reach an unanimous verdict on the issue of Alana's guilt. The judge declared a mistrial. James Hodari Benson was convicted of the murder in 1987. A year later, Alana pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the Benson case in return for a prison sentence of six years.

     Police officers, on August 6, 2013, arrested Randy Alana on a parole violation and booked him into the Santa Rita County Jail in Dublin, California. The magistrate denied him bail.

     Three days after Alana's arrest a Contra County search and rescue team near Lagoons Valley Park, an unincorporated area in Solano County outside of Vacaville, California, found Sandra Coke's body in a creek bed. She had been strangled to death.

     Former Alameda prosecutor Russ Giutini in speaking to a CBS reporter described Alana as a good-looking career criminal who was cunning and manipulative.

     On August 18, 2013, in a jailhouse interview, Randy Alana told a reporter with The Oakland Tribune that he and Sandra Coke had been in love and had planned to get married. During the past several months, according to Alana, they had shared a house and regularly attended the Harmony Missionary Baptist Church. "I'm being treated like a suspect," he said.

     In November 2013 an Alameda County prosecutor charged Mr, Alana with murder in connection with Sandra Coke's death. Al Wax, Alana's longtime criminal defense attorney, calling the case against his client "very weak and circumstantial," asked a judge in June 2014 to dismiss the case. The judge denied the defense motion to drop the charges. The case would progress to the trial stage.

     The Randy Alana murder trial got underway on March 16, 2015 in the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland. Prosecutor Colleen McMahon, in her opening remarks to the jury, said that after the defendant stole Sandra Coke's dog Ginny on May 9, 2013 he tried to extort $1,000 from her for the pet's return. She didn't file charges against him and didn't pay him the ransom. She did, however, speak to his parole officer, accusing Alana of stealing her car, abducting her dog and stealing her daughter's expensive headphones. This discussion led to Alana's incarceration that spring and summer for violating his parole.

     Infuriated that Coke had spoken to his parole agent, the defendant, on August 3, 2013, strangled Coke to death in the rear seat of her Mini Cooper parked behind the Nights Inn in North Oakland.

     Defense attorney Al Wax, in his opening statement, said that without an eyewitness or a confession the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial and insufficient.

     Over the next four weeks prosecutor McMahon presented her evidence that included incriminating surveillance camera footage, cellphone data and records from the defendant's electronic ankle monitor. When police officers arrested him on August 6, 2013 in Dublin, California Alana was in possession of the murder victim's car keys and credit cards.

     Two of the defendant's former cellmates at the Santa Rita County Jail took the stand for the prosecution and testified that following his arrest, he remarked that while he had assaulted many women in the past, things didn't look good for him this time.

     Prosecutor McMahon, to establish motive, played a recording of a phone call from Alana to Sandra Coke made on May 9, 2013 from the Santa Rita County Jail. In that call Alana expressed his rage at her for getting him into trouble with his parole officer.

     A 40-year-old homeless woman took the stand and said that just hours after Sandra Coke's murder, the defendant took her, in his "wife's" Mini Cooper, to a motel in Oakland where they smoked crack and she gave him oral sex.

     Randy Alana took the stand on his own behalf on April 20, 2015. Under direct examination by defense attorney Wax the defendant gave an account of his activities on the day of Coke's murder, a story he was telling for the first time. According to Alana, on August 3, 2013 he and Sandra Coke in her Mini Cooper followed two people she believed would lead them to her dog Ginny. At the point of destination, a crack house in Richmond, California, he went inside to smoke dope while she remained outside talking to the unidentified people.

     When Alana came out of the crack house Sandra asked him to take her car and bank card and withdraw cash from her bank account. When he returned to the crack house with the money she was gone, presumably murdered by these mysterious people.

     On May 4, 2015, the last day of Alana's self-serving testimony, prosecutor McMahon, during a blistering cross-examination, poked several holes in the defendant's story. The next day, following the testimony of the defendant's 33-year-old daughter from a short-lived marriage in the 1980s, the defense rested. 

     After the closing arguments, the jury, following a two-hour deliberation found Randy Alana guilty as charged. He faced up to 96 years in prison.

     The Alameda County judge, on June 18, 2015, before sentencing the murderer to 131 years in prison, called  Mr. Alana a "black hole that sucks the life out of anything positive." 

