The Marcel Melanson Arson/Theft Case

     In 1998 22-year-old Marcel Melanson joined the fire department in Los Angeles County's Compton California. While the ambitious and popular firefighter succeeded at his job, he wasn't good at managing his financial affairs. In 2005 the state of California filed a $29,000 tax lien against him. Two years later the IRS hit him with a $80,240 tax lien.

     Melanson became a minor celebrity in 2009 as a regular participant in a BET Network reality TV series called "First In." A TV crew followed the fire battalion chief as he led a rescue team that came to the aid of victims of traffic accidents and street crime. About this time Inked Magazine featured Melanson's elaborate tattoos on his back, arms and neck.

     The crime-ridden city of Compton, like its celebrity firefighter, had run into financial problems. The municipality, due to a revenue shortfall and bloated budgets disbanded its police department. In June 2010 members of the Compton City Council in anticipation of bringing back the police force authorized the purchase of $1.7 million in communications equipment from the Motorola Corporation. Melanson, an emergency communications expert, sat on a three-person technology committee that oversaw the purchase of this equipment.

     By 2011 the city of Compton was on the verge of insolvency. As a result the police department was not coming back and the city was stuck with hundreds of radios that cost $2,500 a piece. The city stored the excess communications equipment at the Compton Fire Department.

     In December 2011 a fire broke out and quickly spread at the Compton Fire Department in the area housing the surplus radio equipment. Arson investigators determined that the fire had been intentionally set and that Marcel Melanson was the only person in the station at the time of the fire. Detectives with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office discovered that prior to the blaze someone had stolen thousands of dollars worth of the radios. Further investigation revealed that over the past several months the thief had been selling the stolen property, one radio at a time, on Internet sites like eBay. Theft detectives by 2013 recovered fifty of the stolen communication units.

     In February 2013 Mr. Melanson, the prime suspect in the thefts and the arson, was fired. Deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office at eleven o'clock on the morning of May 15, 2013 arrested the 37-year-old at his home in Torrance California. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Renee Rose charged the former celebrity firefighter with arson, grand theft and embezzlement. If found guilty as charged he faced up to ten years in prison. A judge set his bail at $350,000.

     Investigators believed that Melanson set the fire to cover his radio equipment thefts. The suspect's attorney, Robert Rico, publicly insisted that his client was innocent. According to the defense attorney a Long Beach Fire Department arson investigator initially reported that the Compton fire was not arson then later changed his mind.

     While a firefighter committing arson is not that unusual, firefighters rarely torch a fire station. Due to the celebrity element in this particular case Melanson's arrest attracted a lot of southern California media attention. People who knew him and worked with the former high-ranking firefighter had a hard time believing he was guilty as charged.

     In April 2014 Marcel Melason pleaded no contest to felony arson and embezzlement by a public official. In June the judge sentenced him to three years and four months in prison and ordered him to pay $517,477 in restitution. 

The Peep-Show Jailer

     Small town jail guards, while near the bottom of the criminal justice hierarchy, wield power and control over inmates temporarily housed in county lock-ups. It's not easy recruiting qualified corrections officers willing to work among drunks, drug addicts, petty thieves, burglars, sex offenders and inmates awaiting trial for aggravated assault, rape and criminal homicide. Most people would find working in a jail disgusting and depressing.

     Nicholas Tankersley worked the midnight-to-eight shift at the Morgan County Jail in Martinsville, Indiana. In early January 2013 a former female inmate of this central Indiana lock-up wrote a letter to a corrections official regarding the 21-year-old night guard. According to the complainant, Mr. Tankersley, in exchange for jailhouse favors had asked a dozen or so female inmates to pose naked for him.

     The former inmate's letter led to an internal investigation which revealed that Nicholas Tankersley during the period November 15, 2012 to January 11, 2013 rewarded several female inmates who sexually exposed themselves. He gave them extra sheets, pens, batteries, oranges and other items. A Morgan County inmate in exchange for one of Tankersley's favors allegedly let him fondle her.

     After confessing to several of these expose-yourself-for-favor incidents, Mr. Tankersley, on January 17, 2013 was fired, arrested and charged with sexual battery and official misconduct. If convicted he faced up to three years in prison for each of these felonies.

     Investigators learned that Tankersley had friended several former female inmates on his Facebook page. When his wife found out about this she ordered him to unfriend these women.

     Following his arrest, Nicholas Tankersley who went by the name "Tank," was held in a neighboring county jail. A public defender was assigned his case. The ex-jailer through his attorney pleaded not guilty to all charges.

     On February 27, 2013 the defendant pleaded guilty to one count of official misconduct. A few days later the judge sentenced Mr. Tankersley to one year in custody. The former jailer would experience what it was like to be in jail on the other side of the bars.

Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley: Prosecutorial Politics in a High Profile Rape Case

     In 2007 26-year-old Grant Robicheaux graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He did his residency as an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California at Irvine Medical Center. Dr. Robicheaux in 2008 resided in Newport Beach, California, an Orange County city 45 miles south of Los Angeles. He practiced medicine at the Chapman Spine and Orthopedic Institute in Orange, California and at the Newport Care Medical Group in Newport Beach.

     In 2008 Dr. Robicheaux's girlfriend, a 19-year-old dance instructor named Cerissa Laura Riley, moved in with the doctor at his Newport Beach home.

     In September 2009 detectives with the Newport Beach Police Department questioned a woman who reported she had been raped. She claimed to have met Dr. Robicheaux at a bar in the city after which he took her to his house and sexually assaulted her. The alleged victim said the doctor owned a lot of guns and that she was afraid of him. The woman's rape complaint did not result in any charges against Dr. Robicheaux.

     Some publication in 2013 named Dr. Robicheaux Orange County's "Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year." In 2014 the doctor appeared on an episode of Bravo TV's short-lived series "Online Dating Rituals of the American Male." The low-brow show, typical of the network's offerings, featured the plight of a busy young doctor in search of the perfect woman. Doctor Robicheaux was quoted in the program as saying: "I am not looking for a party girl. I am looking for a wife to raise a family." While on television advertising for the perfect woman the doctor was still living with Cerissa Riley in Newport Beach.

