The Tracy Ingle SWAT Raid

     A narcotics officer with the North Little Rock (Arkansas) Police Department received information on December 20, 2007 that a woman known only as Kate was selling methamphetamine out of the house at 400 East 21st Street. The confidential informant who said he'd purchased meth there didn't know who owned the dwelling, if other people lived there, how much drug activity was going on at that location or anything about Kate other than she usually carried a gun. A judge, relying entirely on this sketchy report from a confidential informant, issued a nighttime no-knock warrant to search the house.

     At 7:40 PM, 17 days after the judge issued the warrant, Tracy Ingle, a 40-year-old former stonemason with a bad back was asleep in his first floor bedroom in the back of the house at 400 East 21st Street. Mr. Ingle awoke with a start at the sound of a SWAT battering ram breaking down his front door. He instinctively reached for his pistol, the unloaded and broken handgun he kept at his bedside to scare off intruders. This would not be the first time burglars had broken into his home. Suddenly, a flashbang grenade came though the window near his bed, filling the room with blinding light. The SWAT officer who climbed into the bedroom through the broken window yelled, "He's got a gun!" That's when the shooting started. The first bullet, fired from a .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle, tore into Ingle's left leg just above the knee. As he dropped to the floor, SWAT officers outside the window fired 20 more shots, hitting Ingle in the arm, calf, hip and chest. Moments later several officers were in the room. One of the officers kept referring to Ingle as Michael or Mike. Before being rushed to the Baptist Health Hospital Mr. Ingle said, "My name is not Mike."

     The police did not find methamphetamine or any other illegal drug at Tracy Ingle's house. They didn't find Kate, whoever she was, or any incriminating evidence in Ingle's car. They did seize a digital scale and a few baggies, common household items they designated as drug paraphernalia. Ingle's sister, a surgical nurse who made jewelry as a hobby, told the police the scale and baggies belonged to her.

     Because the police had broken into Ingle's house and shot him five times, then failed to find the drugs they had raided the house for, they had to charge him with something. And they did: two counts of aggravated assault for picking up the handgun in self defense, and felony possession of drug paraphernalia. The North Little Rock police, in the botched drug raid had almost killed a citizen who had never been convicted of a felony. Instead of apologizing for their shoddy, reckless work and overaggressive tactics, the authorities wanted to send Tracy Ingle to prison.

     Ten days after the shooting the hospital discharged Tracy Ingle from the intensive care unit. Police officers immediately picked him up and drove him to the police station. For the next six hours detectives grilled Ingle without an attorney present. From the interrogation room they hauled him to the Pulaski County Jail where they booked him, still in his hospital-issued clothing. When they released  Mr. Ingle four days later (he had sold his car to make bail) his wounds had become infected because he had been unable to change his bandages every six hours.

     The internal affairs investigation of the shooting cleared the two SWAT officers who had shot Mr. Ingle of wrongdoing. Seeing the gun in Ingle's hand they had responded appropriately. Responsibility for this drug enforcement fiasco rested on the shoulders of the case detective and the judge who had signed the no-knock search warrant. Ingle, who couldn't afford to hire a lawyer, finally caught a break in May when John Wesley Hall, a well-known Arkansas defense attorney, agreed to represent him.

     In an April 2008 interview conducted by a reporter with the Arkansas Times, North Little Rock Chief of Police Danny Bradley spoke about the department's SWAT team, officer safety and police militarism. Because North Little Rock was a small city of 50,000 the SWAT team was made up of 12 to 15 regular-duty patrolmen and detectives assigned to the squad part time. These officers trained for the position twice a month. The chief said he deployed the unit only in high-risk situations. "If we have any doubts about detectives and uniformed officers being able to execute the warrant safely we're going to use the SWAT team. I would rather spend the extra money that it takes to get the SWAT team together than risk someone getting injured."

     Chief Bradley, regarding nighttime no-knock home invasions such as the one that got Tracy Ingle shot and almost killed, said, "How do you weigh a situation where executing a warrant safely means exploiting the element of surprise, versus the natural reaction of a person when someone is intruding into his house? It's a dangerous business." The chief allowed that he didn't like the phrase "war on drugs" because he didn't want his officers thinking they were soldiers, and drug suspects their enemy. In that regard he had worked to eliminate some of the militaristic trappings of the force. For example, he had switched his regular patrol officers out of their "fatigue-looking" uniforms.

     Tracy Ingle's attorney, on September 8, 2008, filed a motion to suppress the evidence against his client. John Wesley Hall argued that owing to the vagueness of the informant's report the warrant authorizing the raid lacked sufficient probable cause, which rendered the evidence against Ingle inadmissible. Moreover, had there been sufficient probable cause in the first place, it had been severely attenuated by the 17-day delay in the warrant's execution. In other words, the evidence had grown stale. (Under Arkansas law, search warrants must be served within a reasonable time, but not more than 60 days after issue.)

     The judge denied attorney Hall's motion, and in March 2009 a jury found Tracy Ingle guilty of maintaining a drug house and of felony assault. The judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison and fined him $18,000. Tracy Ingle took his case to the Arkansas Court of Appeals which on May 12, 2010 affirmed his conviction.

Jill Hansen: The Hawaiian Road Menace

     Jill Anjuli Hansen, a 30-year-old resident of Honolulu's Maunalani Heights neighborhood aspired to become a professional surfer. Hansen also claimed to be a model and owner of a swimsuit line. But in her community, if Hansen was known for anything it was for being a violence-prone woman who drove like a maniac.

     In 2010 Hanson was convicted twice for speeding. A year later police caught her driving without a license and car insurance. Local officers arrested her three times in 2014 for speeding, including driving 72 in a 35-MPH zone. The Maunalani Heights Neighborhood Watch Group's 500 members were aware of Hansen and her reckless driving habit. A representative of the group reportedly said: "We need everybody to be on the lookout for her, it's that scary. Two people were almost run over by her. One person had a head-on collision with Hansen."

     On April 18, 2014 Honolulu police officers arrested Jill Hansen on a charge of third-degree assault. The judge in that case ordered her to undergo mental evaluation. (According to Hansen's father she had solicited someone to murder him on Facebook. As a result, he obtained a restraining order against her.)

     On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, in the Diamond Head section of Waikiki, 73-year-old Elizabeth Conklin got out of her BMW 328 Wagon in the parking garage of her apartment complex. As Conklin walked away from her vehicle, Jill Hansen, who had followed her into the parking area, slammed her gray Volkswagen Passat into the woman, knocking her twenty feet.

     Following the impact, Jill Hansen climbed out of her VW and walked over to the injured woman who was writhing in pain on the garage floor. Instead of calling 911 Hansen returned to her car, climbed in and was about to take another run at the downed woman when a building employee named Chris Khory grabbed a crow bar and smashed out Hansen's back window.

     Mr. Khory's timely intervention caused Hansen to get out of her Volkswagen and flee the scene on foot. Paramedics rushed the victim to a nearby hospital where doctors treated Conklin for numerous cuts and bruises.

     At the hospital, the victim told police officers that the attack was not the result of an earlier road-rage incident. She believed her attacker followed her home with the intent of stealing her car. "I parked in my normal parking place," she said. "I got out and all of a sudden woke up in an ambulance. She saw my car, it was the car she wanted. She followed me and was going to kill me to get the car."

     An hour or so after running down Elizabeth Conklin in the Waikiki parking garage, Jill Hansen was on her computer updating her Facebook page with a photograph of the victim's BMW. She also informed her Facebook friends and readers that she had just been accepted into the Association of Surfing Professionals. "I am becoming a professional!" she wrote. "I have worked soooo hard to get to where I am today. I am so grateful for the support of surfers and the ASP."

     Police officers arrested Jill Hansen at her apartment seven hours after she intentionally plowed into the 73-year-old victim. Officers booked the suspect into jail on the charge of attempted murder. The judge set her bail at $1 million.

     In August 2014 the authorities charged Hansen while she awaited her attempted murder trial at the Women's Correctional Center in Kailua, with violating the protection order acquired by her father. (I'm not sure how she managed this while in custody.)

     Circuit Judge Richard Perkins, on September 25, 2014, following a series of psychiatric evaluations of Hansen found her mentally unfit to stand trial. The judge ordered her to undergo treatment at a local mental health facility.

    After regaining her connection to reality through anti-psychotic medication, Jill Hansen went on trial in Honolulu on the charge of second-degree attempted murder in the Conklin case. She waived her right to a jury in favor of a so-called bench trial where the judge determines issues of law and fact.

     The principal witnesses during Hansen's 4-day trial on August 23, 2015 involved three mental health experts brought to the stand by the defendant's attorney, Victor Bakke. The psychiatrists, pursuant to Hansen's insanity defense, testified that she had tried to kill the victim while suffering from a psychosis that had rendered her incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. She had therefore been incapable of forming the requisite criminal intent.

     On August 27, 2015 Judge Richard Perkins found Jill Hansen, due to her state of mind at the time of the assault, not criminally responsible. Instead of prison, she was sent to a state hospital where she would remain until her doctors determine she could be safely released back into society.

     Jill Hansen was released from the mental hospital sometime in 2018.

The Frank Crash Murder Case

     Frank R. Crash was the proverbial big fish in a small pond. He owned and operated an auto wrecking company in his hometown of Greenville, a western Pennsylvania town of 6,000 eighty miles north of Pittsburgh. Located on the Shenago River in Mercer County, Greenville was home to Thiel College.

     In the 1960s and 70s Frank Crash, a 1956 graduate of the former Penn High School, raced dirt track sprint cars and snowmobiles. His wife Carol Lee passed away in December 2009. Frank's two daughters, Pam Higbee and Susan Brenneman, also lived in Greenville. Frank resided by himself in a house on Mercer Road in Hempfield Township just south of Greenville across the street from a restaurant and golf course.

