The Shannon Kepler Murder Case

     Shannon Kepler and his wife Gina joined the Tulsa Police Department as patrol officers on August 13, 1990. He was  30-years-old and she was 24. In 2002, the childless couple adopted 6-year-old Lisa.

    Lisa Kepler, diagnosed with a personality disorder called reactive detachment, became a difficult child. Due to her behavioral problems the parents, over the years, spent thousands of dollars on various programs, camps and therapy. None of this treatment altered the girl's anti-social behavior. By 2014, the parents were at their wit's end. They simply had no control over their 18-year-old daughter.

     On July 30, 2014, the fed-up parents, in hopes that a dose of reality might prompt Lisa to change her ways, kicked her out of the house. They dropped her off at a homeless shelter in downtown Tulsa.

     While living at the homeless shelter Lisa met 19-year-old Jeremey Lake. Shortly thereafter Lisa moved into Lake's parents' house in north Tulsa. On August 5, 2014 Lisa and Jeremy announced their romantic relationship on Facebook.

     That Tuesday night, August 5, 2014, at nine-fifteen, Shannon Kepler pulled up in front of Jeremy Lake's house where he encountered Lisa and her boyfriend walking along the street. Following an exchange of angry words the police officer shot at Lake three times then allegedly turned his gun on his daughter and fired three more times. Lisa escaped injury but Jeremey Lake died on the spot. After the shooting Officer Kepler drove off in his SUV.

     Not long after the shooting, a Tulsa police officer spoke on the phone to Gina Kepler who said that she and her husband planned to turn themselves in. She said she'd leave the gun in the trunk of her car.

     Accompanied by an attorney, Shannon Kepler and his 48-year-old wife surrendered at police headquarters. (Mrs. Kepler had been charged with accessory to murder after the fact.) On the advice of their lawyer the couple did not agree to interrogations.

     Officers booked the Keplers into the Tulsa County Jail. The 54-year-old police officer and instructor at the Tulsa Police Academy faced charges of first-degree murder and shooting with intent to kill.

     The judge denied the suspects bond and the chief of police suspended the couple with pay. Mr. Kepler entered a plea of not guilty based on a claim of self defense.

     A few days after the arrests of her parents, Lisa Kepler spoke to a local television reporter. Regarding her dead boyfriend she said, "He was just really sweet and caring and he didn't pretend. I've known him a week. He was everything. He gave me a place to stay, food to eat and a bed to sleep in. He meant a lot to me and dad came and took him away."

     On August 22, 2014 the defendants made bail and were released from custody. They had both been fired from the Tulsa Police Department.

     The Kepler murder trial was delayed several times due to a series of procedural motions filed by the defense involving claims that the judge and the case prosecutor were biased against the defendant. The motions were denied.

     In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Shannon Kepler went on trial for murder three times, and three times the juries were deadlocked on a verdict.

     A fourth jury, on October 19, 2017, found Shannon Kepler guilty of first-degree manslaughter. On November 20, 2017, Tulsa County District Judge Sharon Holmes sentenced him to 15 years in prison. 

     In 2017, the Tulsa County prosecutor dropped the accessory after the fact charge against Gina Kepler, and in December 2019, following arbitration, she was re-instated as a Tulsa police officer.

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, 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 had 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 that she had killed herself. But, as in most suspicious death cases without eyewitnesses or obvious suspects, questions remained. For example, how did Vasta 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.  

Watery Graves: The Mystery of Foss Lake

     There's no telling how many murder victims lay on the bottom of America's lakes, rivers and ponds. Most people don't realize that these boating, swimming and fishing sites are also the unmarked graves of people who have gone missing and might never be found. It's a sobering thought.

     Whenever a lake goes dry or is drained, law enforcement officers often gather to recover guns, knives, cars, safes, cellphones, computers, wallets and other potential indicia of foul play. Occasionally, the remains of missing persons are exposed as well. When that happens one mystery is solved and another is created.

     On September 10, 2013, Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer George Hoyle, while testing a sonar detection device from a boat on Foss Lake 110 miles west of Oklahoma City, discovered a pair of vehicles sitting under twelve feet of murky water.

     A week after the vehicles were detected, Darrell Splawn, a member of the state's underwater search and rescue team, dove into the lake for a closer look. At this point officers believed they had found a pair of stolen cars.

     When officer Splawn opened the door to one of the vehicles and probed its interior, his hand came in contact with a shoe. He also discovered, near the car, a human skull. The diver surfaced to report his finds. When the diver slipped back into the muddy water to check on the other vehicle he saw skeletal remains inside the second car.

     Once the heavily corroded cars--a 1952 Chevrolet and a 1969 Chevy Camero--were pulled out of the reservoir, they revealed their gruesome secrets. Each vehicle contained the skeletal remains of three people. Officers also recovered, among other items, a muddy wallet and a purse.

     On April 8, 1969, 69-year-old John Alva Porter, the owner of a 1952 green Chevy, went missing. In the car with him that night were his brother Arlie and 58-year-old Nora Marie Duncan. These three residents of nearby Elk City, along with the Chevy, had disappeared without a trace. No one had any idea what had happened to them.

     Jimmy Williams, a 16-year-old from Sayre, Oklahoma, a town of 4,000 a few miles from the lake, owned a 1969 Chevrolet Camero. On the night of November 20, 1970 he and two friends--Thomas Michael Rios and Leah Gail Johnson--both 18, were riding in Williams' car. Instead of going to the high school football game in Elk City, the trio had gone hunting on Turkey Creek Road. The teenagers and the Camero were never seen again.

     While the six skeletal remains were presumed to match the two sets of missing persons, it would take months to scientifically confirm their identities. Forensic scientists in the Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office compared DNA from the bones with DNA samples from surviving family members. Dr. Angela Berg, the state forensic anthropologist, determined the gender, general stature and approximate ages of the people pulled out of the lake. She did this by analyzing leg and pelvic bones along with the skulls. This data was compared with information contained in the missing person reports.

     What the 44-year-old remains did not reveal was the manner and cause of these deaths. While the six people presumably drowned, they could have been murdered by gun, knife or blunt instrument then dumped into the lake. To rule out foul play, the forensic pathologist and the anthropologist looked for signs of trauma such as bullet holes, knife wounds and smashed or broken bones. The forensic scientists also attempted to determine if the fates of the people inside the two cars were somehow connected.

     Custer County Sheriff Bruce Peoples told an Associated Press reporter that it was possible that these underwater victims had been driven accidentally into the lake where they had drowned. "We know that can happen even if you know your way around," he said. "It can happen that quick." 

     In October 2014, the forensic pathologist officially confirmed the identities of the six sets of remains. Two months later the medical examiner's office ruled out foul play. Some of the victims' family members, however, remained skeptical and suspected otherwise.

Christina Schumacher's Involuntary Commitment

     In 2011, Ludwig "Sonny" Schumacher lived in Essex, Vermont with his wife Christina and their son and daughter. They had been married 17 years and their marriage was falling apart. The couple also had problems with their professional lives.

     After retiring from the Vermont National Guard as a Colonel and a F-16 pilot, Mr. Schumacher accepted an executive position with the Timberiane Dental Company in South Burlington, Vermont. Christina worked as a financial officer with the GE Healthcare Corporation, a company she had been with for more than twenty years.

     In July 2011, Christina petitioned a family court judge for an order of protection against abuse from her husband. In support of her request, she claimed that their 15-year-old daughter was afraid of her father. "My daughter," she wrote, "is fearful and has said if I do not file this petition she will file her own. She is now staying with friends." According to the protection order petition, Mr. Schumacher had struck Christina in the face in front of the girl. He had also abused his wife by grabbing her arm and pulling her hair. The family court judge denied the protection request.

     In 2012, after Christina's job at GE Healthcare was eliminated, she landed a position with an Internet firm called, MyWebGrocer. A few months later she quit that job. Ludwig Schumacher ran into employment problems himself that year. Officials at Timberiane Dental fired him.

     In July 2013, a judge granted Christina a temporary order of protection against her husband after he tipped his 14-year-old son Gunnar's bed upside down with the boy in it. According to the court petition, Mr. Schumacher kept the boy pinned to the floor by pressing his knee against his back. When Gunnar broke free, the father allegedly threw him to the floor. Christina cited this and other incidents of her husband's out-of-control rage to illustrate a "pattern of abuse which causes fear" for her and her son.

     Ludwig Schumacher appealed his wife's protection of abuse order and won. The family court judge ruled that the description of events in Christina's petition did not constitute domestic abuse by a parent as defined by Vermont law.

     Christina, on September 3, 2013, filed for divorce on grounds that her 49-year-old husband had been unfaithful, abusive and mentally ill. Shortly after the divorce filing he moved out of the house and rented an apartment in Essex. In cross-filing for divorce, Mr. Schumacher described Christina as mentally ill, noting that during the summer of 2013 she had received intensive mental health treatment at the Seneca Center at the Fletcher Allen Health facility in Burlington.

     Ludwig Schumacher, on Tuesday, December 17, 3013, called Essex High School stating that his son Gunnar would be absent two days due to "a family situation." A day later, at two in the afternoon, a friend of Gunnar's went to the Schumacher apartment where he found Gunnar and his father dead.