     In 2016 two women in separate complaints informed detectives with the Newport Beach Police Department that at Dr. Robicheaux's house they had been drugged and raped. One of the alleged victims described the doctor and his girlfriend as a "Bonnie and Clyde" team who drugged and forced her to engage in sex acts.

     The second complainant said she met Dr. Robicheaux at a Newport Beach Halloween party. She went home with him and it was there he spiked her drink with the date rape drug GHB (Dopamine Beta-Hydroxylose, a substance that quickly metabolizes in the body and is therefore difficult to detect). The alleged victim said she awoke during the sexual assault.

     In April 2017 another woman reported being raped by the orthopedic surgeon at his Newport Beach house. The complainant told detectives she met Dr. Robicheaux on an Internet dating site. While having drinks with him at a Newport Beach bar they were joined by Cerissa Riley who held herself out as his friend. After getting the alleged victim drunk the couple took her to their house and raped her while she was out cold.

    In the summer of 2017 another one of Dr. Robicheaux's dates came forward alleging he raped her. This woman told the police she met the doctor at a Fourth of July party. A few days later she was spending an afternoon with Robicheaux and Rily on a boat. The couple, according to the woman's story, invited her back to the house where they drugged and raped her.

     In January 2018 officers with the Newport Beach Police Department showed up at Dr. Robicheaux's house armed with a search warrant. Officers seized the couple's cellphones and computers, and according to police documents, found cocaine, ecstasy and the date rape drug DBH. Searchers also seized two assault rifles and several other guns.

     Newport Beach police officers on September 2, 2018 arrested Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley at the doctor's house. Officers booked the couple into the Orange County Jail on charges of rape, illegal gun possession and possession of controlled substances. The magistrate set their bail at $100,000 each. Through their attorneys the suspects pleaded not guilty.

     The Robicheaux-Riley date rape investigation and arrests generated an enormous amount of media attention. The case had everything the true crime media loves--violent sex, drugs and prominent, glamorous suspects. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, in the midst of a re-election campaign took full advantage of the publicity. He appeared frequently on local and national television, gave dozens of interviews in the print media and held regular well-attended press conferences. He essentially tried and convicted the doctor and his girlfriend in the media.

     Critics of the district attorney accused him of timing the suspects' arrest with an eye toward the upcoming November 2018 election. Rackauckas was being challenged by his old political rival Todd Spitzer who was ahead in the polls.

     At a press conference held on the day of the arrests District Attorney Rackauckas announced that the couple had been charged with 17 counts of rape covering the period 2009 to 2017. The suspects faced charges of rape by use of drugs; oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance; assault with the intent to commit a sexual offense; and possession of controlled substances for sale. Dr. Robicheaux had also been charged with several gun violations.

     A few days after the high profile arrests District Attorney Rackauckas, through his office spokesperson, announced that six more women had come forward with date rape accusations against Dr. Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley. Moreover, according to the district attorney's spokesperson, there could be many more victims--up to 1,000. And there was more: detectives had viewed more than 1,000 cellphone videos that depicted the suspects having sex with women who were either unconscious or semiconscious. The district attorney told reporters that Dr. Robicheaux and his girlfriend used their "good looks" to lure their victims to the Newport Beach house where they  drugged and sexually assaulted them.

     Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley, on September 12, 2018, posted bail and were released from custody. If convicted as charged they could both serve up to 30 years in prison. Dr. Robicheau was now 38 and Cerissa Riley 30.

     On November 2, 2018 voters in Orange County, notwithstanding all of the publicity generated by the Robicheaux-Riley case, voted District Attorney Tony Rackauckas out of office.

     The date rape defendants' attorneys in January 2019 accused the former district attorney of making false and reckless public misstatements regarding the videos allegedly depicting the defendants sexually assaulting drugged and intoxicated women. The attorneys hired a team of consultants who viewed more than 1,000 cellphone videos. According to the defense lawyers only a few of the videos showed any kind of sexual activity. None of the sex videos depicted women who were in any way unable to consent.

     Shortly after taking office Todd Spitzer, the new Orange County District Attorney, assigned a team of prosecutors to review the Robicheaux-Riley rape investigation. These prosecutors combed through a trove of evidence that included photographs, videos, text messages and alleged rape victim interview transcripts.

     In March 2019 one of the women who claimed to have been raped by the suspects in 2016 asked an Orange County judge to put a hold on her $12 million lawsuit against the couple until the criminal case against them played out.

     In early February 2020 District Attorney Todd Spitzer made a shocking press conference announcement: His investigators had not found "a single piece of evidence or video or photograph that shows an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted by Dr. Robicheaux or Cerissa Riley."

     At that press conference District Attorney Spitzer accused the former Orange County prosecutor of using the sensational rape case to help in his bid for re-election. In Spitzer's opinion there was not enough evidence against the couple to support a rape conviction. As a result the district attorney planned to ask a judge to dismiss all charges against Dr. Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley. "I didn't create this situation," he said, "but it is my responsibility to fix it. Doing justice is not always pretty. But these are important decisions that affect people's lives."

     At his own press conference former district attorney Tony Rackauckas said, "I feel terrible for the women who had the courage to come forward and give their evidence to the authorities in this case. Certainly, any prosecutor should think long and hard before dismissing such a case where multiple women have independently come forward and subjected themselves to the hard process of baring their souls to the authorities."

     Defense attorney Thomas M. Ferlauto, in publicly thanking District Attorney Spitzer, said, "He made a very courageous decision. It was the right decision, but one that might expose him to criticism. Grant and Cerissa's lives were destroyed by the prior administration's misuse of the justice system."

     In July 2023 a judge dismissed the sexual abuse charges against the doctor and Cerissa Riley. A few months later Dr. Robicheaux pleaded guilty to several gun and drug charges. In return for his plea and giving up his medical license, the judge sentenced the doctor to two years probation. 

