The Steven Capobianco Murder Case

     On Sunday night February 9, 2014, 27-year-old Carly Scott, a resident of Makawao, a town on the Hawaiian island of Maui, received a call from Steven Capobianco. Carly Scott's 24-year-old ex-boyfriend and father of her unborn child said his truck was stuck in a ditch off the Hana Highway near mile marker 30 in the Keanae area.

     Carly left her house that night with her pit bull mix Nala in her 1997 Silver Toyota 4Runner. On Monday morning when Carly Scott didn't show up for work her mother reported her missing to the Maui police. That day friends and family of the missing 5-foot-10, 160 pound woman with shoulder-length red hair, drove up and down the Hana Highway looking for her. They were concerned she might have driven off a cliff.

     That morning, February 10, 2014, one of Carly's sisters, Kimberly Scott, spoke to Steven Capobianco who said that after Carly had pulled him out of the ditch the two of them proceeded on the highway with her following behind his truck. At some point he didn't see her headlights anymore.

     At six in the evening of Wednesday, February 12, 2014 Carly's friends came across the missing woman's SUV in Haiku, Maui. The vehicle, completely gutted by fire, had been rolled over onto its side. The burned-out Toyota was lying in a pineapple field off Peahi Road that led to a popular surfing spot known as "Jaws." Carly Scott was not in the vehicle. (Her dog Nala had turned up two days earlier in Nahiku.)

     The day after her friends found Carly's torched 4Runner in the pineapple field, Mileka Lincoln, a reporter with Hawaii News, interviewed Steven Capobianco. The ex-boyfriend confirmed that on Sunday, the night Carly went missing, she helped him get his truck out of the ditch. Later the two of them headed toward Haiku 25 miles up the road. She followed behind and when he reached Twin Falls he looked in his rearview mirror and didn't see her headlights. Capobianco drove home and assumed that Carly had made it back safety to her house.

     "I sent her a text that said, 'Thank you,' but I figured she was working. That's why she didn't get back to me right away." [Apparently Carly had a late night job.]

     According to Steven Capobianco, "It wasn't until the cops showed up at my house at 5:30 in the morning the next day [Monday February 10] that I realized something was wrong." He told the reporter that Maui police questioned him at the police station where he took a polygraph exam. When he asked how he had done on the lie test a detective informed him that according to the instrument he had not told the truth.

     To the reporter Mr. Capobianco insisted that he "absolutely" had not hurt his ex-girlfriend. "I mean," he said, "it's understandable that I'm probably the prime suspect, so they're [the police] not going to tell me details (of the case)." 

     The missing woman's ex-boyfriend said they broke up several years ago but had remained friends. He said that they "occasionally hooked-up."

     "Were you excited about being a dad?" asked the reporter.

     "Sort of. It was unexpected. She didn't tell me right away, but it was growing on me." At one point Capobianco indicated that he didn't know for sure if he was the father of Carley Scott's unborn child.

     On Thursday night, February 13, 2014, 16-year-old Phaedra Wais, the missing woman's half-sister found a skirt, shirt and bloodstained bra in a remote area off the Hana Highway. When she reported the find to the police an officer told her not to disturb the evidence and wait for a detective. The girl ignored this advice and drove the garments to the police station in Kahuiui. Later, police officers found a jawbone, fingertips and hair follicles near this site.

     In an unrelated matter, Maui police, in April 2014, arrested Steven Capobianco on the charge of first-degree burglary. The judge set his bail at $10,000. He stood accused of breaking into a Haiku woman's apartment in September 2013 and stealing two computers and her jewelry. Police recovered the stolen property in a search of the suspect's house.

     The garments found by Phaedra Wais belonged to her missing half-sister. A forensic scientist ended hope that Scott was alive by identifying the jawbone, fingertips and hair as being hers. This meant the missing person case had turned into a homicide investigation.

     On July 18, 2014 a grand jury sitting in Maui indicted Steven Capobianco of murder and arson. According to the language of the true bill the suspect had "intentionally or knowingly caused Carly Scott's death in an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner that manifested exceptional depravity."

      Steven Capobianco pleaded not guilty to the murder and arson charges.

