Mark Berndt: The Elementary Teacher From Hell

     People without sexual perversions are normal in generally the same way. Sexual perverts, on the other hand, are deviant in disturbingly diverse ways. Adults who use innocent children to satisfy their perverse sexual compulsions are not mentally ill in the sense they are detached from reality. To other adults, even to people they work with every day, they can seem normal. Sexually perverse elementary teachers are hard to detect because they victimize kids who are under their control. Sometimes the children don't even know they are being victimized. Teachers like this can get away with sexually abusive behavior for decades. Most of them probably die before they are caught. Short of launching McCarthy-like witch hunts, how can these sexual predators be identified and stopped?

     Mark Berndt, a 61-year-old third grade teacher at the Miramonte Elementary School in Florence Firestone, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County, began teaching at the school in 1979. Miramonte, situated in a hispanic neighborhood is in the Los Angeles Unified School District comprised of hundreds of campuses and 650,000 students. During his tenure at Miramonte, Mr. Berndt, according to his personnel file, performed up to school standards without a single disciplinary action taken against him. Moreover, he had never been arrested for anything more serious than a traffic violation.

     In October 2010 a technician at a CVS drugstore in the South Bay area of Los Angeles came across a set of disturbing photographs of grade school boys and girls depicted in situations suggesting a bizarre form of sexual bondage. The film processor, as mandated by state law, notified the Redondo Beach Police Department. On December 2, 2010 the Redondo police turned the 40 photographs over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.

     In some of the photographs Mark Berndt either had his arm around a third grade boy or girl or his hand covering their mouths. Some photographs showed children with live bugs crawling on their faces. Other kids were either blindfolded or had their mouths covered with clear tape. Some of the girls were depicted holding spoons up to their mouths containing a white liquid. Children were also pictured about to eat cookies topped with a substance later identified as the the teacher's semen. (In Berndt's classroom trash can police recovered a blue plastic spoon containing traces of his semen.)

     Detectives with the sheriff's office's Special Victims Unit started identifying the students in the photographs for interview. On January 3, 2011 a detective showed up at the Miramonte school to question Berndt. The teacher refused to speak to the investigator without first consulting with an attorney.

     A former fourth grade student of Berndt's, a woman who was now 30, told detectives that in 1990 she and two other girls spoke to a school counselor about their teacher's odd inappropriate behavior. They had seen him, seated at his desk at the front of the room, playing with himself. The counselor accused the girls of making up the story. As a result, nothing came of their complaint. (In 1993 police investigators looked into similar complaints against Berndt. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, on grounds the police had not gathered sufficient evidence against the teacher, decided not to pursue the case. Presumably, school officials knew of the investigation.)

     Shortly after Mark Berndt refused to be interviewed by the police, school administrators removed him from the classroom. A month later, in February 201l, they fired him. (Actually, he wasn't fired. School officials induced him to retire by offering him $40,000 which he accepted. Firing a public school teacher is no small feat.) While the parents of the children depicted in the photographs were told of the investigation the police kept the general public in the dark. (Placed under police surveillance, Berndt, between the time of his discharge and arrest, was not in contact with children.)

     On January 30, 2012, following a 13 month investigation, the Berndt case went public with his arrest at his home in Torrance, California. A search of his dwelling resulted in the discovery of 400 photographs similar to the ones seen by the CVS employee. (A normal person, knowing that he was under police investigation, would have destroyed these photographs. The fact that Brendt didn't revealed how  important these photos were to him. It was recommended that children depicted in the photographs be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.) Charged with 23 counts of lewd acts against minors, Mr. Brendt was hauled off to jail where he was held on $23 million bond. The criminal charges against him pertained to his contact with children ages 6 to 10 from 2008 to 2010.

     On February 3, 2012 police officers arrested a second Miramonte teacher on charges unrelated to the Berndt case. Martin B. Springer, 49, was charged with three counts of committing lewd acts in connection with the alleged fondling an 8-year-old girl in one of his classes. He was fired and held on $300,000 bail. From Alhambra, Mr. Springer had taught at the school since 1986. The judge who set his bail decreed that if Mr. Springer made his bond he was to wear an ankle monitoring device and to stay 250 feet away from schools and parks. On February 7, 2012 one of the two girls who accused Martin Springer of fondling recanted her story.

