Removing Judge John F. Russo

     John F. Russo at age 34 was admitted to the New Jersey Bar Association in 1997. In 2009 he became an administrative law judge, a position he held until 2015 when he was sworn in as an Ocean County Superior Court Judge.

     In 2017, after Judge Russo asked a testifying rape victim if she knew how to prevent sexual intercourse by closing her legs, Assignment Judge Marlene Lynch suspended him from the bench. Once re-instated Judge Russo's professional behavior continued to draw criticism.

     In August 2018, based on several complaints, the Supreme Court of New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct charged Judge Russo with four counts of misconduct. He stood accused of asking court staff members to do him personal favors; asking preferential scheduling treatment for his son's child custody case; and refusing to recuse himself from a high school classmate's child support case.

     The most serious misconduct allegation against Judge Russo pertained to his asking an alleged rape victim, during cross-examination, if she had tried to close her legs to prevent the assault. The fact he had asked this question to another rape victim a year earlier made this complaint all the more disturbing.

     At his November 2018 disciplinary hearing in Trenton, New Jersey regarding the question he had asked the rape victim, Judge Russo claimed he was simply trying to help a "demoralized witness get re-engaged in the hearing."

     On May 26, 2020 justices on the New Jersey Supreme Court voted unanimously to permanently remove the 57-year-old judge from the bench. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in his rationale for the decision wrote that Russo's rape case question was "neither appropriate nor tasteful. No witness, alleged victim or litigant should be treated that way in a court of law. The question also shamed the alleged victim by intolerably suggesting she was to blame."

     Chief Justice Rabner, regarding Russo's judicial behavior in general, wrote: "His conduct breached the public trust. His pattern of misconduct and unethical behavior not only undermined several court proceedings but also impaired his integrity and the judiciary's. His overall behavior reflects a lack of probity [trustworthiness] and fitness to serve as a judge."

Assisted Suicide: The Willard Skellie Case

     In America suicide is not a crime, but in all states but one, helping someone take their life is a form of criminal  homicide. In New York state the act of assisted suicide is prosecuted as second-degree manslaughter which carries a sentence of five to fifteen years.

     Willard F. Skellie and his wife Kathy lived in a two-story house in Glens Falls, New York 45 miles north of Albany. In 2012 Kathy Skellie suffered from mental illness and clinical depression. The 59-year-old woman also struggled with the side-effects of her anti-psychotic medication and experienced panic attacks whenever she left the house. As a result she spent days at a time locked into her bedroom. Early in 2012 she tried to kill herself with a knife.

     At the end of her rope, Kathy asked her 69-year-old husband to buy a gun and teach her how to use it. Knowing that she intended to use the weapon to commit suicide, Willard purchased a 12-gauge shotgun and showed his wife how to operate it. As he demonstrated how the shotgun worked Kathy made notes on a sheet of paper. When Willard loaded the gun he altered the first two rounds so they wouldn't fire, hoping that two misfires would discourage Kathy from killing herself. Kathy took the loaded weapon to her room.

     On Friday, December 14, 2012 Willard Skellie went deer hunting in the morning and didn't return until evening. He went to bed that night without checking on Kathy. Early the next morning he went hunting again and when he returned to the house a few hours later forced his way into his wife's bedroom. He found that Kathy had used the shotgun to shoot herself in the head. He called 911.

     Officers with the Glens Falls Police Department asked Mr. Skellie if he had helped his wife take her own life. After he denied helping her in any way a detective asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph test at the state police headquarters in Greenwich, New York. Mr. Skellie agreed to take the lie detection exam.

     On Sunday, December 16, 2012 when detectives informed Mr. Skellie that the polygraph examiner believed he had lied when he denied helping his wife kill herself, he confessed to his role in her death. Mr. Skellie also admitted destroying the notes Kathy had taken regarding how to operate the shotgun. In his confession, Mr. Skellie said, "She was in mental pain from everything. She just couldn't take it anymore."

