The Daniel DeJarnette Murder Case

     In 2003, 50-year-old homicide detective Daniel DeJarnette, after 21 years on the force retired. He and his wife Yu Kue moved to the town of Ka'u on the southern tip of Hawaii's Big Island. During his last ten years on the force Detective DeJarnette was a member of the Van Nuys Division's robbery-homicide unit's rape section. During that period he investigated a series of high-profile homicide cases involving sexual attacks.

     By 2006 the retired detective's marriage had fallen apart. His wife Yu Kue told her co-workers at a grocery store in the town of Kona that she wanted to leave him but he wouldn't let her go. They fought all the time and he was physically abusive.

     On November 12, 2006 officers with the Hawaii County Police responded to the DeJarnette home after Daniel called 911 to report that his wife had fallen off a lava embankment while hanging out laundry to dry. The officers found the 56-year-old wife lying dead twenty feet from the house with two gaping head wounds. The officers arrested DeJarnette on suspicion of homicide.

     According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, Yu Kue DeJarnette had died from blunt force trauma to the head. Notwithstanding the presence of paint chips in her hair from the suspected murder weapon--a car jack stand--and scrapes on her body suggesting that she had been dragged over the lava to where the police had found her body, the forensic pathologist ruled her manner of death as "undetermined." As a result of this postmortem finding Daniel DeJarnette was released from custody due to lack of evidence.

     In January 2012, more than five years after Yu Kue's suspicious death, Hawaii County Deputy Prosecutor Linda Walton re-opened the case. Employing modernized forensic science a DNA analyst identified traces of the victims's blood on the jack stand. Another crime lab expert connected the paint chips in the victim's head hair to the murder weapon. Forensic scientists also determined that someone had used a bleaching agent in an effort to clean up Yu Kue's blood in the couple's bathroom and other parts of the DeJarnette house.

     On May 14, 2012 a grand jury indicted Daniel DeJarnette of second-degree murder. Police officers arrested the 59-year-old at his Big Island home. If convicted as charged the former LAPD detective faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. A judge set his bail at $300,000.

     Ten months after his arrest DeJarnette confessed to killing his wife. They had been fighting, she slapped him and he struck her in the head with the jack stand. He dragged her body from the bathroom across the lava field to the embankment where the police had found her. Just before he killed Yu Kue Daniel purchased a $300,000 insurance policy on her life.

     On March 26, 2013 Daniel DeJarnette pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter while under extreme emotional stress. Two months later a judge imposed the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.

The Brandon L. Woodard Murder-For-Hire Case

     Raised in the Ladera Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Brandon Lincoln Woodard, the son of wealthy parents lived a privileged life. His uncle Leonard Woods was a celebrated drag car racer and his mother, Sandra Wellington, ran a successful mortgage business. Mr. Woodard in 1999 graduated from a private Episcopal high school in LA called Campbell Hall. He and his parents belonged to an exclusive society of prominent black families called Jack and Jill of America.

     In 2003 Brandon Woodard graduated from southern California's Loyola Marymount University with a bachelor's degree in business administration. While working in his mother's mortgage company (shut down in the summer of 2012 for state lending code violations) he cultivated fast-living friends in the music business and in professional sports. He developed a reputation as a man about town.

     Between 2004 and 2012 Brandon Woodard acquired a criminal history consisting of at least twenty arrests. A supermarket security guard in Hermosa Beach, California caught him stealing several bottles of wine in 2009. After struggling with the security officer Mr. Woodard sped off in his car, but in so doing, he slammed into two other vehicles. To flee the scene he abandoned his disabled car and hailed a cab. The police took him into custody shortly after the incident. (I don't know the disposition of this case but would guess that Mr. Woodard pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)

     A year after the retail theft incident Woodard was accepted into Whittier Law School. During his first year at Whittier he was arrested on the charge of battery. (In most states this offense is called assault.) In April 2012 while the 31-year-old was enrolled in law school police arrested him in West Hollywood for cocaine possession. By now Brandon Woodard was holding himself out as a hip hop promoter in LA's music industry.

     On Sunday, December 9, 2012 Brandon Woodard flew from Los Angeles to New York City. At five in the afternoon he checked into a high-end hotel on Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan called 6 Columbus. He planned to return to LA the next day to take a law exam. That evening he watched a football game at the hotel with a female friend then went to dinner at a restaurant nearby.

     Just before two in the afternoon on Monday, December 10, 2012 Woodard checked out of his hotel. He left his luggage with a valet expecting to return for it in a couple of hours. Brandon Woodard never got back to the hotel.

     As Brandon Woodard walked along 58th Street that afternoon not far from the southern border of Central Park a man wearing a hooded jacket walked up behind him and shot him once in the back of the head with a nickel-plated pistol. As Woodward collapsed to the pavement and died, the shooter climbed into a Lincoln sedan and was driven away. The murder was captured by a surveillance camera that did not reveal a clear picture of the gunman's face.

     Crime scene investigators recovered a spent shell casing that had been fired out of a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. A search of a ballistics database revealed that the handgun that had ejected this casing had been used in a November 22, 2009 shooting in Queens, New York. In that incident no one had been hit and no arrests had been made.

     At the time of his death Brandon Woodard was in possession of three cellphones. This, along with the fact that he associated with music industry types led investigators to speculate that he had been somehow involved in the drug trade. The shooting M.O. also bore the earmarks of a murder-for-hire conspiracy.

     On December 11, 2012, the day after Woodard's murder, NYPD officers with the 113th Precinct in Queens came across the abandoned getaway car. They traced the Lincoln MKZ to an Avis car rental service in Huntington Station, New York.

     New York City detectives on December 13, 2012 searched Woodard's condo in Los Angeles. According to newspaper reports the officers did not find drugs or useful clues into the identities of the people behind his murder.

     In July 2017 a Manhattan jury, after a three month trial, found 39-year-old Lloyd T. McKenzie guilty of hiring a hit man to murder Brandon Woodard. McKenzie, a party organizer from Queens, New York, arranged the murder to avoid paying Woodard the $161,000 he owned for five kilograms of cocaine. (Woodard had been working as a drug courier for a bicoastal cocaine ring.) The judge sentenced McKenzie to 85 years to life.

     As of this writing the hit man in Brandon Woodard's murder remains unidentified.

Kenneth Markman: The Fall Of A Drug Dealing Defense Attorney

     Kenneth Markman, after graduating from UCLA and Loyola Law School, began practicing criminal defense law in 1991. Between 2000 and 2010 the State Bar Association of California suspended him twice for not paying his membership dues. It was during this period the attorney went from representing drug addicts and dealers to becoming one.

     On October 21, 2011 Mr. Markman was in the attorney's room on the 11th floor of the Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles. He had scheduled a meeting with his client, Jorge Zaragoza. Zaragoza, a drug-dealing gang member with a history of violent crime, had been convicted of attempted carjacking. In a few days a judge would be handing down Zaragoza's sentence.

     Detectives with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office suspected that Mr. Markman was smuggling narcotics to his clients who were incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail. As the attorney waited for his opportunity to speak with Zaragoza a sheriff's deputy accompanied by a drug-sniffing dog entered the room. The dog immediately "alerted" to the presence of drugs on attorney Markman's  person and in his briefcase.

     From the inside pocket of the attorney's suit jacket the deputy removed a package wrapped tightly with electrical tape. The bundle contained twenty-six balloons of heroin and methamphetamine. Markman's briefcase contained a quantity of marijuana and three mini-hypodermic syringes. 

     Charged with seven drug-related felony counts the attorney was booked into the county Inmate Reception Center. The judge set his bail at $145,000. If convicted of trying to smuggle $30,000 worth of narcotics into the Los Angeles County Jail Mr. Markman faced up to four years in prison.

     The accused attorney posted his bond and was released from custody. On November 8, 2011 a security officer screening visitors to the Antelope Valley Court House noticed something suspicious as Markman's briefcase passed through the X-ray machine. After the attorney grabbed his wallet out of the tray and tried to flee a Los Angeles Sheriff's deputy caught up to him before he left the building. In his wallet the officer found two bundles of rock cocaine. The attorney's briefcase contained several pieces of drug paraphernalia.

     After being booked again for trying to smuggle drugs to an incarcerated client Kenneth Markman made his $25,000 bail.

     In February 2013 Kenneth Markman pleaded no contest to the October 2011 drug smuggling charges. Pursuant to a plea deal the judge, a month later, sentenced the suspended attorney to a year in the Los Angeles County Jail. That sentence included three years of probation which involved one year of drug treatment.

     The State Bar Association of California, following a hearing in August 2013, disbarred Mr. Markman. 

The Laurel Schlemmer Murder Case

     Laurel Michelle Ludwig married Mark Schlemmer in July 2005. In May 2006 the couple purchased a house in McCandless, Pennsylvania, a suburban community north of Pittsburgh.

     By September 2009 the couple had two sons. The youngest was 18-months-old. His brother was three. Mark Schlemmer was 39 and working as an insurance actuary. Laurel, a former teacher, stayed at home to raise the boys. On September 5, 2009 a patron at the nearby Ross Park Mall noticed a parked Honda Odyssey with an unaccompanied toddler inside. Although the van's windows were cracked the temperature inside the vehicle had risen to 112 degrees. The passerby called 911.

     When Laurel Schlemmer returned to her van she was met by Ross Township police and EMT personnel who had managed to unlock a door and remove the three-year-old boy. Due to the fact the mother was gone from the car twenty minutes the boy did not require medical treatment.

     An Allegheny County prosecutor charged the 36-year-old mother with the summary offense of leaving a child unattended in a vehicle. Laurel pleaded guilty to the crime and paid a fine. No one read anything into this incident other than a mother's lapse of due care.

