The Vincent Viafore Murder Case

     In 2011 Vincent Viafore, a 1986 graduate of Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappinger, New York, met 31-year-old Angelika Graswald at the Pickwick Pub in Poughkeepsie. At the time Mr. Viafore was going through a divorce. Angelika Graswald, a native of Lativa (maiden name Lipska) had been previously married.

     In 2015 the engaged couple planned to get married in Europe on the Baltic Sea.

     At four in the afternoon of Sunday April 19, 2015, Vincent and Angelika entered the choppy waters of the Hudson River in Kayaks. They were en route from Plum Point in the Cornwall-on-Hudson area to Bannerman's Island.

     Three hours and forty minutes after they set out on the Hudson River in Kayaks Angelika Graswald called 911 to report that, forty minutes earlier, her fiancee had fallen out of his kayak into the river. She capsized as well and was rescued by a boater. Mr. Viafore was still missing.

     As Graswald received treatment for hypothermia at a local hospital police and rescue crews launched a search for Vincent Viafore. According to her, Mr. Viafore was not wearing a life jacket.

     The next day while searchers continued to look for Vincent Viafore's body Graswald went on Facebook to thank everyone for reaching out to her with sympathy. "Please keep your prayers for Vince," she wrote. "Miracles ARE possible. The authorities are doing everything they can." Graswald also posted a number of photographs of herself and Viafore captioned: "I miss you my love."

     On April 21, 2015, with the search for Viafore still underway, Angelika Graswald spoke to a local television reporter about how she and her fiancee had fallen out of their kayaks into the cold, choppy waters of the Hudson River. According to her, he had said, "I don't think I'm gonna make it." She responded, "What are you talking about? Of course you will."

     Detectives questioned Graswald on April 28, 2015, nine days after the still missing Viafore capsized on the Hudson. Investigators came away from the interview doubting Graswald's account of the incident.

     On Tuesday April 30, 2015, New York State Police Major Patrick Regan announced at a press conference that Angelika Graswald had been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of the still missing Vincent Viafore. "Initially," he said, "we believed Graswald to be a survivor of a tragic accident."

     Without elaborating, Major Regan said, "Graswald made statements to us that implicated herself in the crime. We believe we know what happened."

     Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, regarding the absence of a corpse, told reporters that "It's not unheard of presenting a murder case without a body." (True, but with an autopsy providing a cause of death the case against the accused would have to be very strong. With no eyewitness, confession, a strong motive or physical evidence linking Graswald to the murder, the prosecutor had an uphill battle.)

      As the investigation progressed Angelika Graswald was held in the Orange County Jail without bond on the second-degree murder charge.

     On May 3, 2015 Angelika Graswald gave another television interview, this time from the Orange County Jail. She said the police arrested her after reading entries in her diary in which she had written that at times she wished her fiancee dead. She explained that these passages had been written "during tough times under stress." The murder suspect insisted she loved Viafore and would never have caused him any harm.

      Angelika Graswald, on July 24, 2017, pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. Under the plea agreement she received a sentence of 15 months to four years in prison. She spent 27 months in jail awaiting her trial and was released from custody in December 2017.

     Mr. Viafore's body has not been found. 

Reckless Crime Reporting

     In the world of sloppy crime reporting guns shoot "rounds," indictments are "squashed," homes are "robbed," crime scenes are investigated by "criminologists" and negligent drivers are charged with "wreckless driving." Also, criminal suspects are "allegedly arrested."

     Rifles and handguns shoot bullets not rounds. The bullet is the projectile, the round is comprised of the bullet (usually lead made from a used car battery) and the cartridge case which contains the gun powder. The round is the whole package. In semi-automatic handguns--pistols--cartridge cases are automatically ejected and can become crime scene evidence. In revolvers cartridges remain in the handgun. The term "firearm" generally applies to revolvers and pistols.

     Criminal indictments, "true bills" handed down by grand juries, are quashed. Bugs are squashed. An indictment is an early step in the criminal justice process which merely indicates there is enough evidence to justify moving the case forward to the trial stage. Indicted subjects are still presumed innocent.

     Since the crime of robbery is theft by force or threat of force, a crime against persons--homes and cars cannot be robbed. Homes can be burglarized. Burglary is an unlawful intrusion into a dwelling or occupied structure motivated by the intent to commit a crime--usually theft. It is a crime against property. Cars are broken into for purposes of theft.

     Reporters often use "murder" and "arson" inappropriately. These are legal terms. An intentionally set fire--an incendiary fire--is not an arson until someone is found guilty of unlawfully setting it. A killing or homicide becomes murder after someone is found guilty of unlawfully and intentionally taking a life.

     A criminologist is a sociologist interested in criminal subgroups such as juvenile delinquents, prison inmates and prostitutes. They are usually academics who think about the causes of crime and invent terminology crime writers consider mealy-mouthed and vague such as "anti-social behavior" which runs from first-degree murder to littering. Criminalistics (an unfortunate term coined in 1947 by Dr. Paul Kirk) refers to a form of forensic science practiced by crime scene investigation experts interested in latent fingerprints, blood stains, bullets, cartridge cases, tire tracks and other types of physical evidence commonly found at the scenes of crime.

     Criminalists analyze physical evidence for the purpose of interpreting the crime scene and identifying the people who were there. Criminologists are usually found in the classroom, criminalists are found at crime scenes, in crime labs and in courtrooms.

     A wreckless driver is a careful one who has not had a wreck. A grossly negligent driver can be charged with reckless driving.

     Criminal suspects who are taken into custody have not been allegedly arrested. The arrests are facts. Until proven guilty they are the alleged perpetrators of the charges against them.

The Brenda Delgado Murder-For-Hire Case

     At quarter to eight on the night of Wednesday September 2, 2015, 35-year-old dentist Dr. Kendra Hatcher parked her car in the garage of her upscale Dallas, Texas apartment complex. As Dr. Hatcher did so a man hiding in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee driven by a woman jumped out of the vehicle and approached her. It was at that moment the assailant shot the dentist one time with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol, killing the victim on the spot. After stealing two of Dr. Hatcher's purses the shooter climbed back into the Jeep and was driven off by his driver.

     On Friday, September 4, 2015 detectives with the Dallas Police Department arrested 23-year-old Crystal Cortes on suspicion she was the person behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee. Cortes, during her interrogation, confessed to her role in the robbery-murder. She also identified the shooter as 31-year-old Kristopher Love.

      After a week into the Hatcher murder investigation detectives came to believe that robbery had not been the motive behind the killing. The officers suspected the slaying was the culmination of a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by a 33-year-old dental hygiene student at Stanford-Brown College named Brenda Delgado.

     Two months before the murder Delgado, a Mexican citizen, and her boyfriend, 38-year-old dermatologist Dr. Ricardo Panigua, broke up following a two-year relationship. After the split Dr. Panigua began dating Dr. Kendra Hatcher. Detectives suspected that Delgado had the dentist murdered out of jealousy and rage.

     When questioned by investigators the murder-for-hire suspect admitted lending Crystal Cortes the Jeep Cherokee and meeting with Cortes and the suspected hit man, Kristopher Love. She met with the murder suspects at a Dallas apartment complex a few days before the killing. Delgado, however, denied being the mastermind behind a plot to have her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend murdered. That, she claimed was Kristopher Love's idea.

     On September 11, 2015 a Dallas County prosecutor charged Crystal Cortes with capital murder. Police officers booked her into the Dallas County Jail under $500,000 bond. Cortes' attorney, George Ashford III, told reporters that his client, before what she believed was just going to be a robbery, tried to call and warn Dr. Hatcher of the hold-up plot. The lawyer said that after the killing Mr. Love had threatened to kill Cortes' 6-year-old son if she went to the authorities.

     According to Crystal Cortes, Brenda Delgado promised her and the hit man free prescription drugs if they robbed Dr. Hatcher. Also, Delgado allegedly paid Cortes $500 to drive Kristopher Love to the robbery scene. Just before Love climbed out of the Jeep in the victim's parking garage Cortes asked him how much money Delgado paid him to commit the robbery. Love replied, "That's none of your business."

     On October 3, 2015 Dallas detectives arrested Kristopher Love on suspicion of capital murder. At the time he was taken into custody he was still in possession of the murder weapon. A magistrate set his bail at $2.5 million. In Texas a capital murder conviction can lead to the death penalty.

     About the time Kristopher Love was arrested a Dallas County prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Brenda Delgado. At that time the murder-for-hire suspect's whereabouts were unknown.

     In speaking to reporters regarding Delgado, Major Max Geron of the Dallas Police Department said: "Ms. Delgado was involved in the planning and the commission of Kendra Hatcher's murder."

     On April 7, 2016 a spokesperson with the FBI announced that murder-for-hire fugitive Brenda Delgado had been placed on the bureau's "Ten Most Wanted" list. A day later the authorities in Torreon, Mexico took the fugitive into custody.

     In October 2018 a jury sitting in Dallas, Texas found Kristopher Love guilty of murder. The judge sentenced the hitman to death.

    Before Delgado could be extradited back to Texas the U.S. prosecutor agreed not to pursue the death penalty against the suspect. According to the Mexican authorities in charge of the case it could take up to a year to complete the extradition process.