Comedian Andy Kaufman's Bad Joke

     Andy Kaufman became famous in the 1970s as the comedic character Latka Grauas in the popular sitcom "Taxi." He later appeared regularly on "Saturday Night Live." At the height of his fame, after a performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman arranged for 24 buses to take his audience of 2,800 out for milk and cookies after the show. As he career petered out Kaufman took on the persona of a cheesy and abusive lounge singer from New Jersey he called Tony Clifton. During this period the eccentric comedian participated in a series of bizarre wrestling matches with women. At times he seemed unhinged which in Hollywood often passes for brilliance.

     In May 1984, suffering from a rare form of lung cancer, Andy Kaufman died in a West Hollywood hospital room. He was 35.

     In 2013 the 9th Annual Andy Kaufman Comedy Awards ceremony was hosted by Andy's brother Michael at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York City. That Monday night, November 11, 2013, Michael stunned the audience with the announcement that his brother was in fact alive.

     Michael Kaufman informed the awards show audience that when going through Andy's things following his supposed passing he had found an essay by Andy detailing how he planned to fake his own death. According to the scheme Andy would reappear at a specific restaurant on Christmas Eve 1999.

     Michael on Christmas Eve 1999 showed up at the restaurant to meet his presumably dead brother. Instead he was met by a waiter who handed him a typed letter from Andy in which Andy had written that he had fallen in love and had gone into hiding. (The typed letter precluded handwriting identification.)

     In the letter Andy supposedly wrote that he and his girlfriend resided with their ten-year-old daughter at an undisclosed place. The letter led Michael to believe that everything was great in Andy's life. He had faked his death simply to get away from being Andy Kaufman. The reclusive ex-comedian asked Michael not to tell their father, Stanley Kaufman, that he was alive. 

     In July 2013 Stanley Kaufmann passed away. Not long after his father's death Michael received a call from a 24-year-old woman who claimed to be Andy's daughter. The caller had good news. Andy Kaufman was still alive. (He would be 65.) The young woman said she went by the last name McCoy, the name Andy had used when checking into hospitals.

     As the awards audience tried to digest Michael Kaufman's shocking revelations, the host called a young woman onto the stage and introduced her as Andy's daughter. Addressing the comedy crowd this woman said, "Andy just wanted to be a stay-at-home dad. That's why he wanted to leave showbiz. He's pretty much a great dad. My mom has her own business…he helps her with that kind of thing--paperwork and stuff--so he can work from home and he doesn't have to be hiding out or concealing himself. He just makes us food and takes care of the house."

     Andy Kaufman's friend, fellow comedian Al Parinello in talking about Andy's secret life after death said this to a reporter with The Comic's Comic: "Only the family actually saw Andy's body [before the closed-casket funeral]. Andy was an aficionado of meditation. One of the things Andy was taught at the highest level was a process where one could slow down his breath to a point where you can literally fool anyone that you may be dead when in fact you are alive."

     Andy must not only have mastered the technique of death impersonation well enough to fool the hospital pathologist, he must have found a way to tolerate having his blood replaced by embalming fluid. Otherwise, he managed to pull off a tricky body switch. It that's what happened, then there's a body in Andy's grave that's not him. That is unless the substitute corpse was cremated.

     In response to the news that the comedy world's strange duck was not a dead duck, Kaufman's last girlfriend, 56-year-old Lynne Margulles, told TMZ that she had watched him die in the West Hollywood hospital room. According to Margulles, Kaufman's only daughter is a 40-year-old named Maria.

     If Andy Kaufman had in fact faked his own death is he guilty of a crime? In the United States faking one's own death is not against the law per se. It is, however, a criminal offense to use the ploy to defraud an insurance company or to avoid taxes and other debts. It is also not a crime to publicly announce that a dead man had faked his own death. But it is a bad taste joke. But in life that's what Andy Kaufman had become--a bad taste comedian. 

The Connie Villa Murder Case

      When Adam and Connie Villa were married in 2005 she had a 5-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. He was a member of the Arizona National Guard. The couple and the child, Aniarael Macias, resided in Casa Grande, a suburban community 50 miles south of Phoenix. In 2006 Adam Villa served a year in Iraq with his National Guard unit. By 2010 the couple had three children of their own.

     Adam and Connie Villa were divorced in 2012. Following the break-up the battle over legal custody of the children began.

     On Christmas day 2013 Adam Villa called 911 to report that his wife had stabbed him in the chest and that he was driving himself to the hospital. Police officers rushed to the Villa residence where they encountered Connie Villa holding a knife to her chest. Officers subdued the distraught 35-year-old woman and called for an ambulance.

     The three younger Villa children, ages three, five and eight, were in the house when the police arrived. The youngsters informed the officers that their mother had forced them to consume what turned out to be a narcotics-based prescription drug.

     In the bathroom officers discovered the body of 13-year-old Aniarael Macias. Because there were no marks on her officers assumed that Connie Villa had poisoned the girl to death with prescription drugs.

     While 33-year-old Adam Villa remained in stable condition at the Casa Grande Regional Medical Center, physicians at the Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix treated Connie Villa for superficial self-inflicted knife wounds. The three children, although there were traces of opiates in their bodies were fine. The siblings were placed into the custody of relatives.

     On Sunday December 29, 2013 upon her release from the hospital detectives took Connie Villa into custody. When questioned at the police station she admitted stabbing her husband and poisoning their three children. In the bathroom, after being unable to force Aniarael to ingest the prescription drug, the mother strangled her daughter to death with her hands.

     Detectives asked Connie why she had killed her oldest child, stabbed her husband and tried to poison the little ones to death. She said she was afraid the judge would grant custody of the children to her ex-husband. 

     On January 8, 2014 Pinal County Attorney Lando Voyles charged Connie Villa with premeditated first-degree murder, four counts of attempted murder, kidnapping and four counts of child abuse. The suspect, through her public defender attorney pleaded not guilty to all charges. She was held in the Pinal County Jail without bond.