     On December 28, 2016 a jury in Maui, in the entirely circumstantial case, found Steven Capobianco guilty of second-degree murder and arson. 

     On March 24, 2017 the judge sentenced Steven Capobianco to 40 years for second-degree murder and 10 years for arson. The sentences were to run consecutively that meant the 27-year-old could serve up to 50 years in prison.

An Amish Nightmare: The Shaken Baby Misdiagnosis

     On December 23, 1999 Liz Glick, the 4-month-old daughter of Samuel and Liz Glick, Amish dairy farmers in Dornsife, Pennsylvania, died in the hospital two days after her parents found her unconscious in her crib. The baby was ill with a fever and had been vomiting. At the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, pediatricians experienced in treating Amish babies determined that the infant had died of vitamin K deficiency, a genetic and sometimes dietary condition associated with babies born at home and breastfed who were not given the vitamin through precautionary shots or formula. The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency include bleeding in the brain and eyes as well as the presence of bruises caused by normal handling and movement.

     Dr. Michael Kenny, a pathologist at Geisinger, performed the autopsy and, as Kate Rush later reported in "Genomics in Amish Country," concluded the baby died of a "closed-head injury" (as opposed to a "penetrating head injury" caused by a bullet, stabbing instrument or a blunt object.) Since Dr. Kenny was not the medical examiner and it was not his job to make an official manner of death ruling, that decision fell to the county coroner, an elected official without a medical degree. Instead of conferring with pediatricians familiar with Amish patients, the coroner took the unusual step of convening an inquest, a jury-enpannelled hearing to determine if the death was suspicious enough to warrant a full-scale criminal investigation. (The coroner's inquest, as a first step in the criminal justice process, while still available in most states is an antiquated way of determining manner of death.)

     Dr. Kenny's "closed-head injury" finding, combined with the bruises and the brain and eye bleeding led the coroner's jury to rule that Liz Glick may have been the victim of a shaken baby syndrome (SBS) homicide.

     The Glick case became national news when a child protection agency speculated that the other seven Glick children in the wake of the coroner's jury decision were in danger. For their own protection the children were placed in foster homes until the Pennsylvania State Police and perhaps a jury at a murder trial determined if the parents had committed criminal homicide. The Glick children were split up and sent to non-Amish (English) foster parents, an action that stunned and terrified the residents of this traditional central Pennsylvania community.

     The plight of the Glick family caught the attention of Dr. Holmes Morton, a Harvard trained pediatrician who in the 1980's treated Amish patients at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Morton moved to Strasburg, Pennsylvania, where in 1989, he founded a nonprofit clinic in the heart of Amish country called the Clinic for Special Children specializing in the treatment and study of illnesses and disorders affecting the Amish. Supported by donations and fund-raising events the clinic incorporated a state-of-the-art laboratory for the diagnosis and study of biochemical genetic disorders. Dr. Morton should have been one of the first experts consulted by the authorities in the Glick case. He was well-known, had expertise pertinent to the case and was local. No one, however, sought his opinion on the cause of the Glick baby's death.

     Without being asked, Dr. Morton conducted his own inquiry into the Glick baby's medical history. A few days later he announced that the infant had been born with a genetic liver condition that rendered her body incapable of breaking down vitamin K. The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency--the bleeding in the brain and eyes, and the severe bruising--could easily be mistaken for signs of SBS. In Dr. Morton's opinion the Glick child had not been killed by shaking. There had been a terrible mistake; this baby's death had been of a natural cause.

     But criminal investigations are like freight trains--once they get rolling they are hard to stop. Even though Dr. Morton had thrown his body across the tracks the train kept coming. Weeks passed. Finally, in February 2000 the case went before a state medical advisory board of physicians. The doctors heard testimony from several pediatricians who agreed with Dr. Morton's diagnosis. The panel of physicians voted to recommend that the manner of death in the Glick case be changed to natural.

     The local coroner, in light of the physicians' recommendation, changed his cause of death ruling and shortly thereafter the child protection agency gave the Glick children back to their parents. A month later the district attorney announced that Samuel and Liz Glick were no longer the targets of a homicide investigation. One can only guess how far down the criminal justice track the prosecution train would have rolled had it not been for Dr. Morton's intervention. One or both of these parents could have been sent to prison. 