     On June 7, 2019 a jury in Dallas, Texas, after deliberating only twenty minutes, found Brenda Delgado guilty of the plot to murder Dr. Kendra Hatcher. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

Robert Durst: Money, Madness and Murder

     Robert Durst, born in April, 1942 into a wealthy family, grew up in Scarsdale, New York. His father, Seymour Durst, got rich investing in real estate. In 1949 when Robert was seven he saw his mother fall to her death from the roof of the family mansion. The authorities ruled her death a suicide. Although young Robert received extensive psychological counseling his doctors worried that this childhood trauma would lead to future mental illness. (Robert's brother Douglas claimed in 2014 that Robert did not witness their mother's death, that the lie was nothing more than a ploy to gain sympathy.)

     After graduating from Scarsdale High School and Lehigh University, Robert Durst started graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles. After acquiring a first-class education he entered the family real estate business but hit a roadblock in 1995 when his brother Douglas assumed control of the enterprise. This led to Robert's permanent estrangement from his family.

     In January 1982 Robert Durst's wife Kathleen, a woman he'd married ten years earlier, suddenly disappeared. Robert waited several days before reporting her missing and didn't bother notifying her family. The police suspected foul play but without the body the homicide investigation hit a dead end.

     In 2000, with Kathleen Durst still missing, the New York State Police re-opened the 18-year-old case as a cold-case murder investigation. Detectives suspected that Mr. Durst murdered his wife and disposed of her body.

     Not long after the renewed police interest in Kathleen Durst's disappearance, someone murdered, execution-style, Susan Berman in her home in Benedict Canyon, California. Because Berman had been Robert Durst's longtime friend and confidant, detectives believed she had knowledge of Kathleen Durst's disappearance. Investigators speculated that she had been killed because she was a potential witness against Robert Durst. The Beverly Hills police were alerted to Berman's murder by the writer of an anonymous, hand-printed note telling them of a "cadaver" in Berman's house. The writer, in addressing the envelope, misspelled Beverly as "Beverley." Handwriting experts did not have enough document evidence to identify Robert Durst as the writer of the so-called "cadaver note."

     Although interrogated by detectives as a suspect in the Berman murder, Robert Durst was not charged. The two cases remained unsolved.

     In 2000 Robert Durst moved to Galveston, Texas to get away from the criminal investigations of his missing wife and his murdered friend, Susan Berman. About this time he took up cross-dressing.

     In 2001 the body parts of 71-year-old Morris Black, Robert Durst's apartment complex neighbor, were found floating in Galveston Bay. When questioned by the police Durst claimed that Mr. Black had entered his apartment, grabbed a gun hidden in the room and pointed it at him. According to the 60-year-old Durst the gun went off accidentally when he tried to disarm his neighbor.

     While he denied murdering Mr. Black in cold blood, Durst admitted that after the killing he used a paring knife, two saws and an axe to dismember the victim's corpse before dumping the body parts into Galveston Bay. The authorities booked Durst into the county jail on the charge of murder.

     Free on bail until the Morris Black murder trial, Durst missed a preliminary court hearing on the case. The judge issued an arrest warrant for the bail-jumper whose whereabouts were unknown. A month or so later police officers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania took him into custody outside a supermarket after he shoplifted a chicken sandwich, Band-Aids and a newspaper. Durst had $500 in his pocket and $37,000 in cash stashed in his car along with two guns, marijuana and Morris Black's driver's license.

     At Durst's 2003 murder trial for killing Morris Black, his three attorneys--the best legal defense team money could buy--argued self defense. Following seven weeks of testimony the jury shocked everyone by finding Robert Durst not guilty. After this stunning verdict, lead investigator Cody Gozalas told reporters that he'd rarely had a more clear-cut case of murder against a defendant. "I believe," the investigator said, "that Mr. Durst walked up behind Mr. Black and shot him in the back of the head. There was nothing to suggest self defense. Mr. Durst never mentioned self defense until after the defense attorneys took over the case."

     The Durst case jurors, widely criticized for the acquittal, said it had been a difficult verdict for them to arrive at. While they knew the defendant had cut up Mr. Black's body, they weren't convinced he committed a premeditated murder. The jurors bought the defense theory that Durst suffered from a psychological disorder that caused him to cut up and dispose of Mr. Black's body amid a state of panic.

     At the time of Durst's murder acquittal the Durst family fortune was valued at more than $2 billion.

     Prosecutors, having lost the Morris Black murder case, charged Durst with two offenses related to Mr. Black's murder--bail jumping and evidence tampering. To avoid going through another trial Mr. Durst pleaded guilty to the lesser charges. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison. Durst served one year of that sentence. Pursuant to the terms of Durst's 2005 parole he had to obtain official permission to travel any significant distance from his home.

     In December 2005 Robert Durst made an unauthorized trip to a shopping mall near the apartment complex where he killed Morris Black. In the mall he had the bad luck to run into the judge who had presided over his murder trial. The judge, suspecting a parole violation, notified the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. Corrections authorities sent Durst back to prison on the parole violation. He remained behind bars until March 2006.

     In 2011 Robert Durst purchased a townhouse in Harlem, New York. Three years later in Houston, Texas he exposed himself at a CVS drugstore then urinated on a rack of candy. A Harris County prosecutor charged him with criminal mischief and indecent exposure.

     In February 2015 the HBO television network aired the first episode of a six-part series about Robert Durst and his connection to his wife's disappearance and the Susan Berman murder. The show was called "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst." In making the documentary New York City producers Marc Smerling and Andrew Jarecki spent 25 hours interviewing Mr. Durst on camera.

     In the course of their research the producers acquired from Susan Berman's stepson a hand-printed letter Durst had sent to her a year before her murder. On the envelope Durst had misspelled Beverly as "Beverley."

     Believing that the identical misspellings in the Berman letter and the "cadaver note" indicated that Durst had hand-printed the note sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department, the TV producers asked New York City forensic document examiner John Osborn to analyze the handwriting evidence. After comparing the note to the Berman letter and 40 specimens of Durst's known hand-printing, Mr. Osborn concluded that Durst was the writer of the cadaver document. The producers notified the authorities in Los Angeles.

     In Louisiana at eleven at night on Saturday March 14, 2015, the day before the airing of the final episode of "The Jinx," deputies with the Orleans Parish arrested Robert Durst in his room at the J. W. Marriott Hotel. A prosecutor in Los Angeles had charged him with the first-degree murder of Susan Berman.  Durst had been preparing to fly to Cuba.

     The next evening, when the final episode of "The Jinx" aired, Robert Durst was seen being confronted by producer Jarecki with the two pieces of hand-printing featuring the identical misspellings of Beverly. Durst admitted writing the Berman letter, but in obvious distress, denied writing the cadaver letter to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     At the conclusion of the filmed interview of Durst in the New York City offices of producers Smerling and Jarecki, Robert Durst asked to use their restroom. With his microphone still hot, he began talking to himself. "There it is," he said. "You're caught. What a disaster. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

     On March 17, 2015 the authorities in Orleans Parish announced that Robert Durst had been charged in Louisiana with possession of a firearm by a felon, a felony that carried a maximum ten year sentence. It was not clear how this charge would affect the progress of the Berman murder case in Los Angeles.

     While Robert Durst sat in a Louisiana jail cell, police officers and FBI agents, on March 17, 2015, searched his apartment in a 17-story condominium located in a posh Houston, Texas neighborhood. His attorney, Dick DeGuerin, called the search a publicity stunt orchestrated by the Berman case prosecutor in Los Angeles.

     In January 2016 Robert Durst pleaded guilty to the federal gun charge. The judge in Louisiana sentenced him to 85 months to be served at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

     On November 7, 2016 the 73-year-old was arraigned in the Los Angeles Superior Court for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. At that hearing Deputy District Attorney John Levin announced that the state would not seek the death penalty in the case. Durst, who pleaded not guilty, sat in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace.

     On February 26, 2020, in a Los Angeles, California court room, a jury of eight women and four men were selected in the Susan Berman murder case. 

     On May 22, 2021, following a 14 month COVID-19 delay, Robert Durst went on trial for the murder of Susan Berman. A week into the trial, the judge put the proceeding on pause when the 78-year-old defendant was hospitalized. On June 13, 2021, after doctors declared Durst fit for court, the murder trial continued over the objection of the defendant's attorneys. 

     In July 2021 the Durst trial was put on hold for two weeks due to the defendant's re-hospitalization. 

     Robert Durst, on August 11, 2021, took the stand on his own behalf, and regarding his wife Kathleen, said that he has changed his mind several times on whether or not he had seen her enter the commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in January 1982. He also testified that he lied when he told investigators he had later spoken to her on the phone. Days after Kathleen's disappearance the defendant told a detective he had called and spoken to her at her apartment in Manhattan. "That was also a lie," he said. "I was imagining that she was out someplace having fun. It hadn't occurred to me that anything had happened to her."

     While on the stand Mr. Durst also said that Kathleen fabricated and exaggerated stories about his abusing her. 

     On August 17, 2021, on the fifth day of Durst's testimony, pursuant to being cross examined by prosecutor John Lewin, the witness admitted that he would lie to save his own skin. "If you had in fact killed Susan Berman," the assistant district attorney asked, "would you tell us?"

     "No," the witness replied.

     "If you said you've taken the oath to tell the truth but you've just told us that you would lie if needed, can you tell me how that would not destroy your credibility?"