     On the day of Mr. Skellie's confession, Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan charged him with tampering with physical evidence and second-degree manslaughter. Unable to post his $100,000 cash bail Mr. Skellies was incarcerated in the Warren County Jail.

     In May 2013, Willard Skellie pleaded guilty to helping his wife kill herself. Judge John Hall sentenced Mr. Skellie to five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service. 

The Mitchelle Blair Murder Case

     On Tuesday morning March 24, 2014, Wayne County court bailiff Lee Gordon and her crew entered an apartment in Detroit to evict the family and clear the property. The subjects of the eviction, 35-year-old Mitchelle Blair and her four children by two men, resided in the Martin Luther King Apartments, a low-income housing complex on the city's east side. Neither of the children's fathers lived in the dwelling and both owed thousands of dollars in child support.

     Shortly after 36th District Court Bailiff Gordon and her crew entered the vacant apartment someone lifted the lid to a freezer that sat just inside the dwelling. In the freezer the eviction crew member discovered the frozen body of a girl inside a black plastic bag. Court Bailiff Gordon called 911.

     Responding police officers and emergency personnel found, beneath the girl's frozen corpse, the body of a boy, also inside a black plastic container. The girl had on a pink jacket and the boy had been wrapped in a white sheet.

     A neighbor of Mitchelle Blair's told police officers that the mother of the dead children was babysitting a friend's baby in a nearby apartment. When taken into custody Mitchelle Blair said, "They're both dead. I did it." At the police station she confessed fully to killing her 13-year-old daughter Stoni Blair on May 25, 2013. The suspect said she later murdered her 9-year-old son, Stephen Berry. The mother said she made her 17-year-old daughter place the bodies into the home freezer.

     When asked by a detective why she had murdered her two children the suspect said she had killed them because they had sexually molested their 8-year-old brother.

     Officers booked Mitchelle Blair into the Wayne County Jail on suspicion of child abuse and murder.

     Social workers took the other two Blair children, the 17-year-old and her 8-year-old brother into protective custody. Neighbors told investigators they rarely saw the home schooled children outside of the housing unit.

     A spokesperson for the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office said the bodies would have to thaw before autopsies could be performed. The process would have to occur slowly to preserve potential evidence.

      A few days after the shocking discovery in the freezer, detectives learned that over the years all four of Mitchelle Blair's children had been repeatedly beaten with a two-by-four board, burned with an ironing rod, whipped and choked with a belt. The bodies all bore scars of prolonged physical abuse.

     Autopsies determined that the two children in the freezer died from multiple blunt force trauma and burns. The medical examiner ruled their deaths as homicide. The forensic pathologist found physical evidence of prior physical abuse.

     On March 29, 2015 Alex Dorsey, the father of the murdered 13-year-old girl told a reporter that he hadn't seen his child in two years. Every time he showed up at the housing complex to visit his daughter, Mitchelle Blair told him the girl wasn't home. Efforts by Dorsey to gain custody of his other child were contested by the county's child protection agency.

     On March 30, 2015 Mitchelle Blair's attorney Wyatt G. Harris told reporters that his client was being held in isolation at the Wayne County Jail. In a statement that was outlandish even for a defense attorney, Mr. Harris said, "She realizes she has some challenges to work through. I met with her and she's doing okay, but there are things she needs to get through and she'll get through them."

     Challenges? Doing okay?  How could this child abuser and double murderer be doing "okay"? Moreover, who cared how she was doing?

     At Blair's arraignment on April 2, 2015 the defendant entered a plea of not guilty to the charges of murder. The judge ordered a team of state and private psychiatrists to evaluate her to determine if she was mentally competent to understand the criminal charges against her.

     A few days after her arrest Wayne County Jail officials took Blair out of isolation and placed her into a cell with another person. Blair, shortly after the transfer, assaulted her cellmate.