     By 2013 Laurel Schlemmer and her husband had their third son. On April 16 of that year, Laurel, when backing her van out of her parents' driveway in Marshall, Pennsylvania, ran over her two and five-year-old boys. One of the children suffered internal injuries while his brother ended up with broken bones. Both boys survived.

     An investigator with the Northern Regional Police Department conducted an inquiry into the driveway incident and concluded that it had been an accident. Personnel with the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth, and Families conducted an assessment of the Schlemmer family and found no evidence or history of child abuse.

     The pastor of the North Park Church, Reverend Dan Hendley, counseled Laurel in an effort to help her cope with what everybody assumed had been a nearly tragic mishap. Members of the church were supportive of their fellow parishioner.

     At 8:40 on the morning of Tuesday, April 1, 2014 Laurel Schlemmer put her seven-year-old boy on the school bus and waved him goodbye. She returned to her house and told her three and six-year-old boys to take off their pajamas as she filled the bath tub. The fully dressed mother, once the boys were in the tub, held them under water then climbed into the tub and sat on them.

     Laurel pulled the limp bodies out of the water and laid them out on the bathroom floor. She replaced her wet clothes with dry garments. In an effort to hide the wet pieces of clothing she bagged them up with two soaked towels and placed the container in the garage.

     At 9:40 that morning Laurel called 911 and reported that her two sons had drowned in the bath tub. Emergency personnel rushed the Schlemmer children to the UPMC Passavant Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. An hour later three-year-old Luke Schlemmer died. His six-year-old brother remained in critical condition.

     Questioned by detectives Laurel said she figured she would become a better mother to her oldest son if his younger siblings weren't around. "Crazy voices" had told her the younger ones would be better off in heaven.

     Later that day detectives booked the mother into the Allegheny County Jail in downtown Pittsburgh. Mrs. Schlemmer faced charges of homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault and tampering with evidence. The judge denied her bond.

     On April 5, 2014 a spokesperson for the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office announced that six-year-old Daniel Schlemmer had died. The boy had been on life support at UPMC's Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

     At a mental competency hearing on April 7, 2014 Dr. Christine Martone, an Allegheny County psychiatrist, testified that Mrs. Schlemmer was psychotic, suicidal and suffered from depressive disorder. Judge Jeffrey Manning, based upon this testimony, ruled the defendant mentally incompetent to stand trial.

     Judge Manning ordered the defendant committed to the Torrance State Hospital in Derry Township, a mental health facility 45 miles east of Pittsburgh.

     In Pennsylvania, defendants are considered mentally incompetent to stand trial if due to mental illness they are unable to distinguish right from wrong or cannot assist their attorneys in their defense.

     In January 2015 Judge Manning postponed the murder trial indefinitely. He also imposed a gag order that prohibited the prosecutor and defense attorney from discussing the case publicly.

     On May 5, 2016 Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning, after the prosecution and the defense could not agree on a plea arrangement, set the Schlemmer murder trial for June 21, 2016. According to the defendant's attorney, Schlemmer was pursuing a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity.

     Judge Manning, on June 21, 2016, heard testimony from psychiatrist Dr. Christine Martone who opined that the defendant was still too mentally disturbed to be tried. The judge ordered the defendant to be forcibly medicated until she became mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of her sons.

     On March 16, 2017, following a bench trial (no jury) featuring psychiatric testimony on both sides, Allegheny County Judge Manning found Laurel Schlemmer guilty of two counts of third-degree murder but mentally ill. The prosecution argued for first-degree murder but the judge, due to the defendant's mental condition, found that she had acted in "diminished capacity." In Pennsylvania a guilty but mentally ill sentence simply meant that the convicted person would be given the appropriate mental health medication in prison instead of a mental institution. In Schlemmer's case she was sentenced to ten to twenty years behind bars.

The Yoselyn Ortega Murder Case

      Kevin Krim grew up in Thousand Oaks, California where he was a high school football star. The Harvard graduate met his future wife Marina at an Italian restaurant in Venice Beach. They were married in 2003. Marina had grown up in Manhattan Beach. Kevin worked in Los Angeles then took a job with Yahoo in San Francisco. The couple moved to New York City in 2009.

     In October 2012 the Krims, with three children--Lucia, age 6, Nessie, 3, and 2-year-old Leo, lived on Manhattan's upper west side in a second-floor, 3-bedroom apartment in the LaRochelle Building on West 75th Street. The $10,000 a month apartment was a block from Central Park and not far from the Museum of Natural History and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Marina, a stay-at-home mother, kept a daily online journal of her children's daily lives.

     In October 2010 the Krims hired 48-year-old Yoselyn Ortega, a nanny who had been referred to them by Ortega's older sister Celia who, as a nanny herself, met Marina and Lucia at a ballet lesson. A naturalized U.S. citizen from the Dominican Republic, Yoselyn lived in Manhattan's Hamilton Heights neighborhood then moved to an apartment on Riverside Drive in Harlem a few miles from the Krims. She lived with her son, sister and niece.

     The Krims became very close to Ortega (they called her "Yosi") and in February 2012 accompanied her to the Dominican Republic where they visited her family. Whenever the Krims left town for an extended period with their children they bought Ortega a flight back to her native country. According to the nanny's relatives she had been seeing a psychologist and had financial problems. For extra money she had been selling cheap cosmetics and jewelry to residents of her tenement building.

     On Thursday afternoon on October 25, 2012 Marina Krim took 3-year-old Nessie to a swimming lesson. She left Leo and Lucia in the apartment with the nanny. At 5:25 that evening, when Marina and Nessie returned to the apartment they found the place dark. Marina assumed that Yoselyn Ortega had taken the two children out for a walk.

     Marina Krim and her daughter Nessie returned to the lobby and from the doorman learned that Yoselyn Ortega and the children had not left the building. Marina re-entered the apartment and when she walked into the bathroom saw Leo and Lucia lying in the bathtub covered in blood. The children had been slashed and stabbed to death with the bloody kitchen knife lying on the floor next to the nanny who was bleeding from a wound in her neck. Yoselyn Ortega had also slashed her wrists.

     Several neighbors heard Marina scream, "You slit her throat!" Later the distraught mother was heard saying, "What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I have no children."

     Paramedics rushed the unconscious nanny to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Medical Center where she underwent emergency surgery. Marina Krim was taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital for sedation. Kevin Krim, returning from a business trip to San Francisco, was met at the airport with the news of his children's deaths. He was also taken to the hospital where they sedated him.

     On Friday, October 26, 2012 detectives were unable to question Ortega who was on a respirator. According to the doctors the nanny was expected to survive her wounds. Investigators believed Ortega murdered the children, then stabbed herself in the neck about the time the victims' mother entered the apartment.

     Yoselyn Ortega was the youngest of six siblings who grew up in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Her sister Celia emigrated to the United States in the early 1980s after graduating from accounting studies at Santa Ana College in Santiago. Yoselyn later joined her older sister in America. She worked as the manager of a print shop in Manhattan, then after separating from the father of her son, returned to the Dominican Republic. After awhile, she returned to New York City. According to family members she loved the Krim children. Before the murders she had been acting strangely from some kind of emotional stress.

     Prior to her hospital bed arraignment on November 28, 2012, Yoselyn Ortega's attorney asked the judge to bar the press from the hearing on the grounds his client was too "pathetic" to be seen. Judge Lewis Stone denied the request.

     In a June 2013 Rikers Island jail interview of Ortega by a reporter with the New York Daily News, the murder suspect denied killing the children. "I didn't do that," she said. "Those are all lies." The brief interview ended abruptly when Ortega said, "My lawyer told me not to talk. I'm not supposed to say anything."  Later that month a Manhattan judge at Ortega's competency hearing ruled that she was mentally fit for trial. Ortega's attorney, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, appealed that decision.

     In August 2013, before the same Manhattan judge, prosecution witness Dr. Ankur Saraiya took the stand and testified that while Ortega "had suffered some brain damage when she slit her throat, the injury was not enough to interfere with her fitness." The judge reaffirmed his initial finding that this defendant was mentally competent to stand trial.

     In April 2018 after several delays a jury sitting in New York City rejected Ortega's insanity defense and found her guilty of double murder. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

The Cheryl Silvonek Murder Case

   Cheryl Silvonek lived with her 14-year-old daughter Jamie in a suburban home outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. On March 8, 2015 the 54-year-old mother learned that her daughter's boyfriend, Army PFC Caleb Barnes, at 21, was much older than she had been led to believe.

     In an effort to end the relationship between her eighth grade daughter and the Army private, Cheryl Silvonek struck a deal with the boyfriend. Mr. Barnes agreed to end the romance and return to his base at Fort Meade, Maryland in return for the mother's promise to take the couple to a Breaking Benjamin concert in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

     In the early morning hours of March 15, 2015 following the Scranton concert Cheryl Silvonek, with her daughter and Caleb Barnes in her SUV, pulled into the Silvonek house driveway. Before the mother could climb out of her vehicle Barnes started punching her in the head. The assailant tried to choke the victim to death before stabbing her four times. She died in the vehicle shortly after the attack.

     Following the cold-blooded murder Caleb Barnes and the victim's daughter drove the SUV to a place nearby where they dumped the body into a shallow grave. Once they had disposed of the corpse the murderous couple drove to a Walmart store where they purchased a bottle of bleach and other cleaning supplies they used to clean up the victim's blood.

     Not long after the killing, detectives took the couple into custody on suspicion of murder. Investigators linked Jamie Silvonek to the murder through numerous text messages she had sent to Barnes in the days leading up to the crime. Many of these messages, besides being sexually explicit, urged him to murder Mrs. Silvonek. "I want her gone," the daughter wrote.