     A lawyer representing "Jane Doe 1," one of Mark Berndt's victims who ate a sugar cookie laced with the teacher's semen, announced plans to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District. The plaintiff claimed the school district did not take adequate steps to prevent Berndt from repeatedly abusing his students after numerous complaints had been filed against him. (Following Berndt's arrest seven more students came forward with allegations of abuse.)

     On February 6, 2012, perhaps in response to allegations of an institutional cover-up, the 88 teachers and 40 staff employees at Miramonte were suspended with pay. They were replaced by a substitute crew of teachers and clerks.

     The Miramonte situation continued to worsen on February 7, 2012 when the mother of a former fourth grader told the Los Angeles Times that in 2009 a 50-year-old female teacher's aide wrote three love letters to her then 11-year-old son. One of the letters read, "...when you get close to me, even if you give me the chills, I like that. Don't tell nobody (sic) about this!"

     In November 2013 Mark Berndt pleaded no contest to 23 counts of lewd acts on children. The judge sentenced the 62-year-old former elementary teacher to 25 years in prison. According to his defense attorney he was "remorseful and apologetic." The lawyer said that Berndt had entered a plea to spare his victims the ordeal of a trial. (Berndt spared himself the ordeal of a trial and made the deal to get a lighter prison sentence.) 

     On November 21, 2014, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that it had agreed to pay nearly $170 million in court settlements related to the Berndt pedophilia case. The settlement involved more than a hundred students.

The Janet and William Strickland Murder-For-Hire Case

     Seventy-two-year-old William Strickland lived with his 64-year-old wife Janet thirty years in the same house in south Chicago. Their neighbors considered them a happy couple. Mr. Strickland, a dialysis patient, may have been a contented husband, but his wife Janet wanted him dead.

     In February 2013 Janet Strickland informed her 19-year-old grandson--also named William Strickland--that she was "sick" of his grandfather and wanted him "gone." By "gone" she meant murdered. The old guy had money in the bank that couldn't be spent until he was "gone." Janet wanted that money and she wanted it now.

     In one of their discussions about Mr. Strickland's fate, Janet told her grandson that she decided against hiring an outside hit-man because she wanted the job done now. Young William, anticipating a share of his grandfather's wealth, said he would assassinate his namesake. Grandma sealed the deal by giving the young man his grandfather's handgun, a weapon he kept around the house for protection.

     At three-thirty on the afternoon of March 2, 2013, Janet Strickland said good-bye to her husband as he stepped out of the house to await a ride to his dialysis treatment. The murder target had been standing on the sidewalk a few minutes when he was approached from behind by his grandson. The younger William Strickland, using his grandfather's handgun, shot the elderly man six times in the back. Mr. Strickland fell to the ground and died.

     A few days after what the Chicago Police first considered a random robbery-murder--a common crime in the Windy City--Janet Strickland purchased her grandson a new car. A red one. She also went furniture shopping for herself.

      Young William rewarded himself with an expensive sound system for his new car, a pair of high-end sneakers and a fancy cellphone. He also spent some of his grandfather's money at his favorite tattoo parlor. With old guy dead life was good.

     Detectives arrested William Strickland on the charge of first-degree murder on March 30, 2013. He confessed to the execution-style homicide and identified his grandmother as the mastermind behind the deadly get-rich-quick plot.

     On April 6, 2013 police officers took Janet Strickland into custody. She confessed as well. The murder-for-hire grandmother and her assassin grandson were held on $50,000 bond in the Cook County Jail.

     On February 19, 2016 a jury in Chicago, after deliberating less than three hours, found William Strickland guilty of his grandfather's murder. Judge James Linn, on March 23, 2016, sentenced him to 40 years in prison.

     Janet Strickland went on trial a month later and was found guilty as charged. The judge sentenced the 67-year-old murder-for-hire mastermind to eighteen years in prison.

Derek Medina: The Facebook Wife Killer

     After dating a few months in late 2009, Derek Medina and Jennifer Alfonso got married. Because he was the jealous type and extremely controlling they frequently fought. Early in 2012 Jennifer had enough. They divorced, but a few months later, after Medina talked her into it, they remarried. For Jennifer this turned out to be a terrible mistake.