     At 10:30 PM on Wednesday, July 24, 2013, Mr. Crash left the Hickory Grill in nearby Hermitage. At nine-thirty the next morning, when the 76-year-old didn't show up for work, his daughter Pam went to his house to check on him. She found her father lying dead in a pool of blood in the kitchen. It appeared that Mr. Crash had been stabbed to death.

     Death scene investigators found blood trails and blood spatter patterns throughout the dwelling. The telephone had been ripped from the wall. Next to the corpse lay a smashed cellphone. The intruder, who had entered the house forcefully through the back sliding glass door had stolen an undisclosed amount of cash and a 4-carat solitaire diamond ring.

     In nearby Erie, Pennsylvania forensic pathologist Eric Vey, on Friday July 27, 2013, published the results of his autopsy. Frank Crash had been stabbed 76 times by a knife or pair of scissors. The victim's heart and lungs had been punctured many times in what Dr. Vey labeled a criminal homicide.

     Mercer County District Attorney Robert C. Kochems, on July 31, 2013 issued a press release on the status of the Crash homicide investigation. According to the prosecutor the authorities did not have a suspect.

     On November 6, 2014 District Attorney Kochems announced that 33-year-old Tracey Lin Hassel from nearby Hermitage, Pennsylvania had been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, robbery and burglary in the Crash murder case. (Second-degree murder--in Pennsylvania the felony-murder doctrine--carried a sentence of life in prison.) Burglary and robbery were felonies that brought up to 20 years in prison. The penalty for third-degree murder in Pennsylvania was 20 to 40 years behind bars.

     According to the Mercer County prosecutor, Yracy Lin Hassel, who knew the victim, broke into his home to steal money so she could bail her boyfriend out of jail. After stabbing Mr. Crash 76 times the suspect stole the diamond ring off his finger and cash from his pockets.

     Hassel, with a criminal record, was serving time at the state prison in Muncy, Pennsylvania. She had been convicted in February 2015 of several counts of burglary and robbery.

     On September 13, 2016, on the day the Crash murder trial was set to begin, Tracey Hassel pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. As part of the plea deal she would serve her murder sentence along with the 7 to 21 year sentence she was serving for her previous burglaries and robberies. Regarding the Crash murder case, the judge denied her credit for the two years she had served awaiting trial.

Abortion Doctor Ulrich George Klopfer And His Dead Fetuses

     Ulrich Klopfer was born in 1940 in Dresden, Germany. He came to the United States in 1952 with his family. Klopfer attended high school in Bloomfield, Michigan and upon graduation became a naturalized U.S. citizen. 

     In 1963, Ulrich Klopfer, now going by his middle name George, graduated from Wayne State College in Detroit with a degree in organic chemistry. He graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1971.

     In 1974 Dr. Klopfer opened an abortion clinic in South Bend, Indiana. In June 2014, a prosecutor in St. Joseph County, Indiana charged him with the misdemeanor offense of failing to file a timely report with the state regarding an abortion he had performed on a 13-year-old girl in South Bend. (Indiana state law required doctors to report every abortion within six months of the procedure.) After Dr. Klopfer agreed to complete a re-education program the prosecution dropped the charge.

     Also in 2014 Dr. Klopfer performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle. After the procedure she went home with her parents who obviously knew she had been sexually assaulted. Neither Dr. Klopfer nor the girl's parents reported the rape to the police.

     The Indiana State Department of Health, in 2015, revoked the abortion clinic's license for violating the state's regulation regarding the registry of patients, and for failing to provide documentation that the clinic provided patients with state-mandated patient counseling at least 18 hours before an abortion.

     In November 2016 the Indiana Medical Licensing Board revoked Dr. Klopfer's medical license for failing to ensure that qualified staff was present when patients received or recovered from medications given before and during abortion procedures. By then Dr. Klopfer was no longer practicing. He informed the medical licensing panel that during his 43 years of performing abortions he had terminated 30,000 pregnancies without losing a patient.

     On September 3, 2019 Dr. Ulrich Klopfer died at the age of 75. Members of his family, on September 12, called the local authorities after finding, in his Crete Township, Illinois garage, 2,246 medically preserved fetal remains. The dead fetuses were turned over to the Will County, Illinois Coroner's Office for proper handling.  There was no evidence that Dr. Klopfer had performed abortions at his home.

     In May 2016, Indiana enacted a law that required the burial or cremation of fetal remains produced by abortions. Prior to that law abortion clinics in Indiana turned the dead fetuses over to processors who disposed of human tissues and other medical byproducts.

     The Will County Sheriff's Office, on September 14, 2019, opened an investigation into Dr. Klopfer's possession of the fetal remains. 

     In December 2020 investigators reported that they had no clue as to why Dr. Klopfer's kept all those remains in his garage. The bodies were kept in moldy boxes and Styrofoam coolers and were preserved with formalin, a derivative of formaldehyde. According to the investigation, Dr. Klopfer had acted alone.

The Pyle Mansion Fire

     Donald Pyle and his wife Sandra lived on Childs Point Road in Annapolis, Maryland in a 16,000 square-foot waterfront mansion. The massive house, built on an eight-acre tract of land, featured seven bedrooms and as many bathrooms. Mr. Pyle, the chief operating officer of ScienceLogic, an information technology company located in Reston, Virginia, had grown up in Baltimore County north of the city. The 55-year-old had attended Delaney High School and graduated from the University of Delaware. Prior to accepting the position at ScienceLogic Donald Pyle had been the chief executive of IT companies in Pittsburgh and Annapolis.

     At three-thirty in the morning of Monday January 19, 2015 firefighters responded to what turned out to be a four-alarm fire at the Pyle mansion, a massive house referred to by neighbors as "The Castle." By the time 85 firefighters brought the blaze under control at seven that morning, the $6 million dwelling had been reduced to rubble in what had been an extremely hot fast-moving fire.

     Although rescue personnel were unable to immediately sort through the debris due to heat and unstable structural conditions, investigators believed Mr. and Mrs. Pyle and their four visiting grandchildren, all uncounted for, had died in the fire.

     The search for bodies and evidence of the fire's cause and origin--traces of accelerants, multiple points of origin and abnormal burn patterns--was conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and investigators with the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office. Bomb and arson dogs as well as cadaver canines augmented the fire scene inquiry.

     Construction of the mansion had been completed in 2005 before the state mandated home sprinkler systems. Had it been otherwise the fire damage might have been minimal.

     On Wednesday evening January 21, 2015, fire investigators accompanied by a cadaver dog located the bodies of two people. Preliminary reports indicated the remains belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Pyle. The charred bodies were sent to the Maryland State Medical Examiner's Office for identification and autopsy. Fire investigators wanted to know, among other things, if the couple had been alive at the time of the fire.

     According to media reports there had been no police activity at the residence prior to the fire. Moreover, there was no record of lawsuits, financial trouble or marital discord associated with the family.

     The four missing children, Wes 6, Charlotte 8, Katie 7, and Lexi 8, were the offspring of Mrs. Pyle's two sons from a previous marriage. On Thursday January 22, searchers found two more bodies. The next day the authorities recovered the remains of another child. Searchers located the sixth and final body on Monday, January 26, 2015.

     The exterior of the Pyle mansion was built of stone in the tradition of a castle. Stone was used in the construction of the dwelling's interior as well. The fast development of the inferno, the extreme heat and the total destruction of the structure required an answer to how, in the context of an accident, the fire had started.

     Following an extensive fire scene investigation the authorities, months after the tragedy, determined that the source of the fire involved a corroded electrical outlet near the Christmas tree. The heat from the electrical short ignited the skirt beneath the tree. Flames shot up the 15-foot Frazer fir and spread quickly along the ceiling. Investigation revealed that while Mr. Pyle tried to extinguish the blaze his wife tried in vain to save the grandchildren. 

The Lois Riess Double Murder Case

     On March 23, 2018 in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, Dodge County sheriff deputies went to the home of 59-year-old David Riess after his business partner reported that he hadn't seen him for two weeks. Riess's wife Lois had texted friends that Mr. Riess was not well and should not be bothered at home. At the Riess house police officers discovered David Riess's body. He had been shot to death with a .22-caliber gun that was not at the murder scene. Lois Riess was not in the house and no one knew where she was.

     A few days after the discovery of Mr. Riess' body Lois Riess began forging checks drawn on his bank account. The checks were cashed in south Florida.

     A few days after the discovery of Mr. Riess's body Dodge County, Minnesota prosecutor charged Mrs. Riess with the murder of her husband. At this point the missing 56-year-old murder suspect became known in the local media as "The Grandma Fugitive."

     While hiding in Fort Myers, Florida Lois Riess met Pamela Hutchinson, a woman who looked a lot like her. The 54-year-old Hutchinson lived in Bradenton, Florida but was staying in a hotel in Fort Myers where she had traveled to visit a friend.

     On April 5, 2018 Lois Riess shot Pamela Hutchinson to death in the victim's hotel room. Her body was discovered four days after the murder. Police officers recovered from the crime scene the murder weapon, a .22-caliber handgun. This weapon was determined to be the gun used to kill David Riess in Minnesota. Lois Riess had killed Mrs. Hutchinson, her lookalike, in order to use her identification. From Florida Riess drove to Texas in the murder victim's car.

     On April 10, 2018 a Lee County, Florida prosecutor charged Lois Riess with the first-degree murder of Pamela Hutchinson.

     On April 19, 2018 U.S. Marshals took "The Fugitive Grandma" into custody in South Padre Island, Texas. Riess was having a cocktail at a waterfront restaurant.

     Lois Riess, in December 2019, pleaded guilty to murdering Pamela Hutchinson in Fort Myers, Florida. The Lee County judge sentenced her to life in prison.

     Following Riess' guilty plea, the Dodge County authorities in Minnesota began the process of extraditing her back to that state to stand trial for the March 2018 murder of her husband.

