The Free Speech Hating Politician

    It's ironic that the people we elect to protect free speech often hate it the most. Politicians hate it because it's hard to control an electorate that can speak freely. To a politician so-called "hate speech" is simply speech they don't like. Criminal law has always restricted what we can do, now some of our more fascist oriented politicians are determined to also restrict what we can say. If the people in power can control speech they can control us. The best we can hope for regarding this frightening trend is that a lot of these politicians are pandering hacks who are not bright. Beyond that we have the U.S. Constitution.

     In May 2019 a Massachusetts state legislator named Daniel J. Hunt introduced a bill titled "An Act Regarding the Use of Offensive Words." (Italics mine.) Mr. Hunt's proposed law read: "A person who uses the word 'bitch' directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person." At first blush one might think this was a joke or fake news. It was neither.

     Under Mr. Hunt's bill, if a victim of this outlandishly unconstitutional law could produce a witness who overheard the outlawed word uttered with intent to, let's say, annoy, the perpetrator with the criminal tongue could be fined $150.

     If the word "bitch" came out of the convicted criminal's mouth again and annoyed the same person the violator could be sentenced to up to six months in jail. 

     If free speech-hating politicians get control of our government they certainly won't stop with the word "bitch." Americans could go to jail for uttering thousands of other words such as "bastard," "fat," "crazy," "stupid" and "ugly." Words often used to describe politicians such as "asshole," "moron" and "hack" would certainly be outlawed and possibly classified as felonies. 

     Legislator Hunt's proposed bill did not become law. 

A Middle School Pedophile and The Teachers Who Supported Him

     In the spring of 2013 Neal Erickson, an eighth grade science and computer education teacher at the Rose City Middle School in northern Michigan, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal conduct with a male student. Back in 2006 Mr. Erickson had ten sexual encounters with the eighth grader at the teacher's house. (The authorities learned of these sex offenses several years later when an anonymous tipster sent the police an old photograph of the student that in some fashion incriminated the teacher. The victim, at the time of the guilty plea, was attending college. Mr. Erickson had left teaching.)

     In anticipation of the former teacher's sentencing, six Rose City educators and two of their retired colleagues wrote letters to the judge on Neal Erickson's behalf asking for leniency. Amy Huber Eagan wrote: "I am asking that Neal be given the absolute minimum sentence, considering all of the circumstances surrounding the case."

     Rose City teacher Sally Campbell in her letter to the judge wrote: "Neal made a mistake. (Losing your wallet is a mistake. Stealing someone's wallet is not.) He allowed a mutual friendship to develop into much more. He realized his mistake [again the mistake] and ended it years before someone sent something to the authorities which began the legal process."

     Middle school teacher Harriett Coe wrote this on Mr. Erickson's behalf: "Neal has plead (sic) guilty to his one criminal offense but he's not a predator. (One could argue that any time a teacher has sex with a student the teacher by definition is a predator.) He understands the severity of his action and is sincere in his desire to make amends."

     On July 15, 2013, Neal Erickson's sentencing day, Judge Michael Baumgartner looked out over his courtroom and noticed that the defendant's teaching supporters were sitting with members of his family. Speaking directly to Mr. Erickson Judge Baumgartner said, "I'm appalled and ashamed that the community would rally around you. What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher."

     Judge Baumgartner sentenced Neal Erickson to fifteen years to thirty years in prison. The former teacher's courtroom cheerleaders reacted with shock and disgust.

     Following the sentencing one of Erickson's supporters told a reporter with The Detroit News that Judge Baumgartner had socked it to the teacher because he was a man who molested a boy. Had the defendant in this case been a woman she may have gotten off light. (This may be true but it didn't mitigate Erickson's crime.)

     Not long after Judge Baumgartner handed down the sentence someone burned down the garage owned by the victim's parents, John and Lori Janczewski. An unknown person also spray-painted a threatening message on their house.

     Overall, citizens of this rural community agreed with Judge Baumgartner's hardline approach to pedophilia in the local school. Many asked the school superintendent to fire Erickson's teacher friends. Several parents said that if these sex offense cheerleaders were not sacked they would take their children out of the school system.

     As could be expected the embattled supporters of Mr. Erickson responded to the public's outrage by making threats of their own. If the school superintendent tried to fire them they would fight back by suing the cash-strapped school district. These pedophile supporting educators would not go down without a fight. Moreover, taxpayers and parents had a lot of nerve trying to interfere with public education.

     None of the teachers who supported and defended Neal Erickson lost their jobs over this case. Following the scandal parents pulled 87 students out of the school.

The Pamela Phillips Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 1986, Gary Lee Triano, a well-known real estate developer in Tucson, Arizona made the mistake of his life when he married 28-year-old Pamela Phillips. Triano had made millions investing in bingo halls and slot-machine parlors in Arizona and California. He made his fortune before Congress authorized Native Americans to open full-blown gambling casinos.

     In 1992 when Triano was broke his wife of six years divorced him. The couple had two children. Shortly after the breakup Pamela Phillips took out a $2 million insurance policy on her ex-husband's life. She moved to Aspen, Colorado where she began working as a real estate agent. It was there she met and began dating a 44-year-old man named Ronald Young.

     In 1994, Gary Triano, $25 million in debt, filed for bankruptcy. He told his girlfriend in July 1996 that someone had been following him.

     At 5:30 PM on Friday November 1, 1996, after playing a round of golf at the Westin La Paloma Country Club with his friend Luis Ruben, Mr. Triano climbed behind the wheel of his 1989 Lincoln Town Car. Eight minutes after pulling out of the country club parking lot the vehicle exploded and burst into flames. The blast killed Gary Triano instantly.

     Investigators determined that someone had wired a black powder pipe bomb to Mr. Triano's car. Detectives interviewed the ex-wife and others but ended up with no suspects in the case A year later the case went cold.

     In November 2005, nine years after the car bombing murder of the ex-millionaire, Tucson detectives caught a break in the form of an anonymous tip. According to the tipster, Pamela Phillips had paid Ronald Young $400,000 to murder her ex-husband. The hit man had been compensated out of the $2 million life insurance payout that had gone to Mr. Phillips.

     FBI agents in Florida uncovered information connecting Ronald Young and Pamela Phillips in the Triano murder plot. The evidence included incriminating emails between the hit man and the mastermind, detailed records of their business transactions, meetings and even recorded telephone calls in which the two discussed the murder plot.

     Ronald Young, charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, went into hiding and became a fugitive.

     In September 2006 FBI agents raided Pamela Phillips' house in Aspen, Colorado. On her computer agents found evidence of her involvement in her ex-husband's murder. However, before she was taken into custody, the murder-for-hire suspect fled the country and took up residence in Austria.

     Gary Triano's two children, in November 2007, sued Pamela Phillips and Ronald Young for the wrongful death of their father. (The plaintiffs were awarded $10 million in damages two years later.)

     On October 2008, after Ronald Young was featured on the TV show "America's Most Wanted," FBI agents arrested him in California. The suspected hit man was now 66-years-old. Upon his extradition to Arizona the authorities booked him into the Pima County Jail. The judge set his bond at $5 million. Mr. Young pleaded not guilty to the charges of conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder.

     A jury in March 2010 found Ronald Young guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the chance of parole.

     In December 2010 government officials in Austria agreed to extradite Phillips to the U.S. on condition she would not, if found guilty, be sentenced to death. Prosecutors in Arizona agreed to this condition and the fugitive was sent home to face trial.

     The Pamela Phillips murder-for-hire trial got underway in February 2014 in Tucson, Arizona. Prosecutor Nicol Green portrayed the defendant as a cold-blooded gold digger who hired a former boyfriend to kill Mr. Triano for the life insurance money.

     Defense attorney Paul Eckerstrom painted his client as a victim of overzealous law enforcement. As a successful real estate agent in her own right, the lawyer claimed his client didn't need Triano's insurance money. Regarding the $400,000 she had paid Ronald Young, attorney Eckerstrom characterized the transaction as payment for Young's help in various business ventures.

     In speculating who may have bombed Triano's Lincoln Town Car, Mr. Eckerstrom said, "Gary Triano lived on the edge, the financial edge…He borrowed a lot of money from all sorts of people, many people who might be connected to organized crime."

     On April 8, 2014 the jury found Pamela Phillips guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On May 22, 2014 the judge sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Upon hearing her fate Phillips turned to the gallery and said, three times, "I'm innocent!" 

Jessica Herrera's Vehicular Homicide Trials: When Is An Accident a Crime?

     All drivers occasionally speed, cross the center line, roll through stop signs and get distracted. There is no such thing as perfection behind the wheel. No one wants to cause an accident, particularly one that results in injury or death. Whenever a driver's carelessness causes or contributes to a traffic accident that results in the death of another driver or passenger, a prosecutor has to decide if this act of negligence rises to the level of criminal homicide. Ordinary negligence that falls short of recklessness--the total disregard for the safety of others--is treated as a civil wrong rather than a criminal act. Vehicular homicide applies to motorists who are driving extremely fast, are drunk, high on drugs or fleeing from the police.

     On June 11, 2011 in Santa Barbara County, California, Christopher Martinez slowed down on Highway 246 east of the town of Lompoc to turn into a driveway that led back to a winery. The 28-year-old was showing up for his first day of work. As he slowed to negotiate the turn, Jessica Herrera, driving the car behind him rear-ended his vehicle. The collision pushed Martinez's car into the opposite lane where it was struck broadside by a pickup truck carrying two people.

     Paramedics rushed Christopher Martinez to the Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria with severe head trauma and a collapsed lung. He died the next day.