     On July 17, 2015 Wayne County Judge Dana Hathaway, following Mitchelle Blair's guilty plea, sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Pornography at Pasadena City College

     In 2013 Dr. Hugo Schwyzer was history and gender studies professor at Pasadena City College (PCC) in Pasadena, California, the nation's third largest community college. The 44-year-old professor had a Ph.D. in church history from UCLA. The so-called "male feminist" offered courses with titles like Men and Masculinity, Navigating Pornography and Gay and Lesbian American History. 

     In 2005 the Internet professor review site Rate My Professor named Dr. Schwyzer one of the nation's top 50 "hottest professors." 

     A prolific blogger, Schwyzer in 2006, claiming expertise in "body image, sexuality and gender justice," wrote that he'd like to open a summer camp for teens and adults where he could teach "fitness, basic life skills, spirituality, the whole thing." 

     New York Magazine in 2009 published an article about Professor Schwyzer's decision in 2005, when he was 37, to undergo circumcision. 

     In a tell-all confessional blog entry published in 2011, Dr. Schwyzer informed his readers (I presume mainly his students) of "a binge episode that ended with my attempt to kill myself and my ex-girlfriend with gas." According to the professor's detailed account of the 1998 incident (which was taken off the Internet), his former lover came to him for help after she had been tied and and raped by her drug dealer.

     In Schwyzer's Pasadena apartment he and the woman took drugs and had "desperately hot, desperately heartbreaking sex." Following the desperate, heartbreaking sex, the professor described what took place when the drunk and drug addled woman passed out: "I looked at her emaciated, broken body that I loved so much. I looked at my own, studying some of my more recent scars. (I'd had a binge of self-mutilation earlier in the week, and had cigarette burns on both arms and my torso.) " 

     Schwyzer continued: "And then it came to me: I needed to do for her and for myself the one thing I was strong enough still to do. I couldn't save her. I couldn't save me, but I could bring an end to our pain. My poor fragile ex would never have to wake up again, and we could be at peace in the next life. As drunk and high as I was, the thought came with incredible clarity. I remember it perfectly now."

     According to Schwyzer's story, he turned on the gas in his oven, aimed the toxic flow at his unconscious ex-girlfriend, drank more alcohol, swallowed more pills, then stretched out next to her body expecting to accompany the poor woman into eternity. Because the gas fumes failed to do the job, the ex-girlfriend survived the attempted mercy killing. 

     One of Dr. Schwyzer's students, in a 2012 Rate My Professor review, wrote: "If you get a chance to take his Navigating Pornography class (he was teaching it in 2013), you must! Hugo doesn't tell you what to think but helps you find yourself. Lectures and discussions handle even touchy subjects like sexuality with comfort and clarity.  He's a stickler for attendance and grammar, but grades fair. Great guest speakers, too!"

     Another Dr. Schwyzer Rate My Professor reviewer wrote: "....the stories he tells is like incredibly fascinating...."

     Under the auspices of his spring 2013 class, Navigating Pornography, Dr. Schwyzer invited the "award-winning" porn actor James Deen to speak to PCC students and members of the general public. Deen, a PCC alumnus had 1,300 porn flick performances under his belt including hits like "Atomic Vixens" and "Batman XXX." Deen's February 26, 2013 appearance at the college would, according to the actor, educate students about human sexuality and portray porn acting as a legitimate profession. 

     James Deen hoped that his presentation would empower students to make their own decisions. "This is an opportunity for people who want to ask questions and talk openly about sexuality." 

     When word got out about Dr. Schwyzer's porn star guest speaker, school administrators (Schwyzer referred to them as "suits") informed the professor that the presentation would have to be a classroom visit rather than a public speaking event. Schwyzer had failed to obtain a facilities use permit required for on-campus public events.

     In responding to his diminished role as a classroom lecturer James Deen told reporters that "sex is not a dirty, disgusting thing. I feel a little persecuted and singled out." 