     In April 2020 Lois Riess pleaded guilty to murdering David Riess. The judge sentenced her to life in prison without parole. She later pled guilty to murdering Pamela Hutchinson. She is currently serving her life sentence at the Minnesota Women's Correctional Facility in Shakopee. She has yet to be tried for the murder in Florida of Pamela Hutchinson.

The Diana Costarakis Murder-For-Hire Case: The Mother-in-Law From Hell

     Diana Reaves Costarakis lived on Buggy Whip Drive in Middleburg, an unincorporated community in northern Florida thirty miles southwest of downtown Jacksonville. The 70-year-old grandmother, in September 2013, asked an unidentified intermediary for advice on how to find a hit man to murder her daughter-in-law, Angela Costarakis. The person the elderly murder-for-hire mastermind reached out to took the request seriously enough to report Costarakis to the Duval County Sheriff's Office in Jacksonville.

     As the standard investigative protocol in murder solicitation cases, murder mastermind Costarakis received a call from an undercover officer who offered to do the job. But first they would have to meet in person in order for the first installment of the hit money to exchange hands. If the suspect agreed to a face-to-face meeting with the phony contract killer, a videotaped event that normally took place in a box store parking lot, the case would proceed.

     Diana Costarakis told the man on the phone that she would like to meet with him. She agreed to bring $500 in cash, the first downpayment for the hit. (It's amazing that almost every murder-for-hire mastermind falls for this trap. These people are so desperate to have someone killed they lose the ability to think straight.)

     Diana Costarakis, on Wednesday, October 9, 2013, met with the undercover cop in the parking lot of a Home Depot store in Jacksonville. With this meeting she believed she was moving forward in her scheme to have Angela Costarakis murdered. She handed the phony hit man $500 in cash and promised a second downpayment of $1,000 the next time they met. Upon completion of the job Diana Costarakis said she would come up with an additional $3,500. Having someone killed, while a fairly simple straightforward task, didn't come cheap.

     As a further incentive for the contract killer, the mastermind informed him that the murder target usually wore expensive jewelry, untraceable diamonds that could be fenced without risk. To facilitate the successful completion of the hit man's assignment she provided the undercover cop with a photograph of her daughter-in-law, a description of her car and her home address.

     The next day in the same Home Depot parking lot, the homicidal grandmother handed the undercover cop $1,000 in cash. In response to the question of why she wanted Angela Costarakis taken out the mastermind described her daughter-in-law as a drunk who drove around intoxicated with her 6-year-old daughter in the car. Not only that, the murder-for-hire target, who was in the process of divorcing the mastermind's son, was moving to Denver with her boyfriend. According to the suspect the couple planned to take the little girl with them. (Real hit men don't care why the mastermind wants the target murdered.)

     When asked if she was sure she wanted to go ahead with the murder plot Costarakis replied, "If you don't kill her, I will."

     Having acquired all the evidence he needed, the undercover cop flashed his badge and arrested the suspect on the spot. After reading Costarakis her Miranda rights she asked to consult with an attorney before speaking to the police. As a result there was no interrogation and forthcoming confession.

     Charged with criminal solicitation and criminal conspiracy, Diana Costarakis was placed in the Duval County jail where she was incarcerated without bond. She was arraigned on October 31, 2013.

     The day following the murder-for-hire arrest, Angela Costarakis, the target of her mother-in-law's wrath, told a local television reporter that "I am beyond sad and it breaks my heart because it messes up the family. I have compassion. I don't want to see anyone spend the rest of their life in jail. However, I am still just not dealing with it. I just found out. I have not wrapped my head around it." The murder target said she did not have plans to move to Denver with her daughter.

     On August 27, 2014, Diana Costarakis pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit a capital felony. 

     In October 2014 the judge sentenced the 71-year-old murder-for-hire mastermind to seven years in prison.

The Jack McCullough Murder Case

     On December 3, 1957, 7-year-old Maria Ridulph and her playmate, Kathy Chapman, were playing on a street corner in Sycamore, Illinois, a DeKalb County town west of Chicago. A teenage boy who approached the girls and introduced himself as Johnny began giving Maria piggyback rides. Kathy left her friend to go home for mittens, and when she returned, Johnny and Maria were gone.

     After friends and relatives searched the neighborhood without finding Maria the FBI, on the assumption the disappearance was a ransom kidnapping, entered the case. Over the next few weeks agents and police officers questioned more than a hundred potential suspects, including a 17-year-old boy named John Tassier who said he had seen the missing girl around the neighborhood. Tassier described little Maria as being as pretty as a Barbie Doll. When asked his whereabouts at the time of the abduction Mr. Tassier said he had been on his way to Chicago to take a medical exam before entering the Air Force. When Tassier's stepfather backed up the alibi investigators moved on to other possibilities. Not long after Maria's disappearance John Tassier entered military service.

     In the spring of 1958, in a forest 120 miles from Sycamore, hikers came upon Maria Ridulph's badly decomposed body. The autopsy disclosed she had been stabbed in the throat and chest. Because five months had passed since her death the forensic pathologist was unable to determine if she had been sexually assaulted.

     John Tassier, sometime in the 1960s, changed his name to Jack McCullough. At the time he was employed in the state of Washington as a police officer. In the 1980s, after being accused of sexually molesting a teenage runaway girl he and his girlfriend had taken in, Mr. McCullough lost his police job. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor sexual offense and in return received a probated sentence.

     Jack McCullough's half-sister, in 2008, told DeKalb County authorities that on their mother's deathbed in 1994 the dying woman indicated that Jack had been responsible for Maria Riduph's disappearance and death. About two years later a woman who said she dated McCullough in the 1950s told the police that Jack's stepfather lied about the boy's 1957 alibi. In 2010 the DeKalb County prosecutor re-opened the 53-year-old murder case.

     Cold case detectives contacted Kathy Chapman, the playmate who had been with Maria Ridulph when the teenager who called himself Johnny gave the 7-year-old piggyback rides on December 3, 1957. After viewing a collection of photographs Chapman picked Jack McCullough out of the photo-lineup as Johnny. (I'm assuming the photograph Chapman selected depicted McCullough as a 17-year-old. I'm also assuming that the physical description of the suspect she gave to the police in 1957 matched the then John Tassier.)

     Detectives in Seattle where McCullough resided questioned him about the Ridulph kidnap-murder case. While raising eyebrows with the comment that he remembered Maria as a "stunningly beautiful" neighborhood girl, McCullough denied any role in her death.

     When homicide investigators questioned one of McCullough's younger sisters she claimed that in 1962 when she was fourteen he and two other men had sexually molested her. (The crime, which according to the sister took place in Sycamore, led to charges against McCullough. In April 2011 a judge in a bench trial acquitted him of that crime.)

     When the Ridulph case investigators spoke to members of the suspect's family they gave statements to the effect that McCullough's mother, on her cancer deathbed in 1994, uttered comments they interpreted as implicating the suspect in the neighborhood girl's murder.

     On July 1, 2011 detectives arrested 72-year-old Jack McCullough at his Seattle retirement home. The prosecutor in DeKalb County charged him with the kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph. According to the prosecution's theory of the case, when Kathy Chapman went home to get her mittens, McCullough dragged Maria into an alley where he choked her with a wire and stabbed her in the throat and chest. According to the prosecutor the defendant had been sexually attracted to the victim.

     McCullough's trial, the oldest unsolved crime in United States history to make it into a courtroom, got underway on September 10, 2012. The defendant waived his right to a jury and requested a bench trial in which the judge determined the defendant's guilt or innocence. 

     The prosecution's star witness, Kathy Chapman, after recounting the events of that day 54 years ago when she was seven, made an in-court identification of the defendant as the man she had last seen with Maria Ridulph. Chapman was followed to the stand by three jailhouse snitches who had been in the DeKalb County lockup with McCullough during the months leading up to his trial. One of the informants, a man named Kirk Swaggerty who was facing a 33-year prison term for a home invasion robbery that had led to a person's death, said the defendant confessed to him. According to this witness, McCullough told him..."he was giving her [Maria] a piggyback ride on his shoulders, and when she fell she wouldn't stop screaming and when she wouldn't keep quiet, he suffocated her."

     On cross-examination by McCullough's attorney, Mr. Swaggerty admitted that following his cooperation with the police his attorney filed a motion for a reduced sentence. Because jailhouse snitches have been known to commit perjury to help their own causes, many jurors do not find them credible. To some members of a jury this point made by the defense attorney would hit home. But because this case was being tried before a judge who had allowed the jailhouse snitch to take the stand in the first place, the implication that he had lied to reduce his sentence had little impact.  

     Two more jailhouse informants followed Mr. Swaggerty to the stand. If these witnesses were to be believed, Jack McCullough, after keeping his mouth shut for 54 years had confessed to three men he didn't know during a period of a few months.

     McCullough's defense, which could have been substantial, consisted of a handful of witnesses and just two hours of court time. The defense attorney put the physician on the stand who had treated McCullough's mother for cancer. According to the doctor, when the woman died in 1994 she was so mentally confused any deathbed utterances she made would have been meaningless. Jack McCullough did not take the stand on his own behalf. Perhaps he chose to remain silent because there were no jurors to impress. Moreover, the defense attorney, based on the weakness of the prosecution's case probably expected an acquittal.

     Just how weak was the case against Jack McCullough? The prosecution, without a confession, a cooperating accomplice, a proven motive, a murder weapon, a time of death or any physical evidence linking the defendant to the victim, had no choice but to present a 54-year-old eyewitness identification by a then 7-year-old girl, vague deathbed utterances and three jailhouse snitches. By any standard this bottom-of-the-barrel evidence barely supported enough probable cause for McCullough's arrest.

     On September 14, 2012 the McCullough trial judge found the defendant guilty of kidnapping and murder. Had the defendant been tried before a jury he probably would have been acquitted. This was not how our criminal justice system was supposed to work.