     "Because what I'm saying is mostly the truth. There are certain things I would lie about, certain very important things." While on the stand Durst admitted writing the "cadaver note" with the misspelling of Beverly and sending it to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

     On September 8, 2021 the Robert Durst trial entered the closing arguments stage during which time the prosecutor called the defendant's testimony "cockroach soup" and called him a "narcissistic psychopath." 

     The jury retired to deliberate the defendant's fate on September 14, 2021.

     On Friday, September 17 the jury returned with a first-degree murder verdict. The jurors also found Durst guilty of the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing a witness. This finding carried a mandatory life sentence. The convicted murderer's sentence hearing was scheduled for October 2021.

     After being sentenced to life in October 2021 Robert Durst tested positive for COVID on November 21, 2021 and was placed on a ventilator. He died on January 10, 2022. He was 78.

The Harold Montague Ax Murder Case

     In 2010 33-year-old Harold E. Montague lived in a single-story house with his wife Erricca, their two grade school children and Erricca's disabled mother, Monica O'Dazier. The family resided on San Pedro Avenue in the central valley area of Las Vegas. Erricca worked outside the home while her husband cared for her mother who had cerebral palsy and suffered seizures. Harold had been his mother-in-law's principal caregiver for the past five years.

     At eleven-forty on the morning of Thursday, February 11, 2010, Harold Montague removed a medieval-style battle ax that hung on a wall in his house and used the weapon to hack his mother-in-law twenty times. Leaving the gravely wounded O'Dazier bleeding in the rear bedroom of the dwelling, Montague, with the bloody battle ax in hand walked out onto Pedro Avenue where he encountered a young mother pushing her 4-month-old son in a stroller.

      Mr. Montague walked up to Sonia Castro and her son Damian and started swing the weapon. He quickly hacked the baby to death, then struck the mother several times in the head and hands as she tried to protect herself. During the murderous rampage Sonia Castro begged her attacker to stop. Instead of letting up he laughed in her face. With the dead baby under the overturned stroller and the infant's mother on the ground with her jaw hanging loosely from her face, Harold Montague walked back into his house.

     A neighbor, 52-year-old Teresa Garner, witnessed the attack and called 911. After making the emergency call Garner ran to the victims. She found the baby dead and Sonia alive but horribly disfigured and bleeding profusely.

     Paramedics rushed the unconscious Monica O'Dazier to the University Medical Center. Sonia Castrol was taken to the same facility where she was listed in "extremely critical" condition. Both women would survive Montague's vicious attacks.

     Following a brief scuffle, Las Vegas officers arrested Harold Montague at his house. He told the officers that he had no memory of the assaults. They booked him into the Clark County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

     The next day, at Montague's arraignment, the judge denied him bail. At that hearing defense attorney Norm Reed characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. The lawyer said he would have his client examined by a psychiatrist, and depending upon the results of that examination, make a decision as to whether he would plead his client legally insane.

     In October 2010 attorney Reed informed the court he planned to put on an insanity defense. The judge set the trial for June 2011.

     By 2013, due to several postponements, the Montague case had not come to trial. At a preliminary hearing on December 6, 2013 attorney Reed put a Reno, Nevada psychiatrist named Dr. Tom Bittker on the stand. Dr. Bittker said that several interviews of Mr. Montague had given him a profile of this disturbed man's life. For example, as a child he had been beaten, raped and emotionally tormented by his drug-abusing parents. At age six someone murdered the boy's father.

     According to Dr. Bittker, Harold Montague didn't go beyond the fifth grade and grew up in and out of a Las Vegas juvenile detention center. As an adult he married Erricca and fathered two children with her. She worked out of the house while he stayed at home, unable to hold down a job. In 2004 he began taking care of Erricca's mother.

     Dr. Bittker testified that in his expert medical opinion, when Mr. Montague attacked Monica O'Dazier, Sonia Castro and little Damian, he was in the midst of a psychotic episode that included the delusion that God was speaking to him directly.

     Erricca Montague took the stand at the hearing and testified that for several days before the attacks her husband's behavior had been bizarre. He hadn't slept for days, stopped eating and refused to drink water. He spent his nights pacing the house and talking to himself.

     Following the preliminary hearing the judge ruled the defense had produced enough evidence to go forward with an insanity defense. (In Nevada as in most states, legal insanity is a so-called affirmative defense which means the defendant has the burden of proving, with a preponderance of evidence, that the defendant was insane at the time of the alleged criminal act.)

     On May 22, 2014 the Montague case came to an abrupt conclusion when attorney Reed announced that his client pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and battery of a police officer. Under the plea agreement the defendant was sentenced on July 30, 2014 to life in prison without the chance of parole. In prison he would receive treatment for his mental illness.

     The plea agreement meant that Sonia Castro would not have to testify at Montague's trial. Earlier, at a April 2010 preliminary hearing, she testified that when she begged him to stop his murderous assault he laughed at her. After the rampage her jaw had to be surgically reattached. The attack had also left her with an irreparably damaged eye.

     Montague's guilty plea also spared eyewitness Teresa Garner from the ordeal of re-living the crime in court. After Montague's ax-wielding madness she suffered a nervous breakdown.

     Harold Montague, on anti-psychotic medication, expressed a desire to apologize to his victims and to explain that he had acted out of a psychotic delusion. I doubt that his apology and explanation helped his victims, people who were permanently scarred physically and emotionally as a result of his bloody rampage.

Judge Michael Thornsbury

     There are many jurisdictions in the United States that have earned reputations of being awash in governmental corruption. For example, nothing is politically on the level in the states of Louisiana and Nevada and the cities of Detroit and Chicago. But to varying degrees, governmental fraud, dishonesty, crime and abuse of power on the federal, state and local levels flourishes everywhere in America. Whenever you have government, big or small, you have corruption. Government is nothing more than organized lying. Government and corruption go together like pancakes and syrup. You can't have one without the other. And corruption is not just limited to big cities and states. It exists in places like Mingo County West Virginia. 

     Mingo County, home to 27,000, is located on the state's southern border with Kentucky. This place, going all the way back to its Hatfield and McCoy days, has a history of violence and political corruption. In 1997 the people of Mingo County elected Michael Thorsbury to the office of circuit judge. As the only common pleas judge in the county he held a position of power and influence. He was the proverbial big fish in the small pond. Unfortunately he was a piranha.

     In 2008 Judge Thornsbury became romantically involved with his married secretary. A couple of months after he begged her to leave her husband, Robert Woodruff, she ended her relationship with the judge. This is when things started to get bad for Mr. Woodruff.

     Judge Thornsbury, in a effort to railroad Mr. Woodruff into prison, asked a friend to plant drugs in a magnetic box under his car. The judge, thinking that his friend had carried out the assignment tipped-off the local police.

     Having failed to set Mr. Woodruff up for a phony drug bust, Judge Thornsbury tried something else. After carefully cultivating a friendship with a West Virginia State Trooper, the judge asked the officer to file a false complaint accusing Mr. Woodruff of grand larceny. The cop followed through by accusing Woodruff of stealing drill bits from his coal company employer. Mr. Woodruff had salvaged old drill bits, but with the company's permission. Mingo County prosecutor Michael Sparks intervened on Woodruff's behalf and a local magistrate dismissed the case. The state trooper, the next year, was named West Virginia State Trooper of the Year. 

     Determined to get Robert Woodruff out of the way in order to get to his wife, Judge Thornsbury, in an effort to dig up dirt on his target, appointed a friend to the position of foreman of a Mingo County Grand Jury. This gave the Judge's friend the power to issue subpoenas as part of a fishing expedition in search of information the judge could use against Mr. Woodruff. When the recipient of one of these bogus subpoenas refused to cooperate the Judge's scheme fizzled out.

     In 2012 Mr. Woodruff was assaulted outside a convenience store by two men, one of whom brandished a handgun. Judge Thornsbury tried to turn Mr. Woodruff from being the victim of the assault to its perpetrator. Once again the county prosecutor refused to go along with the phony case.

     On August 15, 2013 FBI agents arrested Judge Thornsbury in Williamson, the Mingo County seat. The jurist was under indictment by a federal grand jury for "conspiring to violate Robert Woodruff's right not to be deprived of his liberty without due process of law." If convicted as charged the 57-year-old judge faced up to 20 years in prison.

     On the day of Judge Thornsbury's arrest the West Virginia Supreme Court suspended him without pay and lifted his license to practice law.

     Judge Thornsbury, after posting his $10,00 bond, insisted that he was innocent and predicted that he would be vindicated when his case went to trial.

     On October 2, 2013 Mr. Thornsbury entered a plea of guilty of conspiring to deprive Robert Woodruff of his constitutional rights. He also resigned from office. The federal judge sentenced Mr. Thornsbury to 50 months in federal prison.

Outsourcing Contract Murder

     Murder-for-hire cases fall generally into one of two categories: criminal homicides in which the contract for the killing is carried out and crimes in which, due to law enforcement intervention in the form of an undercover operative playing the role of the assassin, no one is killed. While still a serious felony the latter offense is one of criminal solicitation.

     The cast of a murder-for-hire plot features three principal characters: the instigator/mastermind who solicits the criminal homicide, the hit man (or the undercover cop playing the role of triggerman) and the victim, the person targeted for death. Supporting players might include a cast of go-betweens and accomplices such as people who put the mastermind in touch with the hit man or the undercover cop, and helpers brought into the scheme by the triggerman.