     On his blog site the PCC pornography navigator addressed the Deen flap this way: "I am deeply disappointed that all those who were eager to hear James will be unable to do so. I am grateful that my students will still be able to hear him. And I look forward to welcoming other porn performers (and public critics of porn) to my class in the future. I remain proud to teach at Pasadena City College."

     In September 2013 Dr. Schwyzer's academic career came to an end when he admitted that he had been involved in many sexual affairs with his young female students. Moreover, he had recently been charged with DUI pursuant to a traffic accident that caused the serious injury of his female passenger. At this point Dr. Schwyzer took the opportunity to reveal that for decades he had suffered from "borderline personality disorder and bipolar depression." He said he had been divorced four times.

     In October 2018, Dr. Schwyzer was working at a Trader Joe's grocery store in southern California.

The Walter Ogrod Murder Case

     On July 13, 1988 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania a citizen discovered a cardboard box sitting among trash set out on the curb to be picked up. The box contained the naked and beaten body of a 12-year-old girl. The victim, Barbara Jean Horn, had resided on a nearby street with her mother and stepfather. She went missing the day before.

     According to the city medical examiner the girl in the box had been struck four times in the head with a blunt object. There was no evidence she had been raped or sodomized.

     About the time Barbara Jean Horn was abducted several neighborhood witnesses saw a man carrying a box that matched the container in which the victim's body was found. This unidentified man was described as white, in his mid-twenties to early thirties, five-foot-six to five nine and weighing 165 to 175 pounds.

     As possible suspects detectives questioned the victim's stepfather; the man who had purchased a television set housed in the box the body was found in; and a third man in the neighborhood who had a history of sex crimes involving young girls. Because the suspects didn't confess and there was no crime scene evidence linking them to the girl no one was charged. Without productive leads the Barbara Jean Horn investigation came to a halt.

     In 1991, three years after Barbara Jean Horn's murder a team of cold-case investigators reopened the homicide investigation. In April 1992 detectives with the Philadelphia Police Department questioned Walter Ogrod, a 27-year-old truck driver who lived with a married couple across the street from the victim and her family. The people Ogrod lived with had a son who regularly played with Barbara Jean Horn. Mr. Ogrod did not have a criminal record.

     Walter Ogrod, described by his mother as "slow" denied having anything to do with the girl's abduction and murder. But following a grueling 14-hour interrogation without the presence of an attorney Walter Ogrod broke down and confessed. He signed a 16-page confession his interrogators claimed were in his own words.

     According to Ogrod's confession he encountered the victim when she came across the street to play with the couple's son. He lured the girl into the basement with chocolate candy, and after forcing her to give him oral sex, beat her to death with a two-by-four. He removed her clothing, washed her body and carried her in the box to where it had been found. (Ogrod matched the general description of the unidentified man seen carrying the box.)

     Immediately after signing the confession statement the suspect recanted and insisted that he was innocent.

     Walter Ogrod went on trial for murder in October 1993. The prosecution, without an eyewitness or physical evidence connecting him to the crime, relied heavily on his confession. Mr. Ogrod took the stand and professed his innocence. The jury, after deliberating nine hours, returned a verdict of guilty. However, when the judge polled the individual jurors one of them announced that he disagreed with the verdict. The judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

     The second Ogrod murder trial got underway on October 1, 1996. This time the prosecution, instead of relying on the improperly obtained confession written in a style that didn't match the defendant's way of speaking, produced two jailhouse informants who testified that Ogrod had confessed to them. Both of these snitches were known in the criminal justice community for selling out inmates for their own benefit. They were, to say the least, not credible. Nevertheless the jury, after deliberating just two hours, found Walter Ogrod guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to death.

     In 2003 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the Ogrod conviction and death sentence.

     Over the next fifteen years Walter Ogrod's attorneys kept fighting to establish his innocence and set him free. His story was featured in a television documentary and a movie which portrayed him as an innocent man awaiting execution.