     On December 10, 2012 the judge sentenced Jack McCullough to life in prison. He continued to maintain his innocence.

     On April 15, 2016 Judge William P. Brady of the Illinois Circuit Appeals Court vacated Jack McCullough's 2012 conviction and ordered a new trial. A week later, perhaps anticipating that prosecutors would try McCullough again, the judge dismissed the charges against him.

    A year later judges with the DeKalb County Circuit Court issued Mr. McCullough a certificate of innocence.

Archaeological Protection Gone Wild: The Lynch Case

     In 1979 Congress passed the Archaeological Resource Protection Act (ARPA) which made it a federal crime to excavate, remove, damage, alter, and/or deface (without a government permit) archaeological resources from federal and Indian lands. Under ARPA, an "archaeological resource" was an item of past human existence or archaeological interest more than a hundred years old. First time ARPA offenders, in cases where the value of the artifacts and the cost of restoration and repair of the damaged archaeological site was less than $500, could be fined no more than $10,000 or imprisoned for more than one year. However, if the value or restoration costs exceeded $500 the offender faced fines up to $20,000 and imprisoned for two years on each count. Under ARPA, federal authorities could pursue violators civilly or in criminal court, imposing fines and confiscating vehicles and equipment used in the commission of the prohibited activity.

The Ian Martin Lynch Case

     Although he didn't know it at the time, 23-year-old Ian Martin Lynch made the mistake of his life when he picked up a human skull lying among hillside rocks on an uninhabited island off the shores of southeastern Alaska. In July 1997 Mr. Lynch and two of his friends were deer hunting on public land in an area called the Warm Chuck Village and Burial Site. They had no knowledge of this place, were unaware it had once been the home of Native Americans and were not looking for prehistoric artifacts. There were no indications, other than the skull the men had stumbled upon, that the site was an ancient grave site.

      While exploring the area while his friends were breaking camp, Ian Lynch scraped the dirt away from the back of the skull then picked it up for a closer look. He guessed the skull, and the bones scattered around it, had been there for some time because of the absence of clothing. He had no way, however, of knowing that the remains he had found were archaeological resources.

     Shortly after taking the skull home Mr. Lynch decided to turn it over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Office in Anchorage. He described how he had come in possession of it to a government employee and revealed the circumstances surrounding his discovery. A short time later an agent with the Forest Service asked him to come to the federal building for an interview.

     When the Forest Service agent asked Lynch if he knew the skull was old, the interviewee said, "So, I mean, it's definitely been there for awhile. Oh, man, it's definitely old. There's not a stitch of clothing or nothing with it." (To make a federal case against Mr. Lynch the Forest Service agents had to establish he knew, or should have known, that he was taking away a skull more than a hundred years old.)

     The Forest Service archaeologist for the region examined the evidence but was unable to  determine the age of the skull. That prompted the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) to call in a physical anthropologist to determine, through visual analysis, the age of the head. This expert also declined to scientifically declare the skull an archaeological resource. The AUSA, determined to establish a crime under ARPA, sent the skull out for carbon dating. This analysis revealed that it was at least 1,400 years old. This opened the door for a federal prosecution.

     In 1998 a federal grand jury sitting in Anchorage returned an indictment charging Ian Martin Lynch with a felony ARPA offense. If convicted he faced up to a year in prison and a $10,000 fine. Lynch's attorney filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground the government had not met its burden of proving that Mr. Lynch, in taking the skull, had sufficient knowledge to establish the requisite criminal intent to violate this law. Specifically, the prosecution had not proven that Lynch knew the skull was an archaeological resource.

     The U.S. District Judge, reasoning that Lynch's picking up the skull was "a wrong in itself," ruled that the prosecution did not have to prove that Lynch had specifically intended to commit the crime. Based on this legal rationale the judge denied the defense's motion to dismiss the indictment. In response to this ruling, Ian Lynch pleaded guilty to the single ARPA count while retaining his right to appeal the judge's decision. In 1999 the judge sentenced Lynch to six months in prison and fined him $7,000 to cover the costs of the burial site restoration. (Lynch had picked up one bone, what restoration?) At his sentencing the defendant told the judge he had not intended to offend Native Americans. He remained free on bail pending the results of his appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

     In 2000 the federal court of appeals overturned the ARPA conviction. Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, one of the three jurists on the panel, wrote: "The Government must prove that a defendant knows or had reason to know he was removing an 'archaeological resource' before that defendant can be found guilty of an ARPA offense."

     The reversal of Lynch's conviction made sense, but what didn't make sense was why the U.S. Forest Service and the federal prosecutor in Alaska went after Mr. Lynch in the first place. Congress, in passing ARPA, intended to punish and deter the for-profit looting of archaeological sites. Mr. Lynch was not even an artifact collector. It's hard to believe that federal law enforcement officers would waste taxpayers' money by pursing such a questionable case. And finally, what kind of judge would sentence a harmless defendant like Mr. Lynch to six months in prison?

The Russell and Shirley Dermond Murder Case

     In 2014, 88-year-old Russell Dermond and his 87-year-old wife Shirley resided in a $1 million, 3,300-square-foot home on the shores of Lake Oconee in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia, a retirement/resort community 75 miles east of Atlanta. Before retiring Mr. Dermond owned franchises in Wendy's and Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurants. Mr. Dermond, a U.S. Navy veteran, grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. He played golf, liked to read and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. The couple regularly attended the Lake Oconee Community Church.

     Married 68 years, the couple in 1994 purchased the house on the cul-de-sac in the neighborhood of Lakeside Great Waters. The gated community that featured a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course was considered safe from crime.

     In 2000 one of the couple's three adult children, Mark Dermond, was shot to death after a drug deal went bad in Atlanta. The Dermond's oldest son had been struggling with drug addiction for years.

     On Monday, May 6, 2014, after not hearing from Russell or Shirley Dermond for several days, neighbors went to their house to check on them. They found Mr. Dermond's body in the garage. He had been decapitated and his head was not at the scene. Mrs. Dermond was not in garage or the house. Both of their vehicles were parked in the driveway and the interior of the dwelling seemed undisturbed. There were no signs of forced entry and nothing had been stolen, including Mrs. Dermond's purse that was still in the house.

     Investigators with the Putnam County Sheriff's Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), based upon the blood spatter pattern in the garage, theorized that Mr. Dermond's head had been cut off after his death. Moreover, he had not been stabbed or shot. Detectives believed he had been bludgeoned to death sometime between Friday, May 2 and Sunday, May 5, 2014.

     Following Mr. Dermond's murder there was no activity on the couple's bank accounts. Since no ransom demands had been made detectives didn't think Mrs. Dermond had been kidnapped for money.

     To help the local authorities locate Shirley Dermond the FBI put up 100 billboard posters and offered a $20,000 reward. Scuba divers searched the lake in the vicinity of the house and officers used cadaver dogs to look for the missing woman in the surrounding woods. Police officers and FBI agents also questioned dozens of residents of the gated community.

     On May 7, 2014 Bradley Dermond, the couple's son, told a local television reporter that the murder of his father and the disappearance of his mother,"makes no sense at all. We're still hoping that our mother is OK." Two days later Putnam County Coroner Gary McEhenney announced the presumed cause of Mr. Dermond's death to be "cerebral trauma."

     On Friday afternoon May 16, 2014 after two fishermen spotted a body, an emergency crew pulled Shirley Dermond's corpse out of Lake Oconee five miles from her house. According to the Putnam County coroner, she had been murdered by blunt force trauma to the head then dumped into the water.

     Investigators believed the intruder or intruders who murdered the couple may have used a boat in the commission of the crime. No suspects, however, were developed in the case. Moreover, the motive behind the double murder remained a mystery. The authorities had not located Mr. Dermond's head and the reason behind his decapitation remained unknown. Some believed the murders could have been a mob hit, but who would want these elderly people rubbed out?

     Residents of this community, following the gruesome double-murder, had their illusion of security shattered.

     In November 2014, six months after the still unsolved murders, Putnam County sheriff Howard Sills, in an interview with a local television news reporter, said, "I go to sleep every night thinking about this case and wake up every morning thinking about it. And I'm not exaggerating." According to the sheriff every potential suspect questioned in the investigation had been cleared. The sheriff said he believed the murders had been pre-meditated and planned. "You can't make me believe there was any kind of randomness to this crime. It bothers me a great deal that someone has committed such a heinous crime and they're still out there."

     On December 9, 2014 Sheriff Sills told another television reporter that his office had received thousands of pages of phone records going back six months prior to the Dermond murders. The Gwinnett County district attorney's office used special software to help investigators analyze the phone data in search for suspects.

     The reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers, raised to $55,000, did not produce any leads in the case.

     In February 2015 Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills revealed to a local TV reporter that Shirley Dermond's body had been held to the bottom of Lake Oconee by two cement blocks. The killer or killers had not accounted for decomposing gases that causes a weighted down body in water to become buoyant. While there was no effort to hide Mr. Dermond's body, the killer or killers did not want his wife's corpse to be found.

     In April 2016, in speaking to a local newspaper reporter, the murder victims' 57-year-old son Keith said, "It's bad enough to lose both of your parents at the same time, but in the way it happened. We would have been devastated if they'd just had a car accident. But to have it all happen this way, and then just compounding with the details and then the fact they haven't caught anybody. They don't even have a clue. We don't even know why."

     On May 6, 2017 Sheriff Sills, on the third anniversary of the Russell and Shirley Dermond's murders, discussed the still unsolved case with a local reporter. The sheriff said that he believed the Dermonds had been targeted victims and that, "Somebody knows who did this." The sheriff admitted that not solving such an important murder case was "somewhat embarrassing" and that his investigators did not have any promising leads.

     As of March 2024 the 10-year-old Russel and Dermond Murder case remained unsolved.