     A few years ago hit men in China added a new player to the traditional cast of murder-for-hire characters: The subcontractor.

     In 2013 in Nanning, China, Tan Youhui, a highly successful owner of a real estate company, hired a hit man named Xi Guangan to kill a business competitor. The murder-for-hire mastermind provided his hit man with the murder target's business card, his cellphone number and his vehicle registration information. Tan Youhui also paid Xi Guangan two million yuan ($385,000) to do the job.

     Instead of pulling off the hit Xi subcontracted the assignment to another assassin named Mo Tianxiang and kept half of the murder fee for himself. Mo, the new hitman, decided to hire a man called Yang Kangsheng to kill the murder-for-hire target. Mo gave Yang 270 yuan ($52,000) upfront and promised $96,000 when he finished the job.

     Yang Kangsheng, the second murder-for-hire subcontractor, also decided to outsource the murder assignment to a third hit man named Ling Xiansi. Yang promised this assassin 100,000 yuan ($19,000) once he completed the task.

     Ling Xiansi, the final hit man in the outsourcing chain, decided not to get his hands bloody for a mere $19,000. Instead of killing Tan Youhui's business rival, Ling went to the murder-for-hire target to convince him to fake his own death. Ling could then collect his fee from Yang without resorting to murder.

     The murder-for-hire target approached by Ling Xiansi had no intention of faking his own death. Instead, he reported Tan Youhui's plot against his life to the local police.

     Following the criminal investigation into this bizarre murder-for-hire scheme where all of the hit men wanted the blood money without spilling any blood, Nanning police officers arrested the murder-for-hire mastermind Tan Youhui and his original hit man, Xi Guangan. The authorities also took into custody all of the subcontractors in the case.

     Upon his conviction for soliciting murder, Tan Youhui received a sentence of five years in prison. The others were each sentenced to two years and seven months behind bars.

The Warning Shot: Reckless Endangerment or Self-Defense?

     On Saturday night, October 19, 2013 when questioned at her apartment complex in Woodbridge, Virginia, Lakisha Gaither told Prince William County police officers that she and her daughter had been set upon that night by a gang of boys. As Gaither and Brianna, her 15-year-old daughter walked to their apartment ten boys approached them in the parking lot.

     According to the 35-year-old mother, one of the boys insulted and swore at them. Brianna, who was five-foot-nine and 160 pounds, did not back down. This led to an exchange of face-to-face insults. When the boy grabbed Brianna's shirt and started hitting her Ms. Gaither unholstered her handgun and fired a shot into the air.

     The warning shot ended the parking lot confrontation.

     Police officers arrested Lakisha Gaither for the reckless use of a weapon, a misdemeanor offense. None of the boys were charged with a crime. The next day Lakisha took Brianna to Fairfax, Virginia to stay with the girl's grandmother. Lakisha feared that the boys she had run off with the gunshot might retaliate.

     In speaking to a local reporter a Prince William County spokesperson said, "Ms. Gaither should have called the police instead of taking matters into her own hands. She may have been trying to break up the fight, but that's not the proper course of action to take."

     The gun-owning mother told the same reporter that, "I didn't feel like I was wrong. I wanted to protect my child. I just wanted this group of guys to disperse. I didn't know what they were going to do. I wanted him to stop hitting my child."

     A week after the confrontation and warning shot a Prince William County Police Department spokesperson issued a modified account of the incident. According to investigators, Brianna and the boy in question had been involved in an ongoing dispute over rumors that had been spread about her. That night, Gaither and her daughter sought out the boy near his home where the fight and warning shot took place. The boy claimed Brianna threw the first punch.

     Most people believe that citizens have the right to defend themselves when threatened with bodily harm. There is something profoundly satisfying about dispersing overwhelming force with a shot into the air. However, if the person claiming self-defense instigated the confrontation, there is a lot less sympathy for the shooter.

     The day after being taken to her grandmother's house in Fairfax Brianna went missing. Lakisha filed a missing persons report with the police. "I don't know where she is," said the mother. "I don't know if she's okay. I don't know if she's hurt. There's been no action on her Facebook."

    Four days later on October 24, 2013 Brianna returned home. Her mother, without revealing where her daughter had been, used Facebook to thank the people who had been looking for her.

     

     Lalisha Gaither was found guilty of the misdemeanor and paid a small fine.

Excited Delirium Syndrome: The Taser-Proof Man

     In the Guinness Book of World Records there seems to be a record for just about everything. But there is no mention of the man police used their Taser guns on 71 times within a span of thirty minutes. This had to be a world record in the category of repeatedly shocking someone who didn't die from it. The tasered man who holds this unofficial record will simply be referred to as Bob.

     Bob, a 25-year-old veteran of the Afghanistan War who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, after being allegedly disowned by his family in Phoenix, moved in with a relative in Flagstaff, Arizona. One evening in July 2010 after taking PCP and bath salts, Bob entered a Cheveron gas station and store on Highway 89 in Doney Park just north of Flagstaff. Barefoot, he wandered about the place leaving muddy footprints then approached the cashier and asked to be reported to the police.

     When Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Officer Brian Barnes arrived at the Cheveron station he encountered Bob in the parking lot in front of the store. As the officer approached the suspect Bob ran toward the entrance of the station with the officer in close pursuit. When Bob slammed into the closed door he bounced back into the officer and they both fell to the ground. Bob jumped up, this time opened the door and ran inside. After shooting Bob with his Taser gun Officer Barnes and a bystander managed to handcuff the out-of-control man. His hands, however, were not restrained behind his back.

     Bob settled down a bit, but the moment Coronino County Deputy Sheriff Don Bartlett arrived he started acting up. To hold him down the 260 pound deputy sat on his legs, but when that didn't stop the violent thrashing and kicking Deputy Barnes gave Bob a taste of his Taser. When that didn't help he zapped him two more times.

     As the DPS Officer and the deputy struggled with the drug-crazed man in the Cheveron station, EMT and firefighters arrived at the scene, followed by Sheriff's Office Sergeant Gerrit Boeck. During the next thirty minutes Deputy Bartlett used his Taser twenty more times on Bob with Officer Barnes helping out with his Taser.

     Finally, the three police officers, with the help of several firefighters, strapped the handcuffed man onto a gurney, but as they slid him into the ambulance Bob managed to grab Deputy Bartlett's belt. Sergeant Boeck, thinking that Bob was trying to get ahold of the deputy's gun, started punching him in the arm. It took several officers to pry Bob's fingers from the Deputy's belt.

     Once they got Bob into the ambulance a paramedic injected him with a tranquilizer used to control animals. The drugs kicked in and Bob settled down.

     At the Flagstaff Medical Center,a doctor diagnosed Bob as being in a state of excited delirium that gave him superhuman strength and rendered him impervious to pain. After a few days hospital personnel discharged Bob. The authorities decided not to charge him with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer or disorderly conduct. (The county prosecutor was probably concerned with the Taser overuse, and decided to let a sleeping dog lie.)

     Regarding the issue of excessive force, the DPS referred the case to the county attorney's office for investigation. That Bob survived all that electricity, especially when in a state of excited delirium, was miraculous. Had he died the medical examiner would probably have listed the cause of his death as excited delirium syndrome.

     These officers were presented with an extremely difficult situation, and when their Taser guns didn't work, ran out of good options. Sometimes the police encounter situations they are not equipped to handle. When it became obvious their Tasters weren't working the officers should have stopped using them.

     The officers were cleared by the district attorney's office of any wrongdoing in the case.

Randall Price: The Cost Of Hiring a Loose Cannon Cop

     Along a dirt road in Cottageville, South Carolina on May 16, 2011, Officer Randall Price of the Cottageville Police Department shot and killed Bert Reeves, a local construction company owner and the town's former mayor. They were both 40-years-old, had an antagonistic history between them, and, at the time of the shooting were engaged in physical combat. The backgrounds of both men involved conflict and trouble. Reeves, shot in the chest, died from his wounds at a local hospital. The chief of the six-man police department, consisting of only two full-time patrol officers, placed Officer Price on paid administrative leave pending the investigation of the shooting by detectives with the state.

     Mayor Reeves, in 2004, scolded a town officer for not writing enough speeding tickets to pay for his job. ( With 10,000 vehicles passing through town every day on a major route between Charleston and Waterboro, Cottageville was a notorious speed trap.) In March 2006 a sheriff's deputy arrested the mayor for driving 103 mph in a 55 mph zone. Three months later another deputy warned Mayor Reeves for driving 71 in a 55 mph area. In July 2006 Mr. Reeves suffered a serious brain injury after flipping his pickup. That November the mayor reported his wife and children missing. He said they had been taken against their will by unidentified people angry at him over some business deal "turned ugly." As it turned out the wife and kids left on their own volition to get away from Mr. Reeves. A month later, after the state revealed that Bert Reeves had traces of marijuana in his blood when he wrecked his truck he resigned from office. About a month before the fatal shooting Mr. Reeves complained about Officer Price's arrest of one of his relatives on an alcohol related charge.

     Officer Randall Price, before joining the Cottageville force in May 2008 had, two years earlier, been fired from the Blockville Police Department over a claim of excessive force. In 2001 he was fired from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office for criminal domestic violence, and in 1999 from the McCormick County Sheriff's Office for unsafe driving. During an eleven year period Mr. Price held jobs with eight different law enforcement agencies. He was the quintessential small town gypsy cop.