     In April 2018 the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office's Conviction Integrity Unit opened an investigation into the Ogrod case. Two years later attorneys with the district attorneys office filed a motion asking a judge to vacate Ogrod's conviction on grounds of police misconduct, false testimony and exonerating physical evidence. According to the motion Walter Ogrod was "likely innocent." The judge set a hearing on the motion scheduled for June 5, 2020.

     On March 10,  2020, Walter Ogrod's attorneys filed an emergency petition to have their client released from custody. The request was based on the fact Mr. Ogrod had symptoms of COVID-19 and required immediate medical attention.

     On March 11, 2020 officials at the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix, Pennsylvania, pending the outcome of the COVID-19 petition, placed Mr. Ogrod into isolation.

     On March 22, 2020 a common pleas judge ordered Walter Ogrod's transfer out of prison to an outside hospital for COVID-19 treatment.

     A Pennsylvania common pleas judge, on June 5, 2020 vacated Walter Ogrod's conviction and ordered him released from prison.

The James Nichols Murder Case

     On December 26, 1985 James L. Nichols Jr. reported his wife JoAnn missing from their home in Poughkeepsie, New York. According to Mr. Nichols his 55-year-old spouse, a first grade teacher at Gayhead Elementary School in upstate New York's Hopewell Junction, had left the house three days earlier. Mr. Nichols told investigators that she called home on Christmas eve but had refused to reveal her whereabouts.

     In an attempt to explain his wife's mysterious disappearance the husband told police officers that JoAnn had been depressed over the May 1982 drowning of their only son, 25-year-old James Nichols III. The young man died in a lake in Mississippi. On the Nichols' home computer detectives found comments ostensibly written by the missing wife that hinted of her intent to commit suicide.

     Many of JoAnn's friends and co-workers, from the very beginning, suspected the teacher's husband of wrongdoing in the case. Mr. Nichols, a hoarder who had filled the couple's basement to the ceiling with junk was by all accounts an obsessive man with strange habits.

     As is often the case when people go missing a handful of psychic "detectives" provided investigators with false leads as to the missing woman's fate and her whereabouts. Eventually the missing persons investigation fizzled-out and the matter was forgotten. Mr. Nichols, who did not remarry remained in the house in Poughkeepsie and continued to fill it up with garbage.

     On December 21, 2012 Mr. Nichols died at the age of eighty-two. The dwelling was in such a mess a contractor had to be called in to haul off the junk and trash before the place could be put on the market. At 5 PM on June 28, 2013 one of the workers stumbled upon a container that had been hidden inside a false wall in the Nichols basement. The box contained a human skeleton.

     A few days after the gruesome discovery Dr. Kari Reiber, the Duchess County Medical Examiner, announced that through dental records the remains had been identified as JoAnn Nichols. According to the forensic pathologist the first grade teacher had been murdered by blunt force trauma to the head.

     It's hard to image that JoAnn Nichols had been murdered by anyone other than her oddball husband James. For twenty-seven years her body remained hidden amid the junk and debris in this hoarder's basement. Apparently there was nothing, not even his wife's corpse, this man didn't save.

     While the motive behind JoAnn Nichols' murder remains a mystery, the following is a good guess: Fed up with her husband's hoarding, JoAnn Nichols expressed her intent to divorce him. That would mean they would have to sell the house, and in so doing, rid the place of all the debris. To keep his stuff and possibly benefit from his dead spouse's Social Security benefits, James Nichols murdered his wife and added her remains to his collection of trash and junk.  

Randi Chaverria: The Rise and Fall of a High School Teacher

     In 2005 Randi Chaverria (her future married name) graduated from Baylor University with a degree in fashion design. Upon graduation she studied abroad in Florence, Italy. When she returned to the United States Chaverria acquired a job as an assistant designer at Dillard's corporate office in Little Rock, Arkansas. While working in Little Rock she met and married Eric Chaverria. After five years in Arkansas the couple and their two children moved to Paris, Texas where Randi worked as a store manager for a retailer called Maurice's. In 2013, after six years in retail management, Randi Chaverria began teaching fashion design at a Paris, Texas high school.