     The 14-year-old boy had been strangled and his father had hanged himself. Mr. Schumacher left behind a long suicide letter explaining why he had murdered his son and killed himself.

     On the day after the discovery of her dead husband and son, a doctor informed Christina that if she didn't check herself into a psychiatric ward at the Fletcher Allen Health Care facility in Burlington she would be taken into custody by the authorities and put into the hospital without her consent. Because Christina had once told her sister that if anything happened to her children she would kill herself, the doctor felt he was acting in her best interest. Christina insisted that she did not need mental health treatment. All she wanted to do was grieve with her 17-year-old daughter. The doctor followed through on his threat by having Christina involuntarily committed to the mental ward.

     On December 30, 2013, Christina called the Burlington Free Press and asked the newspaper to investigate her situation, saying that the state had no basis to hold her against her will in the mental facility. While Vermont law did not require a prompt judicial review of involuntary mental health commitments, the publicity Christina received from newspaper stories prompted a judicial hearing.

     On January 22, 2014, after three hours of testimony before a Superior Court judge in Burlington, the judge said he disagreed with Christina's mental illness diagnosis and the assessment that she was a danger to herself and others. The judge ordered her release after five and a half weeks in the psychiatric ward.

Journalistic Ethics in The Naemm Davis Subway Murder

     At 12:30 PM on Monday, December 3, 2012, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han stood with other New Yorkers waiting for their trains at the Times Square subway station at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. Mr. Han, who was currently unemployed, had once owned a midtown dry cleaning business. He had come into Manhattan from his home in Queens to renew his Korean passport. That day, Naemm Davis, a 30-year-old homeless man wandered about the platform above the tracks mumbling to himself and alarming some of the subway travelers. Mr. Han (who reportedly had been drinking), asked Davis to stop bothering the other people. The two men exchanged angry words, and following a brief scuffle, Davis threw Mr. Han off the subway platform onto the tracks below.

     Dozens of subway patron looked on as Mr. Han struggled to pull himself off the tracks and back up to the armpit-high platform. He couldn't make it, and after being on the tracks for about a minute was hit by a southbound train that did not have time to stop. A medical student from the Beth Israel Medical Center went to Mr. Han who was face down on the tracks and still alive. The student rolled him over and tried to save him by beating on his chest. Some of the people standing on the subway platform used  their cellphones to video Mr. Han as he lay on the tracks below. A short time later Ki-Suck Han died at Saint Luke's Hospital.

     The next day police officers arrested Naemm Davis in midtown Manhattan. While being questioned by detectives Davis said, "He [Han] wouldn't leave me alone, so I pushed him. I saw him get hit by the train. I said to him, '[expletive], get out of my face.'"

     On Tuesday, December 4, 2012, the day of Davis' arrest, the New York Post on its front page published a large photograph of Mr. Han standing between the tracks and the platform wall with the back of his head to the camera as he looked toward the oncoming train. The oddly tranquil photograph, taken just moments before impact, featured the headline "DOOMED" and the caption: "Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die." The photograph had been taken by R. Umar Abbasi, a freelance photo-journalist who just happened to be on the train platform that day. Mr. Umar sold the image to the New York Post for an undisclosed amount.

     The subway station murder, a homicide that in its own right would have created widespread fear and anger, sparked public outrage over the fact no one on the train station platform had reached down and pulled Mr. Han to safety. People also wondered why Mr. Abbasi, instead of getting a dramatic and newsworthy photograph, hadn't dropped his camera to save this man. And editors at the New York Post were under fire for simply publishing Abbasi's picture.

     R. Umar Abbasi, against a tidal wave of criticism, tried to defend his behavior on the New York Post website. The photographer wrote that he had flashed his camera 49 times with the intent of catching the attention of the subway motorman. "I wanted to help the man," he wrote, "but I couldn't figure out how to help. It all happened so fast. I had no idea what I was shooting. I'm not even sure it was registering with me what was happening. I was just looking at that train coming." Abbasi said he didn't understand why others who were closer to the tracks didn't try to save Mr. Han.

     Some media critics took issue with the New York Post for what they considered the unethical journalistic act of buying and publishing Mr. Abbasi's photograph of the doomed Mr. Han. A pundit named Lauren Ashburn called the act "profit-motive journalism at its worst."

     Howard Kurtz, the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources," a weekly TV talk show about the media, in recognizing that Mr. Han's murder comprised every subway traveler's nightmare, was less critical of The New York Post. Mr. Kutz did "wonder why the photographer's first instinct was to take pictures." The answer to that question was perhaps this: Mr. Abbasi was a photo-journalist. He was not a police officer, firefighter or paramedic. Mr. Abbasi was not in the business of saving lives but in the business of taking pictures.

     On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, Charen Kim, a lawyer representing Mr. Han's wife Serim, told reporters that the family had been shocked by the New York Post photograph. The family didn't understand why no one helped Mr. Han. During the the press conference the lawyer didn't mention Naemm Davis, the man responsible for Mr. Han's death.

     Naemm Davis was held without bail on the charge of second-degree murder. He had a history of drug related arrests in Pennsylvania and New York.

     In a December 7, 2012 jailhouse interview with a reporter with the New York Post, Naeem Davis said he had been coaxed into shoving Mr. Han off the platform by voices in his head that he couldn't control.

     At his January 15, 2013 arraignment hearing, Mr. Davis pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. According to police documents, he told investigators that the victim had "rolled like a bowling ball" when he fell onto the subway tracks. Because Davis was seething over a comment an acquaintance had made two days earlier about his Timberland boots, his "head wasn't where it was supposed to be that day. He [Ki-Suck Han] came at the wrong time."

     At the arraignment hearing, Defense attorney Stephen Pokart argued that Han, who had started the fight, was pursuing his client. Prosecutor James Lin countered by pointing out how the defendant's statements revealed that he did not feel threatened and had acted out of anger and malice.

     In 2013, the victim's daughter, Ashley Han, sued the New York City Transit Authority for $30 million.

     In March 2016, Naemm Davis pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison.

Writer Gabriel Matzneff: France's Proud Pedophile

     For the past fifty years or so Gabriel Matzneff, now 86, was one of France's most celebrated, renowned and admired writers. He won several prestigious literary awards and state honors for his novels, essays, and nonfiction books. Presidents of France praised Matzneff for his deep, original thought and highly creative writing style. Literary critics in France and throughout Europe agreed.

     What is unusual, indeed shocking, about Matzneff's status as a literary icon is how, in his books and essays, and on his official web site, he flaunts and writes about his adventures as a predatory pedophile. For example, in Matzneff's infamous 1974 essay, Les Moins deSieze Ans (Those Under 16), Matzneff describes in great detail his seduction of pre-adolescent boys and 14-year-old girls. He also chronicles his regular trips to the Philippines to pick up young boys for sex.

     In Matzneff's diaries, published in 1985, he writes: "Sometimes, I'll have as many as four boys--from 8 to 14--in my bed.

     The Paris police, in 1986, launched a half-hearted investigation into anonymous tips that the 50-year-old literary giant was living with a 14-year-old girl named Vanessa Springora. To avoid being questioned about his relationship with the girl, Matzneff and Springora moved into another apartment, a hideout provided by the fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent.

     In accordance with the French acceptance of pedophilia, and the desire to protect the country's most valuable literary treasure, the authorities quickly closed the Matzneff investigation. Everyone knew Matzneff was a pedophile, yet no one cared or had the courage to bring this famous and powerful man to justice.

     Gabriel Matzneff's charmed life of privilege and exemption from criminal prosecution suddenly collapsed in January 2020 with the publication of Vanessa Springora's memoir, Le Consentement (The Consent). The memoir tells the story of her life with the famous pedophile.

     On a French television program featuring her memoir, Springora, a Paris publishing house director, said, "My goal was to lock him [Matzneff] up because that's what he has done to me and that's what he did with many young girls."

     Following the publication of her tell-all memoir, Springora met with a prosecutor in Paris named Remy Heitz who informed her he was interested in prosecuting the famous writer for his crimes against children.

     On February 11, 2020, prosecutor Heitz announced the commencement of an investigation into the alleged sexual crimes of Gabriel Matzneff. Perhaps this meant that in France, law enforcement authorities had finally decided to prosecute pedophiles. However, in the case of an eighty-three-year-old self described sex offender, this new enforcement policy was more than a little late.

     The Paris prosecutor's office, on February 11, issued a summons ordering Mr. Matzneff to appear the following day in court. The great writer, hiding out somewhere in the Italian Riviera, ignored the summons.

     In March 2020, after decades of sexual crimes allegedly involving hundreds of victims, Gabriel Matzneff was charged with sexually abusing an unidentified youth. The prosecutor, in an Europe 1 Radio interview, said, "We will seek to identify other possible victims who could have suffered violations of the same nature, on national territory or abroad."

     In the wake of Vanessa Springora's memoir the French government stripped Matzneff of his state literary awards that included The Order of National Merit, and Officer of Arts and Letters. His publisher of 30 years, Gallimard, after profiting decades on the works of a proud pedophile, stopped selling his books.