     In September 2011 Cottageville Mayor Margaret Steen laid off Officer Price. The police department, she said, couldn't afford to keep him on paid administrative leave pending the completion of the shooting investigation.

     In September 2012 Bert Reeves' ex-wife Ashley, on behalf of their two children, filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the town of Cottageville and other defendants. According to her attorney, Mullins McLeod, on the day in question officer Price drove out to Nut Hatch Lane where he blocked the former mayor in with his patrol car before shooting him in the chest. The plaintiff accused the defendant town of negligently hiring a cop with a history of police brutality. According to the lawsuit, because town officials knew that Officer Price was out to get Mr. Reeves they were negligent in not firing him.

     In August 2013 Lake Summers, the attorney representing the town, released civil suit documents that portrayed Bert Reeves, in the years before his death, as a mentally unstable and dangerous man. One of these documents included Mayor Margaret Steen's deposition transcript. Steen, the dead man's aunt, testified that shortly before the shooting, while she was at work in the town's municipal building he pulled his car up behind Officer Price's cruiser and started blowing his horn. The mayor, in an effort to defuse the situation told the officer to ignore Reeves and go about his business. After Officer Price drove off Mr. Reeves informed the major he had been "this close to getting" Officer Price.

     According to Mayor Steen, Reeves looked as though he was under the influence of drugs that day. She testified that he was "acting wild and crazy." The mayor advised her nephew to take his complaints about Officer Price to the chief of police. Bert Reeves did not take her advice. In recalling that moment the mayor said, "and he [Reeves] got this look on his face and he pointed and said, 'I'm going to get him now' and took off like a bat."

     The mayor, worried that there would be a dangerous confrontation involving her nephew and the police officer, immediately notified chief of police John Craddock of the situation. A short time later Chief Craddock informed the mayor that Officer Price had killed Bert Reeves.

      Bert Reeves' brother, Mercer Reeves, in his civil suit deposition revealed that his brother, in November 2006 was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility after he threatened to harm members of his family. According the brother, Bert Reeves threatened to kill his cousin and talked about harming a police officer.

     Ashley Reeves, in responding to attorney Summer's deposition transcripts admitted that her ex-husband had gone through a rough period before and immediately after their June 2007 divorce. In 2006 he threatened to burn down their house. The family court judge granted the divorce on grounds of Bert's adultery. Although the children remained with her, the judge granted her ex-husband visitation rights. "He was a really good father to his children," Ashley said. The plaintiff further asserted that her husband's difficulties with mental illness had nothing to do with his being wrongfully shot to death by Officer Price.

     According to a state toxicology report Bert Reeves, at the time of his death, was not under the influence of illicit drugs. However, he did have in his system, at "therapeutic levels," three prescription drugs designed to treat anxiety.

     There was no third party witness to this police-involved shooting. Moreover, the event was not caught on videotape. As a result all investigators had to go on was Randall Price's version of the incident. This and the fact Bert Reeves was mentally disturbed and angry in the hours before his death resulted in no criminal charges against the former police officer.

     On October 2, 2014 testimony in Ashley Reeves' wrongful death suit against Randall Price, the town and its police department got underway in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout the trial plaintiff's attorney McLoad painted Randall Price as a loose cannon cop who had been frequently disciplined and fired for his on-duty bad behavior with several law enforcement agencies.

     The federal jury on October 15, 2014, finding that the village of Cottageville had been negligent in hiring Randall Price, awarded the Reeves family $97.5 million. This award, punitive in nature, was a staggering financial blow to the community.

     In March 2015, to avoid an appeal that could take years, the plaintiffs agreed to accept $10 million in damages.

The Juan Elias Garcia MS-13 Gang Double Murder Case

     In 2010, 17-year-old Juan Elias Garcia, a resident of the Long Island community of Central Islip, New York belonged to the street gang MS-13, also known as the Mara Salvatrucha Gang. This violent, criminal organization with ties to several Mexican drug cartels had a strong presence on Long Island with more than a dozen chapters. The gang also flourished in other areas of the U.S. with substantial Salvadoran populations such as in southern California, Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia.

     The five-foot-four inch Garcia, nicknamed "Cruzito," dated 19-year-old Vanessa Argueta. A problem developed in their relationship when Garcia learned she had ties to two rival gangs, the Latin Kings and the 18th Street Gang. Pursuant to gang culture Argueta's association with the rival groups amounted to "disrespecting" MS-13.

     To save face Juan Garcia acquired permission from a gang leader named Heriberto Martinez to have his girlfriend murdered.

     On February 4, 2010, Garcia, as part of the murder plot invited Vanessa Argueta to dinner in Central Islip. She accepted his invitation and arrived with her 2-year-old son. From their meeting place Garcia forced Argueta and the boy to accompany him to a nearby wooded area where they were met by a pair of gang assassins, Rene Mendez Meja and Adalberto Ariel Guzman.

     Meja shot the mother to death in front of her son, then, as the boy cried in terror, shot him in the head as well. The bodies were discovered the next day. To avoid arrest Juan Garcia fled to El Salvador.

     In 2012 Heriberto Martinez, the gangster who sanctioned the murder, was convicted for his role in the assassinations. The judge sentenced him to life plus 60 years. A year later Meja and Guzman were found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They each received the same sentence.

     Juan Garcia, the gang member behind the killings, remained at large in Central America.

     In February, 2014, one day after the fugitive turned twenty-one, a federal grand jury sitting in Central Islip indicted the fugitive Garcia for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The FBI, on March 26, 2014 placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted List. Two days later Garcia turned himself in to law enforcement authorities in Nicaragua. After being briefly detained at the U.S. Embassy in Managua, FBI agents took Garcia into custody. He was immediately extradited to America.

     A U.S. District Court judge on March 31, 2014 ordered Juan Garcia held without bail. Speaking through an interpreter the suspect entered a not guilty plea.

     In October 2014 Garcia changed his plea to guilty. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

     In May 2018, in referring to the growing incidents of MS-13 brutality in the United States, President Donald Trump called these sadistic rapists and murderers "animals." Trump's sob-sister adversaries in politics and the media immediately criticized this characterization as inhuman and cruel. What's inhumane and cruel is the fact that government authorities had allowed these gangs of illegal aliens to flourish in the United States.

     Suffolk County (Long Island) District Attorney Timothy Sini, in December 2019, announced that as a result of a two-year investigation his office charged and arrested 96 MS-13 gang members for a variety of crimes including murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, and aggravated assault.

True Detective Magazines: The Golden Era

     The period 1920 to 1940 marked the golden age of the fact crime magazine. Aimed at the adult male reader, the pulp art covers--often featuring sexy women in distress--promised stories of salacious violence and mayhem. Unlike many writers for crime fiction periodicals such as Black Mask who went on to become famous authors of mystery novels, the literary contributors to the fact-crime magazines remained relatively unknown. Exceptions included writers Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson and Alan Hynd.

     True crime magazines usually featured ten murder cases per issue. (Occasionally there were accounts starring con men, counterfeiters, safe crackers, forgers, pickpockets and extortionists.) Because true crime readers were armchair detectives, good investigative work comprised a major element of each story. Editors liked cases solved by the emerging forensic sciences of latent fingerprint identification, blood stain analysis, tire impression evidence, biological time of death estimation, handwriting identification and forensic ballistics. It also helped if the homicides were exceptionally gruesome such as one cover-story that featured a woman tied to a tree to be eaten alive by hyenas.

     True crime magazines in the golden era reflected the history of crime in America. In the 1920s and 30s the magazines featured depression era bank robbers like John Dillinger, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, "Baby Face" Nelson and Ma Barker and her degenerate son Fred. Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, Alvin Karpus and "Machine Gun" Kelly all made regular appearances between the covers of fact-crime publications. In 1931 True Detective Mysteries started a regular feature called "Line Up." Police departments across the country sent in mug shots and descriptions of criminals on the run. Readers who recognized these fugitives and turned them in received small cash rewards. By 1944 "Line Up" had been responsible for the apprehension of more than 300 criminals. The magazine also ran an ongoing piece called "Crime Doesn't Pay" consisting of photographs of bad guys who had been recently brought to justice. (Crime did pay for True Detective Mysteries.) Many of the men shown in this feature were destined for the electric chair.

     In 1933, True Detective Mysteries started a series of articles by the famous Seattle criminalist Luke S. May. All of these pieces involved criminals who were outfoxed by scientific crime detection. By 1940 Luke May was also writing a regular question and answer column about forensic science. Mr. May also authored several books featuring his most interesting cases.

     True Detective Mysteries, first published by Bernard MacFadden in 1924, is considered the first fact-crime magazine. Within a few years MacFadden would publish several true crime periodicals including Master Detective. At his peak MacFadden was selling two million magazines a month. In the 1930s a true crime buff could choose between 100 magazines with titles like, Front Page Detective, Official Detective, Baffling Detective, True Gangster, Detective Yarns, Spicy Detective, Current Detective and Detective World.

    By the end of World War II the golden era of the true detective magazine came to an end. Mass market paperbacks and television finishrd off the last of the true crime magazines. MacFadden Publications, in 1971, sold off  True Detective Mysteries to a British firm. In the summer of 1995 the company ceased publication altogether. In the 1960s, MacFadden managing editor Marc Gerald said, "Our readership of blue-hairs, shut-ins, Greyhound bus riders, cops and axe murderers are old and dying fast."