     A Santa Barbara County prosecutor charged the 22-year-old Herrera with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. In May 2012, the Herrera trial jurors voted seven to five for conviction which caused the judge to declare a mistrial.

     Prosecutor Mark Smith decided to retry Herrera on the vehicular homicide charge. On February 8, 2013 the second trial got underway in the Santa Barbara County Court in Lompoc. In his opening remarks to the jury prosecutor Smith accused the defendant of driving too fast for conditions (65 mph in a 55 mph zone) and being inattentive.

     Herrera's attorney, Dillon Forsyth, argued that the crash that took Christopher Martinez's life was a tragic accident. To the jury he said, "There is no evidence a crime occurred. This is a circumstantial case. There is really no credible evidence that what occurred was anything but an accident. The fact is we simply don't know what happened." The defense attorney also pointed out that there were no signs that a driveway was coming up and that brake lights and turn signals on Martinez's car might not have been working.

     On February 13, 2013, after more than a day of deliberation, the jury reported to the judge that it was deadlocked eleven to one in favor of conviction. Another hung jury, another mistrial.

     It is surprising that so many jurors in these two trials had voted for conviction. Even assuming Jessica Herrera had been driving ten miles over the speed limit at the time of the accident she was not criminally responsible for Christopher Martinez's death.

     On February 28, 2013 at a hearing in the Santa Barbara County in Lompoc, Judge James F. Iwasko dismissed the Herrera case after prosecutor Mark Smith said the district attorney's office would not seek a third trial. To have gone forward with a third trial in this case would have amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.  

The David Tarloff Murder Case

      In 1991 psychiatrists diagnosed David Tarloff with schizophrenia when the 23-year-old was in college. Over the next seventeen years the Queens, New York resident, on twelve occasions, ended up in a hospital mental ward. There was no question that the man was mentally ill.

     Tarloff lived with his mother in a Queens apartment until 2004 when she moved into a nursing home. By 2008 the 40-year-old schizophrenic had convinced himself that his mother was being abused by nursing home personnel. That's when he concocted a plan to rob Dr. Kent Shinbach, the psychiatrist who had initially treated him in 1991. With the money he hoped to acquire by using the doctor's ATM code, Mr. Tarloff planned to pull his mother out of the nursing home and take her to Hawaii.

     In February 2008, after making several phone inquiries David Tarloff learned that Dr. Shinbach had offices on Manhattan's Upper East Side. In preparation for the robbery Tarloff purchased a rubber meat mallet and a cleaver that he packed into a suitcase filled with adult diapers and clothing for his mother.

     On February 8, 2008 Mr. Tarloff showed up at  Dr. Shinbach's office armed with the meat cleaver and the mallet. But instead of encountering his robbery target he was confronted by Dr. Kathryn Faughey, the 56-year-old psychotherapist who shared office space with Dr. Shinbach.

    In the Manhattan doctor's office David Tarloff smashed Dr. Faughey's skull with the mallet then hacked her to death with the meat cleaver. He also attacked Dr. Shinbach when the psychiatrist tried to rescue his colleague. The assailant fled the bloody scene on foot and was taken into custody shortly thereafter. Dr. Shinbach survived his wounds.

     The Manhattan District Attorneys Office charged David Tarloff with first-degree murder. The defendant's attorney acknowledged what his client had done but pleaded him not guilty by reason of insanity. If a jury found that at the moment the defendant killed Dr. Faughey he was so mentally ill he couldn't appreciate the nature and quality of his act, they could return a verdict of not guilty. Instead of serving a fixed prison term Mr. Tarloff would be placed into an institution for the criminally insane. The length of his incarceration would be determined by the doctors who treated him. If at some point the psychiatrists considered him sane enough for society he could be discharged from the mental institution. (It is for this reason that most jurors are uncomfortable with the insanity defense, particularly in cases of extreme violence.)

     Under American law criminal defendants are presumed innocent and sane. That means the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense, in insanity cases, has the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence (a less rigorous standard of proof) that the defendant was out of touch with reality when he or she committed the homicide. Since even seriously psychotic murder defendants are aware they are killing their victims, insanity verdicts are rare. This is particularly true in rural communities where jurors prefer to send mentally ill murderers to prison.

     After years of procedural delays David Tarloff's murder trial got underway in March 2013. A month later, following the testimony of a set of dueling psychiatrists, the case went to the jury. After ten days of deliberation the jury foreman informed the judge that the panel had not been able to reach an unanimous verdict of guilt. The trial judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

     The Manhattan prosecutor in charge of the case announced his intention to try David Tarloff again.

     In May 2014, at his second trial, the jury rejected the insanity defense and found David Tarloff guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.     

James Wolcott aka James St. James: Mass Killer to Professor

     In 1967 when he was fifteen, James Gordon Wolcott lived in the central Texas town of Georgetown, the home of Southwestern University. His father, Dr. Gordon Wolcott, headed up the university's Biology Department. His mother Elizabeth, an outgoing woman, was active in the religious community. James and his 17-year-old sister Libby attended Georgetown High School.

     At ten o'clock on the night of August 4, 1967, James Wolcott and his his sister Libby returned home after attending a rock concert in nearby Austin. Just after midnight James sniffed model airplane glue to give himself a "boost." Armed with a .22 rifle he walked into the living room and shot his father to death by shooting him twice in the chest. In his sister's room James killed her by shooting her in the chest and in the face. The teenager found his mother in her bedroom where he shot her twice in the head and once in the chest.

     With his father and sister dead, and his mother in her room dying, James Wolcott hid the rifle in the attic crawlspace above his bedroom closet. After he disposed of the weapon he ran out of the house and flagged down a car occupied by three college students. After telling these students that someone had killed his family, they returned with him to the house. Inside the dwelling the students found Mrs. Wolcott barely alive in her bedroom. One of the young men called for an ambulance and the police. (This was pre-911.)

     On the front porch of the Wolcott house,James kept yelling, "How could this happen!" He, of course, knew exactly how it happened. When it occurred to the college kids that the killer could still be in the dwelling they fled the scene.

     Later that morning Elizabeth Wolcott died at the hospital. A minister who happened to be a Wolcott neighbor took James to his parsonage. A few hours later, when a Texas Ranger asked James if he had killed his family,the youngster said, "Yes, sir." At that point James had the presence of mind to describe in detail what he had done. At the killing site he showed police officers where he hid the rifle.

     When asked the obvious question of why, James said he hated his family. He later told psychiatrists that his mother chewed her food so loudly he had to leave the room. His sister had an annoying Texas accent and his father made him cut his hippie hair and wouldn't allow him to wear anti-Vietnam war buttons or attend peace rallies.

     Several psychiatrist interviewed James at the Williamson County Jail. From the young mass killer they learned that he had been sniffing glue for several months. James also told the doctors that he had contemplated suicide. He said that his parents and sister had tried to drive him insane. He killed them before they had a chance to murder him.

     Although James Wolcott and members of his family did not have histories of mental illness, the psychiatrists concluded that the boy suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. (There may have been doctors who disagreed with this conclusion.) One thing was certain, with an I Q of 134, the boy was no dummy. Notwithstanding the diagnosis of schizophrenia the psychiatrists declared the defendant mentally competent to stand trial as an adult.

     As could be expected, the murder defendant's attorney, Will Kelly McClain, set up a defense based on legal insanity. In October 1967, following a short trial, the all-male jury found James Wolcott not guilty by reason of insanity. The jurors believed that James had been so mentally impaired he had no idea that killing his family was wrong. (Since the Wolcott verdict only a handful of Texas murder defendants have been declared not guilty by reason of insanity. This rarely happens because there is no such thing as a mental illness so severe that it completely destroys a killer's appreciation of what he is doing. In the history of Texas jurisprudence the James Wolcott case is an anomaly.)

     In February 1968 the trial judge sent James Wolcott to the Rusk State Hospital in Nacodoches, Texas. He was to be incarcerated there until he regained his sanity. That sentence placed his fate in the hands of psychiatrists.

     In 1974, seven years after the mass killing in the Texas college town, Rusk State Hospital psychiatrists declared the 24-year-old killer sane. The young man had made a remarkable recovery for someone who had been so mentally ill that he didn't realize that shooting his family to death was wrong.

     As the only surviving child of his deceased parents, James Wolcott inherited their estate and started receiving a monthly stipend from his father's university pension fund.

     Upon his departure from Rusk State Hospital James Wolcott took up residence in Austin, Texas where he enrolled at Stephen F. Austin University. Just two years later he had a Bachelor's Degree in psychology.

     At some point in the late 1970s James Wolcott changed his name to James David St. James. In 1980, Mr. St. James, having acquired his Master's Degree began his doctoral work in psychology at the University of Illinois. In 1988 Dr. St. James began teaching psychology at Millikin University, a Presbyterian liberal arts institution in Decatur, Illinois. No one at the school knew that the psychology professor had shot three members of his family to death twenty years earlier. Had he included this background information on his job application it is doubtful the university would have hired him. Having been declared criminally insane in the field of academic psychology is not a job-hunting selling point.

     In July 2013 a Texas journalist named Ann Marie Gardner published an article that revealed Dr. St. James' homicidal past. When the story broke the academic, who did not have a family of his own, headed the Behavioral Sciences Department at Millikin University. While the secretive professor's colleagues and students were probably shocked, no one at the school voiced disapproval. In fact, at least in academic circles, Dr. St. James emerged from his exposure as a hero, a poster-boy for the power and glory of the behavioral sciences. (Had he been working for a plumbing company he would have been fired.) If the professor's colleagues and students were stunned by the creepy irony of Dr. St. James' story, no one said so. 