The Don Willburn Collins Murder Case: Robert Middleton's Long, Painful Death

     Robert Middleton, on June 28, 1998, turned eight. Early in the evening of his birthday his 13-year-old neighbor, Don Willburn Collins, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. Robert survived the attack but suffered third-degree burns over most of his body. The crime took place in Splendora, Texas, a small town in the Houston metropolitan area.

      Don Willburn Collins confessed to the police, was arrested and spent several months in juvenile detention. He was not, however, prosecuted as a juvenile or an adult for the assault. According to the Montgomery County prosecutor in charge of the investigation the state did not have enough evidence against Collins to go forward with the case. As a result the authorities had no choice but to release the suspect. (Collins took back his confession and there were procedural problems associated with the investigation.)

     Over the years Robert Middleton underwent 100 painful surgeries and many skin grafts that still left him disfigured. In 2011, after being diagnosed with skin cancer, Robert, in a videotaped deposition given shortly before his death at the age of 23, revealed that two weeks before the arson-assault Don Collins sexually molested him. Don Willburn Collins set his victim on fire to prevent him from reporting the rape.

     The medical examiner, finding that Robert Middleton's cancer was caused by his burns, ruled his death a homicide. Following this cause and manner of death determination detectives with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office conducted a seven-month cold-case investigation into the 1998 sexual molestation and subsequent arson.

       In 2002, three years after Collins set Robert Middleton on fire, a jury found him guilty of sexually molesting an 8-year-old boy. At the time of that rape Collins was fifteen. For that offense he spent four years in juvenile detention. The assault took place in San Jacinto County, Texas.

     In 2012 Robert Middleton's parents won a $150 million wrongful death suit against Collins. Because the man who set fire to their son was homeless the plaintiffs knew they would never collect the civil judgment.

     A Montgomery county judge, in 2013, transferred the Collins/Middleton case from juvenile to adult court after the district attorney charged Don Willburn Collins with felony-murder in connection with Middleton's delayed death. Under the felony-murder doctrine, a person who commits a felony is culpable for any death that occurs in the commission of that crime. In the Collins case the underlying felony was sexual assault. While the sexual crime didn't cause Middleton's death, it lead to the arson that in turn caused the cancer that killed the victim. (The arson-assault wouldn't work as the underlying felony because the statute of limitations on that offense had run out. The sexual assault, however, wasn't reported until 2011.)

     In terms of the law, the prosecution in the Collins case faced a felony-murder causation problem. The prosecutor had to directly link the arson to the sexual attack. There was also the passage of time between the rape and the victim's cancer death. In the old days before crimes were codified, there was a common law principal related to criminal homicide called the year and a day rule. If the victim of an assault died a year and one day after the attack too much time had passed to allow a murder charge.

     Collin's attorney challenged the transfer of his client's case into adult court. In 1998, under Texas law, a person under the age of 14 could not be charged as an adult with a capital offense. Collins was 13 when he allegedly raped then set fire to the victim. (In 1999 state legislators dropped the age to ten.)

     In October 2014 State District Judge Kathleen Hamilton approved a request by Collins' attorneys to move the murder trial out of Montgomery County. E. Tay Bond, one of the defendant's lawyers, had argued that the intense publicity the case received would make it difficult for his client to get a fair trial locally. Mr. Bond said, "I think the degree of shock as to what happened to Robbie Middleton has created a fervor in the community where people have decided that Don Collins is in fact guilty of something. They would convict him just based on emotion instead of an objective review of the evidence or lack thereof in the case."

     On January 10, 2015 Judge Hamilton heard arguments on the Collin's defense motion to suppress statements the defendant made to police sixteen years earlier regarding setting the victim on fire. Two days after the oral arguments the judge decided that because the interview room had not been approved by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department Board she had no choice but to exclude this evidence from the prosecution's case. Judge Hamilton noted, however that "the officers involved in the 1988 statements had not acted in bad faith." But because Texas law did not provide for good-faith exceptions to the rules in the Family Code, the judge's hands were tied.

     In looking for evidence against the defendant, detectives questioned a man who served jail time in juvenile detention with Collins who claimed that Collins threatened to burn him the way he set fire to Robert Middleton.

     On February 4, 2015, in a Galveston, Texas courtroom, Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn, in his opening statement to the jury made up of six men and six women, said, "Our case is based on the testimony of adults who came forward and can tell you what the defendant did when he and Robbie Middleton were children. Witnesses will tell you that he poured gasoline on Robbie Middleton in 1998 and set him on fire."