     In 2013, the 31-year-old Medina and his 26-year-old wife lived with her ten-year-old daughter from a previous relationship in a townhouse in South Miami, Florida. She worked as a server at a nearby Denny's Restaurant. He had a job as a property manager at a Coral Gables condo, the most recent of his string of short-term employments.

      Derek Medina had self-published six online books with rambling nonsensical titles like, How a Judgmental and Selfish Attitude is Destroying the World We Live Because the World is Vanishing Our Eyes. He also wrote a book about one of his passions--ghost hunting. Medina dedicated his most recent work--How I Save Someone's Life and Marriage and Family Problems Thru Communication--to his wife Jennifer.

     In addition to being a prolific writer, with 143 videos featuring himself on YouTube and Facebook, Median fancied himself a public person. As an extra on some TV drama he got a taste of the entertainment world. On YouTube his handful of fans could see him hitting golf balls, playing pick-up basketball, showing off his tattoos, riding in a boat and having a drink poolside with his wife. Derek Medina was a poster-boy for cheesy narcissism where everyone is an aspiring celebrity.

     On the morning of August 1, 2013, Medina, on his Facebook page, published a disturbing photograph of his bloodied wife lying dead on a linoleum floor. In the message accompanying the death scene photograph he wrote: "I'm going to prison or [getting the] death sentence for killing my wife. My wife was punching me and I'm not going to stand anymore with the abuse so I did what I did. Hope you understand me. Love you guys. Miss you guys. Take care Facebook people. You'll see me in the news."

     At noon on the day he shot and killed his wife Mr. Medina walked into a South Miami police station and informed officers that he shot her to death. He told homicide detectives that Jennifer threatened to leave him which led to a heated argument. According to Medina's account of the killing, he grabbed his pistol from a closet on the second floor and pointed it at Jennifer who had followed him up the stairs. After he put the pistol back into the closet, the couple returned to the kitchen where she took possession of a knife. He wrestled the knife out of her hand, but the fight continued with her punching and kicking him. Media told the detectives he walked upstairs, retrieved the gun, then shot his wife to death in the kitchen. At the time of the killing the victim's daughter was in a second-floor bedroom.

     After killing his wife Median changed his clothes and drove to his parents' house. He left the little girl behind with her dead mother. He did not call 911, but posted the photograph of Jennifer's corpse and the accompanying message on Facebook before turning himself into the authorities. He wanted his Facebook fans to be the first to know what he had done.

     Later that afternoon police officers with the South Miami Police Department armed with a search warrant entered the townhouse where they found the victim and the 10-year-old girl. At the request of the police, Facebook personnel removed the death scene photograph from the site. A Miami-Dade County prosecutor charged Derek Medina with first-degree murder.

     Jennifer Alfonso's former boss at Denny's told a reporter that Medina was so jealous he didn't want his wife working at night, or even to talk to other people on the telephone. Every time she threatened to leave him and they fought he'd beg her forgiveness and promised to change. The former boss said that after one of their fights she would come to the restaurant "bruised up."

     An Amazon.com reviewer posted the following comment regarding Medina's 42-page book on how he had saved a marriage: "Medina hits the bulls' eye with this definitive guide to marriage. He pulls no punches as he gives out advice to die for. Don't waste time and grab a copy at this killer price, as we are sure to hear more about this rising star in the news..."

     The local magistrate denied Derek Medina bond.

     In November 2015, following a short trial in which Medina did not testify on his own behalf, the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. On February 5, 2016 the judge sentenced him to life in prison.

The Kareem Andre Williams Murder Case

     On January 11, 2013, Lauren Kanoff from New York City was in Boynton Beach, Florida, a Palm Beach County town north of Hallandale Beach visiting her 80-year-old father, Albert Honigman. Mr. Honigman lived in the Aberdeen Development, a gated retirement community considered safe from crime. Mr. Honigman had grown up on Long Island, New York and after retirement moved to Florida's southeast coast with his wife Phyllis. In 2011 Phyllis passed away.

     At ten o'clock Friday night, January 11, 2013, Lauren and her father were unloading packages from their car in their open garage after an evening of shopping. A man walked up behind Lauren, and when she turned around, he punched her in the eye and side of her face. The blow knocked her down, and for a few seconds rendered her unconscious. When Lauren came to she saw the assailant over her downed father punching him in the face. "You stay down old man," he said, "I have a friend in the car with a gun."