     There were probably members of the Wolcott family who were still psychologically scarred by James Wolcott's killing spree. There was no indication, however, that what took place that night in 1967 had any lingering affect on the killer himself. And there was no evidence that Dr. St. James was still a schizophrenic. This was interesting because the disease is incurable. 

     One possible explanation for James Wolcott's rapid and apparent total recovery from this devastating disease is that he wasn't insane in the first place. Following his arrest James told his interrogators that he had been thinking about killing his family for a week. Moreover, if he wasn't aware that what he had done was wrong, why did he hide the gun? Is it possible he was a brilliant sociopath who fooled the psychiatrists and gamed the criminal justice system?

Courtroom Psychologists and Criminologists

     As trial witnesses, experts are brought into the courtroom to help jurors understand things beyond their knowledge as laypersons. Unlike ordinary witnesses experts can express their opinions which because they are experts carry extra weight. Through exhibits and testimony these specialists can point out similarities or dissimilarities between, say, a defendant's known fingerprint, hair follicle, DNA or handwriting to a crime scene fingerprint, strand of hair, bloodstain or a questioned document. A forensic pathologist in a murder case might be able to tell jurors when, where, and how the victim had been killed. While these courtroom experts work with physical evidence and apply science to their inquiries, even they don't always draw the same conclusions after analyzing the same evidence. For the administration of justice this is not good.

     In terms of disciplines and fields of study, the more courtroom experts there are and the less stringent the legal standards are for who qualifies as an expert, the worse it is for the trial process. Today there are too many trials featuring dueling expert testimony. Instead of helping jurors determine the facts of a particular case the competing experts render the process more difficult and unreliable. This is why, especially in the soft-science disciplines of criminology (sociology) and psychology, trial judges should deny these practitioners expert witness status. In other words, when it comes to courtroom testimony, we'd be better off if they kept their opinions to themselves.

Psychologists in Child Abuse Cases

     Pennsylvania is the only state where prosecutors are not permitted to call psychologists to the stand as expert witnesses in child molestation cases to help jurors evaluate the credibility of young accusers. Specifically, in cases where victims of sexual abuse waited months or even years to come forward, prosecutors want psychologists to explain why this doesn't mean these accusers are not believable. These expert witnesses, according to prosecutors, can help jurors understand the psychology of this form of victimhood.

     Defense attorneys, on the other hand, object to this form of expert testimony on the grounds it usurps the role of the jury and the power of common sense in deciding if a particular accuser is a credible witness. In performing this duty, jurors do not need the help of a psychologists whose opinions on such matters are no better than anyone else's. Moreover, history has shown that too many psychologists testifying for the prosecution lose their objectivity by thinking of themselves as members of law enforcement teams. (For a good example of this phenomena look up the historic McMartin preschool sex abuse case.)

      In American jurisprudence there are expert witnesses testifying on virtually everything under the sun. It has become a racket. Expert witnesses cost a lot of money and are corrupting the trial process. Some experts will testify for whoever will pay them. Others specialize in helping one side or the other. Too many of these witnesses claim expertise in fields and disciplines that are themselves bogus, and many come into court with phony resumes. In selecting between dueling experts jurors might side with the hired-gun who looks the best or is the most persuasive. A complete phony can look and sound more credible than his or her more credentialed counterpart.

     Psychologists and criminologists, among others in the soft sciences, should not be qualified as expert witnesses. The jury process and the criminal justice system would be better off without their conflicting opinions.

The Joyce Garrard Murder Case

      On Friday, February 17, 2012, 27-year-old Jessica Mae Hardin scolded her 9-year-old step-daughter for lying to her grandmother about eating a candy bar. As punishment, Savannah Hardin was told to run, and keep running while carrying an armload of firewood. At four that afternoon a neighbor saw the third grader running laps around the family's doublewide trailer home in rural northeast Alabama. At six-forty-five that evening the stepmother called 911 after Savannah started having seizures. Finding the girl unresponsive, emergency medical personnel rushed her to the Gadsden Regional Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama.

     On Monday, February 20, 2012 the 9-year-old died. According to the state forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy she had been severely dehydrated with a dangerously low sodium level. Before she collapsed Savannah had been running for three hours.

     Deputies with the Etowah County Sheriff's Office took the stepmother and the victim's 46-year-old grandmother, Joyce Garrard, into custody. The grandmother was charged with capital murder. If convicted she faced either life without parole or the death penalty. The pair were booked into the Etowah County jail, each under a $500,000 cash bond. The stepmother, Jessica Hardin, faced the charge of felony-murder,.

     According to the step-mother's estranged husband (apparently not the girl's father), Joyce Garrard suffered from bi-polar disorder and was a heavy drinker. Both women denied any wrongdoing in the child's death.

     In January 2013, after a judge reduced Jessica Hardin's bond to $150,000, the stepmother posted bail and walked out of the Etowah County lockup. The grandmother remained in custody.

     On August 26, 2014, Etowah County Circuit Judge William Ogletree moved the grandmother's murder trial from September 2014 to February 2015. The judge cited "discovery and procedural issues" as reasons for the delay.

     The Joyce Garrard murder trial got under way in the Etowah County Courthouse on March 9, 2015. Following the selection of jury made up of ten men and six women, four serving as alternates, Chief Deputy District Attorney Marcus Reid made his opening statement. According to the prosecutor, the defendant acted like a "drill sergeant who ran her granddaughter to death.

     Defense attorney Dani Bone told the jurors that her client meant no harm to her granddaughter. The girl wanted to run and to get faster after she had finished second in a race at school. As for the cause of her death, the girl had recovered at the hospital before dying from prior health complications.

     Prosecutor Reid put Dr. Emily Ward on the stand, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Savannah Hardin. The expert witness testified that the victim had died from her seizures linked to abnormally low sodium levels caused by "prolonged physical exertion and heat exhaustion." According to Dr. Ward, the victim's left arm had three bruises caused by carrying the firewood as she ran.

     Heather Elgin Gibson, a nurse who was on duty at the Gadsden Regional Medical Center when the girl was brought in said the victim was unconscious and unresponsive. The witness said she mistakingly "clicked a wrong button" on an electronic chart that made it appear the patient was alert at one point. She was not.

     On March 16, 2015, defense attorney Bone, after the prosecution rested, asked Judge Ogletree to direct a verdict of acquittal on the grounds that the state had not proven its case. Attorney Bone said that if the defendant had wanted to punish the child for a lie there was no reason for her to force the girl to run until she died. "Discipline means teaching a lesson," he said. "How is the defendant going to teach a lesson if she kills her?"

     Prosecutor Reid, in arguing that the state had presented enough evidence to require a defense, pointed out that the defendant had kept yelling at the child to run even after she was on the ground vomiting and begging to stop. "You judge a person's state of mind by what they do," he said.

     The judge ruled in favor of the prosecution which meant that the defense would have to put on its case.

     Donna Johnson, Savannah Hardin's principal at Carlisle Elementary School, testified that the defendant had shown concern for her granddaughter. (This countered the testimony given by a physician who had treated the victim. The doctor had described the defendant as uncaring.)

     Dr. Deborah Smith, a physician with Quality of Life Health Services took the stand for the defense. Dr. Smith said she had treated Savannah Hardin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Under cross-examination the witness admitted telling investigators that she was concerned that the patient did not have a normal relationship with the defendant and her stepmother, Jessica Hardin.

     On March 18, 2015 Joyce Garrard took the stand on her own behalf. She testified two hours during which time she became tearful as well as defiant. According to the defendant, she had punished her granddaughter that day by making her pick up sticks in the yard for 30 to 45 minutes. As the witness relayed her version of the case she drank freely from a water bottle at her side on the witness stand.

     When asked about the running, Garrard described it as "more of a jog, not a full run." The witness said, "You can't make Savannah run. She runs when she wants."

     "Did you ever intend to hurt Savannah?" asked the defense attorney. "Absolutely not," came the reply. "I would rather die than harm Savannah."

     The defendant denied that Savannah was ever down on all fours vomiting. When pressed about this on cross-examination the witness admitted that the girl had vomited once then continued with her activities.

     Late in the day on Saturday March 21, 2015, the Etowah County jury found the defendant guilty of capital murder. As the jury foreman read the verdict, Garrard lowered her head and cried. Others in the courtroom expressed their approval of the jury's decision.

     The penalty phase of the trial began on Monday March 23, 2015. Three days later, the jury recommended life in prison for the convicted grandmother. Five of the Etowah County jurors had voted for her death.

     On May 11, 2015 Judge Ogletree sentenced Garrard to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

     In June 2016 the victim's stepmother, Jessica Hardin, pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse. Judge Ogletree sentenced her to twenty years in prison.

Protecting Classroom Pedophiles in California

     On January 30, 2012, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrested 61-year-old elementary teacher Mark Berndt on 23 counts of lewd acts against minors. The third grade teacher at the Miramonte Elementary School in Florence Firestone, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County, stood accused of photographing 6 to 10-year olds in bondage positions, some with live bugs crawling on their faces. A few of the girls were shown holding spoons containing a white liquid up to their mouths. Children were also pictured about to eat cookies allegedly topped with the teacher's semen.

     Because of the influence of the California Teachers Association (CTA) and other education unions in the state, school administrators couldn't fire anyone, including teachers like Mark Berndt. In the Miramonte school, because parents were so outraged and held protests, school administrators managed to get Berndt out of the classroom by paying him $40,000 to retire. That's how bad it was in the Golden State where it was truly golden for pedophiles working in the state's education system. (You can see why in California the firing of a merely incompetent teacher is impossible. The unions simply won't allow it. Rotten teachers who lose their jobs in other states can find a teaching position in California. The pay is outstanding, benefits are out of this world and it doesn't matter if teachers are any good. Moreover, for pedophiles California classrooms are heavens on earth.)