     In June 2014 a Pinal County Superior Court judge approved the prosecution's request to seek the death penalty in the case.

    After pleading guilty to first-degree murder in July 2017, Pinal County Judge Jason Holmberg sentenced Connie Villa to life without parole plus 155 years. 

The Charles D. Young Murder-For-Hire Case

     In May 2005 high school senior Charles D. Young met 17-year-old Wendy Smith (not her real name) at a military ball in Spokane Washington. He asked her out, and after a month of dating they began to fight. Typically, after one of their arguments Charles would stand all night beneath her window or the next day follow her around after school. When Wendy Smith tried to end the relationship he threatened to kill himself. After ten months of enduring his weird and obsessive behavior Wendy told Mr. Young she found someone else. This was not true, but she wanted this strange kid out of her life. Charles refused to take no for an answer and became Wendy's full time stalker.

     Three months after the breakup Charles Young suddenly lost interest in Wendy and slipped out of her life. A few weeks after that, in July 2006, Wendy's parents got in touch with Charles and gave him news he didn't like. Their daughter was pregnant with his child. Charles angrily insisted that the baby couldn't be his and said that a paternity test would prove it.

     After his initial reaction to the news that he would soon become a father, Charles changed his tone. Following a series of meetings with Wendy and her parents he expressed a desire to help raise the child. But when he stopped communicating with his ex-girlfriend and her parents they figured they had seen the last of him. They were wrong.

     Back home in Colville, Washington Charles asked a friend if he knew how much it would cost to have someone killed. A few days later Charles offered this person $3,000 to either murder or seriously injure his former girlfriend. The main idea, Charles said, was to kill the fetus. If the mother survived that would be okay with him. The friend, convinced that Charles was serious, contacted the Stevens County Sheriff's Office.

     On October 11, 2006, a few days before Wendy's due date, Charles met an undercover officer in the town of Suncrest a few miles north of Spokane. With the tape recorder running in the officer's car Charles said he would pay $3,250 to have the problem with his ex-girlfriend "disappear." He said he didn't care if the girl lived or died as long as the fetus was destroyed. The murder-for-hire mastermind handed the officer a photograph of Wendy and a handmade street map showing where she lived. Charles then took out $1,620 in twenty-dollar bills and handed it to the undercover officer. He promised to pay the balance of the hit money when the job was done. After pocketing the money the officer placed the 18-year-old under arrest. That evening Charles D. Young found himself inside the Stevens County Jail. The next day the magistrate set his bond at $1 million.

     The Stevens County prosecutor charged Young with solicitation to commit first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first degree-murder of a fetus. A conviction on either charge qualified him for life behind bars.

     In April 2007 Charles Young was allowed to plead guilty to the solicitation of manslaughter. His lawyer described his client to the court as an intelligent young man who had received bad advice regarding his responsibilities as a father. The defense attorney said that his client had apologized to Wendy and her parents.

     The Stevens County judge, in February 2009, sentenced Charles D. Young to six years in prison. The judge justified his extreme leniency on the grounds that this murder-for-hire mastermind had only intended to have the unborn child murdered. The sentencing judge must have forgotten about Young's indifference to whether or not his hit man also murdered or seriously injured the child's mother.

    Cases like this undermine one's faith in our criminal justice system. 

The Brinda Sue McCoy Attempted Suicide-By-Cop Case

     Brinda Sue McCoy, a 48-year-old registered nurse, lived with her husband Frank and their 5 children in Cypress California, a suburban town of 47,000 in Orange County. Frank McCoy, a former Cypress Councilman and commander with the Long Beach Police Department was chief of police in Oceanside, a southern California city of 174,000. Frank McCoy had been chief of the 260-member department since 2006. His wife Brinda worked at Hoag Hospital in the Orange county town of Newport.

     At seven in the evening of December 16 2010 Brinda McCoy, while alone in her house and feeling "overwhelmed and distraught," called friends and relatives to inform them of what songs to play at her funeral. Earlier in the day she had argued with her husband and her son.

     Under the influence of prescription medicine to calm her down and a few martinis, Brinda called 911 for "police assistance." She recently read a news account about police in another town killing a man wielding a garden hose nozzle. She thought she might be able to get the local police to kill her. Since this would end her suffering she thought her death would be a relief to friends and family.

     When members of the Cypress Police Department responded to the call Brinda McCoy refused to come out of the house. During the standoff the distraught woman appeared at a window with a pistol in her hand. She pointed the gun at her head, at the ceiling then at the police outside. After being warned that if she discharged the gun police officers could get hurt, she fired a shot out the window in the direction of police officers positioned behind a parked pickup truck. The police did not respond in kind. Twenty minutes later she fired again in the general direction of the officers. 

     About an hour after the shootings a police officer talked Brinda McCoy out of her house. As she crawled out the front door members of a SWAT team subdued her with a beanbag gun.

     Following 72 hours of observation at a local hospital Brinda McCoy was taken into custody. She posted her $250,000 bail and was released.

     Charged with five counts of police assault with a firearm, felonies that could send her to prison for 30 years, Brinda McCoy went on trial in an Orange County court on May 24, 2012. Twenty-five days later, after the defendant testified on her own behalf for two days, the jury after deliberating 5 hours found her guilty on all counts. She awaited her September sentencing under house arrest.

     In 2011 police officers in the United States shot 50 women, killing about half of them. Most of these women were armed with knives and had histories of mental illness. Most of them, like Brinda McCoy, did not have criminal records. Many of these police involved shootings were "suicide-by-cop" cases.

     Had Brinda McCoy been a mental case or a drug addict in Philadelphia, Chicago or Miami she would have probably been shot. But in Orange County California where the officers knew they were dealing with the disturbed wife of a police chief they were patient and used nonlethal force.

     Four days after she was released on bail to await her sentencing police officers found Brinda bleeding in her back yard following an attempted suicide. Judge Francisco Briseno ordered the police to take the suicidal woman into custody for her own protection.