     Lauren did not see the car, but she got a good look at the attacker, describing him to the police as a 6-foot, athletically built black man in his 20s or 30s. Before the assailant left the scene he stole several pieces of jewelry and Mr. Honigman's $26,000 Rolex watch.

     Paramedics rushed Albert Honigman to the Bethesda West Hospital where he was given a brain CAT scan. The next morning the patient went home but later in the day was called back to the hospital after the CAT scan revealed blood on his brain. The following day, January 13, Mr. Honigman returned to his retirement condo. He went to bed where, a few hours later, his daughter found him dead.

     The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy determined that Mr. Honigman had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's office classified the manner of this 80-year-old's death as criminal homicide.

     In speaking to a reporter after her father's murder, his daughter said, "I don't know if he [the assailant/robber] followed us in, I have no idea. All we know is we turned around...and suddenly I'm down, my father's down."

     In the wake of the robbery and homicide, residents of the Aberdeen Development in Boynton Beach were apprehensive. Mr. Honigman's murder destroyed the sense of security in this retirement community. One of the Boynton Beach retirees said this to a reporter: "It's a very frustrating experience to have someone who lives in [your] gated community get murdered. It's terrifying."

     Homicide detectives, by reviewing surveillance camera tapes, determined that Lauren Kanoff and her father had been followed home from the Boca Raton Town Center Mall by a man in a silver Camaro. On February 6, 2013, officers in West Palm Beach arrested 25-year-old Kareem Andre Williams. The murder suspect, a personal trainer with L. A. Fitness, resided in Loxachatche, Florida. In Palm Beach County, Williams had been arrested for grand theft and carrying a concealed weapon. In 2011 Williams was released from a Florida prison after serving time for armed burglary and several firearms offenses.

     Kareem Williams, the owner of a car that matched the Camero seen following the victims home from their shopping trip, was placed, through cellphone records, at the mall at the same time the victims were there. A mall surveillance camera tape also showed Williams and Albert Honigman in the same proximity near one of the shopping mall's exits.

     On February 15, 2013, a Palm Beach County prosecutor charged Kareem Williams with first-degree murder and lesser offenses. The magistrate denied bail for the suspect of this brutal home invasion homicide.

     On February 9, 2016, a jury found Mr. Williams guilty of first-degree murder, burglary with assault and robbery. Two days after the verdict, the judge sentenced Williams to two consecutive life sentences.

The Anesson Joseph Police-Involved Shooting Case

     On February 4, 2014 at eight-thirty in the evening, Douglas Kozlik, a 66-year-old retired New York City police officer on a stroll in Delray Beach, Florida, saw something that caused him great concern. A six-foot-three, 250-pound young man with a crazed look and obvious bad intentions charged toward him. The fact this physically imposing stranger was also naked told the ex-cop he was in imminent danger of being attacked.

     Mr. Kozlik's assessment of the bizarre situation turned out to be correct. Within a matter of seconds he found himself on the ground with the large maniac on top of him throwing punches. A 10-year-old boy not far from the unprovoked assault ran for his life.

     After leaving Mr. Kozlik on the ground badly beaten, the naked menace moved on. At the main entrance of the Colony, a gated neighborhood in Delray Beach, the wild man--later identified as a West Palm Beach 28-year-old named Anesson Joseph--came upon 16-year-old Tania Grein who was taking trash out of her family's house. Tania's 18-year-old brother Tony, who happened to be working in the yard with  his father, tackled Joseph as he grabbed Tania by the hair. The five-foot-six, 150-pound Boynton High School senior began stabbing the nude attacker in the face with a box cutter. The boy's father, Mario Grein, tried to help his children by punching the crazy man in the head.

     Unfazed by the box cutter wounds and the punches to his face, the frenzied man, grunting like an animal, started biting the teenage boy on the cheek and ear. Tony Grein was saved when the automatic security gate closed, knocking the crazy man to the ground. The attacker got to his feet and ran off with the teenager pinned beneath the gate.