     In 2012, in the wake of the Miramonte school scandal (Berndt wasn't the only pedophile working there), a group called Democrats for Educational Reform introduced legislation in the state senate (S.B. 1530) that made it easier to dismiss teachers accused of sex, violence, or drug offenses against children. That bill, with vast public support passed the Senate on a 33-4 bipartisan vote.

     In the California Assembly, when the Senate-passed legislation came before the Assembly Education Committee, committee members, by refusing to vote on the bill, killed the proposed law in committee. (These politicians didn't have the courage to vote "no"which meant the bill did not reach the Assembly floor for a vote. If it had it would have passed by a wide majority.)

     The committee members who killed this child protection legislation had bowed to the state's powerful teachers' unions, including the CTA. All of the state politicians who killed the bill through their abstentions had been beneficiaries of large CTA political contributions. The fact that the CTA could stop legislation favored by a vast majority of California voters showed who was really running the show in the state. Democracy be damned. Moreover, the undermining of this needed legislation revealed what most citizens of the state already knew--that in California it was unions first, teachers second and students, parents and education third--and a bad third at that. It was no wonder the state had one of the worst public education systems in the country. 

     In California the CTA, backed by an army of 325,000 teachers and plenty of money to bribe and control state politicians was in reality the fourth branch of government. As the biggest political spender in the state its influence dwarfed other special interest groups. From 2000 through 2009 the CTA alone shelled out more than $211 million in political contributions and lobbying expenses. That was twice the amount given to politicians by the second largest bribery machine, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Since 2009 the CTA pumped another $50 million into the state's political community. 

     The fact that teacher's unions in California and other states were destroying the quality of public education in the country was bad enough. Even worse, they were enabling and protecting classroom child abusers. As long as school administrators couldn't protect students from the likes of Mark Berndt classrooms were not safe for children. 

      As for Mark Berndt himself, he pleaded no contest in November 2013 to 23 counts of lewd acts on children. The judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. A year later the Los Angeles United School District agreed to pay out $170 million in court settlements related to the Berndt pedophilia case. The settlement involved more than a hundred students.          

The Lee Kaplan Rape Case

     On Thursday June 16, 2016, officers with the Lower Southampton Township Police Department, operating on a children-in-danger tip, visited the home of 51-year-old Lee Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan resided in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Feasterville located in Bucks County twenty miles northeast of Philadelphia. When the police officers entered the Kaplan dwelling they encountered twelve girls, ages six months to eighteen. Several of the children responded by running about the house in panic searching for places to hide.

     When questioned by the police Mr. Kapan explained why the girls were living in his house. In 2012 a former Amish couple from the Lancaster County town of Quarryville named David and Salvilla Stoltzfus, in return for money from Kaplan to help the couple keep their farm, gave him their 14-year-old daughter. Mr. Kaplan and the Stoltzfuses were partners in a metalwork business in Quarryville.

     According to Mr. Kaplan he and the Stoltzfus teenager, since 2012, had produced two children. Their daughters were six-months and three years old. The other nine girls in the house were also Stoltzfus children.

     Mr. Kaplan was the only adult living in the Feasterville house. None of the girls had birth certificates or social security numbers.

     Police officers booked Lee Kaplan into the Bucks County Jail on numerous offenses that included rape, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault and corruption of minors. The twelve girls were placed into protective custody.

     David and Savilla Stoltzfus were also taken into custody on charges of conspiracy of statutory sexual assault and child endangerment. Mr. Kaplan and the ex-Amish couple were held on $1 million bond. Mr. Stolzfus told the police that when he gave up his children he had no idea he was breaking the law. In fact, after researching the issue online, he was convinced the transfer was legal.

     On Saturday June 18, 2016 one of Kaplan's neighbors told a local reporter that she had complained about Lee Kaplan to the authorities three years earlier. Mr. Kaplan's windows were boarded up and his yard was overgrown with uncut grass and weeds. According to this neighbor, the children were occasionally let out of the house, and when she did see them, "They were so sad and fearful. That's what made me call. I've been telling my husband for years that 'something isn't right.' "

     Another one of Lee Kaplan's neighbors in Feasterville told a reporter that Lee Kaplan seemed "weird" and that the neighbor now wished he had called the police.

     On June 18, 2016 police officers executed a search warrant at the Kaplan house. Officers also searched a greenhouse on the property where the long-haired, bearded resident grew Avocado trees. As officers searched the property, several chickens wandered about the place. Inside the house officers discovered several air mattresses, a large catfish tank and an elaborate and expensive model train layout. Following the search the authorities impounded Lee Kaplan's two vehicles, a blue conversion van and a white sedan.

     According to another neighbor the girls were occasionally seen working in Kaplan's vegetable garden. He also took them to a nearby Dollar Store and a local hotdog restaurant. Kaplan and the oldest Stoltzfus girl, according to this witness, had been seen in public holding hands.

     According to the Lower Southampton Township Public Safety Director, "We don't know if maybe there were babies born that were destroyed or whatever, but that's not the case as far as we can tell."

     An investigation of the Stoltzfuses revealed that in 2001 Mr. Stoltzfus borrowed $300,000 from an Amish run institution called the Old Order Amish Helping Program. At the time Mr. Stoltzfus operated a scrap metal business in the small Lancaster County town of Kirkwood. Eight years after taking out the loan to keep his business going, Mr. Stoltzfus lost the property to foreclosure. At this point he left the Amish faith, became a born again Christian and sued the Old Order Amish Helping program for initiating the foreclosure and forcing him out of business. In his lawsuit Mr. Stoltzfus claimed that the Amish wanted to close him down because they didn't approve of him doing business "with an individual of the Jewish faith named Lee Kaplan." A judge dismissed the Stoltzfus lawsuit a few months later.

     The scrap metal business was sold at a sheriff's auction for $342,000. The Stoltzfuses, in 2011 filed for bankruptcy.

     In digging into Lee Kaplan's past, investigators learned that he had graduated from Cheltenham High School in 1983. In 1994 he and his wife Virginia bought a house in the Melrose Park section of Cheltenham for $110,000, a place they worked hard to refurbish. Kaplan and his wife rented rooms in the house to students at a local university.

     According to a Cheltenham man who had lived next door to the Kaplan and his wife from 1994 to 2003, Kaplan was "born again, but not as a Christian. He was a born again Jew--a Jew for Jesus."

     In 2003 Lee Kaplan sold the house in Cheltenham for $250,000. Around this time he and his wife got divorced. After that Mr. Kaplan drastically changed his looks by letting his hair and his beard grow out.

     On June 6, 2017 a Bucks county jury found Lee Kaplan guilty of 17 counts of rape. According to the prosecutor, Lee Kaplan had "brainwashed the Stoltzfus family seeking "power, manipulation and control." 

     The 47-year-old rapist was sentenced to life in prison.

     A month later the judge sentenced David and Savilla Stoltzfus to seven years behind bars.

Heather Elvis: Missing and Presumed Murdered

     Heather Elvis, a 20-year-old employee of a bar and restaurant in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, lived with a female roommate at the River Oaks Apartments in the city. Her parents, Terry and Debbie Elvis, lived nearby. At three in the morning of Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Heather called her roommate from her cellphone about 45 minutes after being dropped off at River Oaks by her date. She called to report how the evening with the young man had worked out.

     On December 19, 2013, Heather Elvis' abandoned 2001 Dodge Intrepid was found parked at the Peachtree Landing along the Waccamaw River in the town of Socastee just outside of Myrtle Beach. The dark green vehicle had not been involved in an accident. Parked about nine miles from the River Oak Apartments, the car did not contain Elvis' purse or her cellphone.

     On Friday December 20, after Heather Elvis failed to show up for her scheduled shift at the Tilted Kilt Pub and Eatery, her parents Terry and Debbi Elvis reported their 5-foot-1 inch, 118-pound daughter missing.

     The next day, under the supervision of the Horry County Police Department, 300 people spent ten hours combing the woods and ponds in the vicinity of the abandoned car.

     On January 3, 2014 another search party made up of law enforcement officers and volunteers, aided by several K-9 units and searchers riding horses and ATVs, continued the hunt for the missing young woman.

     Lieutenant Robert Kegler with the Horry County Police Department, on January 6, 2014, told a Fox News reporter that detectives had questioned several people in connection with the disappearance. While the young man who had dropped Heather off at her apartment after the date in the early morning hours of December 18 was not a suspect, some of the uncooperative men interviewed by detectives were being scrutinized.

     At 8 PM on Monday, January 6, 2014, television crime host Nancy Grace devoted a segment of her show to the Heather Elvis missing persons case. A $25,000 reward was posted for information leading to the discovery of the missing young woman.

     At seven o'clock on the morning of Friday February 21, 2014, officers with the Horry County Police Department, South Carolina State Police and the U.S. Marshal's Office executed a search warrant at a house in Myrtle Beach occupied by 37-year-old Sidney Moorer and his 41-year-old wife Tammy. Officers spent eleven hours at the dwelling. Cadaver dogs searched the property without result. Two pickup trucks were taken away from the house and officers were seen placing several boxes into a white police van.