     Today, true crime buffs (mostly women), have access to mass market paperbacks, cable television and the internet. Patterson Smith, the antiquarian bookseller doing business in New Jersey, had a database of 30,000 articles out of 2,000 fact-crime magazines. To request a search of this repository the crime researcher could submit the name of the crime victim, the name of the perpetrator, the location of the crime, the year it took place or a brief account of the case. 

Steven L. Nelson: Born to be Executed

     When he was 3-years-old Steven L. Nelson set fire to his mother's bed. His father abused the boy and by the time he was ten Steven was being medicated for attention deficit disorder. But the child's emotional and personality problems were deeper than that, and the drugs only made him more hyperactive and impossible to control.

     As a teen Steven continued to be a disciplinary problem in school and got into trouble with the law. He seemed to enjoy disturbing the peace, causing trouble and inflicting pain on others. He ended up in juvenile detention centers in Oklahoma and Texas. One didn't have to be an expert in deviant behavior to predict bad things for this young man as well as the people unfortunate enough to cross his path. Had he been accidentally run over and killed by a bus it would have been a gift to society.

     On March 3, 2011 in North Arlington, Texas the 25-year-old sadistic sociopath, in the course of robbing a Baptist church murdered the pastor, 28-year-old Clint Dobson. He beat, bound, then with a plastic bag suffocated his victim. Nelson also viciously assaulted Judy Elliott, the church secretary. Left for dead, she survived the attack.

     A week after the murder of Pastor Dobson and the attempted murder of his secretary, the police arrested Nelson. Although this cold-blooded killer was off the street he was still an extremely dangerous man. While incarcerated in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth, Texas, Nelson, while in the recreation area of the lockup attacked another inmate. Nelson beat 30-year-old Jonathan Holden with a broom handle, then strangled the mentally retarded man to death with a blanket. After murdering Mr. Holden, Nelson showed-off to inmates who had witnessed the homicide by doing the Chuck Berry hop, using the broomstick as his guitar.

     Knowing that he was going to be convicted for murdering Pastor Dobson, Steven Nelson, with nothing to lose, had killed another man just for the thrill of it.

     On October 8, 2012 after a week-long trial, a jury in Fort Worth, Texas found Steven Nelson guilty of capital murder in the brutal, sadistic killing of Pastor Dobson. Following the verdict the penalty phase of the murder trial got underway before the same jurors. The jury would have to decide whether to sentence this man to life in prison without parole or condemn him to die by lethal injection.

     After a week of testimony from prosecution witnesses Nelson's defense attorneys put experts on the stand in a futile attempt to make their client slightly more sympathetic than the vicious, recreational murderer that he was.

     Dr. Antoinette McGarrahan, a psychiatrist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, labeled Nelson a violent psychopath and said he will pose a danger to people exposed to him in prison. This prosecution witness also debunked Nelson's claim that he had multiple personalities. On October 16, 2012, the jury, after deliberating Nelson's fate for 90 minutes, issued their verdict: death by lethal injection.

     Nelson, true to form, was not done creating havoc. After sheriff deputies placed him into a courthouse holding pen he flooded the cell and the courtroom, with black fire-retardant infused water from the sprinkler head he had broken. Courthouse personnel scrambled to save boxes of evidence from being ruined by the foul-smelling liquid. As the courthouse people rushed to save the evidence they could hear Nelson howling like a wolf in his cell. Firefighters who responded to the scene shut off the water to the sprinkler system.

     Steven L. Nelson was executed on February 5, 2025. He was 38-years-old and to the end maintained his innocence. 

The J. Everett Dutschke Ricin Poison Case

     Ricin is a naturally occurring protein found in the caster oil plant. The pulp from just eight caster beans can kill an adult. As little as 500 micrograms of the poison, an amount that would fit on the head of a pin, can be fatal. Delivered through the air, injected or swallowed, ricin is 6,000 times more toxic than cyanide. There is no antidote for this poison.

     In 1978 an assassin used ricin to kill Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian writer, dissident and defector. The killer used the tip of an umbrella to deliver the ricin as Markov waited for a bus in London. The victim died four days after being pricked by the deadly umbrella.

     Ricin was used as a warfare agent in Iraq during the 1980s. In 2004 someone sent a ricin-laced letter to U. S. Senator Bill Frists. The letter was intercepted at a mail sorting facility outside of Washington, D. C. The sender was never identified.

     On April 16, 2013, the day after the Boston Marathon Bombings, postal workers at a mail-handling facility outside of Washington discovered a suspicious letter addressed to U.S. Senator Roger Wicker. The letter to the senator from Mississippi turned out to be laced with ricin. Dated April 8, 2013 and postmarked Memphis, Tennessee, the envelope did not include a return address.

     A second ricin letter, one addressed to President Obama was also intercepted at an off-site D.C. area mail-handling center. Both letters were signed, "I am K.C. and I approve of this message."

     FBI agents, on April 17, 2013, arrested a 45-year-old man from Corinth, Mississippi on federal charges related to the two ricin mailings. The suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis, had used the phrase "I am K. C. and I approve of this message" on his Facebook page. Curtis had a history of mental illness and a handful of misdemeanor arrests. When he wasn't posting online political rants Curtis worked as an impersonator of celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bon Jovi and Prince.

     On April 23, 2013 after searches of the suspect's home, vehicle and computer failed to provide incriminating evidence, the charges against Mr. Curtis were dropped. A federal judge ordered his release from jail. Following his release from custody the father of four told reporters he had been framed by J. Everett Dutschke, a long-time personal enemy from Tupelo, Mississippi.

     According to media reports Mr. Dutschke was awaiting trial on a child molestation charge. In 2007 he ran for a seat in the Mississippi state legislature. In that race he lost to the incumbent. FBI agents searched Dutschke's house for evidence linking him to the case.

     A third ricin letter, one that linked Paul Kevin Curtis and Everett Dutschke to the case, actually reached its intended target. The receiver of this piece of mailed poison was an 80-year-old Mississippi judge. In 2004 Judge Sadie Holland presided over an assault case that sent Curtis to jail for six months. Judge Holland was linked to Mr. Dutschke through a long-running political feud between their families.

     After opening the threatening letter, Judge Holland called the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The judge was not poisoned by the letter.

     FBI agents, on April 27, 2013, arrested Everett Dutschke in connection with the ricin poison cases. In May 2014, following his guilty plea, U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock in Aberdeen, Mississippi, sentenced J. Everett Dutschke  to 25 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

Persecuting Robert Kraft: The Asia Day Spa Case

     Robert Kraft, a Harvard Business School graduate and paper products tycoon worth about $6.6 billion, purchased the NFL's Boston Patriots franchise in 1994 for $176 million. In New England Mr. Kraft and his team were loved, everywhere else they were not. He was probably the highest profile team owner in the league. What happened to him in 2019 made him known even to people who don't follow professional football.

      On February 22, 2019 the chief of the Jupiter, Florida Police Department held a press conference to announce the results of a 6-month prostitution sting involving a local massage parlor called Asia Day Spa.

     According to the Asia Day Spa's website the spa offered a "variety of massage modalities" that included services that cost patrons $59 for a half-hour and $79 for a full hour.

     Several female employees of the spa had been charged with prostitution. Twenty-five suspected johns had been charged as well. These men were charged with soliciting another to commit prostitution, a misdemeanor that carried, for the first time offender, up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. That was not big news. That was not the real reason the chief of police called a press conference.

     The big news, the bombshell, was that Robert Kraft was one of the johns caught up in the vice dragnet. According to the chief of police the 78-year-old visited the spa on two occasions in January 2019. He allegedly was recorded on hidden police surveillance cameras engaging in sexual activity with two Asia Day Spa employees.

     Robert Kraft when he was in Florida lived in a double apartment in a luxury waterfront development he owned in Palm Beach. According to the police report he made the two 35 -minute trips to Jupiter in a chauffeur driven car.

     A spokesperson for Mr. Kraft told reporters that "We categorically deny that Mr. Kraft engaged in any illegal activity."

     On May 9, 2019 Palm Beach County Judge Joseph Marx sealed more than 100 hours of Asia Day Spa police video recordings, including footage allegedly depicting Robert Kraft's sexual activities. The judge wrote: "Defendants are guaranteed a fair and impartial trial by jury, and not a trial by community or in the press."

     Judge Marx, on May 20, 2019, decided that prosecutors in the Asia Day Spa case could not use the video recordings of Robert Kraft and the others as evidence at their trials. The judge ruled the "dragnet" videos violated the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of lawful spa customers.

     On December 28, 2019 Florida's attorney general asked for a three-judge appellate panel to reverse the lower court's exclusion of the Asia Day Spa videos. The attorney general argued that without hidden surveillance cameras prostitution sting operations would be impossible. Without this evidence the state had no case.

     Robert Kraft issued a statement that in part read: "I know I have hurt and disappointed my family, my close friends, my co-workers, our fans and many others who rightfully hold me to a higher standard."

     Every year in the United States, undercover vice cops arrest roughly 7, 500 men for patronizing adult prostitutes. They do this at a time when jurisdictions like the state of California have essentially legalized retail theft, the public use of heroin and parole violation. Prosecutors in several big cities do not prosecute people for breaking into cars, robbery, possession of heroin and resisting arrest.