     Responding to 911 calls placed by witnesses to Anesson Joseph's rampage, five deputies with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office encountered him not far from the entrance to the Colony. The subject crouched into a fighting stance then charged the officers. Unable to get the subject off his feet and onto the ground, a deputy shot him several times with a taser gun. When that technique failed to subdue Mr. Joseph, a sergeant pulled his gun and shot the subject three times in the torso.

    Fire and rescue personnel rolled up to the scene but were unable to treat the wounded man who was incapacitated but still combative. A few hours later Anesson Joseph died at the Delray Medical Center.

     Mr. Kozlik and Tony Grein were also treated at the hospital for their injuries. The 18-year-old who saved his sister from the zombie-like attacker ended up with teeth marks on his face. The 10-year-old boy had hurt himself when he tried to escape by crawling under a fence. One of the deputy sheriff's also required medical attention.

     According to Anesson Joseph's Facebook page, he worked for a West Palm Beach entertainment company called Nightlife University Parties and Events. Prior to that he had been employed at a local Starbucks. Joseph had attended Forest Hill Community High School and had no criminal record in Florida.

     The Joseph case is reminiscent of a police-involved shooting in Miami that occurred in May 2012. In that assault, a 31-year-old naked man named Rudy Eugene was shot on MacArthur Causeway as he chewed off most of a homeless man's face.

     Investigators believed that Anesson Joseph removed his striped polo shirt, dark shorts and a pair of flip flops not far from the Kozlik attack. There was speculation that he had been under the influence of some kind of mind altering drug. Toxicological tests later confirmed this suspicion.

The Aaron Jackson Murder Case

     The ideal eyewitness is a person with excellent eyesight who is unbiased, honest, sober and intelligent. Unfortunately, most eyewitnesses are either not sober, intelligent, unbiased, honest or sure of their identifications. Moreover, they can be bribed, misled and intimidated. Eyewitness misidentification has caused thousands of wrongful convictions. In the 1930s pioneers in the field of forensic science hoped that the scientific interpretation of physical clues--fingerprints, bullets, blood, and the like--would make this form of direct evidence unnecessary. That day hasn't come. Police and prosecutors still rely heavily on eyewitnesses, and often at their peril.

The Aaron Jackson Murder Case

     In 2001, police in Springfield, Illinois arrested Aaron "Chill" Jackson, a 36-year-old ex-con who had served 6 years in prison for armed robbery. Charged with the shooting death of 27-year-old Durrell Alexander, Jackson, a vicious and dangerous criminal, was held on $1 million bond. A pair of eyewitnesses said they saw the defendant shoot Alexander in the chest and abdomen. A year later, just before the trial, the eyewitnesses took back their identifications. Without this testimony the state's attorney in Sangamon County had no choice but to drop the case. Investigators believed that Mr. Jackson threatened these witnesses.

     In Washington Park, Illinois on April 1, 2010, at 5:47 in the morning, a passenger in John Thornton's 1998 Buick Regal shot him three times in the chest causing the car to crash. John Thornton, the mayor of Washington Park had been cracking down on local crime. Two women who saw the 52-year-old's car go off the road told a detective they saw Aaron Jackson climb out of the wrecked Buick and limp to a vehicle waiting nearby. Police arrested him that day.

     The state's attorney, in addition to eyewitnesses Nortisha Ball and Gilda Lott, could link the suspect to the scene of the shooting in three ways: a latent fingerprint on the Buick's outside rear passenger door; a trace of his blood on the passenger's side deployed airbag; and a speck of the victim's blood on the suspect's left pant pocket. While this last piece of physical evidence was too small for a complete DNA profile, the state DNA analyst determined that the suspect was among a small population of black people--one in 4,200--who could not be eliminated as the donor of the blood speck.

     In October 2010 the Jackson trial blew up in the prosecutor's face when one of the eyewitnesses, Nortisha Ball, testified that a police detective named Kim McAfee, who had since been convicted in federal court of 39 white collar felonies, forced her to pick Jackson's mugshot out of a photograph line-up. Another witness, Lequisha Jackson (no relation to the defendant) testified that Detective McAfee offered her money to testify that he had not been at the scene of the shooting. (Apparently McAfee had initially been a suspect himself in the Thornton murder case.) The judge declared a mistrial.