     Caleb Barnes, when interrogated by detectives, confessed to the murder. He also insisted that Jamie Silvonek had no prior knowledge of the homicide. In an effort to protect his girlfriend he took full responsibility for the crime.

     Notwithstanding the boyfriend falling on his sword for his young lover, a Lehigh County prosecutor charged Jamie Silvonek with solicitation of murder. The district attorney charged Barnes with first-degree murder.

     Shortly after being booked into the Lehigh County Jail Jamie Silvonek's attorneys filed a motion to have her case adjudicated in juvenile court. If found guilty as a juvenile she could not be imprisoned beyond her twenty-first birthday. The district attorney filed an opposing motion requesting that Silvonek be tried in adult court where a guilty verdict would lead to a sentence of up to 25 years to life.

     On October 29, 2005, at a pre-trial hearing before Judge Marie L. Dantos, both sides, on the issue of  whether or not Silvonek should be tried as an adult or a juvenile put their expert witnesses on the stand.

     Dr. John O'Brien, a psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution portrayed Jamie Silvonek as a developing sociopath who had the knack of presenting herself as a victim. According to Dr. O'Brien, Silvonek's teachers at the Orfield Middle School painted her as "a sociopath who thinks societal values do not apply to her." Teachers described Silvonek as extremely mature and manipulative, a "chameleon" who could change faces depending upon who she was talking to and what she wanted.

     To support his diagnosis of the defendant, the prosecution psychiatrist highlighted, among others, these text messages sent by Silvonek: "Don't be afraid of the sides of you that are dark, terrifying" and "People don't understand how cold and manipulative I can be, I hide it so well no one expects."

     Psychologist Dr. Frank Dattilo took the stand on behalf of the defendant. According to this expert witness, the girl was highly intelligent but extremely immature. When Caleb Barnes began flirting with her, the eighth grader didn't know how to handle his attention. According to Dr. Dattilo, "He [Barnes] pursued her. It's a big deal for a young female to be pursued by someone older. She became enamored of this. She was over the moon about the older guy. It's every young girl's dream. She was swept up by Mr. Barnes."

     On November 20, 2015, Judge Dantos, in a 37-page opinion outlining her rationale, ruled that Jamie Silvonek would be tried for murder solicitation as an adult.

     On February 11, 2016 Jamie Silvonek pleaded guilty to the charge of soliciting the murder of her mother. The judge sentenced her to 25 years to life in prison.

     On September 20, 2016 a jury found Caleb Barnes guilty of first-degree murder. At the trial Jamie Silvonek testified for the prosecution. She said her mother had been murdered because she had tried to destroy her relationship with the defendant. The judge sentenced Barnes to life in prison. 

The General Jeffrey Allen Sinclair Case

     In 1985 after graduating from West Virginia University Jeffrey Allen Sinclair began his career in the U.S. Army as an officer and a paratrooper. He served at Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Hood, Texas and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Overseas, Sinclair was stationed in Germany and in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. As he rose in rank he served two tours in Iraq and was deployed to Afghanistan three times. This high-profile, highly decorated officer rose to the rank of Brigadier General. In July 2010 General Sinclair became the Deputy Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

     In May 2012 the 50-year-old One-Star General was removed from his command in southern Afghanistan and sent home to Fort Bragg, North Carolina where he was named Special Assistant to Lieutenant General Daniel Allyn, the Commanding General of the 18th Airborne Corps. General Sinclair's transfer from a position of leadership in Afghanistan to a desk job in the states raised eyebrows and inquiries from the media. The Army, however, refused comment on the reason behind the general's sudden removal from command.

     The reason behind the Army's action against General Sinclair became public on September 26, 2012 with the announcement that criminal charges had been filed against the general and that an Article 32 hearing had been scheduled to determine if Army prosecutors had enough evidence to move the case forward to a full court-marital trial before a military judge and jury. (An Article 32 hearing is the military version of the civilian grand jury.)

     The Army, at this point in the case, refused to provide detailed information regarding the nature of the charges against the general except to reveal that the most serious charges were sexual offenses. Although court-martial cases against high-ranking officers were extremely rare, the media didn't pay much attention to this story.

     General Sinclair's Article 32 hearing, held at Fort Bragg, the Fayetteville, North Carolina home to the 82nd Airborne Division, got underway on Monday, November 5, 2012 before hearing officer Major General Perry L. Wiggins. For the first time the specific allegations against the general became a matter of public record. The most serious accusations involved forcible sodomy committed on five women--four military subordinates and one civilian--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Fort Hood and Fort Bragg between 2007 and 2012.

     Lesser charges against General Sinclair included possession of pornography; use of alcohol while deployed; engaging in inappropriate relationships; misuse of government travel charge cards; and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. According to court documents the General was also accused of trying to silence a victim by threatening her career and life and the lives of her relatives.

     Major General James Higgins, the defendant's commanding officer, testified that he launched an investigation after a female captain accused General Sinclair of forcing her to have sex with him over a period of three years. According to accounts of this testimony as reported in the Fayetteville Observer, the general's sexual encounters with several women occurred "in a parking lot, in his office in Afghanistan with the door open, on an exposed balcony at a hotel and on a plane where he allegedly groped a woman." (One of these encounters involved an accusation of rape.) When subordinates confronted the general with his out-of-control behavior with women he reportedly said, "I'm a general, I'll do whatever the [expletive] I want."

     On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, the second day of the Article 32 hearing, the female Army captain took the stand and testified that the defendant had initiated their three-year sexual affair in 2008 while they were stationed at a forward operations base in Iraq. In Afghanistan he threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about their relationship. On two occasions the Brigadier General, following a conversation in which the captain tried to end the relationship, exposed himself then forced her to perform oral sex. In Afghanistan Sinclair was so controlling he told the captain how much water she could drink as well as where and when she could use the bathroom.

     On several occasions during the captain's testimony she broke down in tears. Seated at the defendant's table the general rolled his eyes, sighed audibly and glared at his former aide. The witness avoided eye contact with the general. "I was extremely intimidated by him," she said. "Everyone in the brigade spoke about him like he was a god." The witness said she had taken his threats seriously because of his Ranger training and his reputation of fearlessness in battle. The captain reported the general after finding messages from another woman in his email account.

     On cross-examination, the general's attorney tried to portray this witness as a jilted lover seeking revenge. The defense attorney also pointed out that his client passed a polygraph test in which he denied forcing the captain into oral sex. The cross-examining lawyer also introduced explicit test messages the captain had sent to the general in which she referred to him as "Mr. Sexy Pants." The witness had also expressed her love and admiration for General Sinclair, comparing him, in a birthday card inscription to General Washington, a man he admired. In response to the cross-examiner's questions the captain at one point said, "In a (expletive)-up way, I still love him. I don't want him to be mad at me."

     The next day prosecutors put a second woman on the stand who testified that she first met the general when she was a staff sergeant serving in Afghanistan. They did not have a sexual relationship, but over the years stayed in touch. In 2011, when the witness was married and a captain, the general asked her to send him nude photographs of herself. (They hadn't seen each other in years.) After several of these requests the captain downloaded photographs from a porn site, cropped the head of a model onto a woman posing nude, and sent the photographs to Sinclair. The general didn't realize the images where not of the captain. For her participation in this bizarre exercise the Army issued this officer a letter of reprimand.  

     Another female officer took the stand and testified that in 2010 she sent the general photographs of her breasts. At the time they were both stationed at Fort Bragg. The major, a company commander under Sinclair, was disciplined in this matter for so-called "indecent acts."

     On November 8, 2012, in her closing argument, defense attorney Major Elizabeth Ramsey painted the general's primary accuser as a scorned lover who was trying to ruin the life of an outstanding warrior and patriot. "Her lies are her fury, and these charges are Jeff Sinclair's hell," she said.

     The prosecutor, Lieutenant-Colonel William Helixon, in his closing presentation, drew a different picture of the defendant by stating that, "General Sinclair has engaged in a deliberate, degrading course of conduct where he targets his subordinates to satisfy his abhorrent desires."

     Under the military system of justice there are no minimum sentencing guidelines. This meant that if the case went to trial and the general was convicted of all charges he could avoid punishment. The judge could demote him, allow him to retire, dismiss him from the Army or send him to prison for life. Experts on military justice who were following this case did not think the general, if convicted, would be sent to prison.

     On November 15, 2012, about a week after the close of the four-day Article 32 hearing (the hearing officer had not yet made his ruling regarding whether the case would proceed to court-martial), General Sinclair's wife Rebecca, in an 800-word opinion column for the Washington Post, blamed her husband's infidelity on "the stress of war." Mrs. Sinclair said she was certain the sex offense charges against the general would be dropped. 

     The Sinclair case didn't generate much media interest until the sex-scandals regarding Generals David H. Petraeus and John R. Allen became news. Even though General Sinclair was charged with crimes that could put him away for life, the scandals involving David Petraeus, Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley dominated the news. That was because General Petraeus was Director of the CIA and a key player in the Benghazi massacre.

     In the end General Sinclair was spared a prison sentence in favor of a $20,000 fine. He was only the third Army general to face court-martial in sixty years.

Natalie Wood's Death: Accident or Murder?

     If you're familiar with the name Natalie Wood you're probably either a film or true crime buff. However, in the 1960s and 70s the film star was a household name married to the actor Robert Wagner. She died suddenly and violently on November 29, 1981, and according to the orthodox version of her death, she died by accidental drowning. At the time Wood's death was news because she was a movie star. Today it's in the news as tabloid true crime reportage.