     In September 2020 the prosecutor dropped the charges against Robert Kraft and the other alleged johns.

     Lei Wang, the manager of the Asia Day Spa pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of soliciting another to commit prostitution. The 41-year-old was sentenced to one year probation and fined $5,000. Three other female spa employees pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses and received probation. 

     Prosecuting men who patronize prostitutes, in a nation overwhelmed with serious crime, is an outlandish waste of law enforcement resources. Nothing destroys faith in a criminal justice system more than selective and heavy-handed law enforcement.  

The Randy Alana Murder Case

     In 2013 50-year-old Sandra Coke, a capital case investigator for the federal public defender's office headquartered in Sacramento, California resided in Oakland with her 15-year-old daughter. As a federal investigator in cases involving death row inmates who appealed their sentences, Coke interviewed them, their family members and acquaintances for the public defenders office in the Eastern District of California. The job often involved travel around California and into other states.

     In May 2013 someone broke into Sandra Coke's home and stole her beloved cocker spaniel, Ginny. After that, in her spare time, Sandra ran down leads regarding her pet's whereabouts by posting missing dog flyers around her neighborhood. The posters offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to Ginny's return.

     On Saturday, August 3, 2013 someone called Sandra with information about the dog. At eight-thirty the following evening she left her house to meet with the person who called about Ginny. Before leaving the dwelling Sandra told her daughter that she'd be gone no more than thirty minutes. When she did not return to the house as promised her daughter reported her missing to the Oakland Police Department.

     Doing some detective work of her own, the missing woman's daughter tracked her mother's two iPhones using a GPS application. One of the phones had been dumped along a highway near Richmond, California. The other device had been ditched in Oakland.

     At seven-forty-five the evening following Sandra Coke's disappearance, an Oakland police officer found her 2007 Mini Cooper convertible parked two miles from her home. In a quest for leads regarding her whereabouts officers removed bags of evidence from the Coke residence. Included among the items seized were two laptop computers.

     A few days into the missing person's case investigators developed a suspect from Oakland named Randy Alana. The 56-year-old career criminal had been seen with Sandra Coke on the night she went missing. The two had dated twenty years earlier.

     In June 2012 Alana was paroled from a fifteen-year prison sentence for armed robbery. He also had convictions for kidnapping and rape and was registered in California as a high-risk sex offender. The fact he and SandraCoke had been together on the night she went missing raised the possibility of murder.

     For Randy Alana this was not the first time he became a suspect in a murder case. In September 1983 Alameda County, California prosecutor Russ Giutini charged the then 26-year-old criminal with using a hammer to beat to death Marilyn Pigott, a woman he had known since elementary school. Pigott had been murdered on August 13, 1983 in her North Oakland apartment.

     In June 1984, while awaiting his murder trial in the Alameda County Jail, Alana and a fellow inmate named James Hodari Benson were accused of killing 40-year-old Al Ingram. The victim had been stabbed 93 times. Alana and Benson were members of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang. They killed Ingram under the false belief he was a police informant.

      In the fall of 1984, the jury in the Marilyn Pigott murder trial deadlocked 9-3 in favor of convicting Alana. In his second trial the jury acquitted him because the witnesses who testified against him were "street types." In the Pigott case, Prosecutor Giutini managed to convict Alana of receiving stolen property in connection with his possession of the murder victim's ring.

     In 1986, as a defendant in the Al Ingram murder trial, the jury couldn't reach an unanimous verdict on the issue of Alana's guilt. The judge declared a mistrial. James Hodari Benson was convicted of the murder in 1987. A year later, Alana pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the Benson case in return for a prison sentence of six years.

     Police officers, on August 6, 2013, arrested Randy Alana on a parole violation and booked him into the Santa Rita County Jail in Dublin, California. The magistrate denied him bail.

     Three days after Alana's arrest a Contra County search and rescue team near Lagoons Valley Park, an unincorporated area in Solano County outside of Vacaville, California, found Sandra Coke's body in a creek bed. She had been strangled to death.

     Former Alameda prosecutor Russ Giutini in speaking to a CBS reporter described Alana as a good-looking career criminal who was cunning and manipulative.

     On August 18, 2013, in a jailhouse interview, Randy Alana told a reporter with The Oakland Tribune that he and Sandra Coke had been in love and had planned to get married. During the past several months, according to Alana, they had shared a house and regularly attended the Harmony Missionary Baptist Church. "I'm being treated like a suspect," he said.

     In November 2013 an Alameda County prosecutor charged Mr, Alana with murder in connection with Sandra Coke's death. Al Wax, Alana's longtime criminal defense attorney, calling the case against his client "very weak and circumstantial," asked a judge in June 2014 to dismiss the case. The judge denied the defense motion to drop the charges. The case would progress to the trial stage.

     The Randy Alana murder trial got underway on March 16, 2015 in the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland. Prosecutor Colleen McMahon, in her opening remarks to the jury, said that after the defendant stole Sandra Coke's dog Ginny on May 9, 2013 he tried to extort $1,000 from her for the pet's return. She didn't file charges against him and didn't pay him the ransom. She did, however, speak to his parole officer, accusing Alana of stealing her car, abducting her dog and stealing her daughter's expensive headphones. This discussion led to Alana's incarceration that spring and summer for violating his parole.

     Infuriated that Coke had spoken to his parole agent, the defendant, on August 3, 2013, strangled Coke to death in the rear seat of her Mini Cooper parked behind the Nights Inn in North Oakland.

     Defense attorney Al Wax, in his opening statement, said that without an eyewitness or a confession the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial and insufficient.

     Over the next four weeks prosecutor McMahon presented her evidence that included incriminating surveillance camera footage, cellphone data and records from the defendant's electronic ankle monitor. When police officers arrested him on August 6, 2013 in Dublin, California Alana was in possession of the murder victim's car keys and credit cards.

     Two of the defendant's former cellmates at the Santa Rita County Jail took the stand for the prosecution and testified that following his arrest, he remarked that while he had assaulted many women in the past, things didn't look good for him this time.

     Prosecutor McMahon, to establish motive, played a recording of a phone call from Alana to Sandra Coke made on May 9, 2013 from the Santa Rita County Jail. In that call Alana expressed his rage at her for getting him into trouble with his parole officer.

     A 40-year-old homeless woman took the stand and said that just hours after Sandra Coke's murder, the defendant took her, in his "wife's" Mini Cooper, to a motel in Oakland where they smoked crack and she gave him oral sex.

     Randy Alana took the stand on his own behalf on April 20, 2015. Under direct examination by defense attorney Wax the defendant gave an account of his activities on the day of Coke's murder, a story he was telling for the first time. According to Alana, on August 3, 2013 he and Sandra Coke in her Mini Cooper followed two people she believed would lead them to her dog Ginny. At the point of destination, a crack house in Richmond, California, he went inside to smoke dope while she remained outside talking to the unidentified people.

     When Alana came out of the crack house Sandra asked him to take her car and bank card and withdraw cash from her bank account. When he returned to the crack house with the money she was gone, presumably murdered by these mysterious people.

     On May 4, 2015, the last day of Alana's self-serving testimony, prosecutor McMahon, during a blistering cross-examination, poked several holes in the defendant's story. The next day, following the testimony of the defendant's 33-year-old daughter from a short-lived marriage in the 1980s, the defense rested. 

     After the closing arguments, the jury, following a two-hour deliberation found Randy Alana guilty as charged. He faced up to 96 years in prison.

     The Alameda County judge, on June 18, 2015, before sentencing the murderer to 131 years in prison, called  Mr. Alana a "black hole that sucks the life out of anything positive." 

The Don Willburn Collins Murder Case: Robert Middleton's Long, Painful Death

     Robert Middleton, on June 28, 1998, turned eight. Early in the evening of his birthday his 13-year-old neighbor, Don Willburn Collins, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. Robert survived the attack but suffered third-degree burns over most of his body. The crime took place in Splendora, Texas, a small town in the Houston metropolitan area.

      Don Willburn Collins confessed to the police, was arrested and spent several months in juvenile detention. He was not, however, prosecuted as a juvenile or an adult for the assault. According to the Montgomery County prosecutor in charge of the investigation the state did not have enough evidence against Collins to go forward with the case. As a result the authorities had no choice but to release the suspect. (Collins took back his confession and there were procedural problems associated with the investigation.)

     Over the years Robert Middleton underwent 100 painful surgeries and many skin grafts that still left him disfigured. In 2011, after being diagnosed with skin cancer, Robert, in a videotaped deposition given shortly before his death at the age of 23, revealed that two weeks before the arson-assault Don Collins sexually molested him. Don Willburn Collins set his victim on fire to prevent him from reporting the rape.

     The medical examiner, finding that Robert Middleton's cancer was caused by his burns, ruled his death a homicide. Following this cause and manner of death determination detectives with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office conducted a seven-month cold-case investigation into the 1998 sexual molestation and subsequent arson.

       In 2002, three years after Collins set Robert Middleton on fire, a jury found him guilty of sexually molesting an 8-year-old boy. At the time of that rape Collins was fifteen. For that offense he spent four years in juvenile detention. The assault took place in San Jacinto County, Texas.

     In 2012 Robert Middleton's parents won a $150 million wrongful death suit against Collins. Because the man who set fire to their son was homeless the plaintiffs knew they would never collect the civil judgment.