     A prosecutor, following the search of the Moorer house, charged Sidney and Tammy Moorer with indecent exposure and obstruction of justice. It was reported that Tammy Moorer, angry at Heather because she and Sidney had been involved in a sexual relationship, sent her nude pictures of herself and Sidney. In January 2014 Tammy Moorer told a reporter that Sidney had sex with Heather Elvis in his car "a total of three times." According to Tammy, Sidney ended the relationship when he realized that "something wasn't right about her."

     On February 24, 2014 a Horry County prosecutor charged Sidney and Tammy Moorer with Heather Elvis' kidnapping and murder. They were held without bail. Elvis' body had not been found.

     In 2016 the Horry County prosecutor, without Heather Elvis's body, dropped the murder charges against the Moorer couple. That year Sidney Moorer was tried for the kidnapping of Heather Elvis. That trial ended with a hung jury. A few months later a jury found Sidney Moorer guilty of obstructing justice in the Heather Elvis kidnapping case. The judge sentenced him to ten years in prison.

     In October 2018 Tammy Moorer was tried for kidnapping. After testifying on her own behalf the Horry County jury found her guilty. The judge sentenced Tammy Moorer to 30 years in prison.

     In September 2019 Sidney Moorer was retried on the kidnapping charge. The jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to 30 years behind bars.

     As of April 2024 the body of Heather Elvis has not been found.

The Colin Abbott Murder Case

     Upon his retirement in 2010 as a New Jersey pharmaceutical company executive, 65-year-old Kenneth Abbott and his second wife Celeste bought a 25-acre estate in Brady Township not far from the town of Slippery Rock, the home of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in the western part of the state. Kenneth and his 55-year-old second wife were married in 2007.

     On July 13, 2011, Melissa Elich, Celeste Abbott's daughter, contacted the New Jersey State Police and asked for information about the car accident death of her mother and stepfather. Kenneth Abbott's son Colin had told Elich that Kenneth and Celeste had died in a traffic accident on June 8, 2011. According to Colin the traffic fatality had taken place in Plant City, New Jersey. When Elich couldn't find Plant City on a map she called Colin to confirm the location. This time he told her it had happened in Atlantic City. According to the 42-year-old New Jersey resident, his father and Elich's mother had been burned beyond recognition in the crash.

     After the New Jersey State Police officer informed Melissa Elich that the state had no record of such an incident, the officer called the Pennsylvania State Police in Butler County and requested a welfare check of the Abbotts.

     On the day of Melissa Elich's New Jersey State Police inquiry regarding the traffic accident, Corporal Daniel Herr and another Pennsylvania State Trooper drove out to the West Liberty Road estate. The officers searched the unoccupied house and several out-buildings. Near one of the two ponds on the property the troopers discovered a pair of metal barrels that had been used to burn something. In the vicinity of the barrels, about 200 yards from the house, the officers came across charred human body parts.

     Later on the day of the gruesome discovery on the Abbott estate, Dr. Dennis Dirkmart, a forensic anthropologist with Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, arrived at the scene with his team of graduate students. Dr. Dirkmart and his forensic crew identified a skull containing the upper teeth along with a lower jaw containing additional dentition. The death scene investigators also recovered a female pelvic bone and several larger bones that were male. (The remains were later identified as those of Kenneth and Celeste Abbott.) Further analysis of the dismembered and burned bodies by a forensic pathologist revealed that the couple had been shot. (The police found a spent bullet near one of the ponds.)

     On July 13, 2011 officers with the New Jersey State Police searched Colin Abbott's home in Randolph, New Jersey, a town of 25,000 in the northern section of the state. The search produced incriminating evidence that linked Mr. Abbott to the double murder in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

     From Colin Abbott's house New Jersey investigators recovered Celeste Abbott's red-leather wallet that contained her driver's license and several credit cards. The officers also found a .380-caliber pistol later identified as the murder weapon. In the murder suspect's bank safety deposit box detectives found Kenneth Abbott's will that designated his son the sole beneficiary of the $5 million estate. The will had been changed to that effect in 2010. Investigators believed the suspect had murdered his father and stepmother in order to inherit their wealth.

     In Pennsylvania, State Trooper Chris Birckichler questioned Adam Tower, Celeste Abbott's son. Mr. Tower revealed that in speaking to the suspect on July 12, 2011 Colin Abbott ordered him not to contact his father's life insurance company. The suspect made it clear that he would be handling the disposition of the estate.

     On July 14, 2011, the day detectives interrogated Colin Abbott in Randolph, New Jersey, murder charges were being filed against him in Pennsylvania. Officers in New Jersey arrested Colin Abbott that day on the Pennsylvania homicide charges, and a couple of weeks later the suspect was incarcerated in the Butler County Jail awaiting his trial.

     On the day before the trial, February 26, 2013, the defendant pleaded no contest to two counts of third-degree murder. As part of the plea deal, Mr. Abbott avoided the penalties of death and life in prison without the possibility of parole. Butler County Judge William Shaffer sentenced him to 35 to 80 years in prison. If he served the minimum sentence Abbott could regain his freedom when he was 77-years-old. The cold-blooded killer stood before Judge Shaffer and wept.

     Less than a month after his sentencing, Colin Abbott filed a 5-page handwritten request asking Judge Shaffer to allow him to withdraw his plea in the case. At the plea withdrawal hearing on March 28, 2013, the Butler County prosecutor played recordings of jailhouse phone conversations between the prisoner and Deborah Buchanan, his 64-year-old mother.

     Abbott, pursuant to a discussion of his attempt to take back his plea, said this to his mother: "It's a publicity start in the right direction for you; possibly for a book, possibly for other things, you know?" Abbott's mother, a resident of Rockway, New Jersey, owned Deadly Ink Press, a small publisher of murder mystery books. Buchanan had made it known that she was writing a book about her son's case.

     To an Associated Press reporter following this story, Deborah Buchanan said, "I am talking to people about a book deal. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I am a writer. That's not why he [her son] wants to change his plea. He was under a lot of pressure."

     On April 12, 2013, Butler County Judge Shaffer denied Colin Abbott's motion to withdraw his no contest plea.

The Albert Jackson Sterling II Murder-For-Hire Case

      Life had been good to Roxanne Sterling, or so it seemed. She lived in a $400,000 house, was married to an ambitious man who made good money and was eight months pregnant with her second child. Early in the afternoon of November 21, 2006, before leaving the house to go shopping, Roxanne said good-bye to her husband, Albert Jackson Sterling II. In an hour or so Albert would be driving from the couple's home in Allen, Texas to nearby Dallas to catch a flight to his parents' home in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

     At four o'clock that afternoon, with her husband on the plane to New Mexico, Roxanne pulled her car into the garage and entered her house. She walked into the master bedroom and nearly fainted when she came face-to-face with a man wearing gloves and holding a black leather belt. The intruder rose from the edge of the bed and said, "Your husband wants you dead." Keeping his voice calm, the intruder asked the terrified woman not to panic. He had changed his mind. Instead of killing her, he was there to warn her of her husband's intentions. She was free to call the police. Roxanne, moving as fast as she could, ran to a neighbor's house. The neighbor called 911. The emergency operator could hear Roxanne sobbing uncontrollably in the background.

     Officers from the Allen Police Department found the intruder, Jeffrey Boden Thompson, waiting for them at the Sterling house. Thompson told the officers that Albert Sterling had given him the leather belt which he was to use in strangling the victim. Thompson said he had instructions to haul the corpse, in the victim's car, to a predetermined site in Dallas. After dumping the body, Thompson was to abandon the vehicle at another spot in the city. Mr. Sterling, the murder-for-hire mastermind, had designed his plan to fool the police into thinking that Roxanne had been carjacked and murdered in Dallas. For his efforts Mr. Thompson would have earned $2,500.

     Because Jeffrey Thompson was willing to cooperate with investigators, the Collin County district attorney decided not to charge him with burglary. To show his willingness to help, Thompson played detectives a message Albert Sterling had left on his cellphone before flying to New Mexico. "The chicken has flown the coop," Albert said, referring to his wife's leaving the  house. "She will be there [back at the  house] in an hour. Just have patience."

     With detectives listening in, Thompson called Albert Sterling in New Mexico with the message he had been told by the mastermind to leave upon completion of the hit: "The chariot (the victim's car) is in south Dallas and the trash (her body) is in west Dallas."

     The next day, in Alamogordo, police officers arrested Albert Sterling on charges of soliciting the murders of his wife and unborn child. The officers booked him into the Otero County Jail where he would await extradition back to Texas. Through his attorney, Mr. Sterling denied having arranged his wife's murder, stating that she had caught Thompson in the act of burglarizing their house. The burglar, according to Sterling, had made up the hit murder business to avoid being charged with the break-in.

     Albert Sterling's family, friends and neighbors were shocked that he had been accused of murder-for-hire. From all appearances he and Roxanne had been happily married and looking forward to the birth of their baby. People who knew Albert refused to believe that a well-educated man with a good job would hire someone to murder his pregnant wife. Albert not only possessed a good job in the computer industry, the 38-year-old worked as a trainer/instructor in a 24-hour fitness club in Dallas. There had been rumors of a girlfriend who was one of his students in his other business, Al's Punch Time, a boxing gym. Still, no one believed he would have his pregnant wife murdered simply because he had found another woman.

     On December 7, 2006 Albert Sterling was brought back to Texas and placed in the Collins County Jail under $500,000 bond. Two weeks later a Collin County grand jury indicted him on two counts of murder solicitation. Late in January 2007 a judge released the suspect on bail on the condition he wear an electric monitoring device and report once a week to the court bailiff. Mr. Sterling also had to relinquished his passport.