The Pastor Elder Ulysses Woodard Attempted Murder-Suicide

     In 2016, Pastor Elder Ulysses Woodard and his wife Alisha started the True Word of Deliverance Church of God in Prichard, Alabama. In early February 2020 the couple, experiencing serious marital problems, separated. The estrangement from his wife caused Pastor Woodard, a man who had for years suffered from mental illness, considerable distress. The 44-year-old told friends that he was lost without his wife.

     On the night of February 21, 2020,  Alisha Woodard was the featured speaker at the Women of God Through Promise Conference at the True Cornerstone Church in Mobile, Alabama. The event was hosted by Pastor Derek Scott Gandy. 

     Shortly after eleven o'clock that night, at the conclusion of Alisha Woodard's sermon, her estranged husband showed up at the True Cornerstone Church and approached Pastor Gandy. "Pastor," he asked, "can I talk to my wife please?"

     Soon after the Woodards met in the parking lot outside the church they began arguing. With church parishioners looking on Elder Woodard grabbed his wife's arm and pulled her screaming to his car. From the vehicle Woodward retrieved a handgun and shot his wife in the chest. After wounding his wife he climbed into his vehicle and drove off, leaving her bleeding on the church parking lot. 

     Police officers arrived at the scene at 11:23 as paramedics attended Alisha Woodard. The medical responders rushed the wounded woman to a nearby hospital where she was treated for a non-life threatening wound.

     Around midnight police officers spotted Pastor Woodard in his car. The vehicle pursuit that followed led back to the True Cornerstone Church's parking lot. When officers approached the pastor's car he put the handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. Upon killing himself his car lurched forward and crashed into the church.

     A few days after the attempted murder-suicide, Pastor Woodard's sister told a reporter that her brother suffered from mental illness and reached out to his Christian friends for help. According to her the church, having failed to help her brother, was responsible for his death. He was she said, a "true mighty man of god."

The College Student From Hell

     In 2009 Megan Thode, a graduate student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, looked forward to earning her master's degree in counseling and human services. To acquire the degree which she would need to qualify for a state counseling license Thode had to earn at least a B grade in her fieldwork class taught by Professor Amanda Eckhardt. Professor Eckhardt, however, upset the applecart when she issued Thode a C-plus. That's when all hell broke out at Lehigh University. 

     While colleges and universities have established procedures for student grade appeals, unless a disgruntled student can prove that the professor made an error in calculating the grade, the student doesn't have a chance. Some students, notwithstanding these policies, get their grades changed by becoming such pains-in-the-neck they wear their professors down. In our sob-story culture everyone has a gut-wrenching tale of woe. Kids who brown-nosed their way through high school are the best at this. Megan Thode and her father, a Lehigh professor, met with Professor Eckhardt who explained that the C-plus was based on the fact Thode's score for the class participation phase of the course was a zero out of a possible twenty-five. Ouch. The goose-egg bumped her down a full letter grade. (In the old days, parents of college kids didn't get involved in their academic affairs. Back then, college-aged people were supposed to be entering adulthood.)

     When Professor Eckhardt said she would not change Thode's fieldwork grade the frustrated student filed an internal grievance against her. Thode not only demanded that her grade be changed to a B, she expected the professor to apologize to her in writing for the C-plus, and to compensate her for the adverse financial consequences of being an unlicensed counselor. Thode did not get her grade bumped up, there was no apology and no compensation. Having exhausted her in-house administrative remedies the disgruntled student got herself a lawyer. 

     Through her attorney, Richard J. Orloski, Megan Thode filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against Lehigh University and Professor Eckhardt in which the plaintiff alleged breach of contract and sexual discrimination. (Exactly what contract the school and professor violated was unclear.) As to the sexual discrimination charge, Thode claimed that she had been punished by her professor because she, Thode, was a strong supporter of gay and lesbian rights. (It would be almost impossible to find a college professor anywhere who didn't strongly support gay and lesbian rights. If Thode had supported free speech and gun rights the lawyer may have had a discrimination case.)