     Matzneff, not accustomed to being treated like a sex offender, agreed to an interview with a reporter with The New York Times. In the March 2020 Times piece the French literary great lamented that his former supporters had not come forward on his behalf. He said he felt "like the living dead, a dead man walking." Regarding his former literary colleagues and admirers, Matzneff said, "They're showing their cowardice. We can say caution, but it's more than caution from people I considered friends." 

     The Gabriel Matzneff pedophilia trial was scheduled for September 2020.

     As of this writing, Mr. Matzneff, who is not in custody, has not been tried for the sexual abuse of minors. 

Handwriting Evidence in the Lindbergh Case

     On April 3, 1936,  Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an illegal alien from Germany who lived in the Bronx, New York, died in the electric chair for the kidnapping and murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr. At the 36-year-old unemployed carpenter's trial, held in Flemington, New Jersey in January and February 1935, prosecution handwriting experts took the stand and testified that the defendant had written all of the ransom notes as well as other documents associated with the abduction and murder. It was this forensic document evidence that sent Mr. Hauptmann to the death house in Trenton.

     At the Lindbergh-Hauptmann trial eight nationally known questioned document examiners, from Los Angeles to New York City, both private and government employed, testified that Hauptmann wrote the fifteen ransom letters, including the note left by the kidnapper in the baby's nursery. The Lindbergh crime produced an unusually large quantity of questioned writing. Moreover, the experts had plenty of known handwriting to work with in the form of request writings--a carefully worded paragraph dictated to Hauptmann--and his conceded or "course of business" writings in the form of his personal notebooks and his auto registration, driver's license and insurance applications.

     The prosecution experts testified that Hauptmann's known writing looked like the writing in the ransom documents. They produced dozens of word chart exhibits for the jury that illustrated the similarity in the two sets of cursive writing. Hauptmann and the ransom note writer also misspelled certain words the same way.

     The questioned document testimony phase of the Lindbergh-Hauptmann trial took up four days and produced 800 pages of trial transcript. Besides the eight experts who took the stand, the prosecution had four rebuttal experts who would have testified against Hauptmann had the defense put on a credible battery of their own handwriting witnesses. As it turned out, these rebuttal witnesses were not needed.

     One the the rebuttal witnesses, John Vreeland Haring, later published a heavily illustrated book showing why he believed Hauptmann had written the ransom documents. Mr. Haring made a special effort to illustrate the similarities between the defendant's writing and the ransom note left in the nursery. For comparison purposes, Haring used as known handwriting samples, two post-conviction letters Hauptmann had written in hand to the Governor of New Jersey.

     In addition to the prosecution's eight handwriting witnesses and the four rebuttal experts, Charles A. Appel, Jr., the head of the FBI crime lab, believed Hauptmann was the ransom note writer. While he didn't testify at the trial, the FBI crime lab director testified against Hauptmann before the Bronx Grand Jury months before.

     Hauptmann's defense attorney, Edward J. Reilly, asked seven document examiners to look at the handwriting evidence. Three declared that Hauptmann had written the documents, another three said the ransom notes had been altered after Hauptmann's arrest to look like his known writing--thereby conceding that the known and questioned writings were similar. The seventh examiner asked by the defense to analyze the evidence, a man named John C. Trendley from St. Louis, ended up being the only examiner who actually testified for the defense at the Hauptmann trial.

     A reporter who covered the Lindbergh-Hauptmann trial wrote this about Mr. Trendley: "He was a furtive, musty little codger who had the greatest difficulty establishing his claim to be an expert...And his testimony was really pathetic." Besides his background as a courtroom charlatan, Trendley's testimony was weakened by the fact he had not spent much time with the evidence.

     Hauptmann's defense lawyers--he had five--were never able to counter the prosecution's overwhelming handwriting case against their client. Notwithstanding all of the other physical evidence connecting Hauptmann to the crime, it was his handwriting that sent him to the electric chair.

     To this day the Lindbergh case remains the high water mark in the American history of forensic document examination.

The Elliot Gornall Child Pornography Case

     In 2011, after passing a background check, 27-year-old Elliot Gornall began teaching second and third grade at the R. F. McMullen Elementary school in the central Ohio town of Loudonville. In the fall of 2014, Gornall, well-liked by his students, their parents and his fellow teachers, began teaching a class of 25 kindergarten kids.

     Gornall's reputation and teaching career took a major blow on November 18, 2014 when local drug officers raided his home in Loudonville. The drug cops found a quantity of marijuana, illicit prescription drugs and several pairs of children's underwear. The searchers left Mr. Gornall's dwelling that day in possession of his personal computer.

     Not long after the drug raid, an Ashland County grand jury indicted the kindergarten teacher on several counts of prescription drug abuse, marijuana possession and theft related to the underwear. He pleaded not guilty to all charges, posted bail and was released from custody.

     Following the indictments that shocked the community, school district officials placed the 32-year-old teacher on administrative leave. On December 8, 2014, Elliot Gornall tendered his resignation from the R. F. McMullen Elementary School. He moved out of his place in Loudonville and took up residence in Lorain, Ohio.

     The big shock in the case came on March 6, 2015 when police officers arrested Gornall and booked him into the Ashland County Jail on 23 counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. If convicted as charged he faced up to 184 years in prison.

     A couple of months after the drug and theft indictments detectives with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation discovered child pornography and videotaped images of R. F. McMullen Elementary school kids using the kindergarten bathroom. Investigators searched the restroom and found, hidden in a white plastic hook stuck to the wall, a pinhole video camera. Detectives believed Gornall had installed the secret camera in August 2014.

     At his March 9, 2015 arraignment, Elliot Gornall pleaded not guilty to the charges related to the spy camera in the children's restroom. Ashland County prosecutor Chris Turnell informed the judge that detectives had found 63 videos of 25 kindergarten students plus more than 100 downloaded images of child pornography on the ex-teacher's computer. Judge Ronald Forsthoefel set Gornall's bail at $500,000.

     In October 2015, Elliot Gornall pleaded no contest to 181 charges related to his videotaping activities and other charges. Judge Ronald Forsthoefel sentenced him to 99 years in prison.

The Ka Pasasouk: Quadruple Murder Case

     In Los Angeles, Ka Pasasouk began using drugs, assaulting people and stealing things years before his first criminal conviction as a 23-year-old in 2004. The husky, heavily tattooed street criminal was sent to state prison that year for auto-theft. After serving a few months behind bars, Pasasouk, in 2006, was back in prison after being convicted of robbery and the crime of assault likely to produce great bodily injury. In 2010, after being out of prison for more than a year, a judge sentenced Pasasouk to three years for stealing cars. On January 18, 2012, after being placed under the supervision of the Los Angeles Probation Department, Mr. Pasasouk was back on the street living his life of methamphetamine, violence and theft.

     On September 19, 2012 Ka Pasasouk pleaded no contest to the possession of meth in a Van Nuys Superior Court before Judge Jessica Silvers. Fateema Johnson, a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office had accepted the plea in return for Pasasouk's promise to enter a county drug rehabilitation program pursuant to a recent voter approved ballot measure called Proposition 36. The goal of this program involved sending nonviolent drug offenders into rehab instead of prison. Since Pasasouk was a violent, habitual criminal, he was not the kind of person California voters had in mind when they approved this measure.

     At the September 2012 hearing in Van Nuys, a member of the Los Angeles County Probation Department objected strongly to the terms of Pasasouk's plea arrangement. The probation officer pointed out that Pasasouk had not checked in with his probation agent since January. Moreover, according to a report submitted to Judge Silvers by the probation department: "The defendant is an ineligible and unsuitable candidate for continued community supervision. It is recommended that probation be denied, and that the defendant be sentenced to state prison."

     Judge Jessica Silvers, on the recommendation of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, handed down suspended sentence on the meth possession case, placed Ka Pasasouk back under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Probation Department and ordered him to enter the drug rehabilitation program.

      Ka Pasasouk, who had no intention of entering a drug program, didn't even bother to check in with his probation agent. In November 2012, when Pasasouk failed to appear in her courtroom to show proof that he was making drug rehabilitation progress, Judge Silvers issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

     At four-thirty Sunday morning, December 2, 2012, Ka Pasasouk and three associates--two women and one man--were outside a rundown unlicensed boarding house in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Pasasouk and his companions were yelling at four people--two men and two women--with whom they had some kind of property dispute. Pasasouk, who was holding these people at gunpoint, suddenly shot and killed all four of them.

     Following the quadruple murder, Pasasouk and his accomplices drove to Las Vegas in a black Audi. That night the police in Las Vegas spotted the car parked at the Silverton Hotel & Casino. Following an all-night surveillance while arrest warrants were being prepared in Los Angeles, the police took Pasasouk and the others into custody. They were held in the Clark County Jail.

     A week after the arrests in Las Vegas, a spokesperson with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office admitted that Ka Pasasouk should not have been placed on probation following his meth arrest. In recommending the drug rehabilitation program instead of prison, the DA's office had made a terrible mistake.

