The Larry Swearingen Murder Case: Was an Innocent Man Executed?

     Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old college student from Willis, Texas, a suburban community just north of Houston, went missing after being last seen in a pickup truck driven by a 27-year-old electrician named Larry Swearingen. Witnesses saw them together on December 8, 1998 pulling away from Lone Star Community College in Conroe, Texas.

     Detectives trying to find the missing student quickly developed Larry Swearingen as a suspect in her disappearance. Swearingen had a history of crimes against women and was at the time under indictment for having allegedly kidnapped his former fiancee. Investigators considered him a violent sociopath.

     About a week after Melissa Trotter went missing when detectives questioned Swearingen he denied knowing her. However, when asked why his pager number was in the missing student's possessions, Swearingen admitted that he knew her and that she had been in his truck many times. At this point the authorities did not have enough evidence to charge Swearingen with any crime related to the missing person case. They did, however, take him into custody in connection with numerous outstanding traffic violations. As it turned out, he would remain behind bars the rest of his life.

     On January 2, 1999, 25 days after she went missing, a person stumbled upon Melissa Trotter's partially clad body in Sam Houston National Forest 70 miles northeast of Houston. The forensic pathologist concluded that she had been killed within a day or two of her disappearance. Her killer had either strangled her to death with a piece of her pantyhose in the national forest or killed her somewhere else before dumping her body in the woods.

     Detectives searched Larry Swearingen's trailer and found a pair of ripped pantyhose that matched the suspected crime scene ligature. Investigators also found a lighter in the suspect's dwelling that was similar to one the victim had owned.

     A crime lab hair and fiber examiner matched fibers on the victim's body with fibers from the inside of Swearingen's truck. In addition, a cell tower had pinged the suspect not far from where the body had been found in the forest. Detectives believed Swearingen murdered Melissa Trotter after she resisted his sexual advances. They also believed he had raped her before strangling her.

     In mid-January 1999 the Montgomery County District Attorney charged Larry Swearingen with kidnapping, rape and capital murder. The prosecutor also notified the defense that the state would seek the death penalty in the case. The defendant pleaded not guilty to all charges.

     At his murder trial Swearingen's attorneys challenged the validity of the fiber matches related to the pantyhose and challenged the trace evidence taken from the defendant's truck. Five forensic pathologists took the stand for the defense and testified that in their expert opinions Melissa Trotter's body showed too little decomposition to have been dead 25 days at the time of her discovery. The experts believed that when the corpse was found on January 2, 1998 she had been dead no longer than 14 days. This meant that at the time of her murder, about December 22, 1998, Larry Swearingen was in jail on the outstanding traffic charges.

     Defense attorneys argued that the circumstantial case against their client was weak and based on junk science. The defense also pointed out that dried blood and tissue samples taken from beneath the victim's fingernails did not come from Larry Swearingen.

     Notwithstanding the aggressive defense, the Montgomery County jury found Larry Swearingen guilty of capital murder. The trial judge sentenced him to death.

     Attorneys with the Innocence Project took up Swearingen's appeal of the murder verdict. On August 21, 2019, following several stay of executions and lost appeals before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, Swearingen was delivered to the death chamber at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas.

     The condemned man's final statement before being injected with pentobarbital was: "Lord, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." The executioner administered the lethal dose at 7:47 in the evening. "It's actually burning in my right arm," said Swearingen. "I don't feel anything in the left arm." Those were his last words. Twelve minutes later the attending physician pronounced the 48-year-old dead.

The Christopher Vaughn Murder Case

     Christopher Vaughn, a 32-year-old former private investigator who specialized in cyber-crime detection and computer security, lived with his wife and their three children in Oswego, Illinois, a suburban community of 30,000 west of Chicago. His 34-year-old wife Kimberly just earned a college degree in criminal justice administration. In preparation for a weekend excursion to a water park in downstate Springfield, the couple and their children--Abigayle 12, Cassandra 11 and Blake 8--had arisen early on June 14, 2007.