     Prior to Brinda McCoy's sentencing date, Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivier, in a rare legal action, agreed to retroactively modify the charges against the defendant by removing the firearm discharge count, the conviction of which carried a mandatory 20-year sentence. 

     On September 7, 2012 Judge Briseno sentenced Brinda McCoy to fifteen years in prison. Had the charges against her not been modified after the fact she could have been sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

     As deputy sheriffs escorted McCoy out of the courtroom in handcuffs she spoke to her husband, relatives and friends there to support her. "Thank you guys," she said. "Everyone, I love you."

     Justice was not done in this case. Fifteen years in prison for a mentally ill woman who tried to use the police to commit suicide is too harsh.

Joseph McGuinniss And The Jeffrey MacDonald Murder Case

     Joe McGuinniss was born in Manhattan, New York on December 9, 1942. Raised by well-to-do parents in New York City and Los Angeles, he graduated in 1964 from Holly Cross University in Worcester, Massachusetts. After failing to get into Columbia University's graduate school of journalism he became a staff reporter for the Worcester Telegram. 

     Following stints at The Philadelphia Bulletin and The Philadelphia Inquirer, McGuinniss published his first book in 1968. The Selling of the President, a nonfiction account of the marketing of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, became a bestseller and remained on The New York Times bestseller list for six months. That book established the 26-year-old author's reputation as a serious investigative journalist and landed him a job as writer-in-residence at the Los Angeles Harold Examiner.

The Jeffrey MacDonald Murder Case

     On February 17, 1970 Green Beret Captain and Army surgeon Jeffrey MacDonald reported a deadly invasion of his home at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. At the scene Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officers found MacDonald's wife Colette and his two daughters, Kimberly and Kristen, stabbed to death. MacDonald himself had superficial puncture wounds. According to MacDonald he had struggled with the hippie intruders who had murdered his family.

     Following an internal military review of the case Captain MacDonald was cleared of wrongdoing. But in January 1975 a federal grand jury indicted him on three counts of first-degree murder. He vigorously maintained his innocence and stuck to his original version of the mass murder.

     At some point after MacDonald's indictment Joe McGuinniss entered the case as a journalist who intended to write a book exonerating the Green Beret officer. The writer acquired access into the inner circle of the MacDonald defense team by gaining MacDonald's trust as a loyal friend. In reality, the more McGuinniss learned about the case the more convinced he became of MacDonald's guilt. The true crime writer believed that MacDonald, a sociopath who wanted to be free of  his family, had murdered his wife and daughters in a homicidal frenzy aided by his abuse of diet pills.

     In 1979 when the jury found MacDonald guilty as charged, Mr. McGuinniss, to maintain his position within the MacDonald defense team, feigned shock and outrage. But when McGuinniss' book on the case, Fatal Vision, came out in 1983 it was Jeffery MacDonald and his supporters who were shocked and outraged by the author's duplicity. In the book the author made a strong case for MacDonald's guilt.

     Shortly after the publication of Fatal Vision, a book that quickly became a runaway bestseller, Jeffery MacDonald sued the true crime writer for beach of contract.

     When the first of its kind lawsuit went to trial several well-known true crime authors such as Joseph Wambaugh and Norman Mailer testified on McGuinniss' behalf as expert witnesses. According to Wambaugh and Mailer, McGinniss had done what any serious investigative journalist would do to get to the bottom of a case. In other words, a true crime writer has no duty to be honest with the person he's writing about. At the conclusion of the trial some jurors bought McGuinniss' defense but others did not. This led to a hung jury.

    The insurance company for the publisher of Fatal Vision, shocked and concerned that some of the jurors had sided with a man who had killed his wife and two children over the journalist who had written the book about the mass murder, settled the suit out of court for $325,000. In the court of public opinion Joseph McGuinniss did not come off as a likable person. Ordinary people did not approve of his journalistic trickery.

     In 1989 journalist Janet Malcolm wrote a long piece about the MacDonald-McGuinniss suit in The New Yorker. A year later the article came out as a book called The Journalist and the Murderer. Malcolm's defining of the journalist/subject relationship as inherently exploitive itself became a source of debate. Regarding the MacDonald/McGuinniss relationship Janet Malcolm famously wrote: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."

     Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bott published a book called Fatal Justice that argued for MacDonald's innocence. According to these authors, McGuinniss's book is full of substantive errors and groundless speculation.

     Regardless of one's take on the MacDonald's guilt or innocence, Fatal Vision is an exceptionally well written account of a fascinating murder case. It also popularized the concept of the sociopathic killer who appears normal on the outside but in reality is a pathologically narcissistic liar without feelings of guilt.

     Joe McGuinniss followed Fatal Vision with two bestselling true crime books. Blind Faith, published in 1989 is about a New Jersey man who hired a hit man to murder his wife, and Cruel Doubt, published in 1991, features teenage murderers inspired by the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.

     The method McGuinniss used to research his 2011 book The Rogue, a biography of Sarah Palin, also stirred controversy. In 2010 he rented a house in Wasilla, Alaska next door to the former vice presidential candidate. Critics called McGuinniss a peeping Tom and Palin accused him of stalking her and her family. The book, failing to break new ground about a person the public had lost interest in did not make the bestseller list.

     On March 10, 2014 Joe McGuinniss died in a Worcester, Massachusetts hospital from prostate cancer. At his death at age 71 he was living in Pelham with his second wife Nancy Doherty. He was survived by three children.

     Fatal Vision is considered by many to be a true crime classic equal to Joseph Wambaugh's Onion Field, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song.

     In December 2018 the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the 75-year-old Jeffrey MacDonald his latest bid for a new trial.

     Jeffery MacDonald remains in prison and continues to maintain his innocence. 

Kenneth Caplan's Road Rage

     On Tuesday November 11, 2014 in Houston Texas, Kenneth Caplan, while driving on the 610 South Loop highway with a female passenger in his car, cut in front of another vehicle nearly causing a collision. The 20-year-old woman who was cut off honked her horn angrily at the reckless driver. She should have left her response at that.