     In November 2015, a jury sitting in Los Angeles found Ka Pasasouk guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. In February 2016 the judge sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

     Had Pasasouk been sentenced to prison in January 2012 instead of being placed on probation he would have served his sentence and been out on the street prior to December 1, the date of the murders. However, had the judge in 2010 given him a stiffer sentence Pasasouk would not have murdered the four people in Northridge. 

Ahmed Elgaafary: The Uber Driver From Hell

     In February 2018, Uber driver Ahmed Elgaafary, an Egyptian citizen, picked up a heavily intoxicated young woman at the Valley Forge Casino Resort in eastern Pennsylvania's Chester County. At two-thirty that morning, the 27-year-old driver from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, instead of directly delivering his alcohol impaired passenger to her home fifteen minutes away, detoured to a dimly lit road in Charlestown Township. At that remote spot Mr. Elgaafary climbed into the back seat of his GMC Yukon and raped the unconscious woman.

     While sexually assaulting his victim the Uber driver kept the meter running.

     Fifty-three minutes after the rape Ahmed Elgaafary dropped the woman off at her residence. In addition to the taxi fare the driver charged her $150 for vomiting in his SUV.

     When she awoke later that day, the Uber rape victim discovered bruises on her thighs. She didn't remember what happened in the SUV but suspected the driver had violated her sexually.  For that reason she went to a hospital where a nurse used a rape kit to gather and preserve the physical evidence of sexual intercourse. The kit was submitted to the authorities for forensic analysis.

     When questioned by detectives, Ahmed Elgaafary denied any sexual contact with his accuser. However, when confronted with physical evidence that contradicted his denial, he changed his story. Elgaafary said that while he had sex with the passenger it had been consensual.

     Charged with sexual assault, indecent assault and the rape of an unconscious woman, Mr. Elgaafary went on trial in August 2019. The prosecution's case rested primarily on the testimony of the victim and the rape kit evidence connecting him to the act.

     Ahmed Elgaafary took the stand on his own behalf and claimed that he had been seduced by the accuser. He said the sex had been consensual. He did acknowledge, however, that his passenger had been intoxicated at the time.

     The jury of eight men and four women didn't accept the Elgaafary defense, and after three hours of deliberation found the defendant guilty as charged.

     The judge sentenced Ahmed Elgaafary to 7 to 20 years in prison. Upon completion of his sentence he would be deported to Egypt.

Don't Sleep with Your Wife And Your Gun

     William McCollom lived with his wife Margaret in a modest house in Peachtree, Georgia, an upscale town of 35,000 southwest of Atlanta. In October 2014 the major appointed the 58-year-old law enforcement officer to the position of chief of police.

     On Thursday January 1, 2015, at four-fifteen in the morning, Chief McCollom called 911 to report the shooting of his wife at their home. "Gunshot wound," he said. "Accidental, need medical ASAP!"

     The 911 dispatcher asked, "Who shot her?"

     "Me," he replied.

     "How did you shoot her?"

     "The gun (a 9mm Glock) was in the bed, I went to move it, put it to the side. It went off."

     "Is she awake?"

     "No, everybody was sleeping."

     "No," the dispatcher said, "is she awake now?" (A woman could be heard moaning in the background.)

     "Yes," the chief said. Then to his wife he asked, "Are you having trouble breathing, dear?" To the dispatcher he said, "Come on guys, get here. Oh my God, how did this happen?"

     "Is that her crying?" asked the dispatcher.

     "Yes, she's having trouble breathing."

     "Were you asleep also when this happened?"

     "Yes." At this point, about two minutes into the 911 call, Chief McCollom identified himself. "I'm the chief of police," he said.

     "Where is the gun?"

     "The gun is on the dresser."

     "You're the chief of police in Peachtree?"

     "Yeah, unfortunately, yes," he replied.

     Emergency medical personnel flew the 57-year-old shooting victim to the Atlanta Medical Center. According to doctors there, Margaret McCollom was in critical condition. The mayor of Peachtree placed the chief on administrative leave and asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to take over the case.

     The district attorney of Fayette County told reporters that he would decide if criminal charges were appropriate after the GBI completed its investigation of the shooting. Friends and neighbors questioned by reporters all insisted that the chief and his wife were not experiencing marital problems or any form of domestic discord.

     On Monday January 12, 2015, doctors released Margaret McCollom from the  hospital. The shooting had left her paralyzed from the waist down. She told GBI detectives that she was asleep when shot and that she believed it was an accident. Before submitting a report to the district attorney's office, investigators were awaiting the results of crime lab tests on the gun as well as the chief's blood-alcohol analysis.

     On March 11, 2015 William McCollom resigned from the police department. On the city's website he wrote the following: "I have had two families in Peachtree--my police family and my personal family. I need to continue to focus my time and efforts there."

     According to District Attorney Scott Ballard, McCollom had accidentally shot his sleeping wife after he had consumed alcohol and sleep medication. The prosecutor planned to ask a grand jury to indict the former chief of police on the misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct.

     In August 2015 William Mcollom pleaded guilty to the above charge and was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation.

Excited Delirium Syndrome: Cause of Death or Police Cover-Up?

     When people die suddenly and unexpectedly without a clear reason, forensic pathologists, rather than classify them as deaths of undetermined causes, often explain these fatalities as being caused by a syndrome. Attributing a mysterious or suspicious death to a syndrome, while it sounds scientific, isn't always forensically enlightening. Some of the more common causes of death syndromes include the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) and the more recent Excited Delirium Syndrome (EDS). As causes of death, syndromes are based less on forensic science than on human behavior and the circumstances surrounding these deaths. These postmortem determinations often leave a lot to interpretation and are therefore controversial and subject to debate.

Excited Delirium Syndrome (EDS)

     Forensic pathologists in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, in situations involving agitated, violent, incoherent and erratic male subjects who die suddenly while fighting with police officers or prison personnel trying to subdue them through physical force or taser jolts, often attribute these deaths to EDS. Most of these men are overweight, a high percentage are black and they are all high on drugs and/or alcohol. Many are also seriously mentally ill. Under intense stress the hearts of these men race wildly, their body temperatures soar to 103-5 degrees and they either die of cardiac or respiratory arrest. Dr. Vincent Di Maio, the former medical examiner of Bexar County, Texas, a well known forensic pathologist and textbook author, believes EDS subjects die from overdoses of adrenaline.

Dr. Deborah Mash

     The term "excited delirium" was coined by Dr. Deborah Mash, the neurologist who founded the Excited Delirium Education, Research and Information Center at the University of Miami where she studied the brain tissue of 120 men she believed died of EDS. Called a junk scientist and charlatan by her critics, Dr. Mash appeared as an expert witness on behalf of Taser International, the stun gun company that was sued by families of men who died after being tasered. When asked about her relationship with the firm, Dr. Mash has reportedly said, "I don't care about the taser, and I'll tell you why. Excited delirium was happening before the taser....If it happened with pepper spray, you'd say, 'oh, it's the pepper spray that's killing them.'...We have some cases where there were no police involved, and they still died....Medical examiners have described cases where paramedics got to the scene and the room is trashed, there are ice cubes everywhere, and the subject is dead. That tells me that person was trying to cool down." (Miami-Dade County fire rescue paramedics carry excited delirium survival kits designed to cool overheated brains.)

     Critics of EDS as a cause of death include the ACLU and other civil libertarian organizations. Noting that EDS is not recognized by the American Medical Association, these critics believe the authorities use EDS to cover-up and white-wash the real causes of death--police brutality and excessive force. They see EDS as a forensic device used to excuse and exonerate heavy-handed law enforcement.

Cases

September 5, 2006
Louisville, Kentucky

     The police encountered 52-year-old Larry Noles, an ex-Marine, standing nude in the middle of the street. After failing to subdue Noles by force, officers shot him with a taser three times. The highly agitated subject suddenly stopped breathing and died. The Jefferson County Medical Examiner attributed the death to EDS.

October 29, 2006
Jerseyville, Illinois

     Roger Holyfield, 17, was walking in the middle of the street carrying a phone in one hand and a Bible in the other. He was screaming incoherently when approached by the police. After struggling with the out-of-control man, officers tasered him. Holyfield went into a coma and died the following day. The local medical examiner attributed the death to EDS.

December 17, 2006
Lafayette, Louisiana

     High on cocaine and delirious, 29-year-old Terill Enard, with a broken bone sticking out of his leg, was creating a disturbance at a Waffle House restaurant. The police came, tried to restrain him, then shocked him with a taser. Enard collapsed and died at the scene. The coroner's office listed the death as "cocaine-induced Excited Delirium."

January 2008
Coral Gables, Florida

     At two in the morning, Coral Gables police found ex-con Xavia Jones lying in the middle of a highway screaming "God is coming to take me!" When officers approached him Jones yelled, "Kill me, shoot me." Instead of shooting him, an officer tasered him four times. When that had no effect, another officer gave Jones five more jolts. The subject sort of locked-up, then died with a white liquid trickling from his mouth. The Miami-Dade County Associate Medical Examiner cited "excited delirium syndrome associated with cocaine use" as the cause of death.