     That morning, at 5:40, Christopher Vaughn, stood bleeding near his vehicle parked on the shoulder of Interstate 55 in Channahon Township, Illinois. He waved down a motorist who discovered the wounded man had been shot in the left wrist and left thigh. Vaughn's wife Kimberly and his three children were inside the 2004 Ford Expedition. They had been shot to death. The motorist called 911.

     Christopher Vaughn's gunshot injuries turned out to be glancing bullet wounds that were minor. After being treated and discharged from a hospital in Joliet, he submitted to questioning by officers with the Illinois State Police. Vaughn said his wife asked him to pull off the road because she was feeling ill. After bringing the car to a stop he climbed out of the vehicle to check on the luggage tied to the rack on the roof of the SUV. When he got back into the vehicle she shot him twice with a pistol. Wounded, he managed to get out of the Ford without being hit again. Once out of her line of fire he heard the gun go off several times from inside the vehicle. When he returned to the SUV to check on his family he found that his wife had murdered the children and had turned the gun on herself.

     None of the detectives questioning Vaughn bought the murder-suicide scenario. They were convinced he murdered his family then strategically shot himself. The officers didn't know why this seemingly rational but emotionless man committed mass murder, or how they would be able to prove it without an eyewitness or a confession. This case looked like a cold-blooded mass murder committed by a killer with nerves of steel.

     According to the Will County forensic pathologist who performed the autopsies, Kimberly Vaugh had been shot under the chin. The killer shot the children in their chests and heads. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

      On June 20, 2007 members of the Illinois State Police seized from the Vaughn home in Oswego, three computers and several boxes full of personal items. Included in the things removed from the Vaughn family dwelling that day was a magazine containing an article on how to make a murder look like a suicide. Detectives had also learned that the suspect purchased the handgun used in the killings in the state of Washington, and that on the day before the murders he practiced shooting it at a firing range.

     In the days before the quadruple murder Christopher Vaughn spent $5,000 at a suburban strip club where he confided in a pole dancer that he was having marital problems. Vaughn told friends that he dreamed of escaping the rat-race by moving into a remote cabin in Canada's Yukon Territory. He also stood to inherit $1 million in life insurance benefits. Investigators believed that Mr. Vaughn murdered his family because they stood between him and his desire to start a new life.

     On June 22, 2007 the Will County States Attorney's Office charged Christopher Vaughn with four counts of first-degree murder. The next day he was taken into custody in St. Charles, Missouri when he arrived at the funeral home where services were being held for his wife and three children.

     In late August 2012, more than five years after the shooting deaths of his family, Christopher Vaughn went on trial for mass murder in Joliet, Illinois. The heart of the prosecution's case consisted of the testimony of forensic ballistic and blood spatter experts. According to these analysts, the physical death scene evidence did not support the defendant's version of a murder-suicide. What the bullet and blood evidence did suggest was this: once Vaughn had pulled off the interstate he got out of the car, walked around to the front passenger's door, opened it, and shot his wife under the chin. He then shot each of his three children twice, climbed back behind the wheel of the SUV, wrapped his jacket around the muzzle of the gun to mitigate its effect, then grazed himself in the left thigh and wrist. Before leaving the vehicle to flag down a motorist, Mr. Vaughn placed the murder weapon at his wife's feet to make the shooting look like a murder-suicide.

     On September 20, 2012, following a five-week trial featuring six hours of closing arguments, the jury, after a 50-minute deliberation returned a verdict of guilty on all four counts.

     On November 26, 2012 Will County Judge Daniel Rozak sentenced Christopher Vaughn to life in prison. Before imposing the sentence Judge Rozak said he was "very frustrated" with the state's decision in 2011 to abolish the death sentence. State's attorney James Glasgow, in speaking to reporters about the case following the sentencing, said, "There isn't a punishment that fits this crime. You could lock him up for 500 lifetimes and it would not compensate the victims in this case or the family members."

Conspiracy Theories: Their Appeal and Resiliency

     The contrary, unorthodox and often complicated interpretation of a newsworthy event often occurs after high-profile crimes and the unexpected deaths of celebrities. Conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths of famous people flourish when it's possible the well-known person could have been the victim of first-degree murder. For the conspiracy buff, it's even better if the suspected murderer is also a celebrity.