     While awaiting his murder trial, Albert admitted to Roxanne that he had been involved in an extramarital affair. She not only forgave him, she told the Collins County prosecutor that despite what she had been told by Jeffrey Thompson, she believed that her husband was an honest, trustworthy man who had never plotted to murder her and their baby. She stunned the prosecutor by saying that she would testify on his behalf at his upcoming trial.

     Albert Sterling, through his attorney, Russell Wilson, denied attempting to hire Jeffrey Thompson, an ex-convict, to kill his wife. According to the defense attorney, his client had been working on a car insurance scam with Mr. Thompson when Thompson chose to burglarize his house. When Roxanne walked in on him the intruder made up the murder-for-hire story.

     On February 13, 2009, a Collin County jury of six men and six women, after a short period of deliberation, found Albert Sterling guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to two concurrent 30-year prison sentences. Throughout the trial Roxanne remained loyal to her husband. She took the stand for the defense and at the sentencing hearing testified on his behalf.

     Six months after the sentencing of her husband, Roxanne divorced him. When asked by reporters if she still believed in Albert's innocence, she didn't respond. After the sale of the house she and Albert had shared, the 39-year-old moved into a rental house not far from her former residence. 

The Daniel Sanchez Mass Murder-Suicide Case

     Beatriz "Betty" Silva lived with her sister Maria and Maria's husband Max in a mobile home located among 400 modular dwellings in a subdivision outside of Longmont, a town 35 miles north of Denver, Colorado. The 25-year-old student at Front Range Community College worked at a Chipotle fast-food franchise, and as a sales associate with Marshalls Department Store. On November 22, 2012, Thanksgiving Day, she told her boyfriend, 31-year-old Daniel Sanchez, that she had found someone new. Sanchez, a quick-tempered violent man flew into a rage. He made threats against the new boyfriend and began stalking and harassing Silva.

     When they were going together, Betty Silva had loaned Daniel Sanchez $1,000, money he needed to fix up his truck. He had not paid her back as promised, so on Saturday, December 15, 2012, she arranged to meet him in the parking lot of a Best Buy on the outskirts of Denver where they would discuss how he planned to repay the loan. When the ex-girlfriend climbed into his vehicle Mr. Sanchez called her names, punched her in the face and used her cellphone to text threatening messages to her boyfriend. Against her will, Betty Siva was driven around in Sanchez's truck while he tried to talk her into checking into a hotel where they could resume their relationship. She refused, and after an hour or so, he drove her back to her car and let her out of his truck.

     Betty Silva reported Daniel Sanchez to the Denver police, and on Sunday afternoon, December 16, 2012, officers took him into custody on charges of false imprisonment, second-degree kidnapping, harassment and domestic violence. He spend the night in the Boulder County Jail, and at ten o'clock Monday night posted his $10,000 bond and was released.

     Furious over the fact the woman he loved had turned him in to the police, Daniel Sanchez drove straight from the jail to Silva's mobile home where he parked on the street in front of her dwelling. Armed with a .45-caliber 13-round Glock pistol and an extra magazine, Sanchez entered the Silva dwelling by shooting out the glass panel to the rear sliding glass door. Once inside the home he took Betty, her 22-year-old sister Maria and Maria's husband Max Ojeda hostage.

     At four o'clock the next morning Betty Silva called 911. The dispatcher overheard her say, "No, no, no." The 911 operator next heard gunfire. Following the gun shots, Sanchez came on the phone and informed the dispatcher that he was going to kill himself. Again, the sound of gunfire, then silence. No one else came to the phone.

     Weld County Sheriff's deputies and a SWAT team arrived at the modular home at 4:18 that morning. Officers weren't sure how many people were in the dwelling, or if any of them were alive. At 5:30 AM, after getting no response from inside the hostage site, members of the SWAT unit stormed into the mobile home. Officers found Mr. Sanchez dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They discovered 29-year-old Max Ojeda and his wife Maria dead in their bedroom. Betty Silva had been shot to death in another part of the house. Officers found 16 spent shell-casings scattered about the murder site.

     In reporting Daniel Sanchez to the Denver police Betty Silva had indicated a reluctance to go forward with the more serious kidnapping related charges. By minimizing the seriousness of Sanchez's crimes against her she may have contributed to her own death and the fate of the other two victims. Had the magistrate been convinced that Sanchez posed a serious threat of life-threatening violence, Sanchez's bail may not have been set so low. There is also the possibility that regardless of the amount of Sanchez's bail, this young woman's fate was sealed once she became this violent, unstable man's girlfriend. 

O. J. Simpson and The Revisionist True Crime Genre

     William C. Dear, the owner of a private investigation agency in Dallas, Texas, had over the years published a handful of nonfiction books featuring his adventures as a larger-than-life PI. A master of self-promotion in the mold of Allan Pinkerton, William Burns and J. J. Arms (remember him?). Mr. Dear was in the news following the release of his 2012 book, O. J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It. (A bold if not artistic title.)

     As if exonerating one of America's most hated men is not enough, William Dear was accusing O. J.'s son Jason of the June 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. When revisionist true crime writers exonerate celebrated criminals by incriminating others, they usually accuse dead people who can't sue them for libel. Jason Simpson, who was 24-years-old when the Los Angeles police arrested his father was alive at the time of the accusation.

     In the other twentieth century "crime of the century," the state of New Jersey, on April 3, 1936 electrocuted Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the 1932 murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr. In the 1980s and 90s a half dozen hack true crime writers produced books that exonerated Hauptmann and incriminated Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, John F. Condon, Ellis Parker and a host of others. At least three of these books make the case that the Lindbergh baby wasn't even murdered, that the authorities had misidentified the corpse found two miles from the Lindbergh estate. In reality, the evidence against Hauptmann had been substantial while the "proof" against the literary suspects turned out to be flimsy, and in many cases, bogus. Readers familiar with the history of the Lindbergh case, including several serious Lindbergh biographers, saw the revisionist books for what they were--fiction passed off as nonfiction. Nevertheless these "Hauptmann is Innocent and I Can Prove It" books attracted a lot of attention and drew more than a few dedicated followers.

     Unlike real investigative journalists, the authors of revisionist true crime books start with a theory and point of view and ignore or try to explain away any facts that do not support or conflict with their thesis. In making the case against their suspects true crime book revisionists frequently present negative evidence as either incriminating or exonerating. For example, in the Lindbergh case, Hauptmann must be innocent because the police didn't recover his latent fingerprints from the crime scene. In this genre of nonfiction crime writing a revisionist's suspect can be guilty simply because he didn't have an alibi. That's how they do it. When you break these books down there's nothing there but conjecture, speculation, wishful thinking and the authors' beliefs. And quite often, evidence is presented that is simply fiction.

     True crime revisionists get away with their literary tricks because we live in an era where facts and knowledge get little respect, and there is no such thing as objective truth. Today, what one believes is true trumps what one knows is true. People who want criminals like Bruno Richard Hauptmann and O. J. Simpson to be innocent eagerly go along with the joke.

    What was written (or not written) on the dust jacket of William Dear's book revealed it was not a work to be taken seriously. For example: "Once Dear established in his own mind that O. J. Simpson was innocent, he focused his attention on six possible suspects." In all probability, Dear began with a single suspect, then cleared away the debris that conflicted with his theory. If O. J. was in fact innocent, and his son was guilty, then the evidence against Jason Simpson should be much stronger, and more convincing than the evidence that was presented against his father. It was not. Here was William Dear's "startling new evidence that is certain to change everyone's perception of O. J.'s guilt:"

     In Jason's abandoned storage locker, Dear found a hunting knife. (This knife, however did not contain a mixture of Jason's and the victims' DNA or any other evidence to establish it as the murder weapon.)

     After the murders, Jason Simpson retained an attorney.

     Jason Simpson did not have an airtight alibi.

     Jason was depicted in a photograph wearing a knit cap similar to the one discovered at the crime scene. (If the crime scene hat contained hair follicles from Jason's head, and bore traces of the victims' blood, that would be incriminating.)

     Two months before the murders, Jason Simpson allegedly assaulted his girlfriend. According to a criminal profiler, Jason's personality was more homicidal than his father's.

     According to William Dear, while O. J. was present at the crime scene, he did not commit the murders. (This was helpful because it explained away the physical evidence connecting O. J. to the victims.) According to Mr. Dear, O. J.'s only crime was that he took steps to cover-up the fact his son had killed Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. So, why did Jason Simpson kill Nicole? He murdered her because she had decided, at the last moment, not to dine at the restaurant where he worked as a chef. This was, therefore, a double murder motivated by injured pride.

     In reality, William Dear's revisionist version of the O. J. Simpson case didn't offer enough evidence to indict the proverbial ham sandwich. Patterson Smith, the antiquarian bookseller from New Jersey who knows more about the literature of true crime than anyone, wrote the following about the true crime revisionist genre:

     "Of all crime books published, those posing revisionist theories tend to attract the greatest media attention. They are 'news.' Far from merely adding to our knowledge of a past event or re-embellishing a tale previously grown stale in the retelling, they say to us, 'You've been wrong about this case.' And if someone is thought to have been unjustly convicted and executed, the news is all the stronger.

     "It has, after all, been observed that Americans have a greater sense of injustice than of justice. When a revisionist account reaches reviewers, the arguments put forth by its author can seem extraordinarily compelling, for very often the book does not aim for balance but selects only those facts that support its divergent thesis.

     "Moreover--and this is very important--the reviewer of a book on crime written for the general public often has little or no background in the case which could help him weigh the author's novel contentions against countervailing evidence. The reviewer sees only one side of the story, and it usually looks good."