      There were only a few doubters at the time of her death. Most people accepted the following story of how the 43-year-old actress died: On the evening of her demise she had dinner with her husband and actor Christopher Walken at Doug's Harbour Reef on Catalina Island off the Los Angeles coast. After dinner that included the consumption of alcohol, the three actors returned to Wagner's yacht "Splendour" where they continued to drink. An argument broke out between the two men. As the story goes, Mr. Walken angered Wagner by suggesting that Wood put her acting career ahead of her husband and her children. After Wood took leave of the men the actors calmed down and bid each other goodnight. Wood was not in the stateroom when her husband returned.

     After returning to his room Robert Wagner heard a noise on deck that made him think that Natalie was un-tying a dinghy roped to the yacht. Wagner figured his angry wife was returning to shore in the little boat. Several hours later Wood's body was discovered floating in the ocean. She was wearing a long nightgown, socks and a down jacket. The dinghy was located a mile from the yacht and a mile from where Wood's body was recovered. When officials boarded the yacht to inform Mr. Wagner of the discovery of his wife's corpse he reportedly asked the captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, to identify the body for him.

     Los Angeles County Coroner and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Noguchi performed the autopsy. Known as "the coroner to the stars," Dr. Noguchi had autopsied, among other celebrities, Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Janis Joplin, William Holden, John Belushi and Sharon Tate. Regarding Natalie Wood, Dr. Noguchi ruled she had died from accidental drowning. The forensic pathologist considered the bruise on Wood's left cheek and the several other abrasions on her body consistent with accidentally falling off the boat. The forensic pathologist wrote about the autopsy in his 1983 bestseller, Coroner.

     The vast majority of drowning deaths are accidental. A few are suicidal and the rest are homicides. While an autopsy can establish the cause of death in such cases (asphyxia), the manner of death is usually determined by an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the drowning. Did the deceased fall into the water, jump in, or did someone throw the victim into the drink against his or her will? Forensic pathology alone seldom answers these questions.

     In 2000 Vanity Fair published an article about the Natalie Wood case that featured an interview of the Wagner yacht captain, Dennis Davern. Mr. Davern had been the fourth person on the yacht that night. Although he had not said this to investigators in 1981, Davern claimed that Natalie Wood had been killed by her husband, Robert Wagner. He said he had heard the couple arguing loudly just before she went missing. According to the captain's more recent story, Mr. Wagner had coached him on what to say to the police after he had waited four hours before calling the coastguard. Davern's critics accused him of fishing for a lucrative book deal.

     In 2009 Dennis Davern's version of the case appeared in Goodby Natalie, Goodby Splendour, a book he co-authored with his friend Marti Rulli. The captain's shocking accusation gained little attention in the media. True crime books featuring revisionist accounts of old celebrated cases had become common.

    In November 2009 Los Angeles Sheriff's Office Lieutenant John Corina, at a press conference, announced that the agency was looking into Natalie Wood's death. Lieutenant Corina noted that Robert Wagner was not a suspect in her death. Obviously, if the manner of Wood's death was changed to homicide, who else would emerge as the suspect--Christopher Walken? Dennis Davern? "We're going to re-interview some people, talk to some new people, and reevaluate some evidence," Corina said. According to the lieutenant the intense media coverage had led to several tips his officers would be following up. (Tips generated by media exposure almost always consist of useless information from mentally unbalanced, lonely people who often claim psychic powers. Following up on these dead-end leads consumes a lot of investigative time.)

     A witness in November 2009 came forward with new information regarding the circumstances surrounding Natalie Wood's death. Marilyn Wayne told investigators that at eleven o'clock on the night the actress went into the ocean, Wayne and her boyfriend, on a nearby craft, heard a woman scream, "Help me, I'm drowning!" The couple heard these cries for up to fifteen minutes. Wayne told investigators that she and her boyfriend could see nothing in the dark. They called the harbor patrol but no one answered. They called for a helicopter but it didn't arrive. According to this witness the police never questioned her or her boyfriend. Moreover, she received a threatening note cautioning her to remain silent.

     In February 2018 the CBS television show "48-Hours" reported that according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Robert Wagner was a "person of interest" in the investigation of Natalie Wood's death. However, upon conclusion of the cold-case inquiry the manner of death in the Natalie Wood case remained accidental drowning.

     In May 2020 HBO aired "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind," a documentary about Wood's life and death. The documentary featured Robert Wagner's first on air interview about the case.

Murder on the Crow Indian Reservation

     The Crow Indian Reservation, 3,500 square miles covering parts of Big Horn, Yellowstone and Treasure Counties in southern Montana, is home to 8,000 tribe members. Geographically, it is America's fifth largest Indian enclave. In these jurisdictions serious crimes are federal offenses principally investigated by the FBI. Tribal police handle everything else. In many of these nations within a nation rates of unemployment, alcoholism and crime are significantly higher than the national average.

     Mary Agnes Leider, the mother of a three-year-old girl named Tannielle, lived with her mother in the Big Horn County town of St. Xavier on the Crow Reservation. On December 3, 2012 at four in the morning she and her two brothers, after a night of drinking in Hardin, Montana, were on their way home in a Dodge pickup driven by her brother Wally. Leider and her brothers had consumed a quart of gin and sixty beers. Mary, with her daughter sitting on her lap sat in the front while her brother Arland rode in the back seat.

     Wally Leider was driving 50 miles-per-hour on Highway 313 south of Hardin when Mary opened the truck door and tossed Tannielle out of the vehicle. Wally jammed on the brakes and ran back to find the child. He found her lying on the highway with blood gushing from the back of her head. Because the little girl didn't seem to be breathing he assumed she was dead.

     When Mr. Leider returned to the vehicle with Tannielle's unresponsive body in his arms he told his sister and brother to get out of the truck. With his niece lying on the back seat Wally drove toward St. Xavier with Mary and Orland sitting on the side of the road crying.

     Georgina Denny, the siblings' mother, was driving north on Highway 313 in search of her children and granddaughter when she passed Wally going the other direction. After both vehicles came to a stop Georgina saw Tannielle and learned from Wally how she had died.

     A deputy with the Big Horn Sheriff's Office found Mary and Arland still sitting along Highway 313 crying uncontrollably. Mary Leider told the officer that she and Wally had been arguing over how fast he was driving. (He was, in fact, driving under the speed limit.) According to Mary, when Wally stopped the vehicle abruptly she banged her head on the dashboard. When she came to Tannielle was gone. Mary said that's all she could remember. While the deputy spoke to the dead girl's mother police officers  questioned Wally and Georgina.

     Doctors at the Hardin Memorial Hospital pronounced Tannielle dead on arrival. At the same hospital, a FBI agent arranged to have samples taken of Mary's Leider's blood. (Her blood-alcohol level measured 0.24, three times the Montana threshold for driving under the influence.)

     While being questioned at the hospital Mary Leider alternated between her story that Tannielle had died in some kind of traffic accident and "I killed my baby."

     According to the Montana State Medical Examiner's Office Tannielle had died from severe head injuries. The medical examiner classified her death as homicide.

     The United States Attorney for the state of Montana charged Mary Agnes Leider with second-degree murder, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of life in prison. The federal magistrate denied the suspect's bond and appointed a public defender to represent her.

     On July 24, 2013, in a Billings, Montana courtroom, Mary Leider pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder charge.

     On October 21, 3013 United States District Judge Donald Molloy, before imposing his sentence, said that in his eighteen years on the bench he had never encountered such depravity in a criminal case. The judge said the details of the offense made him nauseous. Because the judge wanted to keep the defendant from doing further harm he sentenced her to twenty-one years in prison. (Leider's attorney had asked for a fifteen-year sentence.) Judge Molloy also said he wanted to send a message about the dangers of alcohol abuse on the Crow Reservation.

     Mary Leider, after receiving her sentence, said, "Words can't explain anything. Nothing can bring her back and I have to live with that."

The Edward and Eric Campbell Murder Case

     On the morning of January 1, 2015, 54-year-old Edward Campbell and his 21-year-old son Eric, a pair of criminals from Texas, invaded the home of Jerome and Dora Faulkner in Oxford, North Carolina. Before that, on September 2014, the elder Campbell assaulted his own wife with a firearm and had since jumped bail on that case.

     After shooting to death Mr. Faulkner, 73 and his 62-year-old wife Dora, a pair of randomly picked victims, Edward Campbell and his son placed their bodies beneath a mattress in the back of Mr. Faulkner's red Chevrolet pickup truck. They set fire to the Faulkner house and with the father behind the wheel of Mr. Faulkner's pickup, and his son Eric driving Mrs. Faulkner's white Chevrolet SUV, the killers headed west in the stolen vehicles.

     The retired Mr. Faulkner had been a volunteer fire chief and his wife a registered nurse.

     At four in the afternoon of the double murder, Lewisburg, West Virginia police officers Nicholas Sams, a rookie just out of the police academy and his partner Lieutenant Jeremy Dove, while driving on Interstate 64 in Greenbrier County, spotted the stolen SUV driven by Eric Campbell. The officers pulled the vehicle over.

     As the West Virginia police officers sat in their patrol car behind Mrs. Faulkner's SUV, Edward Campbell pulled off the highway, got out of the stolen red pickup truck and approached the two officers with his handgun drawn. When he reached the police car Edward Campbell fired several shots into the vehicle. One bullet entered officer Sam's back and another grazed his head. Campbell shot Lieutenant Dove in the chest and neck. Both officers were wearing bullet-proof vests.

    One of the wounded police officers returned fire, striking Edward Campbell in the leg. Campbell limped into a wooded area where, ten minutes later a deputy with the Greenbrier County Sheriff's Office took him into custody.

     Shortly after his father's arrest, Eric Campbell, having driven away from the shooting scene, pulled off Interstate 64 and waited for officers to arrest him. When officers searched the stolen red pickup truck they discovered the bodies of the murdered North Carolina couple.