     On April 12, 2012, Mr. Jackson's second murder trial got underway. The prosecutor, Steve Sallerson, put eyewitness Nortisha Ball back on the stand. Now serving time on a burglary conviction, the 23-year-old had led the prosecutor to believe she would identify the defendant as the man she had seen limping from Thornton's Buick after it had crashed. Instead she threw him a curve by testifying she did not get a good look because it was dark that morning. Moreover, she was 150 yards away from the car and was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. On cross-examination, defense attorney Thomas Q. Keefe III got Nortisha Ball to say that Detective McAfee forced her to pick the defendant's photograph out of the spread of mugshots.

     Nortisha Ball, perhaps under threat from the defendant, became a prosecutor's worst courtroom nightmare. The other eyewitness, Gilda Lott, a witness with a history of drug related convictions, wasn't much better. She contradicted herself, acted confused then broke down on the stand. The judge had to threaten her with contempt to induce her to respond to the prosecutor's questions. At best, as a prosecution witness, Gilda Lott was useless. It seemed the defendant had gotten to her as well.

     While the two eyewitnesses were a complete prosecution disaster, the state DNA analyst, Jay Winters, identified the blood spot on the airbag as the defendant's. Using a more sophisticated DNA analysis on the speck of blood found on Jackson's trousers, Mr. Winters placed the defendant in a one in 46,000 population of black people who could not be excluded as the donor of this crime scene evidence.

     State fingerprint examiner Melissa Gamboe testified that the latent print on the rear passenger door of the mayor's Buick had been left by the defendant. 

     On April 27, 2012, the St. Clair County jury took just 5 hours to find Aaron Jackson guilty of murder. The judge, on August 27, 2012, sentenced Jackson to 35 years in prison. 

     The Jackson case is a good example of the value of physical evidence over eyewitness testimony. Because most jurors have seen TV shows like "CSI" they tend to have faith in forensic science and forensic scientists. 

The Matthew White Murder Case

     In 1979, Matthew White, a six-foot-eleven center from Bethesda, Maryland, led the University of Pennsylvania Quakers to the NCAA final four. Mr. White was picked that year in the fifth round of the NBA draft by the Portland Trailblazers. Instead of entering the NBA he earned a MBA from the Wharton School of Business. In 1984 Mr. White moved to Spain where, for the next twelve years, he played professional basketball. While in Spain the basketball player met and married Marie Reyes Garcia-Pellon.

     In 2010 after he suffered a stroke, Mr. White and Garcia-Pellon moved from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania to Nether Providence, a township near the eastern Pennsylvania town of Media. He, his wife and their 20-year-old son and teen-age daughter moved into a ranch-style home. Garcia-Pellon worked as a teacher's aide at the Nether Providence Elementary School.

     On February 10, 2013 the 55-year-old former Ivy League basketball star took his wife to an area hospital after her friends expressed concern about her mental health. Garcia-Pellon, no stranger to mental illness, had previously undergone psychiatric treatment. For some reason she was not admitted into the hospital that Sunday.

     On Monday afternoon, February 11, 2013, a friend of Garcia-Pellon's called the police department to report that Matthew White may have been murdered by his wife. At the Nether Providence house police officers found Matthew White sprawled out dead in the master bedroom. He had been stabbed in the neck.

     When questioned at the death scene Garcia-Pellon told the responders that sometime between midnight and one in the morning she got out of bed and walked into the kitchen where she picked up two knives. She returned to her husband, slipped the knives under her side of the bed and waited for him to fall asleep. When she was certain he was asleep she used one of the knives to stab him in the neck. The victim rose up, cried, "I'm dying, I'm dying" then fell back onto the bed and died.

     After killing her husband Garcia-Pellon got dressed and left the house. (Her son was no longer living at home and her daughter was attending college.) Later in the day she showed up at a friend's house. Garcia-Pellon told her friend that she had stabbed Matthew in the neck as he slept. The friend called the police.

     As a police officer handcuffed the 52-year-old murder suspect, Garcia-Pellon said, "I caught him looking at pornography, young girls. I love kids. I had to do it." (According to the police there was no evidence in White's computer that he had been viewing child pornography.)

     On Monday night the Delaware County district attorney charged Garcia-Pellon with first-degree murder, criminal homicide and possession of an instrument of crime. She was held without bail in the Delaware County Jail.