July 2008
Hanover Township, New Jersey

     A New Jersey State Trooper pulled up to 25-year-old Kenwin Garcia as he walked along Interstate 287. After frisking the unarmed man, the officer put him in the back of his patrol car where the mentally ill subject became agitated and kicked out a window. Zip-tied around his wrists and ankles, the trooper and another officer placed Garcia into a second patrol car where the subject kicked out another window. A third trooper arrived at the scene to help restrain the agitated man. One of the troopers turned off the dashboard camera before he and another officers pulled Garcia out of the car and piled on top of him. Garcia kicked and struggled, said he couldn't breathe, then went limp. He died a week later at a nearby hospital after they took him off life support.

     Although the medical examiner found that Garcia had a broken breastbone, fractured ribs, a torn kidney and internal bleeding, and had not been under the influence of alcohol or drugs, he ruled the cause of death excited delirium syndrome. As a result none of the troopers in the case were charged with a crime or disciplined.

      Pursuant to an independent investigation of Garcia's death, four forensic pathologists reviewed the autopsy and found that Garcia had died from suffocation while being restrained. Three law enforcement experts opined that the troopers in this case had used excessive force. The dead man's family, based on these findings, filed a wrongful death suit against the township.

     In 2013, attorneys for Hanover Township agreed to pay the Garcia estate $700,000 in an out of court settlement. No criminal charges were filed in this case.

July 22, 2011
Bangor, Maine

     The Bangor police were called at 6:45 P.M. to deal with 32-year-old Ralph E. Willis, a man addicted to a hallucinogenic stimulant called MDPV, the key ingredient in bath salts. Officers found him running wildly around yelling at people on the street. When Willis resisted being taken into custody, several officers had to subdue him. In so doing, they used their nightsticks.

    At the Penobscot County Jail Willis continued to be agitated and uncooperative. He fought with jail personnel who put him into a holding cell. Thirty minutes later, when they checked on him, Willis appeared unresponsive. When deputy sheriffs entered the cell Willis began to yell. He then grabbed his testicles, banged his head against the wall and rolled onto his stomach flailed his arms and legs At that point the inmate stopped breathing. A short time later doctors pronounced Willis dead at a local emergency room. He had died of cardiac arrest and at the time of his death had a body temperature of 103 degrees.

     The state's medical examiner ruled the manner of Willis' death accidental. The cause: MDPV toxicity. In her report, the forensic pathologist described Willis as having been in a state of excited delirium. As a result of the Willis case, the Penobscot County Jail no longer accepted prisoners who were under the influence of bath salts.

EDS in England and Wales

     Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a not-for-profit organization based at City University in London, disclosed that excited delirium was first used in a British case in 1996. Since then, the condition has been used by coroners in England and Wales to explain 10 police restraint related deaths. In researching EDS, bureau journalists interviewed several forensic pathologists including Dr. Deborah Mash who told an interviewer that,"Just because you die in police custody doesn't mean that what the police were doing at the time you died led to your death. The symptoms of EDS are why the police are called to the scene to begin with."

     In Great Britain Dr. Mash incurred the wrath of several prominent critics in the field of forensic pathology. Dr. Derrick Pounder, a forensic pathology expert at the University of Dundee said, "Excited delirium is a theory...It has come from the United States where the science is very politicized without a robust enough analysis. If you write off a death as excited delirium, then you close the door to guilt being attributed, and more importantly, lessons being learned from the types of [police] restraint used."

     Dr. Richard Shepherd, another English forensic pathologist who spoke to journalists with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, said this: "We know there are a group of people who exhibit this very bizarre behavior. Whether they strictly fall into this group called 'excited delirium' or not, I think will become clearer as more research is done...I think it is a term that should be used with great care..."

     Like its cause of death counterparts SIDS and SBS, EDS will attract supporters and critics and remain controversial until it is either totally rejected in the medical community or accepted as valid forensic science.

Father Gerald Robinson: Devil Priest or Innocent Man?

     In 1980, 72-year-old Sister Margaret Ann Pahl worked at Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio as the caretaker of the chapel. A strict taskmaster who didn't suffer fools, Sister Margaret worked closely with 42-year-old Father Gerald Robinson, one of the hospital's chaplains. Father Robinson was a popular priest in the heavily Catholic city of 300,000.

     On April 5, 1980, on Holy Saturday, someone found Sister Margaret's bloody body on the chapel floor. She had been choked to near death, then stabbed 31 times in the chest, neck and face. Some of the stab wounds in her chest formed the pattern of an upside down cross. The killer had also anointed her forehead with a smudge of her own blood. With her habit pulled up to her chest, and her undergarments pulled down around her ankles, the victim had been posed in a position of humiliation. While not raped, the killer had penetrated her with a cross.

     Although detectives on the case immediately suspected Father Robinson of this ritualistic murder, the priest presided over Sister Margaret's funeral Mass four days after her homicide. The principal piece of crime scene evidence detectives believed pointed to his guilt involved a blood stain on the altar cloth consistent with the form of a sword-shaped letter opener in Father Robinson's apartment. The stain bore the vague print of the letter opener's dime-sized medallion bearing the image of the U.S. capitol. However, because the chief detective on the case was a Catholic, and didn't want to scandalize the church, Father Robinson was not arrested. The investigation floundered, and without a suspect, died on the vine.

     In December 2003, a Lucas County cold-case investigative team re-opened the 1980 murder. Father Robinson, over the past 23 years, had served in three Toledo Diocese parishes. The 65-year-old priest, in 2003, was administering to the sick and dying in several area Catholic homes and hospitals. The case came back to life after a woman wrote a letter to the police claiming that Father Robinson had sexually abused her as a child, a molestation that involved Satanic ritualistic behavior that involved human sacrifice. (I don't know if this complainant passed a polygraph test, or made the accusation after some psychologist coaxed the memory out of her. After the Satanic hysteria in the McMartin preschool debacle, and the horrible injustice in the Memphis three case, this kind of allegation was suspicious. Human sacrifice?)

     Following the exhumation of Sister Margaret's body, a forensic pathologist noted that a stab wound in the victim's jaw could have been made by the letter opener found in Father Robinson's apartment. A DNA analysis of the victim's fingernail scrapings and underwear excluded the priest. Nevertheless, in April 2006, the police went to Father Robinson's home and arrested him. From the Lucas County Jail where he was held without bail, the priest denied killing Sister Margaret.

     While there was barely enough evidence to legally justify Father Robinson's arrest--no motive, no confession, no eyewitness and no physical evidence directly linking him to the corpse--the priest went on trial for murder on April 24, 2006. The prosecutor showed the jury a videotape of the defendant's 2004 police interrogation. Father Robinson told his questioners that he had been stunned when one of the other hospital chaplains accused him of murdering Sister Margaret. When left alone for a few minutes in the interrogation room, the priest folded his hands and began to whisper the word "sister," then bowed his head in prayer. At one point he said, "Oh my Jesus." (I don't know how the prosecution interpreted this as incriminating evidence.)

     A prosecution forensic scientist testified that the letter opener "could not be ruled out" as the murder weapon. (The prosecutor, in his closing remarks, told the jury that the letter opener fit one of the victim's stab wounds "like a key in a lock." Instruments used in stabbings cannot be scientifically linked to their wounds this way. That statement alone should have been adequate grounds for a reversal on appeal.) The forensic scientist also testified that the altar cloth bloodstains were "consistent with" the general shape of the letter opener. On cross-examination this witness conceded that a pair of missing scissors could have left the blood stain on the altar cloth.

     On May 11, 2006, the jury, after 9 days of testimony and 6 hours of deliberation found Father Robinson guilty. The 70-year-old priest became the second priest in U.S. history to be convicted of criminal homicide. (The first was a priest named Hans Schmidt.) The judge sentenced Robinson to 15 years to life. Incarcerated at the Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio, the priest was first eligible for parole in 2016.

     Two months after the murder trial, Ohio's 6th District Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. In December 2008, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the case. About a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain the appeal as well.

     While it seemed that Gerald Robinson had run out of legal remedies, his legal team, in 2010, petitioned the state appeals court for post-conviction relief on the grounds that Sister Margaret may have been murdered by a 27-year-old confessed serial killer named Coral Eugene Watts. Watts had stabbed 12 women to death in Texas, and at least one woman in Michigan. Police suspected him of killing another 80 victims. Watts had left many of the women with their blouses pulled up to their necks. He had not sexually molested any of his victims. They had all been posed in humiliating positions.

     On April 11, 2011, the Ohio appeals court denied the Robinson petition. According to the appellate judges, Father Robinson's attorneys, at the time of his 2006 trial, knew of Watts as a possible suspect in Sister Margaret's murder, but chose not to pursue this as a defense strategy. Moreover, there were dissimilarities between the serial killer's modus operandi and Sister Margaret's homicide. For one thing, Coral Eugene Watts had typically stalked young women before he killed them outdoors.

     A year later the Robinson defense team again petitioned the state court of appeals to toss out the 2006 murder conviction. This time the priest's lawyers accused the prosecution of withholding key documents in the case. Regarding the issue of serial killer Watts, Robinson's trial attorneys didn't pursue that line of defense in 2006 because they mistakingly thought he was serving time when Sister Margaret was murdered. As it turned out, on April 5, 1980, Watts was living in southern Michigan, just 40 miles from Toledo. As for modus operandi, the priest's attorneys found Watts' killings and the death of the nun "eerily similar." (Coral Eugene Watts died in 2007 of prostate cancer. He was 53 and serving time in a Michigan prison.) 