     The angry young motorist, in retaliation, passed the offending driver and cut in front of him. This infuriated the man who pulled his vehicle up alongside the woman who had cut him off. Kenneth Caplan lowered the front passenger's side window, raised a handgun, and with his female rider leaning back to give him a clear shot, fired a bullet into the young woman's car.

     The highway shooter's target heard a ringing in her ear and started to bleed from the head. As she pulled off the highway to call 911 the man who shot her drove away.

     Paramedics rushed the 20-year-old woman to Memorial Hermann Hospital where doctors treated her for a bullet wound that was not life-threatening. Three days later physicians released her from the hospital.

     On Wednesday November 26, 2014, Houston police officers took 32-year-old Kenneth Caplan into custody at his home. While road rage shootings in big cities was not uncommon, the identify of this highway shooter made the case a bit unusual. Kenneth Caplan was a Deputy Harris County Constable for Precinct 6. When he shot the motorist, Deputy Caplan was off-duty and out of uniform.

     Following his arrest Mr. Caplan admitted shooting into the young woman's car. He said he had a right to shoot into the vehicle because the driver was driving erratically.

     Police officers booked Caplan into the Harris County Jail on the charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The judge set his bail at $200,000.

     A spokesperson for the Harris County Constable's Office announced that Caplan's law enforcement credentials had been collected and that he was no longer employed by the office.

     The victim of the shooting told reporters that "I feel like I got a taste of death." Indeed, and perhaps she learned a lesson about the dangers of road rage. A lot of motorists are ticking time bombs and it doesn't take much to set them off.

     In May 2016 Kenneth Caplan pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. In a newspaper interview Mr.  Caplan said he suffered from PTSD and had childhood onset of bipolar disorder after growing up in an abusive family. (With this background how did he become a cop.) The judge sentenced Kenneth Caplan to 20 years in prison.

Kenneth Buck: A Petty Criminal Who Turned Violent

     In 2012 Kenneth Arnold Buck, a 20-year-old homeless resident of Chandler Arizona who had a history of shoplifting and petty theft in California entered a church in Chandler to use the bathroom. Inside the building he encountered the man who taught music at that church. Buck pulled a knife and demanded that the victim turn over his cellphone and wallet.

      Following the robbery the music teacher followed Kenneth Buck onto a city bus where he confronted him. Mr. Buck responded by breaking into tears, throwing his knife to the bus floor and giving back the stolen items.

     After pleading guilty to robbery Kenneth Buck served three months in the Maricopa County Jail. The judge also sentenced him to three years probation.

     In January 2013 Chandler police officers arrested Kenneth Buck for public intoxication. At the time of his arrest he was carrying a small quantity of marijuana. The judge added two years to his probation.

     On November 21, 2014, after Mr. Buck violated the terms of his probation by changing his place of residence without his probation officer's permission, and missing several drug tests, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

     At one in the afternoon of Monday January 5, 2015 police officers in Chandler spotted a man driving a Dodge pickup truck that matched the description of the vehicle associated with a local burglary. The truck bore fictitious out-of-state license plates and was being driven by Kenneth Buck.

     Once he realized the police were tailing him, Kenneth Buck stepped on the gas and ran a red light. The officers gave chase. After driving a couple of blocks Mr. Buck slid open his rear window and started firing shots at the pursing police car. The officers responded with a volley of their own.

      The pursuit came to an end when Kenneth Buck pulled the truck to a stop, climbed out of the vehicle and continued to fire at the officers. In the exchange of gunfire he was hit several times. Although seriously wounded, Buck managed to climb back into the pickup and drive off. After a short distance the Dodge came to a stop. Inside the vehicle officers found the 22-year-old slumped dead behind the steering wheel.

     Notwithstanding Kenneth Buck's record of relatively minor crime, he turned out to be a dangerous person who could have killed a police officer. 

Tattoos As Human License Plates

     A mother in Georgia got into trouble for taking her 10-year-old son to a tattoo shop where he got tattooed in honor of his dead brother. The local prosecutor's office charged the woman with child cruelty. Under Georgia law only physicians and osteopaths can tattoo people under 18. (Why would a doctor ink a kid in the first place?) This story got me thinking about tattoos and the role they play, and have played, in the identification of criminals and their victims.

     Not too long ago people most likely to get a tattoo were enlisted military personnel, prison inmates and members of street gangs. Truman Capote, the author of "In Cold Blood," once told a journalist that of the dozens of mass murderers and serial killers he had interviewed all of them had tattoos. Today, that would surprise no one. In 2006, according to a Pew Research Center survey, more than 36 percent of people between the ages 18 and 40 had at least one tattoo. This percentage is probably much higher now. (It seems that 90 percent of college and professional football and basketball players are tattooed. This is also true of boxers.) 

     Tattoos, along with clothing, personal belongings, fingerprints, scars, moles and teeth are helpful in the identification of corpses that have been dumped in the water, in fields and in the woods. In 1935 two fishermen caught a shark off the coast of Sydney, Australia. They took the live fish to a local aquarium where it disgorged a human arm that had been severed by a knife. The arm also bore a distinctive tattoo that led to the identification of a murder victim named James Smith. Smith had been an ex-boxer with a history of crime. The case became known as the Shark Arm Murder.

     The police routinely ask crime victims and eyewitnesses if the suspect had tattoos. Former prison inmates and members of street gangs unwillingly assist law enforcement by identifying themselves as such through their inked individualized body markings. In England in the late 1800s, before criminal identification bureaus adopted fingerprints, identification clerks took note of arrestees' tattoos and their locations, data classified and filed for future retrieval. Today, in California, the CALGANG database consists of a collection of gang tattoos. The state of Florida has a database that features about 372,000 tattoos of people who have been arrested there.

     In 2010 Michigan State University licensed tattoo matching technology to Morpho Trak, the world's leading provider of biometric (eye, hand, signature and voice ID) identification systems. Corrections and law enforcement officers use the tattoo database to identify criminal suspects and homicide victims.