The Whitney Heichel Kidnap Murder Case

     Whitney Heichel, at 6:45 in the morning of Tuesday, October 16, 2012, walked out of her Gresham, Oregon apartment with the intent of driving her 1999 Ford Explorer to her nearby job at Starbucks. That day she had to attend an early morning employee meeting. Instead of reporting to work she was seen two and a half hours later sitting in the passenger's side of her SUV at a service station in Troutdale, Oregon. (The man behind the wheel had used Heichel's ATM card to purchase gas.)

     A Starbucks employee called Heichel's apartment when she didn't show for work. Whitney's husband Clinton, at 9:56 that morning, called 911 and reported his 5-foot-2, 120 pound wife missing. Ninety minutes later police officers found Heichel's vehicle in the parking lot of the Walmart store in Wood Village. The front passenger's side window had been broken out. The next day children found the missing woman's cellphone in the brush between the service station and the abandoned SUV.

     Detectives began questioning residents of Heichel's apartment complex. They spoke to a 25-year-old acquaintance and neighbor named Jonathan Holt. The investigators grew suspicious when Holt's account of himself on the morning in question contained glaring inconsistencies. Detectives grilled Holt on Wednesday the 17th, and when they interrogated him again the next day he confessed. The police  also recovered the 9 mm pistol Holt used to murder the victim.

     On the morning of October 16, 2012 Mr. Holt waited outside the apartment complex for Whitney Heichel. When she came out of her apartment he asked her for a lift. Holt had been in Heichel's SUV about five minutes when he pulled a gun and told her to drive to an area near Roslyn Lake. At the lake Holt forced Heichel at gunpoint to give him oral sex. He then shot her to death.

     After murdering Whitney Heichel Jonathan Holt drove the body to Larch Mountain, a 40 minute drive up winding roads from the apartment complex. After hiding her corpse in the underbrush he drove to the Walmart parking lot where he abandoned the vehicle. (Holt had either broken the passenger's side window to throw off the police or it had been blown out by a bullet when he shot her.)

     Twelve hours after Whitney Heichel didn't show up for work at Starbuck's a pair of Holt's friends spotted Holt walking along 257th Avenue in Gresham. When they offered him a ride he refused, saying, "I just need to finish clearing my head." A short time later Mr. Holt's friends tracked him down and asked him again to get into the car. After accepting the lift he told his friends a strange story. He said that on his way to work that morning at a Swan Island vending company two black men robbed him at gunpoint. Holt later admitted to detectives that this story was untrue. After confessing to Whitney Heichel's murder he admitting to downloading child pornography onto his laptop computer.

     According to Holt's wife Amanda, her husband felt like a failure and this had let "so many things build up. I think he just loses it." 

     On Friday, October 19, 2012 police officers found Whitney Heichel's body in a remote spot in the woods on Larch Mountain. Besides the confession detectives linked the suspect to Whitney Heichel's murder through his fingerprints and other physical evidence that crime scene investigators recovered from her SUV.

     According to medical examiner Dr. Christopher Young, Whitney Heichel had been shot four times. On Monday, October 22, 2012 Jonathan Holt, at his arraignment hearing in a Clackamas County court, was charged with aggravated murder. The judge denied him bail. His trial was set for April 2013.

     Jonathan Holt in July 2013, pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of his neighbor. The judge sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. 

The Pallavi Dhawan Double Murder-Suicide Case

     Sumeet and Pallavi Dhawan, before becoming naturalized U.S. citizens were married by arrangement in their native home country, India. In 2014 the couple and their 10-year-old son Arnav resided in Frisco, a suburban community north of Dallas, Texas. A computer programmer, Sumeet spent a lot of his time away from home. Mrs. Dhawan had worked in the computer field as well but quit her job to care full time for their special-needs son.

     Arnav, a fifth grade student at Isbell Elementary School was born with a brain cyst and microcephaly, a condition characterized by a smaller than normal head. Pallavi often found herself alone in the house caring for the boy during her husband's extended absences. She found herself coping with mental problems and a marriage that was falling apart.

     On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Sumeet, while on a three-week business trip received an email from Arnav's school informing him the boy had been absent from class for several days. At 4:30 PM that afternoon, as he was about to arrive home, Sumeet called Pallavi who said she was just leaving the house to pick up Arnav at his after-school tutoring center.

     At 6:30 PM that evening, when Pallavi and the boy had yet to arrive home from the school, Sumeet, concerned about their welfare called the police.

     While police officers were questioning Mr. Dhawan, Pallavi returned home without the boy. An officer asked her about Arnav. Where was he? Instead of answering the officer, Pallavi asked if she could speak to her husband privately. The officers backed away.

     Sumeet became visibly upset when Pallavi, referring to their son, said: "He is no more." The distraught father informed the officers that Arnav was in the locked bathroom.

     Inside the dry bathtub officers found the dead boy wrapped to his neck in a cloth. His body was surrounded by several empty plastic bags.

     The day after the discovery of the dead child the Collin County medical examiner, without issuing a statement regarding the specific cause of death, ruled the case a homicide. The cause of death was withheld pending the results of toxicological tests. According to the forensic pathologist the boy had been dead for two days.

     On Thursday, January 30, 2014, police officers booked Pallavi Dhawan into the Frisco City Jail on the charge of capital murder. Before officers had entered the bathroom to check on the boy one of them asked Pallavi if she had killed her son. She responded by nodding her head in the affirmative. When asked if the body was in the bathroom she also nodded her head yes.

     On Friday, January 31, 2014, just after midnight, Pallavi's attorney David Finn posted her $50,000 bail. Later that day in speaking to reporters the Dallas based defense attorney insisted that his client, when she nodded her head in the affirmative, had responded to the question regarding her son's whereabouts, not to the question about whether she had killed him. The police simply misunderstood and misinterpreted what they saw.

     Pointing out that the boy's body showed no signs of physical trauma and that his lungs did not contain water, defense attorney Finn announced that he would ask Dr. Nizam Peerwani, the Fort Worth based chief medical examiner of Tarrant County to conduct his own postmortem inquiry.

     Attorney Finn said that his client had doted on her son, a happy fun-loving kid. He also claimed that Sumeet Dhawan did not believe his wife had killed their son and that he stood by her. A reporter asked the attorney why the mother didn't notify the authorities immediately after her son's death. "That's the million-dollar question," Mr. Finn replied. Pallavi, he speculated, was probably in a state of shock after Arnav's death. She may have been waiting for her husband to come home.

     In August 2014 Pallavi and Sumeet Dhawan testified before a Collin County Grand Jury looking into the death of their son. In January 2014 the couple petitioned the authorities to return their car, fax machine and passports, items seized pursuant to the investigation of Arnav's death. The Dhawans had been forced to rent a car and needed their passports to travel back to India.

     On September 3, 2014 police officers arrived at the Dhawan residence at three in the afternoon in response to a 911 call regarding a body floating in the home swimming pool. Inside the house, lying on a bed, searchers discovered a man's body. The dead adults were presumed to be Pallavi and Sumeet Dhawan.

     The medical examiner, on September 6, 2014, confirmed the identities of the deceased couple. Sumeet had suffered blunt force trauma to his head. One of his hands had been fractured, probably as he raised that hand in defense.

     In October 2014 a spokesperson for the Collin County Medical Examiner's Office announced that Pallavi Dhawan had killed herself. She had drowned under the influence of the common antihistamine diphenhydramine. Sumeet Dhawan, according to the medical examiner's office, had been murdered by his wife. He had died from a combination of blunt force head injures and a toxic dose of several over-the-counter medications.

Ed Buck: How Sex, Drugs and Murder Brought Down a Major Political Donor

     In the mid-1970s, 21-year-old Ed Buck left his home state of Arizona for Europe where he began his career as a fashion model. After returning to the U.S. in 1980 he bought a courier company that turned him into a millionaire.

     In 2007 Ed Buck, while residing in West Hollywood, California, became a prominent donor to democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. About this time the high profile political activist in the LGBTQ community ran for city council and lost. He continued, however, to line the pockets of his favorite democrat politicians.

     On July 27, 2017 police were called to Ed Buck's West Hollywood apartment in the 1200 block of Laurel Avenue. The officers found, lying dead on a mattress in the 63-year-old's living room, a 26-year-old black escort named Gemmel Moore. The apartment was littered with 24 hypodermic needles, five meth pipes and a variety of sex toys. A gay porn video was playing on the television.

     The forensic pathologist who conducted Mr. Moore's autopsy found that he had died from crystal methamphetamine. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled that Gemmel Moore's death had been an accident caused by a self-administered overdose. As a result Ed Buck was not investigated to determine what role he may have played in Mr. Moore's death, or if he was operating some kind of drug den for gay homeless men.

     Gemmel Moore's mother LaTisha Nixon, as well as others, voiced their outrage over the Los Angeles coroner's accidental death finding. The district attorney's office, aware of writings in Gemmel Moore's journal detailing how Ed Buck had injected him and other gay men with methamphetamine in order to facilitate Buck's sexual fetishes, apparently ignored this evidence in deciding not to authorize an investigation. One of Buck's sexual fetishes involved photographing men wearing tight underwear.

     LaTisha Nixon accused the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office and the county coroner of protecting the wealthy political donor. By some accounts Ed Buck had given the Hillary Clinton campaign $500,000. He had also given large sums to Barack Obama.

     On January 12, 2019 the police were again summoned to Ed Buck's West Hollywood apartment. This time they found 55-year-old Timothy Dean dead from a methamphetamine overdose.

     Mr. Dean, a six-foot-five black man, had worked at Bloomingdale's and SAKS Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles as a fashion consultant. He had also worked on and off as an actor in gay adult films. As a younger man Timothy Dean had been active in the Lambada (gay) Basketball League. He had once participated in the Gay Games in Paris, France. At age 52 Mr. Dean had earned an associates degree from Santa Monica Community College.