     Thode's suit came to trial in February 2013 before Northhampton County Judge Emil Giordano. The plaintiff's attorney, in addressing the bench, said that as a result of the defendant professor's low grade his client had "literally lost a career." 

     Neil Hamburg, the attorney representing Professor Eckhardt and Lehigh University, in making the case that this lawsuit was absurd, said, "I think if your honor changed the grade you'd be the first court in the history of jurisprudence to change an academic grade"

     Judge Giordano indicated his agreement with the defendant's attorney when he said, "I've practiced law for longer than I'd like to admit and I've never seen anything like this."

     Attorney Hamburg, in defending Professor Eckhardt's evaluation of the plaintiff's academic performance, acknowledged that on paper Thode had been an excellent student. But regarding her classroom participation, Hamburg said that the student "showed unprofessional behavior that included swearing in class, and, on one occasion, having an outburst in which she began crying. She has to get through the program," the defense attorney said. "She has to meet the academic standards."

     Since there is nothing in the professor-student relationship that guarantees the student a good grade, or even a passing grade, there was no breach of contract in this case. And without solid proof of the defendant's sexual discrimination based on a dislike of people who supported gay and lesbian rights, the suit failed on that rationale as well.

     If the plaintiff prevailed in her case it would create an employment boom in the legal profession, at least until college grades became a thing of the past. In time, students would be able to acquire degrees without any proof they had learned anything. Eventually, there would be no need for classrooms or campuses. (We are approaching that now.) This would lower the cost of a college education and career fast-food servers would all have Ph.Ds. Students could simply buy diplomas online and colleges professors across the nation would lose their ivory tower jobs and end up flipping burgers with everyone else.

     On February 14, 2013 Judge Giordano ruled in favor of Professor Eckhardt and Lehigh University. He wrote: "Plaintiff has failed to establish that the university based the awarded grade of a C-plus on anything other than purely academic reasons. With this decision Judge Giordano dealt a blow to the legal profession, but saved higher education. 

The Oleg Sokolov Murder Case

     On the night of November 7, 2019, Oleg Valeryevich Sokolov, the decorated Napoleonic era historian, author and professor at Saint Petersburg State University in Saint Petersburg, Russian, physically assaulted his girlfriend, 24-year-old Anastasia Veshchenko. She had been a student of his, and upon graduation moved into his apartment. That night, after being beaten, Veshchenko called her brother and informed him of the assault. She said Professor Sokolov attacked her because she attended a birthday party with a friend.

     That night, not long after notifying her brother of the assault, Anastasia Veshchenko called her brother back and told him that the dispute had been resolved and that all was well.

     During the early morning hours of November 8, 2019 the 63-year-old professor, in his flat, killed Anastasia Veshchenko by shooting her with a sawed-off shotgun. Following the murder he dismembered his victim in the bathtub, placed her body parts in garbage bags and stored them in his spare bedroom. 

     On November 9, 2019, with his dead girlfriend's mutilated body still in his apartment, Professor Sokolov hosted a party.

     On the morning after the party the intoxicated killer walked along the Moika River not far from his flat. He was recorded on a CCTV camera throwing bags into the water. At one point he stumbled and fell into the drink. People who witnessed his fall saved him by pulling him out of the water. Someone called the police.

     When officers searched Professor Sokolov's backpack they discovered a bag containing a pair of female arms. At that point Sokolov informed the police he murdered his girlfriend. He led the officers back to his apartment where they found what remained of Anastasia Veshchenko's body. They also seized the shotgun, several firearms and the saw the professor used to dismember his girlfriend.

     While at the murder scene with the police officers, the professor, in an attempted suicide, stabbed himself with a dagger. Following treatment at a nearby hospital he was arrested on charges of murder and illegal possession of firearms. 

     Oleg Sokolov, not long after his arrest, pleaded guilty to the murder and gun charges. 

     On June 9, 2020, following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Sokolov's sentencing hearing got underway in Saint Petersburg. At the proceeding a government witness informed the court that in 2008, in Moscow, Oleg Sokolov tied Ekaterina Ivanova to a chair and beat her. The assault took place because Ivanova threatened to leave him after learning that he was married. Nothing came of that assault.