    O. J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It didn't contained nearly enough evidence to convince many readers that O. J. was innocent and that his son was the guilty party. 

     O. J. Simpson died on April 11, 2024. He was 76. Notwithstanding several more revisionist book accounts of the murders, most people familiar with the case consider Mr. Simpson guilty as charged, and that his murder acquittal was a travesty of justice.

Lying For Lance

     Racing cyclist Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France every year from 1999 to 2005. He lost all seven of his titles, however, after he admitted using performance enhancing drugs. The truth came out in 2013 after years of lying to racing authorities and to the public.

     The icon in a sport most Americans aren't interested in, as a result of the doping scandal, went from hero to heel. Since his fall from grace, the word frequently associated with Armstrong and his athletic career is "disgraced."

     Disgraced athletes, particularly disgraced celebrity athletes, have been able to at least partially rehabilitate their reputations. If Armstrong's legacy of cheating and lying had been in the process of rehabilitation due to the passage of time, good deeds and fading memories, the possibility of this came to an end after the stunt he and his girlfriend pulled in Aspen, Colorado.

     On December 28, 2015, the 43-year-old Armstrong and his 33-year-old live in girlfriend Anna Hansen were mingling with the rich and beautiful at the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colorado. They had been invited to the gala event in honor of the Aspen Art Museum.

     The couple left the party after midnight with Armstrong behind the wheel of his GMC Yukon. As he rounded a corner driving too fast he lost control of his SUV and smashed into two parked vehicles, a Jeep Wrangler and a Toyota Four Runner.

     The collision could be heard from the inside of the homes of the people who owned the damaged cars. Anna Hansen climbed out of the GMC and spoke to a man looking over his crumpled SUV. She identified both herself and Lance, apologized for the accident, left her phone number and promised that Lance Armstrong would pay for the cost of the repairs.

     After speaking to the man whose vehicle Lance Armstrong had damaged, Anna climbed back into the GMC. Not bothering to wait for the authorities, the couple drove off. In Colorado, it's against the law to leave the scene of a traffic accident before the arrival of the police. The man Anna spoke to called 911 and reported the collision.

     When an officer with the Aspen Police Department questioned Anna Hansen the next day she gave an account of the car accident that didn't square with the conversation she had with the man at the scene the previous night. She told the accident investigator that she had been the driver of Armstrong's GMC.

     The investigator took this information with a great deal of skepticism because he had questioned the St. Regis valet who had seen Lance Armstrong climb into the driver's seat when the couple left the party.

     On December 31, 2014, just three days after the accident, Anna Hansen came clean to the police. She admitted that she had lied to protect Lance Armstrong. According to the police report, she explained her fabrication this way: "We've had our family name smeared over every paper in the world in the last couple of years, and honestly, I've got teenagers. I just wanted to protect my family because I thought, 'Gosh, Anna Hansen hit some cars, it's not going to be a national story.' " [Perhaps she should have thought: "Gosh, if Anna Hansen lies to the police and gets caught, it's going to be an even bigger story."]

     When the traffic investigator asked Anna if Lance Armstrong had pressured her into taking the blame for the accident, she said the lie had been a "joint decision." She assured the officer that Lance had not been intoxicated when he plowed into the parked cars.

     The Pitkin County prosecutor's office decided not to charge Anna Hansen with the crime of filing a false report. A prosecutor did, however, charge Lance Armstrong with failing to report a traffic accident, a misdemeanor offense that carried a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail and a $300 fine. Armstrong also received a traffic summons for driving too fast under the conditions, an infraction involving a $15 to $100 fine.

     In January 2015 Lance Armstrong pleaded guilty and was fined $238.50 and court costs.

     For Lance Armstrong, the consequences of this case had less to do with the criminal justice system and more to do with the damage to his already weakened reputation. Traffic accidents happen to everyone, but not everyone lets someone else take the blame.

From Hero to Heel

     In September 2007 when Richard De Coatsworth was a 22-year-old rookie on the Philadelphia Police Department, he pulled over a suspicious vehicle occupied by four men. Three of the suspects jumped out of the car and fled. As the young officer alighted from the patrol car to give chase, the fourth suspect blasted him with a shotgun. Notwithstanding the gunshot wound to the lower portion of his face, officer De Coatsworth chased the gunman while calling in for help. Although he eventually collapsed, other officers apprehended the shooter. The assailant was later convicted and sentenced to 36 to 72 years in prison.

     Officer De Coatsworth, following his medical recovery, was promoted to an elite highway patrol unit. In 2008 the National Association of Police Organizations named him that year's "Top Cop."

     In February 2009, Vice President Joe Biden invited Officer De Coatsworth to sit next to Michelle Obama at the President's address to the Joint Session of Congress. The officer was seen on national TV sitting next to the First Lady in his ceremonial police uniform. In his brief law enforcement career, officer Richard De Coatsworth had achieved full hero status. It was at this point that his life and career began to deteriorate.

     Just seven months after appearing with Michelle Obama, De Coatsworth was accused of excessive force after he shot a motorcyclist in the leg. In November 2011 the hero-cop was under investigation by the Internal Affairs Office for fighting with a fellow officer. A month later, after having amassed during his brief tenure as a police officer nine civilian complaints of assault, abuse and misconduct, Mr. De Coatsworth retired from the force on full disability.

     Two months after leaving the police department Richard De Coatsworth was charged with threatening a woman in the Port Richmond section of the city.

     On May 1, 2013, De Coatsworth, after meeting a woman in a downtown bar, allegedly sexually assaulted her at the Day's Inn on Roosevelt Boulevard. At two in the morning of Thursday, May 16, 2013, De Coatsworth showed up at this woman's home in the Fishtown-Kensington section of the city. At her residence Mr. De Coatsworth allegedly forced the 21-year-old and another woman her age to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint. The next day, immediately after the ex-cop departed the house, the woman he allegedly assaulted at the Day's Inn called the authorities.

     On Saturday, May 18, 2013 a prosecutor charged Richard De Coatsworth with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, trafficking in persons, false imprisonment and aggravated assault. At his arraignment the magistrate judge set the defendant's bail at $25 million for each of the women. The judge added another $10 million bond in connection with an unrelated charge involving De Coatsworth's alleged May 9 assault of his live-in girlfriend. In total the ex-police officer was charged with 32 felonies. His bail was the highest in the history of city, and probably the state.

     In January 2015 Richard De Coatsworth pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution, simple assault and drug possession. The judge sentenced him to 18 months probation. 

The Sara Kruzan Murder Case

     While the law of murder is quite clear on what behavior constitutes the crime, occasionally there are cases that make the strict enforcement of that law seem unfair. The Sara Kruzan case falls into that category.

     As a child growing up in southern California in the 1980s Sara Kruzan had to be hospitalized several times for severe depression. At age eleven she came under the influence of a Riverside California pimp named George Gilbert Howard. In 1994 Kruzan moved to Rubidoux, an unincorporated community in Riverside County where she took up residence with another pimp, James Earl Hamilton. She was sixteen and working as a prostitute.

     On March 10, 1994 Earl Hamilton arranged to have Sara Kruzan meet George Gilbert Howard at the Dynasty Suites Motel in Riverside. That night in the motel room Kruzan shot Mr. Howard in the neck from close range. He died on the spot. Kruzan took $1,500 from the dead man's wallet and drove off in his Jaguar.

     Homicide detectives found Sara Kruzan's purse in the murder room. Four days later police officers took the teen hooker into custody. When asked about Mr. Howard she confessed to shooting her former pimp.

     The Riverside County district attorney decided to try Sara Kruzan, as an adult, for first-degree murder.

     At Kruzan's May 1995 trial she took the stand and testified that James Earl Hamilton had ordered Howard's murder. The defendant believed that if she didn't carry out the hit Mr. Hamilton would have killed her and her mother. This homicide was, therefore, an offense committed by a young girl under duress. (Earl Hamilton was never charged in connection with Howard's killing.) The jury of seven women and five men found the 17-year-old defendant guilty of first-degree murder.

     Because the pimp had been killed in the commission of a robbery, and the defendant had been "lying in wait" to murder the victim, the judge sentenced Kruzan to life without the possibility of parole. Corrections authorities sent her to the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.

     On February 2009 a member of the group Human Rights Watch posted a six-minute interview of Sara Kruzan on YouTube. The inmate described her miserable life as a prostitute and revealed how the pimp she had shot to death had abused her physically.

     In 2010 on his last day in office California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted Kruzan's sentence to 25 years to life with the possibility of parole.

     A Riverside County Judge, in January 2013, reduced Kruzan's first-degree conviction to second-degree murder. This made the now 35-year-old prisoner eligible for immediate parole. Nine months later the state parole board ordered her release pending Governor Jerry Brown's approval. The governor signed off on the parole on October 27, 2013. A few days after that Sara Kruzan walked out of prison a free woman. No one objected to her release.

Pastor John Douglas White: The Devil in Disguise

     In 2012, John Douglas White, the 55-year-old pastor of the Christ Community Fellowship Church located just west of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, lived by himself in a mobile home park in Broomfield Township near the town of Remus. This self-appointed man of the cloth possessed a background more in line with a person serving a life sentence in prison than a preacher of a tiny church in rural central Michigan. Pastor White, a perverted lust killer, had no business living outside prison walls where he could take advantage of women while masquerading as a man of God. He was a predatory sex killer in preacher's clothing.

     In 1981 John White, then 24, choked and stabbed a 17-year-old girl in Battle Creek, Michigan. The victim survived and Mr. White was allowed to plead no contest to assault with intent to do great bodily harm.  The judge sentenced him to five years in prison. Corrections authorities let White out on parole after he had served two years behind bars.