     Notwithstanding the fact that most conspiracy theories are in time debunked by more level-headed investigators, journalists and true crime writers, they often spring back to life decades after the event. Even the most outlandish conspiracy theories have long lives.

     Examples of celebrity murder conspiracies that have lived on through tabloid journalism and hack true crime writing include the sudden deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Bob Crane, George Reeves, and Curt Cobain. In all of these theories the murder suspects were also famous.

     Conspiracy theories are fun and exciting real life parlor games. They are also comporting in the belief that if something big and earth-shattering occurs such as the assassination of a president, powerful, evil forces must be behind the murder. Otherwise we have to accept the fact that American history can be changed in a second by the actions of an insignificant person for reasons that defy understanding. This reality made the murder of John Lennon so unsettling to his fans.

     When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly on February 13, 2016 in a remote region of west Texas, theories that he had been murdered popped up immediately in the news, notwithstanding the fact he was 79-years-old and in poor health. Because Justice Scalia's death involved enormous political and ideological significance it's not surprising that theories of his murder surfaced so soon. Theories of his murder persisted despite the fact officials determined he died of a heart attack. The principal suspect in the Scalia murder scenario was President Obama. In the world of conspiracy theories it doesn't get better than that.

     Before Scalia's momentous passing Rob Brotherton of the Los Angeles Times had this to say about conspiracy theories:

     "Conspiracy theories are not inherently "delusional." Given a handful of dots, our pattern-seeking brains can't resist trying to connect them. If you had claimed in 1972 that the burglary at the Watergate Hotel was, in fact, a plot by White House officials to illegally spy on political rivals and insure President Nixon's reelection, you'd have sounded like a nut. If you'd claimed that the CIA had given American citizens LSD, mescaline, and other drugs in secret mind-control experiments, you'd have been laughed off as a member of the tinfoil-hat crowd. Both conspiracies, however, were quite real. Dismissing all conspiracy theories (and theorists) as crazy is just as intellectually lazy as credulously accepting every wild allegation."

The Rashad Owens Murder Case

     At midnight on March 13, 2014, a patrol officer in Austin, Texas tried to pull over a vehicle without its headlights on that made an illegal left turn onto an I-35 frontage road. The driver of the car, a 21-year-old rapper from Killeen, Texas named Rashad Owens, refused to stop for the officer. A short time later, in the process of avoiding arrest, Mr. Owens drove through a barricade on Red River Street. The street had been blocked off for the South by Southwest film media and music festival.

     An intoxicated Owens, at a top speed of 55 miles per hour, plowed his car into thirty festival goers, killing four of them and injuring others. After driving into the crowd with his headlights off, Owens led police officers on a chase that culminated in his arrest after he fled his vehicle on foot.

     A Travis County prosecutor charged Rashad Owens with four counts of capital murder (in some jurisdictions called first-degree murder) and 24 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was held in the Travis County Jail without bond.

     The Owens murder trial got underway in Austin on November 2, 2015. In her opening remarks to the jury, prosecutor Amy Meredith told jurors that because the defendant knew his action put the people on Red River Street in mortal danger, the charges of capital murder in this case were appropriate. The prosecutor argued that he acted with intent and malice, key elements in the offense of capital murder. While the prosecution was not seeking the death penalty, if convicted Mr. Owens would face mandated life in prison without the chance of parole.

     Rick Jones, Owens' attorney, argued that capital murder was not an appropriate charge in the case because his client, while intending to flee the police did not intend to kill anyone. The defense attorney pointed out that the defendant did not know Red River Street had been closed to traffic. (What did he think the barricade was for?)

     The prosecution began its case with a police dash cam video showing the defendant failing to stop for the patrol officer.

     The case went to the jury of seven women and five men on November 6, 2015. The defendant did not take the stand on his own behalf. After three hours of deliberation the jurors found Rashad Owens guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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.