     Defense attorney Tay Bond told the jurors they should not expect the prosecution to present eyewitnesses to this crime because there weren't any.

     Dr. David Herndon, a burn surgeon and chief of staff at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Galveston took the stand as the prosecution's first witness. He said the burns the victim suffered had eaten through his fat tissue into his muscle. The doctor said Middleton's burns were among the worst he had ever seen. For surviving 13 years, the doctor said he considered Middleton a "miracle."

     Dr. Herndon was followed to the stand by three physicians who testified that the cancer that eventually killed the victim had been caused by his burns.

     Over the next several days, prosecutor Blackburn put on witnesses who testified that Collins had bragged to them about what he had done to Robbie Middleton. One of these witnesses, an inmate at a juvenile detention center who served time with Collins, said the defendant had raped him then threatened to burn him the way he had set fire to the Middleton boy.

     Defense attorney Bond, in his closing remarks to the jury, again stressed the fact there were no eyewitnesses to the crime or physical evidence linking his client to Middleton's burning.

     Prosecutor Blackburn, in his closing statement, called the defendant a "monster" and a "child rapist."

     On February 9, 2015 the jury in Galveston, Texas found Don Collins guilty of capital murder. Following the verdict attorney Bond promised to appeal the conviction on grounds that trying Collins as an adult for a crime committed when he was thirteen was unconstitutional.

     Judge Blackburn sentenced Collins to forty years in prison.

     On April 4, 2017 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the murder conviction.

The Stephanie Lazarus Murder Case

     In the early 1980s Stephanie Lazarus, a student at UCLA, fell in love with John  Ruetten who also attended the university. After college Lazarus and Ruetten continued to see each other and even took trips together. But for John Ruetten it wasn't a serious relationship. In 1984 Stephanie joined the Los Angeles Police Department as a patrol officer. A year later Mr. Ruetten shocked Lazarus with the news that he was marrying a woman named Sherri Rasmussen. Lazarus responded to the revelation by becoming hysterical. At the hospital where Rasmussen worked as a nursing supervisor the jilted, distraught cop confronted her rival. At one point Lazarus threatened that if she couldn't have John Ruetten nobody could. Notwithstanding Lazarus' smoldering objection, Ruetten and Rasmussen were married in November 1985.

     On the morning of February 24, 1986 Sherri Ruetten (nee Rasmussen), still employed at the hospital, called in sick. Stephanie Lazarus also took a day off from the LAPD. At six that evening John Ruetten returned to his townhouse in the San Fernando Valley to find his wife of three months sprawled on her back on the living room carpet. Dressed in a red robe and a pink T-shirt, Sherri Ruetten  had been struck over the head with a heavy vase, tied-up, beaten, bitten and shot to death. The Los Angeles County coroner estimated that the 29-year-old victim had been murdered around noon.

     A crime scene investigator, in the era before DNA identification, had the presence of mind to swab the victim's bite mark with cotton and place the sealed evidence in the coroner's freezer. (From saliva a forensic serologist at the time could only determine the donor's blood type.) Detectives on the case, thinking that Sherri Ruetten had interrupted a burglar, did not suspect officer Stephanie Lazarus. The investigation went nowhere.

     In 1993 the LAPD promoted Lazarus to detective. That year she married a fellow police officer and shortly thereafter the couple had a daughter. In 2005, the LAPD formed a squad of cold-case investigators who re-opened hundreds of old, unsolved murders that featured biological evidence capable of being DNA tested. The 1986 Sherri Ruetten case fell into that category. In 2005 a DNA analysis of the saliva traces swabbed from the victim's bite wound revealed the killer was a woman. While members of Sherri's family suspected that Stephanie Lazarus had killed Sherri, the LAPD, perhaps unwilling to investigate one of their own, stayed with the intruder theory.

     In 2009 after Stephanie Lazarus retired from the force as a highly decorated detective specializing in art theft, cold-case investigators turned their attention to her. That year, a detective who had followed the suspect to a Costco store retrieved a soda can she had thrown into a trash container. A DNA analyst compared saliva traces from the soda can to the Rasmussen bite mark residue. The comparison resulted in a partial DNA match. This linkage to the murder scene provided detectives with probable cause to take Lazarus into custody.