     Paramedics rushed the wounded police officers to the Greenbrier Valley Medical Center where they were listed in stable condition. Edward Campbell was hospitalized for the bullet wound in his leg.

     A Greenbrier County prosecutor charged the father, Edward Campbell, with two counts of malicious assault and attempted murder of a police officer. Back in North Carolina a prosecutor charged Edward and Eric Campbell with double murder, arson, burglary and car theft. In the meantime, the suspects were held in West Virginia under $500,000 bond.

     Eric and Edward Campbell were extradited to North Carolina on the murder, arson, burglary and car theft charges in February 2015. The following month, Greenville County District Attorney Michael Waters, in an April 8, 2015 hearing in Oxford, North Carolina, petitioned the court to seek the death penalty against Eric Campbell. The judge granted the request.

     In March 2016, the father, Edward Campbell, committed suicide while in custody awaiting his trials.

     Eric Campbell, facing the death penalty, told investigators that his father was a drug addict and methamphetamine manufacturer who had physically and psychologically abused him for years. Eric Campbell also claimed to have been diagnosed with ADHD as a child. He said he had been prescribed Adderall that his father had stolen from him for re-sale.

     In August 2017 a jury sitting in Oxford, North Carolina, after three hours of deliberation, found Eric Campbell guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. A month later Superior Court Judge Henry Hight sentenced Campbell to life in prison. In speaking directly to the convicted double murderer, Judge Hight said, "You need to thank God and this jury and the fact you're in the state of North Carolina that your life has been spared." 

     Both of the police officers survived their wounds.

Nathan Ballard: Protecting a Politically Powerful Arrestee

        In 2020, 51-year-old Nathan Ballard resided with his 36-year-old wife Mara in Kentfield, California, a Marin County suburb just north of San Francisco. Described as one of the best places to live in the state, Kentfield was also one of the most expensive places to call home. The couple resided with their four children, two boys and two girls. The two oldest at 11 and 12 were from a former marriage. The younger children were 4 and 18 months old.

     Nathan Ballard, in 2000, worked as an assistant district attorney in San Francisco with Kamala Harris and other local prosecutors. In February 2007 after Gavin Newsom was elected mayor of San Francisco, Nathan Ballard became his communications director. In October 2009 Mr. Ballard resigned his position with the mayor's office to begin a career in public relations. He handled public relations for the political campaigns of several prominent Democrat candidates in California and elsewhere. In 2014, after Gavin Newsom was elected to his second term as Lieutenant Governor of California, his wife Jennifer Siebel introduced Nathan Ballard to Mara Reinhardt, a pilates instructor and the owner of Parallel Pilates Studio in Larkspur, a Marin County community 13 miles north of San Francisco. Nathan and Mara were married two years later. Gavin Newsom officiated at the couple's wedding. In 2018 Gavin Newsom was elected Governor of California.

     Known as the "Media Whisperer", Nathan Ballard in 2016 formed his San Francisco based public relations firm, The Press Store. Whenever a California Democrat politician found him or herself in a public relations crisis for something they said or did, Nathan Ballard was there to either make the problem go away or mitigate the damage. This was, of course, an expensive service that only the rich and powerful could afford. When an ordinary citizen runs afoul of the law or says something that costs him or her their job or subjects them to contempt or ridicule they are on their own. There is no "Media Whisperer" to rescue non-elites in their time of need.

     Nathan Ballard and The Press Store served dozens of rich and powerful clients that included the Democrat National Committee, the California Democrat party, the Getty family, the Golden State Warriors basketball team and the California Labor Federation. Nathan Ballard was also on the board of the Representation Project, a non-profit organization started by Governor Newsom's wife Jennifer to advance women's rights. 

     In 2016 the San Francisco Police Officers Association hired Nathan Ballard following the controversial police-involved shooting of a black man named Mario Woods. Critics of the fatal encounter accused the police department of being a racist agency. A 2016 profile of Nathan Ballard in San Francisco Magazine described him as one of the city's "preeminent media whisperers" with "a junk yard persona."

     In February 2019 Nathan Ballard opened a second public relations office in Sacramento. That year he acquired, among other clients, the 30,000 member California Correctional Peace Officers Association and a statewide coalition of legal cannabis companies. Ballard, as a high profile Democrat strategist and pundit, was also a frequent talkshow guest on California television and radio. 

     In April 2019, in a University of California Hastings Law School alumni publication called U.C. Hastings Magazine, Mr. Ballard, in a piece entitled "Gamechanger," was quoted as follows: "In my crisis communications work, I parachute into a situation that I may know nothing about on day one. But I have to use my people skills and critical thinking skills to get up to speed quickly, face the media, and deal with questions about the toughest topics." In the puff piece Mr. Ballard said that when growing up his parents encouraged him to have political conversations with house guests like Cesar Chavez and Jane Fonda.

     In November 2019 Mr. Ballard was featured in another puff piece published in Better magazine entitled "The Bay Area's Most Successful Dads." In that article he talked about enjoying fatherhood and how important his children were to him.

     On Saturday, October 17, 2020, Nathan Ballard, his wife Mara and their two youngest children were spending the weekend at the luxurious Carneros Resort and Spa in Napa, California. The next morning Mara Ballard called the Napa County Sheriff's Office and related the following: The previous night, after her husband had consumed a large quantity of alcohol and some marijuana, he pushed her with both hands through a glass paneled door causing her injuries to the back of her head. Following that assault he took a pillow off his bed and placed it over the face of their 4-year-old daughter, then laid on the pillow. After rescuing the child, Mara and the children fled to another room.

     When sheriff's deputies arrived to interview Mara Ballard her husband was no longer at the resort. The next day Nathan Ballard turned himself in. After refusing to answer questions regarding his wife's accusations he was booked him into the Napa County Jail on the felony charges of willful cruelty to a child with possible injury and death, and domestic violence in connection with pushing his wife through a glass door.

      On the day of his incarceration Nathan Ballard made his $75,000 bail and was released. On November 11, 2020 a judge issued a temporary restraining order to keep him away from his family. 

     Normally, whenever an ordinary citizen is charged with a crime as serious as trying to suffocate a child and pushing a woman through a glass door, journalists will learn of the arrest through public records and immediately report what they have found. When such an arrestee is celebrity or a person of some stature, because of public interest, journalists will dig a little deeper to get a fuller story. But in the case of an arrestee who was a powerful Democrat media professional connected to all the right people leading all the way up to the governor and his wife, local journalists were simply not interested in this news story. In fact, they ignored it and as a result nothing appeared in the press regarding the arrest of a powerful Democrat accused of assaulting his 4-year-old daughter and his wife. 

     On Thursday, December 3, 2020, 46 days after Nathan Ballard's arrest, journalists with the news outlet Politico broke the story of Nathan Ballard's arrest for domestic abuse. The story included the following statement issued by Ballard's attorney, Anthony Bass: "I am confident that my client, Nathan Ballard, will be fully acquitted of the charges after the district attorney's office has a chance to review the facts and learn all sides of the story. Nate is a well respected professional and member of the bar with a spotless ethical record. He has no criminal history. Nate knows that he is not perfect, but he is facing his own challenges head-on. After nearly eight years of continuous sobriety, Nate resumed drinking in April after his father died. He is now clean and sober again, and he is currently in a residential recovery program to deal with his drinking problem in a responsible, comprehensive manner. He is a good father, he has his children's best interests at heart, and he wants to resolve this matter privately, quickly, and fairly for their sake."

     Attorney Bass, regarding his client's wife Mara, said she "would testify under oath that he has never been violent toward her, their minor son, nor their minor daughter." Just hours after that comment, attorney Bass retracted the statement. 

     Politico, in their story, included the following text message they had received from Nathan Ballard: "I've spent my career in crisis communications fighting on behalf of the wrongfully accused, and now for the first time, I really know what it feels like to be in their shoes. I will be exonerated. I love my children more than anything on earth, and will be reunited."

     Following the Politico bombshell a spokesperson for The Representation Project announced that Nathan Ballard had resigned from the board on October 19, 2020.  

     On October 23, 2020, six days after the alleged assault at the Napa resort, Mara Ballard filed for divorce in Marin County.

     In May 2021 the Napa County District Attorney reduced the charges against Nathan Ballard to misdemeanors that did not require prison time. In return Mr. Ballard agreed to stay away from his children for six years. 

The Jerame Reid Police-Involved Shooting Case

      On the night of December 30, 2014 in Brighton, New Jersey, a Cumberland County town of 25,000 south of Philadelphia, Bridgeton police officers Roger Worley and Braheme Days pulled over a Jaguar for running a stop sign. Officer Worley was behind the wheel of the patrol car.

     Officer Days approached the passenger side of the Jaguar and asked the two men in the car how they were doing. The passenger, 30-year-old Jerame Reid, said, "Good, how you doing, officer?"

     A few months earlier officer Days had arrested Jerame Reid for possession of drugs. As a teenager Reid had been convicted of shooting at police officers. The judge sent him to prison for twelve years.

     A few seconds after approaching the Jaguar, officer Days spotted a handgun in the glove compartment. He said, "Don't move! Show me your hands!"

     On the other side of the vehicle officer Worley pointed his gun at the driver, Leroy Tutt. Mr. Tutt sat in the driver's seat with his hands sticking out of the car door window where they could be seen. Officer Worley called for backup.

     Officer Days reached into the Jaguar and removed a silver handgun from the glove box. To the vehicle's occupants he said, "You reach for something you're going to be (expletive) dead!"

     One of the men in the stopped car said, "I got no reason to reach for nothing." Again officer Days warned, "Hey Jerame, you reach for something you're going to be (expletive) dead!"

     As Jerame Reid opened the front passenger door, he said, "I'm getting out of the car." By now officer Worley had joined officer Days on that side of the vehicle. Both officers had their guns drawn. Mr. Reid climbed out of the vehicle and when he stood up his hands were raised to the level of his chest in the officers' plain view.