     Kathryn Labrum, Garcia-Pellon's Media, Pennsylvania attorney, on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 told reporters that her client was "so separated from reality right now." The lawyer described Garcia-Pellon's mental state as a "psychiatric crises." Attorney Labrum  said:  "He [Matthew White] knew that she needed help, tried to get her help and there you have it--a beautiful family ruined."

     In February 2015, after being found guilty of murder but mentally ill (a verdict that required mental health treatment while serving a 25-year prison term) the judge immediately probated Garcia-Pellon's sentence and ordered her transferred from the jail to the Norristown State Hospital. The judge did not believe the prison system was equipped to deal with someone so insane. The adjusted sentence meant that Garcia-Pellon, when declared sane, could be placed back into society. No one associated with this case seemed to object to this outcome.

The Death of Anneka Vasta: Hollywood Noir

     Anneka Vasta was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in July 1952 in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1973 she met and started dating Penthouse Magazine publisher Bob Guccione. Two years later she became Guccione's Penthouse pet of the year and in 1979 starred as Anneka Di Lorenzo in Guccione's soft-porn film, "Caligula."

     Vasta, in 1988, claiming that Guccione had compelled her to have sex with two of his business associates, sued him for sexual harassment. The jury, in 1990, awarded her $4 million but an appeals court on procedural grounds vacated the award. In retaliation for the suit Mr. Guccione reprinted photographs of Vasta and another woman in a lesbian love scene from "Caligula."

     In 2003, while living in Sherman Oaks, California, Anneka Vasta began suffering bouts of paranoia and anxiety. Seven years later the recently divorced 58-year-old, now having financial problems, still struggled with mental illness.

     A pair of joggers on January 4, 2011 discovered Vasta's naked body on a Marine training beach at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. Agents with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) took control of the case. Shortly after the discovery of the corpse investigators located the 59-year-old's Mazda at a popular scenic overlook along Interstate 5. Because her body could not have reached the water from this point NCIS agents concluded that Vasta had not jumped off the sixty foot cliff.

     At autopsy the forensic pathologist determined that while Vasta had a broken neck and back, she had drowned. The pathologist found on Vasta's wrists superficial cuts called "hesitation marks" that suggested half-hearted attempts at suicide. The body also revealed two shallow stab wounds to her chest. Vasta's body contained no traces of alcohol or drugs. The autopsy produced no evidence of sexual abuse.

     In the dead woman's car searchers found blood-stained clothing--a blouse and a sports bra--inside a plastic bag. Investigators also found a steak knife bearing traces of her blood. The Mazda also contained Vasta's cellphone and purse. On the passenger's side floor investigators discovered Lithium and an empty Xanax bottle.

     Two days before the joggers came upon Vasta's body in the sand she rented a room at a Motel 6 on Raintree Drive near South Carlsbad State Beach. She had not checked out. Investigators found no evidence of violence or foul play in her motel room.

     Vasta's history of paranoia and anxiety, and the presence of the hesitation marks, suggested she killed herself. But, as in most suspicious death cases without eyewitnesses or obvious suspects, questions remained. For example, how did she get from her car to the water? How did she receive the broken neck and back before drowning in the Pacific? Could these injuries been caused by the action of the ocean before her death?

     Anneka Vasta's life and sudden death--the star-struck gal from Minnesota, corrupted and abused by a sleazy Hollywood porn merchant--is the stuff of Los Angeles noir. It brings to mind the famous quote by novelist and screen writer Ben Hecht: "I knew her name--Madam Hollywood. I rose and said good-by to this strumpet in her bespangled red gown; good-by to her lavender-painted cheeks, her coarsened laugh, her straw-dyed hair, her wrinkled fingers bulging with gems. A wench with flaccid tits and a sandpaper skin under her silks; shined up and whistling like a whore in a park; covered with stink like a railroad station pissery and swinging a dead ass in the moonlight."

     On Tuesday, May 13, 2014, Anneka Vasta, having quickly faded from public consciousness, briefly surfaced in the media on the occasion of the death of a Swiss artist named H. R. Giger. The 74-year-old was best known for his design of the creature in Ridley Scott's science fiction film, "Alien." Internet articles regarding Giger's death from a fall featured him posing with Anneka Vasta in April 1980 at the opening of an art exhibition in New York City.  