     According to Mr. Dean's family and friends, it had been years since he had used drugs. Nevertheless, as in the Gemmel Moore case, the Los Angeles Coroner ruled his death accidental due to a self-administered methamphetamine overdose. Once again, in the face of evidence to the contrary, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office decided not to file criminal charges against Ed Buck. This decision outraged Timothy Dean's family and friends who considered him a victim of sexual foul play.

     In February 2019 LaTisha Nixon, emboldened by the second overdose fatality in Ed Buck's apartment, filed a wrongful death suit against the wealthy political donor. The plaintiff alleged that Mr. Buck was a drug dealer who had injected her son with a fatal dose of crystal meth. According to Jasmyne Cannick, a political consultant and spokesperson for the Nixon family, Ed Buck had received special treatment from the prosecutor's office because of his political connections and wealth. This was a view shared by many in Los Angeles's gay community.

     In June 2019 Ed Buck met a black, 37-year-old homeless man later referred to in court documents as "Joe Doe." Following a brief exchange on Adam4Adam, a web site designed for men to meet other men "for friendship, romance, or a hot hookup," Buck drove to LA's skid row, picked up the homeless man and brought him back to his apartment in West Hollywood.

     In Buck's apartment, before he had sex with Joe Doe, Buck injected him with crystal methamphetamine. Ed Buck injected this victim  every day up to September 4, 2019. On that day, when Joe Doe left the apartment, he sought medical help on the belief that Ed Buck had overdosed him.

     A week after receiving medical treatment for the overdose, Joe Doe returned to Ed Buck's apartment. On that occasion Mr. Buck injected him with a double dose of meth. Thinking that he might die from that shot, the homeless man asked Buck to call an ambulance. When Buck refused Joe Doe asked for a Klonopin pill, medication for seizure disorders and panic attacks. Ed Buck refused that request, and when the heavily drugged man tried to leave the apartment Ed Buck tried to stop him.

     Notwithstanding Ed Buck's efforts to restrain him Joe Doe managed to escape from the apartment that day. At a nearby gas station he asked a passerby to call 911 on his behalf. As he was being treated at a local hospital, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies responded to Ed Buck's apartment. It was there officers discovered, in addition to drug paraphernalia, hundreds of photographs of men in tight underwear in various sexual poses.

     On September 17, 2019 officers booked Ed Buck into the Los Angeles County Jail on one count each of battery causing serious injury, the administering of methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house. If convicted of all three counts the suspect faced no more than five years, eight months in state prison. The prosecutor in charge of the case asked the judge to set Ed Buck's bail at $4 million.

     At a press conference the Los Angeles District Attorney told reporters that Ed Buck used drugs to lure gay men to his apartment where he manipulated them into participating in his sexual fetishes. The D.A. painted Mr. Buck as a depraved, hedonistic sexual predator.

     Two days after Ed Buck's arrest on the Joe Doe related charges the United States Attorney in Los Angeles, in connection with the July 27, 2017 death of Gemmel Moore and the January 12, 2019 death of Timmothy Dean, charged the suspect with the federal offense of drug distribution resulting in death. This offense carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     The United States Attorney, in speaking to reporters, said FBI agents had identified nine more gay men Ed Buck had lured to his apartment for the purpose of injecting them with methamphetamine.

     Gemmel Moore's mother LaTisha Nixon praised the United States Attorney who, unlike the Los Angeles Coroner, didn't believe that Mr. Moore had injected himself with the deadly dose of methamphetamine. Others who had been seeking justice for Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean were also pleased with the federal charge against Ed Buck.

     On July 27, 2021, following a two-week trial in a Los Angeles federal courtroom, the jury found 66-year-old Ed Buck guilty of killing Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean by injecting them with crystal meth and the date rape drug GHB during "party and play" encounters held in Buck's West Hollywood apartment. 

     During the trial Ed Buck's attorneys portrayed the defendant's accusers as untrustworthy drug addicts and male prostitutes who sold themselves for drugs.

     The federal district judge sentenced Ed Buck to life in prison. When the sentence was handed down spectators in the room cheered loudly.

Audrey and Edward Cramer: Victims of a Bungled Marijuana Raid

     Although they didn't know it, the nightmare for Audrey and Edward Cramer began in September 2017 when a tree in their neighbor's yard came down. The couple resided in Buffalo Township, a Butler County, Pennsylvania community about 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Edward Cramer was 69 and his wife Audrey 66. They had never been in trouble with the law or had any experience with the police. They were good law abiding citizens, the kind of people who trusted and supported law enforcement.

     On October 5, 2017 Jonathan Yeamans with the Nationwide Mutual Insurance company came to investigate the neighbor's fallen tree claim. In so doing he saw in the Cramer backyard what he believed to be budding marijuana plants. In reality the insurance adjuster was looking at Hibiscus plants. Thinking that he had stumbled upon a marijuana pot growing operation Mr. Yeamans surreptitiously took photographs of the plants and turned them over to the Buffalo Township Police Department.

     Armed with the photographs of the Cramer Hibiscus plants, Buffalo Township police officer Jeffrey Sneddon acquired a warrant to search the Cramer house and property for evidence of marijuana. Apparently officer Sneddon didn't visit the neighbor's house to look at the Cramer plants himself. If he did, he had no experience in drug investigation and no business obtaining a warrant to search someone's dwelling for drugs.

     At noon on October 7, 2017 a drug raiding squad made up of twelve officers armed with assault rifles, showed up at the Cramer house. Audrey Cramer was home alone on the second floor in her underwear and bare feet. Without getting dressed she responded to loud knocking on her door and the voice of a man identifying himself as the police.

     When Audrey Cramer, who had absolutely no reason to expect a SWAT team on her front porch, opened the door she encountered twelve assault rifles pointed at her head. If she had panicked and made what police officers interpret as a furtive move she could have been shot dead.

     Sergeant Scott Hess, the leader of the raiding party, ordered Audrey Cramer to put her hands in the air. "I have a search warrant," he said. The stunned Mrs. Cramer asked if she could see the warrant. Instead of showing her the document Sergeant Hess ordered the partially clothed resident to wait on her front porch while he searched the second floor of her house. When he returned ten minutes later Sergeant Hess placed Mrs. Cramer under arrest, advised her of her Miranda rights and handcuffed her behind her back.

     After being denied the chance to put on a pair of pants and shoes, an officer marched the handcuffed women, in her underwear and no shoes, down her gravel driveway to a police car.

     As the drug raiders ransacked the Cramer house looking for marijuana, Mrs. Cramer, on a 82 degree day, sat in the hot patrol car. When she asked an officer what was going on he told her they were looking for marijuana.

    Mrs. Cramer had been sitting in the hot patrol car two hours when her husband Edward returned home. Officers, with assault rifles pointed at his head, pulled Mr. Cramer out of his car, placed him into handcuffs and sat him in the police car with his handcuffed, partially clad wife. At this point it was impossible to image what was going on in the minds of these helpless, confused and innocent people.

     When under arrest in the police car Mr. Cramer repeatedly asked for the chance to show the officers that what they though was marijuana was really flowering hibiscus plants. His offer fell on deaf ears.

     Four and a half hours after the police stormed the Cramer home looking for marijuana the Cramers were un-handcuffed and removed from the police car. They were told they would not be charged with any crime. The officers had seized the hibiscus plants even though Sergeant Hess acknowledged they were not marijuana. He labeled the fruits of the bungled raid as "tall, green, leafy suspected marijuana plants." Following this mind-boggling fiasco the police left the scene as abruptly as they had arrived, and without an apology.

     On October 26, 2017, Mr. and Mrs. Cramer received a letter from Nationwide Insurance informing them that marijuana had been found on their property, and if they didn't remove it, they would lose their insurance policy.

     Attorney Al Lindsay, on behalf of the Cramers, filed a lawsuit against the Buffalo Township Police and the Nationwide Insurance company. The suit charged the police with excessive force, false arrest, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional stress and invasion of privacy. The plaintiffs asked for monetary and compensatory damages.

     On November 19, 2017, Audrey and Edward Cramer gave an interview to a reporter with a Pittsburgh television station. Mrs. Cramer said, "I was not treated as a human being. I was just something they were going to push aside. I asked them if I could put pants on and he [Sergeant Hess] told me no and I had to stand out on the porch." Regarding how the experience had affected her, she said, "I don't sleep at night and you don't leave me at the house by myself."

     Edward Cramer had this to say about the horribly bungled raid: "Sometimes I think they [the police] look for a crime where it doesn't exist in order to justify their existence."

     In June 2018 the defendants in the Cramer lawsuits settled with the couple for an undisclosed amount.

Raiding the Wrong House, Killing the Wrong Man

     
     Eugene Mallory, a retired engineer who had worked for Lockheed Martin forty years resided in an unincorporated community east of Palmdale, California called Littlerock. The 80-year-old shared a home with his 48-year-old wife, Tonya Pate and her grown son.

     Drug enforcement deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office arrived at the Mallory house at 7:30 on the morning of June 25, 2013. The officers were in possession of a search warrant authorizing them to search the house for methamphetamine and the chemicals used to manufacturer the drug. The probable cause underlying the search was flimsy at best. Officers, from outside the house, claimed to have smelled the odor of the ingredients used to produce meth. The narcotic officers had not orchestrated an undercover buy or had an informant purchase meth in the Mallory house. Moreover, the suspected meth factory hadn't been subjected to a prolonged drug surveillance. All the police had to go on was the smell of meth chemicals. The magistrate should not have authorized a raid on such flimsy evidence. 

     After forcing their way into the dwelling without notice, deputies encountered Mr. Mallory in a bedroom at the rear of the house. It was there they shot him six times as he lay in his own bed. Officers justified the lethal force by claiming that the old man had pointed a semi-automatic handgun at them.