     A few seconds after Jerame Reid exited the Jaguar officer Days shot him. Officer Worley also fired his gun but missed his target.  The shot man collapsed to the ground and died on the spot. He did not possess a firearm.

     The police-involved shooting incident was caught on the officers' dashboard camera. The chief of police placed both officers on administrative leave and turned the case over to the Cumberland County prosecutor's office.

     Shortly after receiving the case, Cumberland County prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae recused herself from the inquiry because she had personal ties to officer Days. First Assistant prosecutor Harold Shapiro took over the investigation.

     Critics of the way the authorities handled the case called for either a special prosecutor or an intervention by the state attorney general's office. Protestors, notwithstanding the fact that Jerame Reid and the officer who shot him were black, claimed racism.

    In February 2015, three months after Mr. Reid's death, a local newspaper reported that in 2011 Jerame Reid had filed a $100,000 lawsuit against the Cumberland County Department of Corrections, Warden Robert Balicki and three corrections officers. Reid claimed the jail guards assaulted him in October 2009. According to Reid the officers, without provocation or justification, repeatedly punched, kicked and pepper sprayed his face then threw a bucket of water on him as he lay on the cell floor.

     As a result of the beating Reid said he suffered broken ribs and a fractured left orbital bone that left him without sensation and nerve damage to his lips and cheek area. According to court documents the encounter began after Reid confronted another inmate over stolen belongings. The accused inmate told correction officers that Reid possessed a sharp object.

     Responding jail guards handcuffed Reid and placed him into another cell. According to the plaintiff, after he made a comment to one of the officers they gave him the beating. (The officers alleged that Reid threw the first punch.)

     Reid's lawyer, in court documents, said the corrections officers, after an internal investigation were disciplined for not filing a use of force report. The matter was not referred to the local prosecutor's office for investigation.

     As a result of the plaintiff's death the lawsuit against the county, the warden and the correction officers was dismissed.

     After a federal prosecutor decided not to pursue the shooting incident against the officers the case, in April 2016, went before a local grand jury. The grand jurors declined to indict either officer. In July 2016 members of Mr. Reid's family settled a federal lawsuit against the police department for an undisclosed amount.

The Lance T. Mason Murder Case

     In 1985 Lance T. Mason graduated from Shaker Heights High School in upscale suburban Cleveland, Ohio. After earning his B.A. from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio Mr. Mason received a law degree from the University of Michigan. Not long out of law school he became an assistant prosecuting attorney for Cuyahoga County, Ohio. From 2002 to 2006 he served as an elected representative in the Ohio House of Representatives. 

     Lance Mason in 2007 advanced his political career by being elected to Ohio's 25th State Senate District. A year later Ohio governor Ted Strickland appointed him to fill a judicial vacancy on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. After seven years on the bench, the arc of Judge Mason's career in law took a sudden downward turn.

     On August 2, 2014 police officers took the judge into custody after he punched his wife Aisha Fraser twenty times and bashed her head five times against the dashboard of their vehicle. During the attack he also bit her and threatened to kill her. The couple's children, four and six, witnessed the prolonged assault.

     Aisha Fraser, a sixth grade teacher in the Shaker Heights School District, was so badly injured she had to undergo reconstructive surgery on her face. Following Judge Mason's arrest detectives searched his home and found an array of handguns, 2,500 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, smoke grenades, semi-automatic rifles and a sword.

     Two days after the assault Aisha Fraser filed for divorce. (She later sued her ex-husband and won $150,000 in damages.)

     On August 13, 2015 Lance Mason was allowed to plead guilty to attempted felonious assault and domestic violence in return for a sentence of two years. Following his sentencing, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty told reporters that "I am confident he [Mason] will leave prison rehabilitated and will again be an asset to our community." 

     On September 3, 2015 the Ohio Supreme Court suspended Lance Mason from practicing law. The convicted felon, a couple of weeks later, resigned from his seat on the bench.

      While sentenced lightly for two years, the man who severely beat his wife walked out of prison after serving only nine months behind bars. As a condition of his early release he was ordered to write his ex-wife a letter of apology.

     Shortly following the ex-judge's early--most would say premature--release from prison, Cleveland Mayor Frank Johnson hired the convicted wife beater as a minority business development director.

     On Saturday November 17, 2018, the dispatcher with the Shaker Heights Police Department received a frantic call from Lance Mason's sister who reported that her brother had just stabbed his ex-wife Aisha Fraser to death in his home. The victim had arrived at Mason's house to drop off their children for a visit.

     As police officers rolled up to the murder scene, Mason, in his attempt to avoid custody stole his ex-wife's car and drove into a police vehicle, seriously injuring the officer. Police arrested Mason after he ran back to his house after crashing into the police car. The injured officer was rushed to the hospital.

     On November 29, 2018 a grand jury sitting in Cleveland indicted Lance Mason on charges of felonious assault, violating a protection order and grand theft of his 45-year-old ex-wife's car. A week later the grand jury indicted the 51-year-old former judge on the charge of aggravated murder. At his arraignment hearing, Lance Mason pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on $5 million bond.

     On September 12, 2019, after pleading guilty to the murder of Alisha Fraser, the judge sentenced the 52-year-old defendant to life in prison with the chance of parole in 30 years. Mr. Mason was sentenced to an additional five years for violating probation, assaulting a police officer and stealing his ex-wife's car. 

The Tick Tock Diner Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 1987 Alex Sgourdos and his two brothers-in-law bought the Tick Tock Diner on New Jersey's Route 3 west of the Meadowlands a few miles from the Lincoln Tunnel that takes you under the Hudson River into midtown Manhattan. The diner not only became a successful business enterprise, it grew into a New Jersey landmark. (Scenes from a dozen movies took place in the diner.)

     In February 2013 one of the diner's managers, 45-year-old Georgious Spyropoulos, tried to hire a hitman to kill his Uncle Alex Sgourdos. Mr. Spyropoulos was married to the daughter of one of Mr. Sgourdos' partners.

     In late February 2013 Mr. Spyropoulos asked a regular patron of the diner if he could put him in touch with a professional killer. The man Spyropoulos reached out to happened to be a regular informant for the New Jersey State Police. As is often the case, the murder-for-hire plot unraveled before it got off the ground.

     In March, 2013 the police informant came to the diner with an undercover officer playing the role of a contract killer. Later that month at a meeting in a nearby Home Depot parking lot, Georgious Spyropoulos and the undercover cop discussed how the murder-for-hire target would be killed. According to court records, the hitman was to enter Mr. Sgourdos' 6,000-square foot house late on a Sunday night after the diner owner had deposited that day's receipts in his home safe. (The daily receipts usually came to about $20,000.) The mastermind provided the phony hitman with instructions on how to circumvent the dwelling's security system, and said that if the target's wife got in the way she should be murdered as well.

     Mr. Spyropoulos, according to police affidavits, informed the hitman that his uncle kept a lot of cash in his safe. To acquire the combination, the mastermind suggested that torture might be required. "You can get anything out of anybody with a pair of pliers," he said.

     According to the plan, after the hitman murdered Mr. Sgourdos, Georgious Spyropoulos wanted the body disposed of in a way that would cause the authorities to treat the matter as a missing persons case. Mr. Spyropoulos handed the undercover cop $3,000 and a revolver and said they would split whatever was in the Tick Tock Diner owner's safe. Hinting that the Sgourdos hit would be one of a series of murder assignments, Spyropoulos said, "We'll have a lot more to do." (As is always the case the entire murder-for-hire conversation was taped by the police.)

     On April 9, 2013, officers with the New Jersey State Police entered the Tick Tock Diner at noon and took Georgios Spyropoulos into custody. Charged with conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder, the suspect was incarcerated in the Passaic County Jail on $1 million bond.

     On July 13, 2014 Georgios Spyropoulos pleaded guilty to plotting the murder of his uncle. In September 2014 Passaic County Judge Ernest Caposela sentenced Mr. Spropoulos to eight years in prison. He could have been sent to prison for up to 30 years.

     According to the state prosecutor who handled the case, Mr. Spyropoulos, even after he entered his guilty plea, showed no remorse for his role in the murder-for-hire plot. He was eligible for parole in less than seven years.

     When it comes to sentencing, our criminal justice system often makes no sense. 

Earmark Identification in the David Wayne Kunze Case

     In the early morning hours of December 16, 1994 near Vancouver, Washington, an intruder entered James McCann's bedroom and bludgeoned him to death. In another bedroom the burglar fractured the skull of McCann's son who managed, after the attack, to crawl outside where the 20-year-old was discovered by a passerby. Questioned at the hospital the boy told the police he hadn't gotten a good look at the attacker whom he described as 25 to 35 years old, dark complexioned, about six feet tall and of medium build. George Miller, a fingerprint examiner with the Washington State Crime Lab lifted a latent ear-print off the surface of James McCann's bedroom door. The killer had apparently pressed his head against the door listening for signs of activity before entering the room. Miller processed the house for fingerprints as well but they all turned out to belong to occupants of the dwelling.

     Although he had red hair and didn't otherwise fit the general description of the killer, the police suspected David Wayne Kunze, the 45-year-old ex-husband of the woman James McCann was about to marry. When Mr. Kunze learned of the upcoming marriage four days before the murder he was upset. This led investigators to suspect that he attacked the victims out of jealousy and rage. The intruder had stolen McCann's television set, VCR, stereo speakers and wallet, an aspect of the case detectives explained away by theorizing that Kunze took these things to throw investigators off his trail. Convinced that the scene had been staged to look like a burglary, the police made no effort to identify a homicidal intruder through the missing property. David Kunze consented to a search of his truck, boat, storage locker and safety deposit box. Detectives found nothing in those places that connected him to the McCann home invasion and murder.