The Un-Great Escape

     On May 12, 2002 34-year-old Steven L. Robbins got into a fight at a party in Indianapolis with a man from Kentucky. During the altercation Mr. Robbins shot 24-year-old Richard Melton to death. Eighteen months later the Gary, Indiana native was found guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to sixty years in prison. (Robbins wasn't eligible for parole until 2029.)

     On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 Steven Robbins, now 44, was transported from the state prison in Michigan City, an Indiana town 50 miles east of Chicago, to the Cook County Jail. He had a court hearing the next day pertaining to a 1992 Illinois felony charge.

     On Wednesday, after the judge informed Mr. Robbins that the old charge against him had been dismissed in 2007 (why did they summon him to Illinois to tell him that?) the prisoner was returned to the Cook County Jail.

     Corrections officers responsible for hauling Robbins back to Indiana, on Thursday, January 31 called the Cook County Jail to alert officials they would pick up Robbins for his trip back to prison. That's when the Indiana authorities learned that Robbins had been released from custody the previous evening at seven o'clock. Because no one at the Cook County Jail knew that he was serving a sentence in Indiana for murder he simply walked out of the massive lock-up through the main door.

     The fact that Steven Robbins had been transported to Chicago to face charges that were dismissed five years earlier suggested there was something profoundly wrong with the corrections bureaucracy in both states. It went without saying that a major bureaucratic SNAFU led to Robbins' easy escape from the Cook County Jail.

     On February 1, 2013 police in the northern Illinois town of Kankakee arrested Robbins at the home of a friend. He was watching TV. The Cook County Sheriff, in an unusual move, took responsibility for the foul-up. "We let people down, no mistake about it." Fortunately, while loose, Robbins did not commit any serious crimes. For Robbins, the easy part was getting out of the Cook County Jail. Staying out proved more difficult. 

When Does Speech Become A Criminal Act?

     In December 2018, 21-year-old Alexander Urtula, a biology major at Boston College met Inyoung You, a 20-year-old South Korean girl attending the school as an economics major. Urtula was an outstanding student who was active in the college's Philippine Society of Boston, an organization for Filipino students.

     On May 20, 2019, the day of his graduation from Boston College, Alexander Urtula was deeply depressed and suicidal. As recorded on his Internet journal read by classmates and family members, and documented throughout the 47,000 text messages he received from Inyoung You, Mr. Urtula had been the victim of intense and prolonged psychological abuse committed by his South Korean girlfriend.

     To control Alexander Urtula and isolate him from his friends and family, Inyoung You repeatedly threatened to harm herself if he didn't do what she demanded. And what she demanded, in the weeks leading up to Urtula's graduation, was for him to take his own life. In her text messages she wrote things like "Go kill yourself," and "Go die."

     On the morning of May 20, 2019, the day of the college's graduation ceremony, Inyoung You used her cellphone to track the despondent Urtula to the roof of a parking garage in the Roxbury section of Boston. With You standing on the parking garage roof not far from him, Alexander Urtula jumped to his death. Allegedly, You made no attempt to dissuade him from leaping from the structure.

     In August 2019, three months following Urtula's suicide, Inyoung You withdrew from Boston College and returned to South Korea.

     Suffolk County prosecutor Rachael Rollins, in October 2019, presented a case to a grand jury that returned an indictment against Inyoung You on the charge of involuntary manslaughter. The rationale behind the charge involved You's reckless disregard for Urtula's life by intentionally tormenting him with psychological abuse that included telling him to kill himself. To make this case, the prosecutor would have to establish a direct casual relationship between You's abuse and Urtula's death.
   
     At a press conference following the grand jury indictment, prosecutor Rollins told reporters that You's "abuse became more frequent and more demanding in the days and hours leading up to Urtula's death."

     If Inyoung You was extradited to the United States for criminal trial her defense would include the argument that her text messages and other forms of communication with Alexander Urtula were constitutionally protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Moreover, she would argue that her behavior, while despicable, was not the principle cause Urtula's mental illness and suicide. Her attorney would no doubt also make the point that talking a person into suicide is different that helping a person take his or her life. One is speech, the other a criminal act.

     The above legal issues were never argued because in December 2021, following her extradition to the United States, You pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The Suffolk County judge sentenced her to ten years probation.