     In June 2014, United States District Court Judge James Guin denied a request for the release of Father Robinson. The priest had been ill and, according to reports, didn't have long to live. The judge said he didn't have the jurisdictional authority to grant the motion.

     Father Robinson had a heart attack on Memorial Day 2014 and died on July 4. He passed away in the prison hospital after being told he had 30 to 60 days to live. He was 76.

"Evil Evan" Ebel: The Violent Death Of A Murderous Parolee

     In February 2011 the governor of Colorado appointed Tom Clements to the position of Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections. Clements left his job as Director of Operations for Adult Correctional Facilities in Missouri to head up the 6,000-employee department. The 58-year-old corrections administrator, his wife and two daughters resided in Monument, Colorado, a rural, upscale community in El Paso County 45 miles south of Denver.

     At 8:37 in the evening of Tuesday, March 19, 2013, a member of the Clements family called 911 to report a shooting at the Monument Colorado home. Deputies with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office found Tom Clements lying dead in his front doorway. According to the family member he had been shot when he answered the doorbell.

     Sheriff's lieutenant Jeff Kramer told reporters that the Clements murder didn't appear to be the result of an attempted robbery. Moreover, it didn't have the markings of a random act of violence.

     On Thursday night, March 21, 2013, a Montague County Sheriff's deputy in northeast Texas near the Oklahoma line pulled over a black Cadillac with Colorado plates. It was a routine traffic stop that turned into a violent crime. The driver of the vehicle, a 28-year-old paroled Colorado gang member and white supremacist named Evan Spencer Ebel, shot the deputy twice in the chest, and with a third bullet grazed the officer's head. The downed deputy, wearing a bullet-proof vest, was able to call for help and describe Ebel's car.

     Following a high-speed police chase, Evan Ebel slammed his Cadillac into an eighteen-wheeler in Decatur, Texas thirty miles south of the traffic stop and shooting. The Colorado parolee, bearing the tattoos "hopeless" and "Evil Evan," climbed out of his damaged car firing at the police. The officers gunned him down on the spot. He died at a hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

     Homicide detectives in Colorado believed that Evan Ebel had murdered Tom Clements. Inside the wrecked Cadillac police found a Domino's Pizza uniform jacket and a cardboard pizza box. This discovery suggested that Ebel had murdered a 27-year-old pizza delivery man named Nathan Leon in Denver on March 17, 2013.

     Evan Ebel, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was scheduled for parole on April 13, 2013 but was released early to the custody of his father, Jack Ebel, a Denver area lawyer. The parolee's violent crime history dated back to 2003 when he was convicted of robbery. In 2008 he was found guilty of assaulting a prison guard. 

The New York City Bread Truck Heist

     The act of taking something that isn't yours, while against the law and anti-social, is not highly deviant behavior, nor is it commonly driven by mental illness. (For years psychologists and criminologists have been debating among themselves over whether so-called kleptomaniacs are sick or simply criminal.) Theft is a specific intent crime committed in cold-blood, as it were. Schizophrenics don't go around swindling people or stealing cars for chop shops. In court, accused thieves don't plead not guilty by reason of insanity. But in the case of a 30-year-old New York City man named David Bastar, that would change.

     On Monday, May 19, 2014, at three in the morning on Second Avenue near East 99th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the driver of a Grimaldi's Home of Bread truck left the vehicle running in front of a pizzeria. When the delivery man exited the pizza joint, his truck was gone.

     David Bastar, dressed only in a pair of briefs, had jumped into the $60,000 truck and drove off with $8,000 worth of baguettes, whole wheat rolls, loaves of sourdough and other baked products. Instead of meeting up with a baked goods fence, Bastar, working off a set of instructions and a map left on the truck's front seat, delivered product to at least three restaurants.

     Later that morning, while driving the bread truck south on Lexington Avenue, Bastar began throwing loaves of bread out the window. As he crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Queens Bastar became fixated on a Cadillac Escalade limousine driven by 43-year-old Armondo Sigcha. Sigcha was headed to La Guardia Airport to pick up customers.

     Once the stolen bread truck and the limo crossed the bridge, Sigcha realized that some nut in a delivery truck was following him too closely. The limo driver made several quick evasive turns but couldn't get the truck off his tail. At this point Sagcha asked his dispatcher to arrange to have an officer with the Port Authority meet him at the airport.

     When Bastar pulled the bread truck to a stop behind the limousine near La Guardia's Central Terminal he was greeted by a Port Authority officer. The cop took one look at the underwear-clad bread truck driver and called for an ambulance to deliver him to a mental ward.

     After being evaluated at Elmhurst Hospital's Psychiatric Ward officers escorted Mr. Bastar to the Queens Criminal Court where he was charged with criminal possession of a stolen vehicle and driving without a license. The judge released the suspect to the custody of his baffled parents.

     Diana Bastar's, the accused truck thief's mother, told a reporter with The New York Post that she had no idea why her son had been bent on delivering bread. "I'm speechless," she said. "He's been estranged from us, so I really can't tell you what's going on."

     Following his arrest Mr. Bastar told police officers that he had tailed the limousine into Queens because, "I thought I had to follow him to make the deliveries."

     According to an Internet search it appears that Mr. Bastar was not prosecuted for stealing the truck. In all probability he received medical attention instead.

The Blake Wardell Manslaughter Case

     Blake Randell Wardell resided in Honea Path, South Carolina, a town in the northeast part of the state. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, May 14, 2014, the 26-year-old Wardell, a man his age named Timothy Fisher, Taylor Ann Kelly and eight or nine others, were hanging out at a house in Honea Path. (The reporting on this case was so weak there was no information regarding who owned or lived in that house.)

     At 2:45 that morning, someone in the group (presumably) called 911 to report a shooting. Deputies with the Anderson County Sheriff's office, upon arrival at the house, found Wardell unresponsive and bleeding from the chest as he lay in a pool of blood on the garage floor. Paramedics arrived but were unable to revive Mr. Wardell who they pronounced dead at the scene.

     According to those questioned at the death site, Mr. Wardell had found, in the house, an old bullet-proof Kevlar flak-jacket. He put on the vest and asked someone to test it out by shooting him.

     Taylor Ann Kelly, a recent graduate of Belton-Honea Path High School took responsibility for the shooting death. She told the police that she had fired the small-caliber bullet that passed through the lining on the edge of the bullet-proof vest into Wardell's heart. (I presume detectives questioned the others at the scene who confirmed that Kelly was the one who had fired the fatal bullet.)

     Officers took the 18-year-girl into custody and booked her into the Anderson County Detention Center on the charge of involuntary manslaughter.

     In South Carolina, as in most states, the homicide offense of involuntary manslaughter involved, as criminal intent, the reckless disregard for human life. The fact the victim in this case had supposedly consented to being recklessly shot would not comprise a legal defense to this charge. According to the law, there are certain things people cannot legally consent to. Being shot is one of them. In South Carolina, involuntary manslaughter carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The judge set the 18-year-old suspect's bail at $10,000.

     On May 16, 2014 an Anderson County prosecutor reduced the charge against Taylor Kelly to accessory after the fact of a felony. According to investigators she had lied to police officers about shooting the victim. She had apparently confessed to protect the real shooter in the case--25-year-old Timothy Fisher.

     The Anderson County prosecutor charged Fisher with involuntary manslaughter. Officers booked him into the county detention center. The authorities did not reveal exactly why the girl had lied for this man. Did she do it voluntarily? Were Kelly and Fisher in some kind of relationship? Did Fisher have a criminal record? What was his relationship to Blake Wardell? The police did say that neither alcohol nor drugs played a role in the shooting. 

     This was a case that called for a careful and professional investigation to uncover possible motives for murder. The criminal investigation should have included a thorough forensic ballistics analysis which would include determining if the fatal bullet had actually passed through a bullet-proof vest. And finally, all witnesses to the shooting should have been asked to take polygraph tests.

     In 2015 Timmothy Fisher was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to five years probation. 

The Elementary School Murder Conspiracy

     Our criminal justice system isn't equipped or designed to deal with kids who haven't reached the ninth grade. This is particularly true when pint-sized offenders commit felonies. In the good old days, students got in trouble for chewing gum in class. Today, they're hauled out of school in handcuffs for assault, resisting arrest, drug possession, sexual crimes and the possession of firearms. But up until a case in Colville, Washington, no elementary school child had been arrested for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

     On February 7, 2013, kids on a school bus saw a 10-year-old boy playing with a knife. The bus was en route to the Fort Colville Elementary School in Colville, Washington 75 miles north of Spokane. A search of this boy's backpack at the school produced the knife and a weapon even more shocking--a .45-caliber fully loaded pistol.

     When asked by a police officer what he was doing with the gun, the kid said that he and his 11-year-old buddy were going to "get" one of the girls in their class. Pressed for details, the boy revealed what they had intended to accomplish. According to the plan, the 11-year-old friend would stab the girl to death while the 10-year-old would use the gun to hold-off other kids and any interfering teachers.