     A psychiatrist for the state testified that at the time he murdered Anastasia Veshchenko Mr. Sokolov was sane and knew exactly what he was doing.

     The defendant, testifying from within a glass enclosure, explained that he killed his girlfriend in a fit of anger. He said he had thought she was the perfect woman, but instead she "turned into a monster."

     Judge Yulia Maximenko sentenced Oleg Sokolov to 12 years and six months, a term to be served at a "strict regime penal colony." No one, including the prosecutor and Anastasia Veshchenko's parents, objected to the lenient sentence.

Troy James Knapp: Utah's "Mountain Man Burglar"

     In 1986 when he was 28, Troy James Knapp went to prison in Kalamazoo, Michigan for burglary and related offenses. Knapp pleaded guilty to destroying property in 1994 while living in Salt Lake City. Two years later police in Seattle arrested him on the charge of stalking and harassment. In 2002, after serving two years in a California prison for burglary, Mr. Knapp left the state in violation of his parole.

     In 2007 the wilderness survivalist (he survived on other people's stuff) lived in the mountains of southern Utah. In the summers he stole food and gear from cabins in Iron, Kane and Garfield Counties, and moved from one campsite to the next. During the winter months he lived in the cabins he burglarized in the summer. The owners would return to their seasonal dwellings to find bullet holes in the walls and doors. Knapp also left notes with messages like: "Pack up and leave. Get off my mountain." (If everyone had packed up and left Knapp would have starved.)

     Between 2007 and 2013 prosecutors in Iron, Kane and Garfield Counties charged Troy Knapp with 13 felony burglary crimes and 5 misdemeanor offenses. Because of the remoteness of Knapp's break-ins and the fact he kept on the move he eluded capture for more than five years.

     In late February 2013 a man hunting with his son in Sanpete County crossed paths with Knapp about 125 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Aware they had conversed with the Mountain Man Burglar, the father notified the authorities.

     A few days after speaking with the hunters 9,000 feet up on a mountain near Ferron Reservoir in the central part of the state, forty police officers and a law enforcement helicopter closed in on the fugitive as he trudged through three feet of snow. After firing fifteen rifle shots at the helicopter, Knapp surrendered to the small army of approaching lawmen.

     When taken into custody, Knapp possessed an assault rifle and a handgun. He was booked into the Sanpete County Jail without bond. An Assistant United States Attorney in Utah charged Knapp with several federal firearms offenses.

     In April 2014, pursuant to an arranged plea bargain, Knapp pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to the use of a firearm during a crime of violence. At his sentence hearing on June 9, 2014 federal court judge Ted Stewart handed down the mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in federal prison.

     Knapp's attorney, in addressing the court, said, "There's an admiration for somebody who chooses to live off the land, because he does it while the rest of us wouldn't. Even if he needs a little help from some cabin owners."

     Sanpete County prosecutor Brody Keisel had a different take on the case. He told reporters after the federal sentencing that Knapp was nothing more than a "common crook." 

The Cecilia Chang Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 1975 a 22-year-old student from Taiwan (an island 200 miles off the coast of mainland China) named Cecilia Chang enrolled in the Asian Studies Master's Degree program at St. John's University in Queens, New York. After Chang acquired the degree in 1977 the university hired her as an Asian Studies professor. Three years later university administrators promoted Chang to the position of Dean of the Institute For Asian Studies. Having exhibited the ability to raise money for the program from the Taiwanese and other Asian governments, her job as dean primarily involved fund-raising. She spent the next decade traveling the world, living high on donor contributions to the school and on her university expense account.

     In October 1986 Cecilia Chang's husband, Ruey Fung, filed for divorce and sought custody of the couples's toddler son. Four years later, in the midst of a contentious domestic struggle over money and child custody, Ruey Fung was shot outside a warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

     Ruey Fung died from his wounds eleven days after the shooting. But before he passed away homicide detectives were able to question him at the hospital. Unable to speak, Mr. Fung wrote: "I know the man who shot me, but I do not know his name. Cecilia Chang was the person who paid the guy to shoot me." Ruey Fung claimed that his wife wanted him dead so she wouldn't have to split their estate which included a hosiery business. With his death she would also gain custody of their son.