     Three months passed without further developments in the investigation. Then Michael Grubb, a criminalist with the Washington State Crime Lab, compared the partial ear-print latent with photographs of Kunze's left ear and concluded that it "could have been made by David Kunze." Six months later, on September 21, 1995, Mr. Kunze voluntarily agreed to have fingerprint examiner George Miller and Michael Grubb take seven exemplar prints of his left ear. The criminalists applied hand lotion to the suspect's ear then placed panes of glass against it using various degrees of pressure. Following that procedure the criminalists dusted the glass with fingerprint powder then lifted the prints with transparent tape.

     Michael Grubb compared the seven exemplars with the crime scene ear latent and concluded that "David Kunze is the likely source for the ear-print and cheek-print that were lifted from the outside of the bedroom door at the homicide scene." George Miller, the crime lab fingerprint analyst, declined to offer an opinion regarding the identification of the crime scene ear latent. He said he identified fingerprints not earmarks. In June 1996, a year and a half after the murder and eight months after Michael Grubb identified the crime scene ear-print, the Clark County prosecutor charged David Kunze with aggravated murder, assault, robbery and burglary.

     In a pretrial motion to exclude the ear-print identification Mr. Kunze's attorney petitioned the judge for a so-called Frye hearing. In 1923 a U. S. District Court in Washington D. C. held that lie detection technology had not been accepted in the general scientific community as a legitimate science. As a result, lie detection results did not constitute admissible evidence. This ruling became known as the "general acceptance test." To determine if latent ear-print identification was an accepted function within the forensic science community the prosecutor and defense attorney in the Kunze case offered expert witnesses on both sides of the issue in a Frye hearing held in December 1996. This would be the most thorough in-depth judicial/scientific review of ear-print identification in legal and criminalistic history.

     On the issue of latent ear-print identification as a legitimate forensic science the prosecution presented three advocates against the defense's twelve witnesses, who in varying degrees were not enthusiastic about this form of pattern analysis. Michael Grubb, the manager of the Washington State Crime Lab in Seattle who had identified the crime scene ear-print as probably Kunze's, testified that comparing an earmark to a known ear print was not unlike other forms of impression identification. A criminalist who specialized in bullet-striation and tool-mark identification, Grubb said that if you can analyze patterns made by tires, shoes, fingers, gun barrels and tools you can render an opinion on the source of an earmark.

     The next prosecution witness, Alfred V. Iannarelli, said he had studied the evidence in the McCann murder case and was certain that the crime scene earmark was an "exact" match to Kunze's left ear. Iannarelli had never worked in a crime lab, had not been to college and had testified only once as an expert witness. He had been a deputy sheriff with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and the chief of campus security at California State University at Hayward. From 1948 to 1962 Mr. Iannarelli had photographed 7,000 ears and from this database concluded that no two ears are the same. He had also devised an ear classification system based upon twelve "anthropometric measurements," a system featured in his 1964 book, The Iannarelli System of Ear Identification. In 1989  Iannarelli self-published a second edition of this text, titled Ear Identification which included a section on latent earmark analysis. He was unable, however, to cite any ear-print studies other than his own, which explained why his books didn't contain bibliographies.

     In ear-print identification it became clear there were no texts other than Iannarelli's, no community of experts, no section within any crime lab that specialized in this kind of work and no professional organizations or certifying bodies. Besides Mr. Iannarelli there was one other analyst devoted solely to this form of identification. If anyone could claim to be an internationally known ear-print expert it was a police officer from Amsterdam named Cornelius Van der Lugt. It was therefore not surprising that Van der Lugt had examined the McCann murder scene evidence and was the third prosecution expert at the Frye hearing. Van der Lugt had become interested in the ear-print identification field after reading Iannarelli's books in the early 1990s and had since analyzed ear-print evidence in 200 cases in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and several countries in Western Europe. He had testified as an expert in six trials, all of which were in Holland where judges, not juries, determined a defendant's guilt or innocence.

     According to Cornelius Van der Lugt, many suspects when presented with his expert ear-print analysis, confessed and pleaded guilty. In one case a suspect admitted putting his ear to the door but denied breaking in to the structure. Van der Lugt never worked in a crime laboratory, attended college or received any kind of formal training in science. He was certain, however, that David Kunze was the source of the McCann murder latent ear-print. As part of his Frye testimony Van der Lugt praised the work done by Michael Grubb and George Miller in obtaining the seven ear-print exemplars, noting how they had varied the amount of pressure against the ear until the known and crime scene prints looked alike. When asked if ear-print identification as a forensic science was accepted around the world, Van der Lugt said that it was.

     While the Kunze prosecution could not have put on a stronger case for ear-print identification, it was arguably not enough to meet the Frye standards. In other words, at least in theory, Kunze's defense attorney could not win the Frye debate without mounting an anti-ear-print case. Leaving nothing to chance the defense hit back with a dozen impressive witnesses, leading off with Dr. Ellis Kerley, a physical anthropologist and former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Dr. Kerley said it was reasonable to assume that no two ears were the same but he wasn't sure this uniqueness would always reveal itself in a crime scene earmark. He didn't consider Iannarelli's books works of science and didn't approve of Van der Lugt's technique of getting an exemplar to match a crime scene latent by varying the pressure against the suspect's ear. "We don't do that in science...because we're not trying to make them look alike," he said. In Dr. Kerley's opinion ear-print identification had not achieved general acceptance in the forensic science community.

     Andre Moenssens, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the author of articles and law school texts on forensic science and a former fingerprint expert in Belgium, testified that the "forensic sciences...do not recognize, as a separate discipline the identification of ear impressions. There are people in the forensic science community, the broader forensic science community, who feel that it can be done. But if we are talking about a general acceptance by scientists, there is no such general acceptance....To my knowledge, there has been no investigation in the possible rate of error that comparisons between known and unknown ear samples might produce."

     Following the Frye testimony of ten other recognized forensic scientists who did not consider latent ear-print identification a true science, the judge ruled that ear-print identification had in fact gained general acceptance in the scientific community. The decision was stunning in that it was so out of sync with the weight of the expert testimony. It was certainly bad news for David Kunze because the prosecution had no case without the ear-print evidence.

     The case went to trial on June 25, 1997. The prosecutor chose not to put Alfred Iannarelli on the stand but the jury heard the testimony of state criminalist Michael Grubb and the ear-print guru Cornelius Van der Lugt. The prosecution ear-print analysts were followed to the stand by a jailhouse informant who claimed that Kunze had confessed to him while in custody. The prosecution rested its case without identifying the murder weapon, connecting the defendant to the crime scene through DNA or fingerprints, or linking him to any of the items taken from house.

     For some reason the Kunze defense attorney did not call upon the testimony of Dr. Ellis Kerley, Professor Andre Moenssens or any of the other anti-ear-print Frye witnesses. As a result the jury found David Kunze guilty of aggravated murder, burglary and robbery. The judge sentenced him to life without parole.

      David Kunze appealed his conviction and in 1999 a three-judge panel ruled that "the trial court erred by allowing Michael Grubb and Cornelius Van der Lugt to testify that Kunze was the likely or probable source of the ear latent and that a new trial was therefore required. The appellate court instructed the prosecutor in the second trial not to prejudice the defense by referring to the first trial and the resulting conviction. The appellate judges didn't want the second jury to know that Kunze had been found guilty on the strength of ear-print identification.

     In March 2001, ten days into the second trial, the prosecutor made reference to the earlier conviction. The presiding judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial. The prosecutor, after several jurors announced that had the case gone to them they would have acquitted the defendant, announced that a third trial would not be scheduled. 

The Pedro Portugal Kidnapping Case

     Pedro Portugal owned a small accounting and tax firm in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, New York. On the afternoon of April 18, 2013, as the 52-year-old married father of six walked to his car on Roosevelt Avenue he was approached by a man who called out his name and flashed a police badge. Suddenly this man and an accomplice wearing a ski mask grabbed Mr. Portugal and forced him into a SUV driven by a third man who had his face covered as well.

     The abductors, after placing a cloth bag over the victim's head drove him to an abandoned warehouse in Long Island City, Queens where they had set up a makeshift apartment. Along the way one of the abductors held a knife to Portugal's stomach. They told the victim he would be killed if his mother in Quito, Ecuador didn't pay a $3 million ransom.

     Shortly after snatching the businessman the man who had flashed the fake badge, identifying himself as "Tito," called Portugal's mother with the ransom demand. While the Ecuadorean family owned some property they did not have $3 million in ransom money. Immediately after the initial ransom demand a member of Portugal's family notified the authorities in Ecuador who in turn reported the crime to the New York Police Department.

     The kidnapped man's mother, who demanded proof that her son was alive, spoke to him several times on one of the kidnapper's cellphone. In one of these conversations the victim told his mother that "they're going to hurt me. They're going to cut off my fingers."

     Detectives were able, by tracing the phone calls, to identify three suspects, men with criminal histories who regularly traveled between the U.S. and Ecuador. The New York City Police Department sent five detectives to Ecuador who worked closely with the Ecuadorean police as well as officials with the U. S. State Department.

     In the weeks following the abduction, Mr. Portugal's captors burned his hands with acid, punched him in the face and body and threatened to kill him. In the meantime detectives began surveilling a Long Island City warehouse after a police officer noticed pizza being delivered to the abandoned building. At night officers saw a light coming through a warehouse window.

     On May 20, 2013, six New York City detectives disguised as building inspectors entered the warehouse. Inside they found Mr. Portugal. The abductor guarding the victim fled the building but was arrested a few blocks from the warehouse. The victim, whose hands were bound with nylon rope, said, "I've been kidnapped. They got nothing."