     In 2016 Randi Chaverria and her family moved to Round Rock, Texas, a city of 100,000 within the Austin, Texas metropolitan area. At Round Rock High she taught fashion design as a Family and Consumer Science teacher. Two years later her husband joined the school's teaching staff.

     In May 2018 Randi Chaverria at the annual Round Rock School District banquet, was named the 2019 secondary teacher of the year. Upon receiving the honor the 35-year-old teacher told the audience that "The most important role of a teacher is to help shape future generations to become successful members of the community. More than any curriculum I teach my students," she said, "I hope that they will walk away from my classroom thinking of ways that they can make a difference in their community and impact the lives of others for the better."

     On November 18, 2019 officials with the Round Rock School District were informed that the local police department had received an e-mail from the parents of an 18-year-old male student who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with his teacher, Randi Chaverria. According the teen the relationship had gone on for several weeks.

     The school was also informed that the fashion design teacher and the student had exchanged text messages that suggested a sexual relationship that included, on two occasions in October 2019, the teacher performing oral sex on the student in her classroom. The student also told detectives that Chaverria had called him several times to arrange sexual encounters. When questioned about this she reportedly did not deny the affair.

     On November 19, 2019, the day after the school learned of the police investigation, Randi Chaverria resigned from Round Rock High School.

     A few days after her resignation a Williamson County prosecutor charged her with conducting an improper relationship with a student, a felony that carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

     The disgraced teacher on November 26, 2019 turned herself into the police. After being booked into the Williamson County Jail she posted her $25,000 bail and was released. (There is no disposition of this case posted on the Internet. In all probability the charges were dropped.)

     While female teacher sexual encounters with male students is fairly common, the Chaverria case was unusual because of the age of the teacher. In most of these cases the women are in their early twenties. Randi Chaverria was 36. 

Shivinder Singh Grover's Triple Murder And Suicide

     A Sikh is a follower of Sikism, a religion that originated in the Punjab region of India in the 1500s. There are about 500,000 Sikhs residing in the United States.

     Shivinder Singh Grover and his family were active members of suburban Atlanta's Sikh community of a thousand worshipers. The 52-year-old father of two had graduated from the University of Michigan and was an executive with one of the technology companies headquartered in the city's northern suburbs. His 47-year-old wife, Damanjit Kaur Grover, worked for Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. The Grover family resided in a gated apartment community in Johns Creek, Georgia, a town 25 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.

     One of Mrs. Grover's co-workers, at eleven o'clock in the morning of Monday, February 4, 2013, became concerned when Damanjit, a reliable employee, didn't show up at the office. After her phone calls to the Grover home went unanswered the co-worker called the Johns Creek Police Department and requested a welfare check at the Grover apartment.

     Later that morning, after breaking into the apartment, Johns Creek officers made a gruesome discovery. Officers found Damanjit dead from head wounds caused by a blunt object. The Grover children, Gurtej, aged 5, and Sartaj, 12, had fatal knife wounds in their necks. Shivinder, the presumed murderer of his family, had hanged himself.

     The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office labeled these deaths a case of murder-suicide. Investigators looked at computer files for a suicide note or something that suggested a reason behind the killings. They found nothing instructive.

     A friend of Mr. Grover's, in speaking to a reporter with a church-related publication, said, "Shivinder was a very respectful person. He talked respectfully to everybody. He was not a person who had any animosity, anxiety, or depression."

     Shivinder Singh Grover's murder of his family and himself shocked his friends, colleagues and family. No one saw this coming and no one had a clue as to what drove this man of quiet intelligence and apparent stability to commit such a violent, unspeakable act. (Some of Mr. Grover's friends wondered if the family had been murdered by an outsider. There was, however, no official investigation into that possibility.) 