     The Stevens County prosecutor, presented with the unusual and difficult facts of this case, decided to charge the fourth graders with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, tampering with a witness (holding off the crowd) and conspiracy to possess a firearm.

     In the state of Washington, individuals under the age of twelve are presumed incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Under the law they are essentially insane. This meant that the state not only had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecutor had to establish the capacity to form specific criminal intent. If convicted, the young defendants in this case faced incarceration at a juvenile facility until they reached the age of eighteen.

     In speaking to the press, prosecutor Tim Rasmussen, in referring to what these boys had been thinking, said, "It's the kind of thing everyone would know is wrong. It gives me no pleasure to prosecute a kid."

     In May 2013 the younger defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to three to five years in juvenile detention.

     On October 16, 2013, following a bench trial (no jury), Judge Allen Nielson found the 11-year-old defendant guilty of the same offense. On November 20, 2013 Judge Nielson sentenced him to three to four years detention in a juvenile facility.

     Judge Neilson called the older boy's actions a "brazen crime." According to the judge, the kid had made a "shrewd effort" to pin the entire plot on his co-defendant, the 10-year-old who had earlier pleaded guilty.

Did Frederick Hengl Murder His Wife?

     In 2002, Frederick Joseph Hengl and his wife Ann Faris moved into a two-bedroom bungalow on North Ditmar Street a block from City Hall in Oceanside, California. Ten years later, residents of the neighborhood considered the 68-year-old Hengl and his 73-year-old spouse more than a little odd. Bearded, bespectacled and bone-thin, Mr. Hengl regularly appeared in public dressed in women's clothing and wearing make-up. Ann Faris often walked the streets armed with a butcher's knife. Neighbors wondered why she always wore the same outfit, a blue sweater and denim-like pants. The fact people could smell her suggested she didn't bother much with personal hygiene. Occasionally Faris would stand in her front yard and take off her clothes. 

     On November 11, 2012 the odd couple's neighbors began detecting a foul odor coming from the Hengl house. They also heard, from inside the dwelling, sounds of a power saw. The stench grew unbearable after Mr. Hengl, to draw the odor out of the house, installed a window fan. A neighbor called the police.

     On November 16, 2012 at eleven o'clock in the morning, Oceanside police officers pulled up to the Hengl bungalow. An officer knocked on the front door but no one answered. Assuming that the place was at the moment unoccupied, officers climbed into the dwelling through a window at the rear of the house. As the police officer entered the foul-smelling bungalow Frederick Hengl slipped out the front door and walked away.

     Inside, amid the stench of rotting flesh, the police discovered three pans of meat cooking on the kitchen stove. In the freezer compartment of the refrigerator they came upon a plastic bag containing a human head. (Later identified as Anna Faris.) A meat grinder that had been recently used sat nearby. In the bathroom the police found a power saw, a boning knife and other cutting instruments. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had taken place under this roof. Scattered throughout the first floor officers found pieces of freshly cut bone.

     Shortly after the gruesome discovery in the bungalow on North Ditmar Street, police officers found and arrested Frederick Hengl. From his house he had walked to a local bar. Perhaps he was enjoying what he knew would be his last alcoholic beverage.

     According to a forensic pathologist with the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office, Anna Faris had died on or about November 1. Crime scene investigators reported that they found "no evidence of cannibalism." (Then why was Hengl cooking the meat?)

     A San Diego County prosecutor charged Frederick Hengl with murder, willful cruelty to an elder and committing an unlawful act with human remains. If convicted of murder he could be sentenced to 25 years to life. On November 21, 2012, the day before Thanksgiving, Mr. Hengl pleaded not guilty to all charges before a superior court judge who set his bail at $5 million. Hengl's attorney advised the court that his client had a bad heart and required medical treatment.

     On September 27, 2013, while in the San Diego County Jail's infirmary, Frederick Hengl died of prostate cancer. From the day of his arrest he denied killing his wife who reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

     To make a case of criminal homicide against Mr. Hengl the state would have had to prove she did not die a natural death. Under the circumstances this would have been difficult. With Hengl's passing no one will ever know the exact circumstances of Anna Faris' death, or why her husband had butchered and cooked her body. While they were a strange couple, they were not necessarily a killer and a murder victim.  

The Tim Zickuhr Kidnapping Case

     The reality TV show "Ice Road Truckers" fell within the genre of reality television series that featured rugged rough-and-tumble men who lived in swamps, dug for gold, ran a business geared to the killing of ducks, hunted wild hogs and transported unusual cargo over-the-road--Back Woods TV, if you will.

     "Ice Road Truckers," starring men who drove 18-wheelers on seasonal routes that crossed frozen lakes and rivers in remote arctic territories in Canada and Alaska premiered on the History Channel in June 2007. Later series focused on Alaska's remote Dalton Highway built on solid, snow-covered terrain. 

     In 2010, the History Channel introduced a spin-off series called "Ice Road Truckers: Deadliest Roads." Tim Zickuhr, a 35-year-old part time actor from Port of Los Angeles, appeared in the series' second season. In a promotional video for the show, Zickuhr described himself as an "adrenaline junkie." The reality TV actor, referring to himself as an "outlaw," also said, "The action is the juice for me." Full of bravado and a lot of crap, Zickuhr was perfect for reality TV. 

     On December 18, 2013, in Las Vegas, Zickuhr hired a prostitute named Lisa Cadeau who worked under the trick name "Snow White." In his apartment, after she had performed the sex acts, Zickuhr gave her his ATM card to withdraw the money they had agreed upon. The next day, after checking his account, Zickuhr called Cadeau back to his apartment where he accused her of withdrawing more cash for her services than they had agreed upon. 

     At sometime during the heated dispute, Zickuhr allegedly punched the hooker in the face and threatened her life if she didn't return the $1,000 she had supposedly stolen from him. According to the police report he tied Cadeau up, then dumped a bucket of cold water on her head. After locking the prostitute into a closet, Zickuhr demanded that she give him the phone number of someone who would pay him the money she had stolen. 

     Cadeau gave her enraged captor the phone number of a Las Vegas police officer she had worked for as a snitch. Zickuhr called the number and put Cadeau on the phone. To the cop, she exclaimed, "Help me, he's going to kill me!"

     When Zickuhr took the phone back from Cadeau, he instructed the man on the line to meet him with the money behind the Eureka Casino near the Las Vegas Strip. 

     After arranging the meeting with the man he thought was going to return his money, Zickuhr forced the prostitute to jump out of a second-story window onto the roof of a carport. As a result of her ordeal, Cadeau suffered injuries to her face and arms. She also had abrasions on her wrists from being bound. 

     At the Eureka Casino, two Las Vegas police officers arrested Zickuhr. As he was being hauled off to jail, the arrestee, according to the police report, he "admitted that he'd made a mistake." (Exactly what "mistake" he was referring to was not clear.) 

     A Clark County prosecutor charged the former reality TV actor with first-degree kidnapping, extortion and coercion. All three of these offenses were felonies that could put the "adrenaline junkie" behind bars for several years. 

     Following his arrest, Zickuhr told a TMZ reporter that he had not given Cadeau the money because she was a prostitute. He insisted that "Snow White" was a friend. He said he lent her the money, nice guy that he was. And what did she do? She wiped him out! So who was the real victim here?  

     Lisa Cadeau, in an April 22, 2014 email to a reporter with the New York Daily News, wrote: "I only withdrew the $80 I was supposed to, and an additional $120 that I wasn't."
 
      In February 2015, following Zickuhr's conviction on the kidnapping and extortion charges, the judge sentenced him to 5 to 15 years in prison. 

Volga Adams: New York City's Infamous Psychic Swindler

     Mrs. Frances Friedman of Manhattan's Upper West Side had been a widow for eight years. In September 1956 she visited a psychic parlor on Madison Avenue run by Volga Adams, a self-appointed gypsy princess. Adams advertised her services in the form of a large drawing painted on her storefront window of a hand, palm facing out. Mrs. Friedman hoped the psychic--"Madam Lillian"--would read her horoscope and identify the source of her depression.

     Volga Adams, a gypsy psychic well known to detectives on the NYPD Pickpocket and Confidence Squad, quickly diagnosed Mrs. Friedman's problem. "There is evil in you," she proclaimed with great authority. Adams instructed her client to go home and wrap an egg in a handkerchief that had belonged to her dead husband then put these two items into a shoe made for a left foot. The psychic instructed Mrs. Friedman to return to the parlor the next day with the handkerchief and the egg. At this point, Mrs. Friedman should have had the good sense to walk out of the shop and not return.

     As instructed, the prospective mark returned to the gypsy psychic's place of fraud. Adams cracked an egg she had switched with the one brought to her. The phony egg contained a small plastic head. The greenish-yellow head featured a pair of horns, pointed eyebrows and a black goatee. According to the psychic, the presence of the devil's head in the egg was an ominous sign. It meant that Mrs. Friedman was cursed. But why?

     Phase two of Volga Adam's psychic confidence game involved handing the victim a dollar bill that had a rip in it. Friedman was told to take the currency home, put it in a handkerchief and wear it near her breast for two days.