     As it turned out, the Mallory dwelling did not contain meth or any evidence that the drug was being manufactured in the home. Deputies did come across a quantity of marijuana in Mrs. Pate's son's bedroom.

     In speaking to the media about the fatal wrong house raid, Los Angeles County spokesperson Steve Whitmore said this: "There was a drug operation that was certainly going on in this house." 

     On October 10, 2013 James Bergener, the attorney representing Mrs. Tonya Pate, announced that he had filed on her behalf a $50 million wrongful death suit against Los Angeles County. 

     In January 2016 Los Angles County settled the Tonya Pate suit by paying the plaintiff $1.6 million. The officer who killed Mr. Mallory was not charged or even disciplined.

Rape in India: A Nightmare For Women and Girls

      Because of India's history of infanticide, child marriage, slavery and rape, it was one of the worst places in the world to be a female. Girls and woman who had been raped were routinely blamed for their victimization and discouraged from reporting the assaults to the police. If they did the victims and their families were subjected to public ridicule and humiliation.

     Police officers in this male-dominated society often refused to accept rape complaints. And when they did register rape complaints the crimes weren't professionally investigated. In those occasional instances where rape cases were taken seriously, crime lab delays slowed down the process of identifying the rapists. In India's Forensic Science Laboratory in Rohini, it took 75 days for a DNA report to come back to the investigating officer. These delays were caused by a work backlog caused by a serious shortage of qualified lab personnel. In the rare instance of an Indian rape prosecution the case would drag on for years, and almost always ended with an acquittal. In India rape was treated as a victimless crime.

     Among India's major cities, New Delhi the nation's capital and home to 16 million people, had the country's highest number of reported rapes. Because such a small percentage of these assaults were reported crime statistics did not come close to reflecting India's extremely high sex crime rate. If just half of India's rapes were reported and investigated the nation's crime lab system, unable to cope with the workload, would completely break down.

     On the evening of December 16, 2012, in New Delhi, a 28-year-old software engineer and his 23-year-old female companion boarded a city bus after attending a movie. The woman, from an urban middle-class family, had recently qualified as a trainee physiotherapist in a private New Delhi hospital. The bus driver and five men from the city's slums were the only other people on the bus. The passengers began taunting the woman's friend, then knocked him unconscious with an iron rod. Five of the men then beat and gang-raped the woman. At some point the bus driver turned the wheel over to one of the rapists, walked to the back of the bus and had sex with the beaten and bloodied woman. Before the one-hour ordeal came to an end one of the attackers inserted the iron rod into the female victim's body. The men undressed both victims and threw their nude bodies off the moving bus.

     The unidentified woman was taken to the Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi with serious brain trauma and severe injuries to her intestines and abdomen. The police, with the help of the rape victim's friend, quickly identified the bus driver and the five other rapists. Shortly after the suspects were taken into custody, the men confessed, telling the police they had tortured and raped the woman "to teach her a lesson."

     On December 26, 2012, following three operations and a heart attack, the authorities flew the victim to Mount Elizabeth's Hospital in Singapore.

     This brutal beating and gang rape on a city bus (operated by a private company) sent thousands of protesters into the streets in several Indian cities. The irate protestors demonstrated against the government's lax attitude toward crimes against women. In New Delhi demonstrators clashed with riot police.

     Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, facing serious civil unrest, promised police and legislative reforms. But the public demonstrations continued throughout the country, growing in strength daily.

     On December 29, 2012 at 4:45 in the morning the female victim of the brutal bus attack died in the Singapore hospital. Her body was flown back to India for cremation. The rape victim's cause of death was listed as brain injury complicated by a lung infection.

     The fact that Ban Ki-moon, the head of the United Nations voiced "deep sorrow" over this young woman's ordeal and death revealed how this case focused international attention on India's rape culture.

     On the day following the 23-year-old's passing, a human rights organization called on the Indian government to ban the so-called "finger test," a medical procedure routinely given to rape victims. This unscientific and irrelevant measure involved testing the laxity of a rape victim's vagina to determine if she had been "habitual to sexual intercourse." The obvious purpose of this procedure was to humiliate victims and to discourage victims from reporting their rapes.

     Amid the women's rights protests a legislator from the state of Rajasthan, in proposing his own rape prevention measure, suggested replacing girls' school uniform skirts with pants. While many ridiculed this politician and his idea, it reflected how most men in India blamed rape on the rape victim . 

     City politicians in New Delhi, facing a wave of public anger, tendered the rape victim's family monetary compensation. Officials also offered one of the victim's unemployed relatives a government job.

     On January 3, 2013 five of the suspects were charged with, among other crimes, rape, kidnapping, and murder. The defendants were Ram Singh, the 33-year-old bus driver; his brother Mukesh, 26 who cleaned buses for the company; Pavan Gupta, 19, a fruit vendor; Akshay Singh, 24, a bus washer; and Vinay Sharma, 20, a fitness trainer. The sixth suspect was a juvenile. He was not charged.

     The male friend assaulted by the men on the bus, in his first public statement about the case, said that he and his friend were lying nude and bleeding on the street for an hour while pedestrians passed by without stopping to help them.

     On January 6, 2013 a popular Indian spiritual guru who called himself Godman Asharam, in a video circulated in the Internet, said, "This tragedy would not have happened if she [the murder victim] had chanted God's name and fallen at the feet of the attackers. The error (italics mine) was not committed by just one side."

     A defense attorney representing three of the accused rapist/murderers announced on January 9, 2013 that his clients would plead not guilty. The attorney also claimed that the suspects were beaten by the police.

     On March 11, 2013 one of the men in custody for the New Delhi bus rape was found dead in his cell. Police say Ram Singh hanged himself. The suspect's father claimed that he had been murdered.

     On September 10, 2013 the adult defendants were found guilty of rape, murder and kidnapping. The guilty men faced the sentence of death by hanging. In May 2017, following numerous appeals, the Supreme Court of India upheld their death sentences.

     On the night of March 15, 2013, in the wake of the gang rape on the New Delhi bus, another Indian rape case grabbed international attention. On Friday night, March 15, 2013, a Swiss couple on a three-month vacation were camped out in the forest 400 yards off a road near the town of Datia in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The couple had ridden their bicycles to the spot from the temple town of Orchha. In the morning they planned to bicycle to the city of Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.

     The Swiss woman and her male companion, that Friday night in the Indian woods, were set upon by seven men. The intruders beat them, tied the man to a tree then gang raped the woman. After committing the assaults the rapists stole the tourists' cellphone, laptop computer and their money. The rape victim was treated for her injuries at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior.

     Two days after the gang rape of the Swiss woman the police in Datia arrested six men suspected of the assault. The next day the suspects were charged with rape, assault and theft. All of the men were poor farmers from villages near the scene of the attack.

     On January 14, 2014, a 51-year-old Danish woman vacationing in New Delhi's most popular tourist spot in the Paharganj District was gang raped after asking a group of local men for directions to her hotel. A few days later New Delhi police officers arrested two suspects.

     On December 5, 2019 a 23-year-old woman who, in March 2019, had filed rape charges against two men, was set on fire as she walked to a hearing on the case. The next day she died in a New Delhi hospital. The police quickly arrested the two men who had burned 90 percent of her body.

     On the day the New Delhi rape victim died from her burns police officers in Hyderabad, India shot and killed four suspected rapists in an unrelated case. While civil rights activists protested the killings as police vigilantism, the women as well as many men in the community, celebrated the rapists' deaths.

      After the December 2012 gang rape and murder of the young woman on the New Delhi bus, rape was viewed as a prominent criminal problem in India. Although the 2012 case focused attention on the issue, sexual violence against women in India did not abate.

     In 2012, 25,000 rape cases were reported to the Indian authorities. In 2016 there were 33,658 reported cases of rape, an average of 92 a day. In 2017 the number of reported rapes dropped slightly to 32,559. In 2018 the Indian government announced the addition of 1,000 fast-track courts to deal with the rape backlog. But there were too many rapists in the country. In 2019, with national court backlog of 127,800  cases, justice still came slow for Indian rape victims if it came at all. 

     On March 4, 2024 police officers in eastern India arrested three men for the gang rape of a Brazilian tourist and the assault of her husband.

     India is still not a safe place for women and girls.

The Roberto Roman Case: To Kill a Cop

     Just after midnight on January 5, 2010, Deputy Josie Fox of the Millard County Sheriff's Office and her partner were watching from a distance a suspicious car and a pickup truck parked along the road near the tiny central Utah town of Delta. There had recently been a series of burglaries which had drawn the officers to the area. When the two suspicious vehicles departed the scene in opposite directions Deputy Fox followed  the 1995 Cadillac DeVille. The officers knew the identity of the man in the other vehicle, the pickup truck. He was a known drug user named Ryan Greathouse who also happened to be Deputy Fox's brother.

     After Deputy Fox called in the license number of the Cadillac, registered to 38-year-old Roberto Miramontes Roman, the police dispatcher forwarded instructions to have the vehicle pulled over. A few minutes later Deputy Fox radioed that she had pulled over Roman and was exiting the patrol car.

     Deputy Fox did not transmit further messages and was not responding to calls from the dispatcher. Concerned that the deputy's encounter with the driver of the Cadillac had resulted in her injury or death, Millard County Sergeant Rhett Kimball proceeded to the site of the stop to investigate. When the deputy rolled up to the scene he saw Fox's patrol car lights flashing and the deputy lying on the road in a pool of blood. The 37-year-old police officer had been killed by two bullets fired at close range into her chest. (The bullets must have pierced her bullet-proof vest.) Roberto Roman and his 1995 Cadillac were gone.