     The suspect arrested near the warehouse was Dennis Alves, a 32-year-old Ecuadorean who lived in Queens. Later that day the police arrested Eduardo Moncayo, a 38-year-old from Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Moncayo had been the man with the phony police badge. The third member of the abduction crew, 35-year-old Christian Acuna also lived in the Queens.

     Queens County District Attorney Richard A. Brown charged the three suspects with kidnapping and first-degree unlawful imprisonment. If convicted all three men faced up to 25 years to life. They were held without bail.

     According to Eduardo Moncayo the mastermind behind the kidnapping was an Ecuadorean named Claudo Ordonez, also known as "Doctor." Ordonez allegedly paid the three-man abduction team $5,000 for the snatch and $800 a week each to guard Mr. Portugal in the warehouse. Mr. Ordonez was currently at large.

     Eduardo Moncayo, in a jailhouse interview with a reporter with the New York Daily News, said, "I made a mistake, but I'm not a criminal." (I don't see how one can mistakenly abduct a man and for a month torture him. That's a crime and the person who commits it is a criminal. People don't go to prison for making mistakes, they go to jail for committing crimes--like this one.)

     In February 2017, Christian Acuna and Dennis Alves, following their guilty pleas, were sentenced to 13 years in prison. The judge sentenced Eduardo Moncayo to the maximum sentence, 25 years behind bars. There were no further arrests in the case.

Professor James Aune Chose Death Over Disgrace

     Dr. James Aune, the holder of a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Northwestern University, joined the faculty at Texas A & M in 1996. He published a book about Rhetoric theory and the First Amendment in 2003 and eight years later was named head of the university's Department of Communication. He lived with his wife in College Station, Texas. The short, pudgy academic with the full beard, long, unruly hair and glasses, cut the figure of the stereotypical college professor.

     In December 2012 a 37-year-old man from Metairie, Louisiana named Daniel T. Duplaisir, under the email address pretty-gurl985@yahoo.com, sent sexually explicit photographs of one of his underage female relatives to Dr. Aune and several other men. The 59-year-old professor took the bait, and with the girl, who called herself Karen McCall, set up a website on MocoSpace.com. Over the next five or six weeks the professor and the girl communicated online. These exchanges included the transmission of sexually explicit photos of each other.

     On January 7, 2013 Daniel Duplaisir, holding himself out as Karen McCall's outraged father, sent Professor Aune a message demanding $5,000 in hush money. The extortionist wrote: "If I do not hear from you I swear to God Almighty that the police, your place of employment, students, ALL OVER THE INTERNET--ALL OF THEM will be able to see your conversations, texts, pictures you sent. And if by some miracle you get away with this, I will use every chance I get to make sure every place or person associated with you knows and sees what you have done. Last chance, you better make the right move." Duplaisir demanded the money by January 8, 2013.

     Shortly after he received the extortion demand the professor transferred $1,000 to Duplaisir. In an email to the girl he wrote: "I answered and said I would do whatever he wanted....I sent him $1,000 and then promised more in January. I am scared shitless about this, and can't figure out how to come up with more money."

     At ten-thirty in the morning of January 8, 2013, 90 minutes before Dulpaisir's extortion payoff deadline, Professor Aune sent him the following email: "Killing myself now, and you will be prosecuted for blackmail." One minute after sending the message the 59-year-old professor jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a campus parking garage.

     On March 26, 2013, FBI agents arrested Daniel Duplaisir in Metairie, Louisiana, an unincorporated community within metropolitan New Orleans. The suspect was charged with the federal crimes of using a phone and the Internet to extort money. At his arraignment in a federal courtroom in Houston, Mr. Duplaisir pleaded not guilty to all charges. The judge denied him bail.

     In 2011 the authorities in Louisiana had charged Duplaisir with aggravated incest and oral sexual battery for allegedly abusing the girl Professor Aune thought was Karen McCall.

     In the immediate aftermath of the professor's death his family, friends and colleagues were baffled by the suicide. What was hard to understand in this case is why a man of Professor Aune's intelligence and stature would establish a sexual online relationship with a young girl. As a professor of communications didn't he realize that his exchanges with this Internet personality were quasi-public?

     In November 2013 Daniel Duplaisir pleaded guilty to extortion in a Houston federal courtroom. At his sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes, professor Aune's wife Miriam testified that her husband had confessed to her a week before he killed himself. She said she found it absurd that a man who was so brilliant could have fallen for a blackmail scheme by a so-called father who was supposedly outraged but would take $5,000 to keep silent. She conceded there was a side to her husband she did not know. He had struggled with alcoholism and had been changed by a bout with prostate cancer. Miriam Aune said she regretted not trying to help her husband raise the rest of the blackmail money. Because of the expense of caring for their two sons with autism that would have been difficult. There was just no money, she said. (Had they paid off this degenerate he would have asked for more.)

     Regarding her feelings toward the man who caused her husband's suicide, Miriam Aune said, "I truly wanted to hate him, I tried very hard to hate him. How much sadness there must be in this man's life. How much anger there must be in his heart."

     Prior to the sentencing hearing, Duplaisir, who had been behind bars eight months, wrote Judge Hughes two letters asking for mercy. "Please do the right thing for everybody," he wrote. "Put me in a mental hospital so I can begin longterm care. I need to stop being so twisted up and lost in my own mind."

     Judge Hughes, noting that Duplaisir had not been charged with causing professor Aune's suicide, sentenced him to one year in prison.

     Professor Aune must have gone through hell between the period of Duplaisir's extortion demand and his suicide. It's tragic that a criminal like Daniel Duplaisir could exploit and destroy a man who was, by all accounts, an outstanding professor. Some people pay dearly for their weaknesses and flaws.

When in Rome: The Finnegan Lee Elder Murder Case

     In 2016 Finnegan Lee Elder lived with his parents in Mill Valley, California, an upscale suburban community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 16-year-old was a junior at the $19,000 a year Sacred Heart Preparatory School in San Francisco's Cathedral Hill neighborhood.

     In October 2016, Elder, in a pre-arraigned fight with a fellow member of his school's football team, hurt his opponent when the teen struck his head on the pavement. The injured youth had to be placed into an induced coma. A local prosecutor charged Finnegan Elder with assault. (The disposition of the case, not a matter of public record, was resolved in juvenile court. Finnegan Elder ended up graduating from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley.)

     In July 2019 Finnegan Lee Elder, now a student at Santa Barbara City College, was vacationing in Rome, Italy with his childhood friend, Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth. The young men were staying at Rome's Le Meridien Visconti Hotel.

     At eleven o'clock on the night of July 25, 2019 Elder and Natale-Hjorth were in the Trastevere section of the city, a place popular with tourists and young people. The young Americans were looking for 80 euros worth of cocaine. It was there they met an Italian man named Sergio Brugiatelli and one Brugiatelli's associates. Brugiatelli, a police drug informant, took the cocaine money and departed on foot to acquire the drug, leaving his friend behind with the college students. He also left his bicycle and his backpack that contained his cellphone.

     A short time later when Brugliatelli returned, he handed Finnegan Elder a bag containing ground up aspirin. This led to a heated argument that ended when the two college students grabbed Mr. Brugliatelli's backpack and fled.

     Back at the Le Meridien Visconti Hotel, Finnegan Elder took a call made by Brugliatelli to the cellphone still in his backpack. The drug snitch and Elder agreed to meet on the street near the hotel where Brugliatelli would return the drug money in exchange for his backpack and phone.

     Sergio Brugliatelli had no intention of meeting Elder and Natale-Hjorth in the early morning hours on the deserted street near the college students' hotel. Instead he reported the fraudulent drug transaction and the theft of his backpack to the authorities who dispatched two plain-clothed Carabinieri officers with Italy's military police. The officers showed up at the meeting site to question the two students from America. Neither officer was armed.

     At some point after the police officers confronted the students, Finnegan Elder pulled a serrated-edged combat knife with a 7-inch blade and stabbed 35-year-old police officer Cerciello Rega eleven times. Rega, bleeding profusely, collapsed to the street as Natale-Hjorth scuffled with Rega's partner, Anorea Varriale.

     Following the knife attack Finnegan Elder and Natale-Hjorth fled the scene while officer Varriale attended to his bleeding partner. Officer Rega died a few hours later at a local hospital.

     Back at the hotel Elder cleaned off the knife he had brought in his luggage from California. Natale-Hjorth hid the weapon in a hotel room ceiling panel.

     Later that Friday Italian police officers arrested Elder and Natale-Hjorth at their hotel. They were both charged with the murder of officer Cerciello Rega. The American college students were held without bail at Rome's Regina Coeli Prison.

     When interrogated, Finnegan Elder, in admitting stabbing officer Rega, claimed self defense. He said that he believed the two officers were thugs sent by Sergio Brugiatelli. Natale-Hjorth told his interrogators he had no idea his travel companion had brought a knife to Italy.

     If convicted as charged, both defendants faced life sentences. (Italy does not have the death penalty.)

     The Elder/Natale-Hjorth murder trial got underway on February 26, 2020 in Rome, Italy. At this point, due to media coverage of the case, public opinion was strongly against the defendants. Two judges presided over the trail that included a panel of six jurors. Finnegan Elder's parents were in the courtroom and planned to stay in Italy for the duration of the trial. The first few days of the proceeding were taken up with procedural issues.

     On March 9, 2020 the judges postponed the Elder/Natale-Hjorth murder trial for five weeks due to the Coronavirus crisis in the country.

     Two years after the trial postponement both defendants were found guilty of murder. The judges sentenced Elder to 24 years in prison and Natalie-Hjorth to 22 years behind bars. Both men appealed their convictions which were upheld by a higher court.