     Dr. Nina Jablonski, head of the anthropology department at Penn State says that "Tattoos are part of an ancient and universal tradition of human self-declaration and expression." In some cases these tattoos express anti-social attitudes and declare that their owners have histories of crime.

The Sierra "CeCe" Sims Kidnapping Hoax

     High school basketball standout Sierra "CeCe" Sims, in August 2008 arrived at Alabama's Auburn University with a full athletic scholarship. As a high school player in Brentwood, Tennessee, CeCe led her team to three regional titles. The five-foot-seven inch point guard, a former teen pageant contestant, also played the guitar. (Her father, Tommy Sims co-wrote the Grammy-winning Eric Clapton hit, "Change the World.")

     The 18-year-old college freshman, as a member of the Auburn Tiger's women's basketball team, a powerhouse in the Southeastern Conference, had to deal with being away from home, academic life on the university level and living up to expectations on the basketball court.

     Shortly after arriving at the university CeCe began drinking heavily every night. In late September 2008 she called her mother Kathie and said she wanted to come home. Kathie told her distraught daughter to talk to coach Nell Fortner. Taking her mother's advice, CeCe called the coach. When CeCe hung up the phone after their chat the coach felt that everything would be fine for the freshman prospect.

     The next morning when CeCe failed to show up for the six o'clock practice Fortner became concerned. When the coach made inquiries regarding CeCe's whereabouts he learned that at 2:30 that morning she had stormed out of the dormitory and rode off on her bicycle. None of her acquaintances had seen her since.

     Not long after campus searchers couldn't find CeCe, university officials asked the authorities to issue an Amber Alert. Eighteen hours later a parol officer looking for the missing student almost hit CeCe with his patrol car. When the officer approached the girl she said, "I'm CeCe Sims."

     Questioned at the local police department CeCe told detectives she was kidnapped by a man and a woman who pulled up alongside her in a pickup truck. After being dragged into the vehicle the abductors forced her to drink alcohol and take pills. As a result of being drugged she couldn't recall in detail what had happened to her.

     Under close questioning by detectives CeCe's story didn't hold up. In an effort to get the student to reveal where she had been since leaving the dorm at 2:30 the previous morning, officers threatened her with the possibility of being charged with a crime. Notwithstanding that threat she stuck to her highly implausible story.    

     The police did not open a kidnapping investigation and CeCe was not charged with false reporting. She dropped out of school and returned home to Brentwood, Tennessee.

     In 2014 CeCe Sims posted a video on the Internet acknowledging that she had indeed made up the kidnapping story in September of 2008. When she left the dormitory that night she rode her bike to a nearby Walmart where she hid for almost eighteen hours.

     According to CeCe Sims the pressure at Auburn had been too much for her. "I didn't want to disappoint my parents," she said, "so I thought, what better way to say I was kidnapped? That way I wouldn't have to quit and be known as a quitter."

     When the story broke regarding CeCe and the kidnapping hoax, former Auburn coach Nell Fortner described to an ABC reporter the pressure student/athletes are under at schools like Auburn. "Your schedule might take you to the Bahamas or to Hawaii. They are going to get a great education. But they pay heavily for that because working out is tough. They are up at five in the morning, and they don't get to bed until eleven at night."

     Following the scandal Sierra CeCe Sims moved in with her parents while she pursued a career in the music business. 

The Steven Pratt Murder Cases

     In 1984 15-year-old Steven L. Pratt lived in an Atlantic City New Jersey apartment complex with his mother Gwendolyn Pratt. One night in April of that year Steven and his friends were hanging out in the hallway outside his apartment when the next-door neighbor, Michael Anderson, complained of the noise. Following an argument between Steven Pratt and his neighbor, Pratt's friends dispersed.

     For Steven Pratt the dispute with his neighbor remained unresolved. That night he went into his apartment and came out armed with a lead pipe. When he confronted his neighbor with the weapon, Michael Anderson grabbed the pipe from him and used the weapon to bloody the teen's face.

     The next day a humiliated Pratt borrowed a handgun from an acquaintance and returned to the apartment complex where he shot Michael Anderson twice, killing him on the spot.

     After crime scene investigators completed their work, Steven Pratt's mother, knowing what her son had done marched him down to the police station. Under police questioning the teen confessed.

     An Atlantic County prosecutor charged Steven Pratt with first-degree murder and tried him as an adult. The young defendant took the stand on his own behalf and told the jurors that when he pulled the trigger the gun just clicked and didn't go off. He kept squeezing the trigger until the bullets came out.

      The jury, presented with evidence of a cold-blooded killing, found the boy guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to thirty years in prison.

     Pratt's attorney appealed the conviction on the ground his client should have been tried as a juvenile. According to the appeal Steven Pratt had "emotional impairments" that reduced his intellectual age to less than seven years. The appellate judge affirmed the conviction.

     On Friday October 10, 2014, after serving most of his thirty-year sentence at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, Mr. Pratt became a free man. Having no place to stay he moved in with his 64-year-old mother who lived in a house on the west side of Atlantic City.

     At two o'clock in the morning of October 12, 2014, one of Gwendolyn Pratt's neighbors heard a loud argument coming from her house. The neighbor, having been accused of being too quick to call the police on her neighbors resisted the urge to call 911. Steven Pratt had been out of prison less than two days.

     At six-thirty that morning someone did call 911 to report a disturbance at the Pratt residence. At the scene police officers found Gwendolyn Pratt dead from massive blunt force trauma to her head. The officers also found Steven Pratt and took him into custody.

     Later in the day of Gwendolyn Pratt's murder police officers booked her son into the Atlantic County Justice Facility on the charge of first-degree murder. The judge set Steven Pratt's bail at $1 million.

     In February 2017 Steven Pratt pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing his mother. A month later the judge in Atlantic City sentenced Pratt to 25 years in prison. According to the judge, the 48-year-old Pratt would not be eligible for parole until he served 85 percent of his sentence.