     Because NYC homicide detectives were unable to identity the man who shot and killed Mr. Fung, the investigation died on the vine. Notwithstanding her husband's deathbed murder accusation and police suspicion that Cecilia Chang engaged the services of a hit man, her fund-raising career at St. John's University continued to flourish.

     In 2001, Cecilia Chang began spending an inordinate amount of time in Connecticut at the Foxwoods Casino where she lost tens of thousands of dollars playing high-stakes baccarat. Her wagering strategy of doubling her bet each time she lost compounded her casino losses.

     A grand jury sitting in Queens, New York in 2010 indicted Chang on 205 counts of fraud and embezzlement. She stood accused of stealing huge amounts of money from St. John's University. In addition to embezzling $1 million from the institution, she was accused of using her $350,000 a year expense account and donor money to finance skiing and surfing trips for her son, fund his law school tuition and even pay for his dog's veterinary bills.

     Dean Chang also faced charges of theft, fraud and corruption in federal court. In 2011, after being charged federally, the judge placed her under house arrest. In the fall of 2012 the federal case against Chang went to trial in Brooklyn, New York. When the Assistant United States Attorney rested the government's case it was clear to people following the trial that the defendant was guilty.

     On November 5, 2012, believing that she could convince the jury that she was innocent of all charges, Chang took the stand on her own behalf. It quickly became obvious that the jurors not only didn't like her, they didn't believe her testimony. At one point jurors actually laughed loudly at something she said. At this point in the trial Cecilia Chang realized that in all probability she would be spending the next twenty years in federal prison.

     On Tuesday, the day after her devastatingly bad afternoon on the stand, Chang, in her $1.7 million home in the Jamaica section of Queens, committed suicide. The 59-year-old was found hanging from a ladder that folded down from her attic. Chang had also slit her wrists. She left behind several suicide notes, written in Mandarin, in which, in true sociopathic fashion, she blamed St. John's University for her problems and her suicide.

     Cecilia Chang got accustomed to having all the money she needed to lavishly entertain herself, her son and all of her friends in high places. She felt entitled to use university and donor money to live extravagantly and to cover her gambling loses. The university had some responsibility for Chang's financial excesses. No university employee should be allowed a $350,000 a year expense account. It seemed that at St. John's University no one was watching the store while an employee lived high on other people's money.     

Breaking Into a House Can Be Fatal

     Eighty-year-old Thomas Greer lived in Bixby Knolls, a neighborhood in Long Beach, California. Mr. Greer came home at nine o'clock on the night of July 22, 2014 and found two burglars in his house. He shot and killed one of them who, prior to being shot, said, "Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby."The homeowner shot her anyway.

     At a press conference regarding the shootings, Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the woman, 28-year-old Andrea Miller, showed no outward signs of being pregnant.

     Officers arrested Andrea Miller's accomplice, 26-year-old Gus Adams on charges of residential burglary and murder. Because Miller had been killed during the commission of a felony perpetrated by Mr. Adams, he was charged with criminal homicide under the felony-murder doctrine. The judge set Adams' bail at $1 million.

     Both Andria Miller and Gus Adams had criminal histories involving burglary. Investigators believed the couple broke into Mr. Greer's home three times before. When Mr. Greer returned home that night and encountered the intruders the suspects attacked him, hitting him with their fists and body slamming him to the floor, breaking his collar bone.

     While Gus Adams tried to pry open Mr. Greer's safe, the burglary and assault victim snuck into a room and grabbed his .22-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As Mr. Greer opened fire the burglars fled through the garage and into an alley. The homeowner chased after them firing his gun. One of his bullets hit Andrea Miller who died in the alley.

     On July 29, 2014 police officers arrested Gus Adam's 49-year-old mother, Ruby Adams on suspicion she had acted as a lookout in the burglary of the Greer home. The judge set her bail at $175,000.

     The authorities also announced that according to the medical examiner's office Andrea Miller was not pregnant.