     With Lazarus in custody an investigator had the opportunity to swab the inside of her mouth for a higher quality saliva sample. According to DNA expert Jennifer Francis, the sample from the suspect's mouth matched the crime scene saliva. This meant that Stephanie Lazarus was the only person in the world who could have bitten Sherri Ruetten. The district attorney's office charged the retired police officer with first-degree murder. A judge set her bail at $10 million. Lazarus would await her trial in the Los Angeles County Jail.

     The Lazarus trial got underway on February 6, 2012. Deputy District Attorney Paul Nunez, after showing the jury of six men and six women the murder scene photographs, spent the first week establishing the integrity of the DNA evidence. He also emphasized how it proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had murdered Sherri Ruetten. Defense attorney Mark Overland aggressively cross-examined the prosecution's DNA experts in an effort to plant seeds of doubt regarding the reliability of physical evidence this old.

     On February 14 the prosecutor put John Ruetten on the stand. The 53-year-old witness described how the defendant had reacted to the news he was marrying Sherri Rasmussen. To calm her down he agreed to have sex with her. After the murder the idea that Lazarus had killed his wife never crossed Ruetten's mind. Detectives told him that Sherri had been murdered when she interrupted a burglar.

     Prosecutor Nunez, on February 16, 2012, put his last witness on the stand, a FBI criminal profiler who testified that the killer staged part of the murder scene to throw off investigators. According to this witness the victim's townhouse, with its alarm company sign on the door and its location in plain view of other houses, was an unlikely target for a burglar.

     Mark Overland, in his two-day defense presentation, attacked the DNA evidence. He tried to convince jurors that the 1986 bite mark saliva had degraded and had been contaminated. The defense attorney also put a fingerprint examiner on the stand who testified that none of the murder scene latents belonged to the defendant. Overland rested his case without putting the defendant on the stand. 

     In his closing remarks to the jury Deputy District Attorney Nunez said the DNA evidence against the defendant was "overwhelming." The prosecutor identified the motive in the murder as jealousy. The defense attorney asked the jurors to disregard the DNA evidence which he characterized as "compromised." During the closing arguments the defendant looked on without outward signs of emotion.

     On March 8, 2012, after deliberating a little more than a day, the jury found Lazarus guilty of first-degree murder. Not long after the verdict the Rasmussen family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the LAPD and the city.

     On May 10, 2012 the judge sentenced the 51-year-old Lazarus to 27 years in prison. A civil judge, in 2013, dismissed the Rasmussen wrongful death suit against the police department.  

Ice Cream Truck Wars: Sno Cone Joe Versus Mr. Ding-A-Ling

     When imagining men who sell ice cream products out of good humor trucks one envisions jolly Mr. Rogers types dressed in white. But why would mobile ice cream vendors be any different than people who drive taxi cabs, UPS trucks and buses. Not that there's anything wrong with those folks.

     In the 1970s and 80s Robert Pronge, the driver of a New Jersey Mister Softee's Truck moonlighted as a contract killer. Pronge became known for his use of cyanide to complete many of his assignments. (He dropped the poison in his targets' whiskey and beer, not their Mister Softee cones.) On occasion, however, he'd keep his victims cooling in his Mr. Softee truck until he could permanently dispose of their corpses. The hit man, referred to in certain circles as "Mr. Softee", ended up being murdered by Richard Kuklnski, the prolific Gambino family contract killer known as the "Ice Man." Mr. Kuklnski introduced "Mr. Softee" to the idea of using cyanide as a murder weapon. In all probability Robert Pronge is the only hit man in history who hauled his dead bodies around in an ice cream truck. But compared to Richard Kuklnski who killed more than 200 men for money, "Mr. Softee" was an amateur. "Ice Man" Kuklinki was a cold-blooded sociopath while "Mr. Softee" was just crazy. He did, however, sell a lot of ice cream and from all accounts loved children.

The Ice Cream Truck War

     In Gloversville New Jersey 34-year-old Joshua Malatino, the owner of the local Sno Cone Joe franchise, also sold a lot of ice cream. His 21-year-old girlfriend, Amanda Scott, helped him operate his good humor truck. Business was good in Gloversville until a rival good humor man rolled into town in his Mr. Ding-A-Ling truck.