     John White and his wife, in 1994, were living in Comstock Township near Kalamazoo, Michigan. On July 11 of that year, 26-year-old Vicky Sue Wall was seen getting into White's pickup just before she disappeared. Shortly after Wall's relatives reported her missing the 37-year-old violent sex offender checked himself into the Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital. In September 1994 police found Vicky Sue Wall's decomposed body in the woods not far from her home. Arrested at the psychiatric facility, John White admitted strangling the victim to death. According to him, he and the victim were having an affair and she had threatened to tell his wife. So he killed her.

     In the Vicky Sue Wall murder case the authorities allowed White to strike a deal with the prosecutor. In return for his guilty plea to the ridiculous charge of involuntary manslaughter, the judge sentenced this degenerate to eight to fifteen years. At his May 1995 sentencing hearing White told the judge that Vicky Sue Wall's death had been a "tragic accident." John White walked out of prison in 2007 after serving twelve years of his sentence. His wife had divorced him.

     In 2012 Pastor John White was engaged to a woman in his congregation whose 24-year-old daughter--Rebekah Gay--lived a few doors from him in the mobile home park. Because White was a preacher engaged to her mother Rebekah allowed him to watch her 3-year-old son. She had no idea her babysitter watched necrophilia pornography and fantasized about having gruesome perverted sex with her.

     On October 31, 2012, at six in the morning, John White entered Rebekah Gay's trailer, struck her in the head with a hard rubber mallet then strangled her to death with a zip tie. After performing perverted sexual acts on the victim's body, he hauled her 5-foot-3, 118 pound corpse in his pickup to a ditch behind a stand of pine trees about a mile from the trailer park. It was there he dumped her body.

     After hiding his victim's corpse White returned to his trailer where he cleaned himself and his truck with paper towels. He walked to Gay's dwelling, stole into her car and drove it to a nearby bar and parked it there. He had also tossed Rebekah Gay's cellphone into a dumpster and threw away the murder weapon. From the bar White walked back to Gay's mobile home, dressed her son in his Halloween costume, then drove the boy to Mount Pleasant where, as prearranged, the boy's father picked him up for the day.

     Crime scene investigators processed the victim's trailer for physical clues and searched White's mobile home where they found the bloody towels and other incriminating evidence. When questioned by detectives with the Michigan State Police John White confessed and led the officers to Rebekah Gay's body.

     On November 1, 2012 John White was arraigned in an Isabella County District Court on the charge of first-degree murder. The judge denied him bail.

     The church member who had hired John White as pastor said this to a reporter with The Detroit News: "He [White] was absolutely contrite. All kinds of people turn around and meet the Lord and they are a different person. He [White] was doing a lot of good in the community...He was doing a lot of good and Satan did not want him doing good, and Satan got to him."

     So, according to one of Pastor White's congregants, White's cold-blooded lust murder of Rebekah Gay was the devil's wrongdoing.

     In April 2013, White pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing Rebekah Gay. The judge sentenced him to prison for 56 years and three months.

     On August 28, 2013 a prison guard at the Michigan Reformatory Correctional Institution in Ionia, found John White dead in his cell. He had hanged himself.

Dining With Hitler

     In 2012 Morris Berger graduated from Drury University in Springfield, Missouri with a Bachelor's Degree in History. After his college graduation he taught history at a Missouri high school where he was also on the football coaching staff. Mr. Berger, more interested in coaching than history, took an assistant coaching position at Missouri Western State University in St. Josephs. He next joined the coaching staff at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater before moving on to Texas State University in San Marcos.

     In January 2020 Morris Berger was named the offensive coordinator at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Shortly after the 29-year-old joined the coaching staff, Kellen Voss, the sports editor of the college newspaper The Grand Valley Lanthorn interviewed him. The question-and-answer article, entitled "Inside the Mind of GVSU's Newest Offensive Coordinator" and published on January 23, 2020 was intended as the typical mindless sports piece. It didn't turn out that way.

     Kellen Voss, knowing that the new coach had an undergraduate degree in history, asked him to name a historical figure with whom he'd like to have dinner. Instead of responding to this puff-piece question with a typically safe answer like Jesus, Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln, Coach Berger stepped on a public relations landmine by saying he'd like to dine with, of all people, Adolph Hitler.

     Before justifying why he had picked the fascist who started World War Two and oversaw the murder of six million Jews as a dinner date, Coach acknowledged that his selection may not get "a good review" from readers. Talk about understatement.

     In reference to Hitler's legacy of massive world-wide death and destruction, Coach Berger the historian said, "It was obviously very sad and he had bad motives, but the way he was able to lead was second-to-none. How he rallied a group and a following, I want to know how he did that. Bad intentions of course, but you can't deny he was a great leader."

    One might argue that Hitler, who led his country to devastating and total defeat before killing himself, was not a good leader nor an appropriate role model for the profession of coaching. And when a football team has a bad season the head coach doesn't kill himself. They just fire him. 

     Coach Morris Berger probably meant no harm in hypothetically asking Adolph Hitler to dinner for advice on leadership. He did, however, manage to do something that was almost impossible: He turned a sports piece in an obscure college newspaper into a national news item.

     Four days after Coach Berger's public relations fiasco the school suspended him. On January 30, 2020 he "resigned." In a prepared statement released by the school, Morris Berger wrote: "In the past 11 years I have taken great pride in the responsibility and privilege of being a teacher, coach, mentor and valued member of the community. I was excited and proud to be at Grand Valley, and am disappointed that I will not get the opportunity to help these players in 2020. However, I do not want to be a distraction to these kids, this great university or Coach Mitchell as they begin preparation for the upcoming season."

The Tong Shao Murder Case

    Tong Shao grew up as the only child in a middle-class family in Dalian, China, a coastal city of 7 million 300 miles east of Beijing. Her parents saved up $100,000 for her college education in America. In the fall of 2012 she enrolled as a chemical engineering major at Iowa State University in Ames. As one of 5,000 Chinese students in the state, her parents thought she'd be safe living in central Iowa.

      In the summer before she started her junior year Shao completed an internship in Kentucky where she had purchased a gold-colored four-door 1997 Toyota Camry.

     On September 6, 2014 Shao drove to Iowa City to visit her boyfriend Xiangnan Li. Xiangnan also attended Iowa State University as an international student from China. Shao had met Li in the summer of 2011 in Beijing where they took English prep classes.

     Xiangnan Li was from Wenzhou China, a city of 9 million on the country's east coast 300 miles south of Shanghai. He had transferred to Iowa State University from Rochester Institute of Technology to be closer to Shao.

     In the U.S. Li resided in Iowa City at an apartment complex called Dolphin Lake Point Enclave. He also stayed in the Ames apartment Shao shared with her roommate Jean.

     Two days after Shao left Ames, a message sent from her cellphone to a friend said she was driving to Minnesota to visit someone. Her college friends didn't hear from her for more than a week after the September 8 text message. On September 17 her roommate Jean reported Tong Shao missing to the Ames Police Department.

     On Friday September 26, 2014 police in Iowa City, at Li's apartment complex along U.S. Highway 6, found Tong Shao's Toyota parked in the parking lot. After smelling the odor of death coming from the trunk area of the vehicle officers acquired a warrant to search the car.

     Inside the trunk of Shao's vehicle officers found the decomposing body of the 5-foot-2-inch missing college student. Next to her body lay a 15-pound barbell. According to a resident of the Dolphin Lake Point Enclave, the 1997 Toyota with the Kentucky plates had been parked in that spot for a couple of weeks.

     Xiangnan Li's blue 2009 BMW was also parked at the Iowa City apartment complex. On September 8 he flew back to China. (He had boarded the plane in Cedar Rapids Iowa and had a layover in Chicago.) Iowa City police officers searched his car. Inside the vehicle they found Li's flight information.

     In November 2014 a forensic pathologist with the Johnson County Medical Examiner's Office performed the autopsy on Tong Shao's remains. A medical examiner's office spokesperson, however, didn't announce the postmortem results until January 2015. According the autopsy report the college student had died from asphyxiation and blunt force trauma. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. (The dual causes of death was unusual. Was she strangled or bludgeoned to death?)

     According to homicide investigators the text message from Shao's cellphone had been sent on September 8 from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago where Li was laid over en route to his home in China.

     Karen Yang, a friend of Li's, told detectives that he had been jealous over Shao's interest in another man. Li had overheard Shao complain to this man over the phone that she was not happy with her current relationship. This made Li extremely angry.

     Detectives with the Ames Police Department learned that on September 5, 2014 Li and Shao checked into room 218 at the Budget Inn in Nevada, Iowa. Hotel surveillance camera footage showed Shao walking alone in the lobby the next afternoon. She was also seen in the town of Nevada driving a gold-colored car believed to be her Toyota. According to hotel records the couple checked out on September 7, 2014. They had stayed at this place in 2013 and earlier in 2014.

     Detectives believed that Shao had been murdered by Li during the early morning hours of September 7 at the hotel. The walls in room 218 were stained with "splatter and drips of various dried liquids." Crime scene investigators also found dried blood behind the headboard of the bed.

     When police discovered Shao's body in the trunk of her car on September 26, 2014 they discovered that her head had been wrapped in a towel with the tag "Premium Quality," the same kind of towel used at the Budget Inn and Suites.

     On March 23, 2016 in eastern China, Li Xiangnan pleaded guilty to murdering Shao Tong. Since the Chinese do not extradite its citizens he remained in China where he would spend the rest of his life in prison.