     In January 2015 the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute Thomas Greer for killing Andrea Miller.

     Ruby Adams, in April 2016, pleaded no contest to residential burglary. The judge sentenced her to three years in prison.

     In August 2016 a jury acquitted Gus Adams of felony-murder but found him guilty of first-degree residential burglary and elder abuse. The judge sentenced him to 12 years behind bars.

The Great Milwaukee Stradivarius Heist

     At twenty after ten on the night of January 27, 2014, violinist Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Orchestra, walked toward his car in the parking lot outside Wisconsin Lutheran College's auditorium where he had just performed a chamber concert. As the 49-year-old musician neared his car a man emerged out of the darkness and stunned him with a taser gun.  Mr. Almond and his violin fell to the ground. The robber picked up the 300-year-old Stradivarius and jumped into a minivan driven by a woman.

     Almond's Lipinski Strad was given to him on "permanent loan" in 2008 by an anonymous patron. As one of 650 of Antonio Stradivari's instruments still in existence, the stolen violin was valued at $5 million.

     Milwaukee detectives immediately began viewing surveillance camera footage in search of clues. FBI agents assigned to the bureau's art theft unit were dispatched to act as consultants in the case. Investigators notified authorities with Interpol in the event the thieves tried to sell the stolen violin in Europe. A $100,000 reward went up for any information leading to the recovery of the instrument.

     On Monday, February 3, 2014, Milwaukee detectives assigned to the high-profile case arrested two men and a woman. One of the men, 41-year-old Salah Salahadyn, pleaded guilty in 2000 to possessing a $25,000 sculpture that had been stolen from a Milwaukee art gallery in 1995. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison.

     The second man taken into custody, a 36-year-old suspect who went by the name Universal Knowledge Allah, had no criminal record. Both suspects were charged with robbery, an offense in Wisconsin that can bring up to 15 years in prison.

     Court Commissioner Katherine Kucharski set Salahadyn's bail at $10,000, an extremely low amount given the fact he had a lengthy criminal history that included bail jumping. The magistrate set Allah's bond at $500.

     Charges against the suspected female get-a-way driver were dropped. The authorities did not release this woman's name.

     On Wednesday, February 5, 2014, two days after the arrests, Milwaukee chief of police Edward A. Flynn announced that one of the suspects led detectives to the stolen Stradivarius. The violin was found in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Milwaukee. The stolen instrument had never left the city. (Perhaps the woman driver in the case was the one who cooperated with detectives in return for her dropped charges.)

     In July 2014, Universal Allah was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. The Milwaukee County judge, in November 2014, sentenced Salah Salahadyn to seven years behind bars.

The Tyler Deutsch Child Abuse Case

   Tyler Deutsch lived with his girlfriend and her six-week-old baby girl in a trailer house in Roy, Washington, a town of 800 outside of Tacoma. On Saturday, May 25, 2013, while the baby's 22-year-old mother was away from the trailer, Mr. Deutsch closed the baby into a freezer to stop her from crying then fell asleep. An hour later, as his girlfriend walked into the dwelling, the 25-year-old removed the baby. The infant, wearing only a diaper, had been exposed to a temperature of ten degrees.

     The mother of the abused child tried to call 911 but Tyler Deutsch, not wanting to get into trouble with the law, took the phone out of her hand. The frantic mother ran to a neighbor's place where she made the emergency call.

     Paramedics rushed the unresponsive baby to the Mary Bridge Children's Hospital were physicians managed to revive her. The infant, with blisters on her skin, had a body temperature of 84. Doctors also determined that the baby had a broken arm and leg as well as a head injury.

     Deputies with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office took Tyler Deutsch into custody. According to reports he told the officers that by deep-freezing the baby he was trying to help her. A local prosecutor charged him with attempted murder, assault of a child, criminal mistreatment and interfering with reporting domestic violence. The suspect was held in the Pierce County Jail without bond.

    In January 2014 Tyler Deutsch pleaded guilty to first-degree assault. The judge sentenced him to 16 years in prison. The good news was that the abused child recovered fully. The bad news: someday this man would get out of prison.