     Mr. Malatino, aka Sno Cone Joe, decided to harass his business rival, 53-year-old Brian Collis aka Mr. Ding-A-Ling. On April 16, 19 and 28, 2013 Joshua Malatino, with his Sno Cone Joe jingles blaring from his truck tailgated Mr. Ding-A-Ling around town. Whenever Mr. Collis stopped to service a customer Sno Cone Joe would pull up behind Mr. Ding-A-Ling and offer the consumer free ice cream. At one point Mr. Malatino allegedly phoned Mr. Ding-A-Ling headquarters in Latham New Jersey and said, "I own this town!"

     On May 3, 2013 a local prosecutor charged  Joshua Malatino and Amanda Scott with harassment and misdemeanor stalking. If convicted Sno Cone Joe and Sno Cone Jane (just kidding) faced up to three months in jail. According to Gloversville Police Captain John Sira, Mr. Malatino had forced a different ice cream truck operator out of town the previous summer.

     In April 2015 a Fulton County judge dismissed the charges against Joshua Malatino and Amanda Scott. 

Appalachia Noir: The Larry Paul McClure Murder Case

     Larry Paul McClure Sr., a registered sex offender served 17 years in prison for sexually molesting a young female relative. On February 14, 2019 the 55-year-old registered sex offender and his two daughters, 31-year-old Amanda McClure and 32-year-old Ann Choudhay, were together in their father's house in Skygusty, West Virginia. Amanda McClure's boyfriend, 38-year-old John Thomas McGuire was also in the dwelling that day. Skygusty, West Virginia is a small town in McDowell County in the southern part of the state near the Kentucky and Virginia state lines.

     John Thomas McGuire resided in Owatonna, Minnesota, a town of 25,000 located in the southern part of the state. His girlfriend, Amanda McClure, lived in Chisago, Minnesota, a small community 35 miles northeast of Minneapolis. Amanda had come to Skygusty, West Virginia with Mr. McGuire with the purpose of helping her father and her sister murder him.

     On Valentine's Day 2019 in the Skygusty house, Larry McClure Sr. hit John McGuire in the head with a wine bottle. The daughters tied up the unconscious victim, injected him with two vials of methamphetamine then looked on as their father strangled him to death.

     After killing John McGuire, Larry McClure Sr. and his daughters removed the dead man's clothing and buried him in the backyard. After disposing of the corpse, Mr. McClure and his daughter Amanda returned to the house where they had sex.

    A few days after burying John McGuire behind the Skygusty house, Larry McClure and his daughters dug up his body and moved it to a more remote area in the county. The trio deposited the corpse in another shallow grave, confident that if found the decomposing body would not be connected to them.

     On March 11, 2019 Amanda McClure and her father drove to nearby Tazewell County, Virginia where they obtained a marriage license. A few days later, they were married in a small United Methodist church. Amanda, in applying for the marriage license listed the name of another man in place of her father's.

     More than seven months after John McGuire's cold-blooded murder, detectives in Minnesota, in the course of their missing persons investigation into the disappearance of Mr. John McGuire, received a tip that the missing man had been murdered and was buried in McDowell county, West Virginia. The caller implicated Larry McClure and his daughters. The Minnesota detectives called the authorities in West Virginia to inform them of the possible murder.

     On September 24, 2019 police officers in West Virginia, operating on the Minnesota tip, questioned Larry McClure Sr. on the pretext they were investigating his failure to comply with the terms of his sex offender registry. During that interview Mr. McClure informed his questioners how he and his two daughters murdered John McGuire. McClure said he didn't know exactly why his daughter Amanda wanted John McGuire dead, but did say she planned his murder and had been spending Mr. McGuire's monthly Social Security checks. Larry McClure led the police officers to the spot in McDowell County where he and his accomplices buried the victim's body.

     A McDowell County prosecutor charged Larry Paul McClure Sr., Amanda McClure and Ann Marie Choudhay with first-degree murder. Police arrested Choudhay at her home in Boone, North Carolina. Amanda McClure was taken into custody at her residence in Chisago, Minnesota.

     On November 4, 2019, while incarcerated at the McDowell County Jail, Larry McClure Sr. wrote a letter in hand that read: "I just want it over. No trial. No taxpayer's money spent for a trial. It is hard for the state of West Virginia to fight against itself because I plead guilty! No contest. Thank you for your time in this matter."

      In July 2020 Amanda McClure pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The judge sentenced her to 40 years in prison. A month later Larry Paul McClure pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 55 years to life. Anna Marie Choudhary, following her second-degree murder plea in April 2021, was sent to prison for forty years.