     A Montgomery county judge, in 2013, transferred the Collins/Middleton case from juvenile to adult court after the district attorney charged Don Willburn Collins with felony-murder in connection with Middleton's delayed death. Under the felony-murder doctrine, a person who commits a felony is culpable for any death that occurs in the commission of that crime. In the Collins case the underlying felony was sexual assault. While the sexual crime didn't cause Middleton's death, it lead to the arson that in turn caused the cancer that killed the victim. (The arson-assault wouldn't work as the underlying felony because the statute of limitations on that offense had run out. The sexual assault, however, wasn't reported until 2011.)

     In terms of the law, the prosecution in the Collins case faced a felony-murder causation problem. The prosecutor had to directly link the arson to the sexual attack. There was also the passage of time between the rape and the victim's cancer death. In the old days before crimes were codified, there was a common law principal related to criminal homicide called the year and a day rule. If the victim of an assault died a year and one day after the attack too much time had passed to allow a murder charge.

     Collin's attorney challenged the transfer of his client's case into adult court. In 1998, under Texas law, a person under the age of 14 could not be charged as an adult with a capital offense. Collins was 13 when he allegedly raped then set fire to the victim. (In 1999 state legislators dropped the age to ten.)

     In October 2014 State District Judge Kathleen Hamilton approved a request by Collins' attorneys to move the murder trial out of Montgomery County. E. Tay Bond, one of the defendant's lawyers, had argued that the intense publicity the case received would make it difficult for his client to get a fair trial locally. Mr. Bond said, "I think the degree of shock as to what happened to Robbie Middleton has created a fervor in the community where people have decided that Don Collins is in fact guilty of something. They would convict him just based on emotion instead of an objective review of the evidence or lack thereof in the case."

     On January 10, 2015 Judge Hamilton heard arguments on the Collin's defense motion to suppress statements the defendant made to police sixteen years earlier regarding setting the victim on fire. Two days after the oral arguments the judge decided that because the interview room had not been approved by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department Board she had no choice but to exclude this evidence from the prosecution's case. Judge Hamilton noted, however that "the officers involved in the 1988 statements had not acted in bad faith." But because Texas law did not provide for good-faith exceptions to the rules in the Family Code, the judge's hands were tied.

     In looking for evidence against the defendant, detectives questioned a man who served jail time in juvenile detention with Collins who claimed that Collins threatened to burn him the way he set fire to Robert Middleton.

     On February 4, 2015, in a Galveston, Texas courtroom, Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn, in his opening statement to the jury made up of six men and six women, said, "Our case is based on the testimony of adults who came forward and can tell you what the defendant did when he and Robbie Middleton were children. Witnesses will tell you that he poured gasoline on Robbie Middleton in 1998 and set him on fire."

     Defense attorney Tay Bond told the jurors they should not expect the prosecution to present eyewitnesses to this crime because there weren't any.

     Dr. David Herndon, a burn surgeon and chief of staff at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Galveston took the stand as the prosecution's first witness. He said the burns the victim suffered had eaten through his fat tissue into his muscle. The doctor said Middleton's burns were among the worst he had ever seen. For surviving 13 years, the doctor said he considered Middleton a "miracle."

     Dr. Herndon was followed to the stand by three physicians who testified that the cancer that eventually killed the victim had been caused by his burns.

     Over the next several days, prosecutor Blackburn put on witnesses who testified that Collins had bragged to them about what he had done to Robbie Middleton. One of these witnesses, an inmate at a juvenile detention center who served time with Collins, said the defendant had raped him then threatened to burn him the way he had set fire to the Middleton boy.

     Defense attorney Bond, in his closing remarks to the jury, again stressed the fact there were no eyewitnesses to the crime or physical evidence linking his client to Middleton's burning.

     Prosecutor Blackburn, in his closing statement, called the defendant a "monster" and a "child rapist."

     On February 9, 2015 the jury in Galveston, Texas found Don Collins guilty of capital murder. Following the verdict attorney Bond promised to appeal the conviction on grounds that trying Collins as an adult for a crime committed when he was thirteen was unconstitutional.

     Judge Blackburn sentenced Collins to forty years in prison.

     On April 4, 2017 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the murder conviction.

The Stephanie Lazarus Murder Case

     In the early 1980s Stephanie Lazarus, a student at UCLA, fell in love with John  Ruetten who also attended the university. After college Lazarus and Ruetten continued to see each other and even took trips together. But for John Ruetten it wasn't a serious relationship. In 1984 Stephanie joined the Los Angeles Police Department as a patrol officer. A year later Mr. Ruetten shocked Lazarus with the news that he was marrying a woman named Sherri Rasmussen. Lazarus responded to the revelation by becoming hysterical. At the hospital where Rasmussen worked as a nursing supervisor the jilted, distraught cop confronted her rival. At one point Lazarus threatened that if she couldn't have John Ruetten nobody could. Notwithstanding Lazarus' smoldering objection, Ruetten and Rasmussen were married in November 1985.

     On the morning of February 24, 1986 Sherri Ruetten (nee Rasmussen), still employed at the hospital, called in sick. Stephanie Lazarus also took a day off from the LAPD. At six that evening John Ruetten returned to his townhouse in the San Fernando Valley to find his wife of three months sprawled on her back on the living room carpet. Dressed in a red robe and a pink T-shirt, Sherri Ruetten  had been struck over the head with a heavy vase, tied-up, beaten, bitten and shot to death. The Los Angeles County coroner estimated that the 29-year-old victim had been murdered around noon.

     A crime scene investigator, in the era before DNA identification, had the presence of mind to swab the victim's bite mark with cotton and place the sealed evidence in the coroner's freezer. (From saliva a forensic serologist at the time could only determine the donor's blood type.) Detectives on the case, thinking that Sherri Ruetten had interrupted a burglar, did not suspect officer Stephanie Lazarus. The investigation went nowhere.

     In 1993 the LAPD promoted Lazarus to detective. That year she married a fellow police officer and shortly thereafter the couple had a daughter. In 2005, the LAPD formed a squad of cold-case investigators who re-opened hundreds of old, unsolved murders that featured biological evidence capable of being DNA tested. The 1986 Sherri Ruetten case fell into that category. In 2005 a DNA analysis of the saliva traces swabbed from the victim's bite wound revealed the killer was a woman. While members of Sherri's family suspected that Stephanie Lazarus had killed Sherri, the LAPD, perhaps unwilling to investigate one of their own, stayed with the intruder theory.

     In 2009 after Stephanie Lazarus retired from the force as a highly decorated detective specializing in art theft, cold-case investigators turned their attention to her. That year, a detective who had followed the suspect to a Costco store retrieved a soda can she had thrown into a trash container. A DNA analyst compared saliva traces from the soda can to the Rasmussen bite mark residue. The comparison resulted in a partial DNA match. This linkage to the murder scene provided detectives with probable cause to take Lazarus into custody.

     With Lazarus in custody an investigator had the opportunity to swab the inside of her mouth for a higher quality saliva sample. According to DNA expert Jennifer Francis, the sample from the suspect's mouth matched the crime scene saliva. This meant that Stephanie Lazarus was the only person in the world who could have bitten Sherri Ruetten. The district attorney's office charged the retired police officer with first-degree murder. A judge set her bail at $10 million. Lazarus would await her trial in the Los Angeles County Jail.

     The Lazarus trial got underway on February 6, 2012. Deputy District Attorney Paul Nunez, after showing the jury of six men and six women the murder scene photographs, spent the first week establishing the integrity of the DNA evidence. He also emphasized how it proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had murdered Sherri Ruetten. Defense attorney Mark Overland aggressively cross-examined the prosecution's DNA experts in an effort to plant seeds of doubt regarding the reliability of physical evidence this old.

     On February 14 the prosecutor put John Ruetten on the stand. The 53-year-old witness described how the defendant had reacted to the news he was marrying Sherri Rasmussen. To calm her down he agreed to have sex with her. After the murder the idea that Lazarus had killed his wife never crossed Ruetten's mind. Detectives told him that Sherri had been murdered when she interrupted a burglar.

     Prosecutor Nunez, on February 16, 2012, put his last witness on the stand, a FBI criminal profiler who testified that the killer staged part of the murder scene to throw off investigators. According to this witness the victim's townhouse, with its alarm company sign on the door and its location in plain view of other houses, was an unlikely target for a burglar.

     Mark Overland, in his two-day defense presentation, attacked the DNA evidence. He tried to convince jurors that the 1986 bite mark saliva had degraded and had been contaminated. The defense attorney also put a fingerprint examiner on the stand who testified that none of the murder scene latents belonged to the defendant. Overland rested his case without putting the defendant on the stand. 

     In his closing remarks to the jury Deputy District Attorney Nunez said the DNA evidence against the defendant was "overwhelming." The prosecutor identified the motive in the murder as jealousy. The defense attorney asked the jurors to disregard the DNA evidence which he characterized as "compromised." During the closing arguments the defendant looked on without outward signs of emotion.

     On March 8, 2012, after deliberating a little more than a day, the jury found Lazarus guilty of first-degree murder. Not long after the verdict the Rasmussen family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the LAPD and the city.

     On May 10, 2012 the judge sentenced the 51-year-old Lazarus to 27 years in prison. A civil judge, in 2013, dismissed the Rasmussen wrongful death suit against the police department.