     After fleeing the scene en route to Salt Lake City Roberto Roman got stuck in a snowbank near Nephi, Utah. He called his friend, 35-year-old Ruben Chavez-Reyes, for help. Chavez-Reyes pulled the Cadillac out of the snowbank and from there the two men continued on to Salt Lake City. Along the way Roman tossed the murder weapon, an AK-47 assault rifle, out of the car. When the two men arrived at their destination, Roberto Roman switched license plates with Chavez-Reyes. (He did not, however, clean traces of Deputy Fox's blood off his Cadillac.) Later that morning Mr. Roman told his friend that he had "broke a cop," meaning that he had killed a police officer.

     Deputy Fox's partner questioned Ryan Greathouse at his home. The murdered deputy's brother said he had purchased drugs from the man in the Cadillac, a dealer he knew as "Rob." Greathouse gave the deputy Rob's phone number which identified this man as Roberto Roman. The deputy then informed Greathouse that Roman had shot and killed his sister with an AK-47 assault rifle.

     The next day Millard County deputies arrested Roberto Roman whom they found hiding in a shed in Beaver, Utah. Once in custody Mr. Roman provided the officers with a full confession. The suspect told his interrogators that when the patrol officer pulled him over outside of Delta he was angry because he was being careful not to speed or cross over the center line. Furious that the cop was pulling him over simply because he was "Mexican" he shot her twice with his assault rifle. He did not know he had murdered the sister of the man who had just purchased meth from him.

     The Millard County prosecutor charged Roberto Roman with aggravated first-degree murder as well as with lesser weapons and evidence tampering offenses. If convicted of murdering a police officer, under Utah law, Roberto Roman faced the death penalty.

     In April 2010, more than four months after the shooting death of his sister, Ryan Greathouse was found dead from a meth overdose in the bedroom of a Las Vegas apartment.

     In 2011 Judge Donald Eyre presided over a two-day hearing to determine if Robert Roman would qualify for the death penalty. The judge, after listening to the testimony of psychologists, ruled that the defendant was "mentally retarded" and as such, ineligible under Utah law for execution. This ruling disappointed and mystified a lot of people. (Most cop killers are either high on drugs and/or stupid. Since intoxication and mental dullness are not criminal defenses, people who are not bright should not be spared execution. Moreover, courthouse psychologists think all criminals are stupid and should therefore be treated differently from their more intelligent counterparts.) 

     The Roberto Roman murder trial got underway on August 13, 2012 in the Fourth District Court in Spanish Fork, Utah. After the prosecution rested its case in four days the defendant took the stand on his own behalf. Rather than admitting his guilt as he had in his police confession, Roberto Roman offered the jurors a completely different story, one that was both self-serving and implausible.

     On the night of Deputy Fox's death the defendant and the officer's brother Ryan Greathouse were riding around in Roman's Cadillac smoking meth. When Deputy Fox pulled the car over outside Delta, Ryan, who was crouched down in the vehicle, grabbed the AK-47 and shot Fox in the chest, unaware he had just murdered his sister. After the shooting, the two men went their separate ways. The beauty of this story involved the fact Ryan Greathouse was not in position to contest the defendant's version of the murder.

     Prosecutor Pat Finlinson, in his closing summation, reminded the jurors of the physical evidence that supported the prosecution's theory of the case. The victim's bullet wounds indicated that the AK-47 had been fired at an angle consistent with being discharged by the driver of the Cadillac. Moreover, the defendant's fingerprints, not Ryan Greathouse's, were on the assault rifle.

     On August 20, 2012, a week after the Roberto Roman trial began, the jury, after deliberating eight hours, found the defendant not guilty of the aggravated first-degree murder of Deputy Josie Fox. The jurors, in defending their unpopular verdict said that without Roman's confession they didn't have enough evidence to find him guilty.

     Roberto Roman became the first Utah defendant charged with the murder of a police officer to be acquitted since 1973. The jury did find him guilty of the lesser offenses pertaining to the assault rifle and the evidence tampering. On October 24, 2012 the judge sentenced Roman to the ten year maximum sentence for those crimes.

     The not guilty verdict in the Roberto Roman murder trial shocked and angered the law enforcement community, friends and relatives of the slain police officer and a majority of citizens familiar with the case. Had Ryan Greathouse not died between the time of the shooting and Roman's trial this case may have had a different ending. For a stupid person, Roberto Roman had done a good job of beating a strong circumstantial case.

     In May 2013, David Barlow, the United States Attorney for the District of Utah, announced that a federal grand jury had returned an 11-count indictment against Roberto Roman for, among other crimes, the murder of Deputy Josie Fox. U.S. Attorney Barlow said, "The fact that Mr Roman had already been tried before a state court had no influence or affect on the federal murder charge [arising out of the same conduct]." In other words, according to this federal prosecutor, the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy didn't apply in this case.

     The new federal charges against Roman, in addition to murder, included, among other offenses, drug trafficking and illegally firing a gun in the death of a police officer. If convicted as charged, Roman faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     In May 2014, Roman's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictments on grounds their client should not have to stand trial for a federal murder charge related to the same crime. Attorney Jeremy Delicino said, "In layman's terms, the United States seeks a second chance to rectify what it believes the jury got wrong the first time. In blunt colloquial terms, the United States seeks a do-over."

     In response to the defense motion to dismiss the indictments, lawyers for the prosecution asserted that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that federal and state governments can prosecute a person for separate crimes based upon the same conduct.

     On September 30, 2014, U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffen ruled that prosecuting Roberto Roman for federal offenses related to the police officer's murder did not constitute double jeopardy. The federal case could therefore go forward.

     On February 6, 2017, a jury sitting in a Salt Lake City courtroom found Roberto Roman guilty of eight federal charges that included the murder of Deputy Fox. U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffen, in April 2017, sentenced Roman to life in prison plus 80 years. "Criminals must know that killing a law enforcer in the line of duty means that they will never go free," he said.

Geraldine Cherry: Natural Born Killer

     Born in 1962, Geraldine Cherry grew up in western New Jersey just east of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As a kid she was aggressive and bellicose, often frightening her siblings and even her mother who felt the need to lock herself into her bedroom at night. In 1974 when Geraldine was 12, social workers broke the family up, sending Geraldine and her 14 siblings to various institutions and foster homes.

     Shortly after Geraldine turned 14 the authorities, following a series of assaults and disruptive behavior, sent her and one of her sisters to the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey. It was there that Geraldine threatened to choke her sister to death while she slept.

     In 1978 at age 18, after assaulting a woman, the judge sentenced Geraldine Cherry to two years at a juvenile detention institution in Burlington County. While living at the medium security facility Geraldine was accused of assaulting 72 inmates and correctional workers. (One would think that after three or four  assaults someone in charge would isolate this girl from the rest of the juveniles.)

     In August 1980, shortly after her release from the juvenile detention facility, Cherry, while standing on a platform at the Voorhees, New Jersey train station pushed a woman she didn't know onto the high-speed railway tracks. The victim was pulled to safety before being struck by a train. Following her conviction for assault, the judge, before sentencing, had Geraldine evaluated at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. The doctor who conducted the examination diagnosed Cherry as having an antisocial personality disorder.

     Although the train station victim only received scrapes and bruises the judge gave Geraldine Cherry ten years, the maximum sentence for the crime. She served her sentence at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in Camden County.

     While doing time at Clinton, Cherry was stabbed in both eyes with either a pencil or a shard of glass. Because she was a pathological liar her account of what happened--a prison guard had tried to gouge out her eyes in a fight--wasn't credible. The wounds were either self-inflicted or the result of an altercation with another inmate. The matter remained unresolved.

     In May 1986 correctional authorities accused Geraldine of starting a fire in the prison. Because it was quickly extinguished no one was hurt. Three years before completing her ten year sentence Geraldine Cherry, in 1988, walked out of prison. (She certainly didn't get out early on good behavior. Perhaps the arson hastened her departure.) During the next several years Cherry lived in various group homes and institutions in Illinois and New Jersey.

     In 2012 Geraldine Cherry and a 70-year-old woman named Kathleen McEwan shared living quarters at the Parker Place Apartments in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. The complex was owned by a Philadelphia based nonprofit social service agency called Resources for Human Development (RHD). McEwan, a former waitress who for years had struggled with schizophrenia had suffered a series of strokes that had rendered her incapable of feeding or dressing herself.

     At six in the morning of June 10, 2012, fire rescue medics responding to an emergency call from the Parker Place Apartments found Kathleen McEwan lying face up in her bed. She had died sometime during the night. Due to her age and medical condition the medical examiner ruled that McEwan had died a natural death.

     Jeff Thompson, the mortician at the John J. Byers Funeral Home in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania who had the job of embalming Kathleen McEwan, made a gruesome discovery. Someone had stuffed a 10 inch length of rope down the dead woman's throat. Because there hadn't been an autopsy in this death the medical examiner had made a bad call. Mr. Thompson, instead of finishing his embalming job called the medical examiner's office.

     Kathleen McEwan's autopsy produced further evidence of foul play. The person who had inserted the rope into the woman had stuffed other things down her throat that included a small bottle of  hand lotion, a diaper fragment, and a quantity of Chex Party Mix. This time the medical examiner ruled McEwan's death homicide by suffocation. (Had Cherry smothered McEwan with a pillow she would have gotten away with murder.)

     Shortly after being charged and arrested for murder Geraldine Cherry suffered a series of seizures which required the 50-year-old's hospitalization. A judge ordered another psychiatric evaluation. Although a mental health expert would never say this, Geraldine Cherry was a natural born killer. She should not have been living with another person, particularly one so helpless as Kathleen McEwan.

     In October 2012 following a 60-day mental health evaluation, Municipal Court President Judge Marsha Neifield ruled that Geraldine Cherry was mentally incompetent to stand trial for murder.

     It is doubtful that Geraldine Cherry will ever be adjudicated competent to stand trial. She will never be free either. Too insane to be punished or rehabilitated, this woman will be warehoused for the rest of her life.