     Upon her return to Volga Adam's scam parlor, Madam Lillian, following a prayer in a foreign tongue, opened the handkerchief to find a mended dollar bill. This "miracle" supposedly revealed the source of Mrs. Friedman's curse. The money her husband had left her upon his death was the problem. Money, the root of all evil, had cursed the widow. If Mrs. Friedman wanted to rid herself of the monetary curse she would have to give Madam Lillian all of that money, cash she would ritualistically burn. Once that was done the widow's happiness would return. Divesting herself of the filthy money would also clear up her troublesome skin rash. Who would have guessed this gypsy princess was also a dermatologist.

     A few days after the miracle of the mended dollar bill, Mrs. Friedman withdrew money from six bank accounts and cashed in all of her government bonds. She delivered the $108,273, stuffed in a paper bag, to the Madison Avenue psychic parlor. 

     Volga Adams suggested that Mrs. Friedman, having rid herself of the evil money, leave the city for a few days to enjoy some "clean air." This ploy in confidence game terminology is called "cooling the mark." The next day, as Madam Lillian left town herself, her mark headed for the Catskill Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. A perfect score.

     For a period of a year after Volga Adams bilked Mrs. Friedman out of her life's savings she continued "cooling the mark" with regular phone calls, made collect, from various places around the country. Back in Manhattan in the fall of 1957, Adams informed Mrs. Friedman that she needed another $10,000 to remove traces of the lingering evil underlying the victim's curse. Mrs. Friedman, obviously unaware that she had been swindled, gave Adams the cash. She turned over the money on the condition that the psychic not destroy it and later return it to her. After she had given the swindler $108, 273, Mrs. Friedman barely had enough money to support herself. A couple months after walking off with the $10,000, Volga Adams called the victim and announced that she could only return $2,000 of the $10,000. The psychic said she was in Florida and would be returning to New York City soon.

     The con game had run its course. Volga Adams did not return to Manhattan and she quit calling the mark. Thanks to Madam Lillian, Mrs. Friedman not only remained cursed with depression, she was now broke. Finally, she picked up the telephone and called the police. When detectives with the Pickpocket and Confidence Squad heard Mrs. Friedman's story they recognized the M.O. and knew that Madam Lillian was Volga Adams, one of the city's most notorious con artists.

     Following her indictment in New York City for grand larceny, the 42-year-old defendant went on trial in February 1962. Five weeks later the jury of five women and seven men informed the judge that they were deadlocked and could not reach an unanimous verdict. The judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

     The Manhattan prosecutor scheduled a second trial for May 1963. Volga Adams avoided that proceeding by pleading guilty to a lesser theft charge. After the judge handed the defendant a suspended sentence she left the city. But before she departed for Florida Adams placed a curse on the prosecutor. "No woman will ever love him," she predicted.

     Volga Adams continued preying on vulnerable women. A few years after Madam Lillian left Manhattan, Frances Friedman died. At the time of her death she was lonely, humiliated and depressed. Thanks to the gypsy princess, Mrs. Friedman died broke.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara: The Great Imposter

     While most people aren't con artists, charlatans and swindlers, many are, in various degrees, cheats and pretenders. Men without military experience impersonate war heroes, politicians pretend to lead, bureaucrats impersonate competent employees and job applicants falsely claim qualifications and work histories. It's not uncommon for young men to break the law by impersonating cops and FBI agents. Because most law enforcement impostors are inept they are quickly caught.

     In 1937, 16-year-old Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. ran away from his home in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He took up residence with Cistercian monks in Rhode Island, then in 1941, joined the Army. A year later Demara went AWOL. Under the name Anthony Ignolia he lived in another monastery before signing up with the Navy. Demara next faked his suicide, adopted the name Robert Lincoln French, and began playing the role of a religiously oriented psychologist. This led to a teaching position in a college psychology department.

     Bored with teaching, Demara worked as an orderly in a Los Angeles sanitarium, then moved to Washington State where he taught at St. Martin's College. The FBI interrupted his impersonation career by arresting him for desertion. That resulted in an 18-month stretch in a federal prison.

     Following his release from the federal penitentiary, Demara joined the Brothers of Christian Instruction order in Maine. There Demara became friends with a young physician which led to the impostor becoming a trauma surgeon aboard a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer during the Korean War. Demara actually operated on 16 South Korean soldiers wounded in combat. He managed this by speed-reading surgical textbooks. All of his patients survived Although later exposed as a phony physician, the Canadian Navy did not press charges.

     In 1951, as Brother John Payne of the Christian Brothers of Instruction, Demara founded a college called La Mennais College of Alfred Maine. He left the state shortly thereafter. (In 1959, the college moved to Canton, Ohio and in 1960 changed its name to Walsh College. In 1993 Walsh College became Walsh University.)

     In the early 1960s Demara worked as a prison administrator in Huntsville, Texas and as a counselor at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. In 1967, at age 46, he received a Graduate Certificate in Bible from Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon. In the late 1970s Demara became a chaplain at a hospital in Anaheim, California. He became ill in 1980, and on June 7, 1982 died at the age of 62.

     Demara had become famous in the late 1950s after he sold his story to Life Magazine. In 1961, Tony Curtis played him in a popular movie called "The Great Impostor." Demara credited his impostor success to his high IQ, his photographic memory and his understanding of institutional politics. 

The Sandy Hook Defamation Case

     James H. Fetzer, after graduating from Princeton University in 1962, joined the U.S. Marine Corps and rose to the rank of captain. In 1970, Fetzer earned a Ph.D. in History of Science and Philosophy at Indiana University. He taught at the University of Kentucky then, in 1987, joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota Duluth as a full professor.

     By the time Professor Fetzer retired in 2006 from the University of Minnesota, Duluth as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, he had published 100 articles and 20 books on various subjects related to the Philosophy of Science.

     Professor Fetzer's notoriety, however, did not come from his university teaching or his scholarly publishing. He became nationally known and publicly ridiculed and reviled for his controversial and outspoken belief in government conspiracies. A Holocaust denier, he called the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination "a government hit job," and alleged that the infamous Zapruder film was a fake. Fetzer also asserted that the 911 attacks on New York City's World Trade Center either involved artillery fire or explosive devices planted inside the buildings. According the the conspiracy theorist, Jews and the State of Israel were somehow behind the historic terrorist attack.

     On December 12, 2012, Adam Lanza, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut shot and killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. The youngest victim of the massacre was 6-year-old Noah Pozner whose father, Leonard Pozner, would become a spokesperson for gun control.

     In October 2015, Moon Rock Books, a small publisher of conspiracy books out of Crestview, Florida, released a 455-page book by James Fetzer and Mike Palecek provocatively titled, Nobody Died At Sandy Hook. Fetzer at the time resided in Oregon, Wisconsin. Writer Mike Palecek, the author of several other works, lived in Saginaw, Minnesota.

     The authors of Nobody Died At Sandy Hook claimed that the mass murder at the Newtown elementary school was a FEMA drill staged as the real thing by the Obama administration to garner support for gun control legislation. The authors also accused Leonard Pozner, in furtherance of the mass murder hoax, of fabricating his son Noah's death certificate. In response to the allegation Mr. Pozner posted his son's death certificate on social media.

     Two months after the publication of Nobody Died At Sandy Hook Amazon banned the book. Moon Rock Books on its Internet site touted it as "banned, the story the government didn't want you to know." For those in search of the truth, declared the publisher, the book was still available from them. Meanwhile, author James Fetzer continued to publicly claim that the mass shooting was a hoax perpetrated upon the American people by a government that wanted to take our guns.

     In November 2018 Leonard Pozner sued James Fetzer and Mike Palecek for defamation. Mr. Pozner conceded that the authors had the right to say what they believed about Sandy Hook, but they didn't have the right to defame him with false allegations that had subjected him and his family to ridicule and hate.

     Co-author Mike Palecek, in May 2019, agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Mr. Pozner for an undisclosed amount.

     The Leonard Pozner defamation suit went forward, and in June 2019, was tried before a jury in Madison, Wisconsin. Dane County Judge Frank Remington presided over the trial. The plaintiff took the stand and testified that since the publication of Nobody Died At Sandy Hook he had been harassed by conspiracy nuts who accused him of being an actor pretending to be the father of a boy who didn't exist. Mr. Pozner testified further that he had been subjected to numerous death threats.

     According to the plaintiff, the tragic death of his son at Sandy Hook, followed by the defendant's libelous book, led to bouts of depression and other health problems related to extreme emotional stress.

     Psychiatrist Roy Lubit, a New York City specialist on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who had treated Leonard Pozner, testified that his patient's mental health had "gone down hill" following the publication of the defendant's book.

     James Fetzer's defense rested on the assertion of free speech, that the author was protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

     Following a short deliberation the jury returned a verdict in favor of Mr. Pozner. The damages phase of the case would take place at a later date.

     Moon Rock Books, following the verdict against James Fetzer, apologized to the Pozner family and promised to take Nobody Died At Sandy Hook out of circulation.

     On October 16, 2019, the Sandy Hook defamation case jury awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000. James Fetzer, the 78-year-old author, called the damages "absurd."