Justyn Pennell: The Recreational Killer

      Justyn Pennell fantasized about how much he wanted to murder a perfect stranger for no reason other than for the pleasure of doing it. At two-thirty in the afternoon of January 9, 2020 the 21-year-old while driving his Red Chrysler PT Cruiser in Hudson, Florida, a town 40 miles west of Tampa, came upon an opportunity to fulfill his desire to take an innocent person's life.

     The object of Pennell's homicidal obsession was a 75-year-old man carrying a walking stick strolling by himself on a road that didn't have a sidewalk. The Vietnam veteran and Pennell were moving in the same direction with the man on the other side of the road walking toward the oncoming traffic. Mr. Pennell made a u-turn, increased his speed and sped directly at the pedestrian who tried in vain to avoid being run over.

     After plowing into the victim Pennell lost control of the PT Cruiser and slammed into a utility pole. He climbed out of the damaged car unhurt. Several motorists witnessed Justyn Pennell run down the elderly man who lay dead on the road.

     At the scene Justyn Pennell called 911, and to the dispatcher admitted he just intentionally crashed his car into a pedestrian for the purpose of killing him. To the police officers who responded to the call Justyn  Pennell again confessed. In relating what happened he told the officers that when he saw the terrified look on the man's face just before he killed him he laughed.

     On January 10, 2020 a Pasco County prosecutor charged Justyn Pennell with first-degree murder. At his arraignment, Pennell, who didn't have a criminal record, requested the services of a public defender. The magistrate denied him bail.

     In March 2022, after COVID related delays, Justyn Pennell pleaded no contest to first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison.

Ingrid Lederhaas-Okum: The Thieving Employee

     On July 1, 2013 at 8:45 in the evening, three men walked into the jewelry store inside the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, smashed a glass jewelry display case, scooped up $200,000 in Rolex watches then ran out of the hotel.

     While the Atlantic City smash-and-grab theft was considered a fairly big haul it was nothing compared to what a jewelry thief could steal working from the inside.

     On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, the day after the Borgata Hotel smash-and-grab, FBI agents arrested Ingrid Lederhaas-Okum at her upscale home in Darien, Connecticut. A federal prosecutor charged the 46-year-old vice president in charge of product development at the Tiffany flagship location on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue with stealing $12 million worth of jewelry from the famed store.

     FBI agents working the case believe that between November 2012 and February 2013 the executive had checked out more than 165 pieces of jewelry that were not returned to the store. The missing merchandise included diamond bracelets, platinum and gold diamond drop and loop earrings, platinum and diamond rings and platinum and diamond pendants. Lederhaas-Okum stood accused of selling the checked-out pieces of jewelry to another company. Federal investigators believed the suspect used her husband and one of her friends as sales intermediaries.

     After Tiffany & Company auditors couldn't find the 165-plus pieces of merchandise in the store's inventory the firm fired Lederhaas-Okum. She held the position of vice president since January of 2011. Lederhaas-Okum began working for the company in 1991 following her graduation from Georgetown University.

     Igrid Lederhaas-Okum pleaded not guilty to the jewelry theft charge.

     In terms of stolen merchandise and cash, retailers in general are hit the hardest by employee thieves who steal three times more than shoplifters and robbers combined. Quite often the most trusted and longtime employees are the thieves who do the most damage. Most of them are eventually caught. A few of these so-called internal thieves avoid prosecution by agreeing to pay restitution. Occasionally, a retailer will decline to prosecute a dishonest employee because such an action would create unwanted publicity. Most of the time, however, inside retail thieves who have stolen large amounts of cash or merchandise end up in prison.

     It's hard to understand why a trusted high-paid executive would risk everything by stealing from his or her employer. Some prominent high-end thieves steal because they are living beyond their means, have large medical expenses, are compulsive gamblers or addicted to drugs. Some employees simply enjoy the thrill of enriching themselves at the expense of their employers. 

     On December 23, 2013 following her guilty plea to one count of Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property, U.S. District Court Judge Paul G. Gardephe sentenced Lederhaas-Okum to one year and one day in federal prison. By any standard, given how much she had stolen, this employee thief got off light.