     The Stephen Pratt case lends credence to the view that certain criminals are beyond the reach of rehabilitation. While these prisoners should not be released back into society there is no way to identify them as hopeless cases before they reoffend. Nothing is less reliable than predicting human behavior. 

Jesse Dimmick: Suing Your Victims

     Jesse Dimmick and another man were suspects in the September 7, 2009 beating death of 25-year-old Michael Curtis, a murder that took place in Aurora, Colorado. The authorities arrested the other man but Dimmick remained at large. On September 12, 2009 when police officers in Kansas encountered Mr. Dimmick driving through the state in a stolen van he refused to pull over. A high-speed vehicle chase ensued.

     In Dover, a suburb of Tokeka, the fleeing suspect crashed the stolen vehicle near a house occupied by Jared and Lindsay Rowley. To hide from the police he forced his way into the newlywed's home and held them hostage at knife-point.

     To calm the armed intruder the Rowleys fed him Cheetos and Dr. Pepper as he watched the movie "Patch Adams." The terrified hostages  promised that when the armed intruder left their house they would not call the police. Later that night when he fell asleep the Rowleys slipped out of the dwelling.

     A short time after the hostages escaped, the home invader awoke to the sounds of a Topeka SWAT team storming into the dwelling. Officers cornered Dimmick in the bathroom and wrestled him to the floor. In the course of the scuffle a police sergeant's AR-15 accidentally discharged. The bullet entered Dimmick's back as he lay face-down on the floor. The officer, a 21-year veteran of the force, was placed on a three-day leave of absence for not having the rifle's safety on.

     In May 2010 a jury in a Shawnee County Kansas court found Jesse Dimmick guilty of two counts of kidnapping. The judge sentenced the defendant to eleven years in prison.

     The Rowleys, in October 2011, sued Jesse Dimmick for causing them emotional stress. At the time he was incarcerated in the Adams County Jail in Brighton Colorado awaiting his trial in the Michael Curtis murder case. The victims of the home invasion were seeking $75,000 in damages. A month later Mr. Dimmick filed a counter-suit against his former hostages in which he sought $235,000 in damages. He accused the Rowleys of breaching their oral contract not to notify the authorities. Because he couldn't find a lawyer to take his case he represented himself in the action. His damages were based on medical bills related to the police caused gunshot wound and his pain and suffering as a result.

     In January 2012 a Shawnee County judge dismissed Jesse Dimmick's counter-suit against the Rowleys. Eight months later he was back in court, this time as a plaintiff in a civil action against the Topeka Police Department. Based on his assertion that he had been seriously injured as a result of Sergeant Guy Gardner's negligent handling of the AR-15, Dimmick was asking the city to reimburse him $185,000 for his medical bills, $150,000 for future economic loss and $100,000 for his pain and suffering. In this civil action Mr. Dimmick had professional legal representation.

     On September 13, 2012 the civil case jury, after deliberating two hours, found that the Topeka SWAT officer had not been negligent or at fault in Dimmick's accidental shooting. The jurors obviously did not want this plaintiff to benefit in any way from his invasion of the Rowley home.

     A Kansas appeals court, in September 2012, upheld the Dimmick kidnapping conviction.

     In May 2013 Dimmick pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Michael Curtis murder case. The Adams County Colorado judge sentenced him to 37 years in prison.

      A month after Dimmick's murder conviction, Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis dismissed the Rowley lawsuit against him on procedural grounds. The Rowleys were free to refile the action. 

Japan's Black Widow

       In 2014, Japan was home to one of the fastest aging populations in the world. Japanese people were living longer and fewer of them lived with their adult children. 

     Japanese men and women in their 70s whose spouses had died were lonely and vulnerable to a variety of crimes that included murder. Many of them, desperate for companionship in their so-called golden years, accessed online dating services that catered to lonely senior citizens,

The Black Widow

     In 1964 18-year-old Chisako, (because she was married to so many men and took their last names only her first name will be used) a bright, ambitious high school graduate from Muko, a small industrial suburb of the city of Kyoto, married a truck driver who later started a small printing company. Although Chisako had the intelligence and desire to attend college her conservative parents, not wanting to waste a higher education on a woman, denied her that opportunity. She ended up working as a bank clerk, a job she felt was beneath her.

     In 1994 Chisako's husband suddenly fell ill and died at the age of 54. The authorities determined his death to be natural, and pursuant to custom in Japan, his body was cremated.,

     In 2004 the 48-year-old Chisako married the 67-year-old president of a small drug company. Two years later he got sick and died. With no reason to suspect foul play the authorities listed his death as natural. His remains were also cremated.

     In May 2008, after being married to Chisako for less than two months the*- 75-year-old landowner became ill and suddenly died. Two months after that the 73-year-old clothing boutique owner Chisako was dating suddenly dropped dead. Although this was the fourth man connected to Chisako by marriage or romance to die suddenly, this man's passing did not catch the attention of law enforcement. As a result it was labeled a natural death. It seemed that when it came to partners this woman had a lot of bad luck. She was, however, becoming rich.

     In 201 after Chisako's 71-year-old fiancee fell off his motorcycle and died, the police, now suspicious, ordered a blood test that revealed the presence of the poison cyanide. This man had been murdered and Chisako became the prime suspect in the case.

     While under investigation for the poisoning murder of her fiancee Chisako married again, this time to a 75-year-old man named Isao Kakehi. Mr. Kakehi, a longtime widower, had a substantial savings account and owned his own home. One month after marrying Chisako he ended up dead on the floor of his dwelling. Following the initial cause of death ruling of heart failure, a test of Isao Kakehi's blood revealed a lethal dose of cyanide.

     In November 2014 detectives with the Kyoto Prefectural Police arrested Chisako on suspicion of murder in the death of Mr. Kakehi and the death of the poisoned fiancee who fell off his motorcycle in 2012. When the fiancee died from cyanide poisoning Chisako was dating at least two other elderly men. Chisako's arrest probably saved their lives.

     Detectives in December 2014 recovered a small bag of cyanide that had been hidden in a plant pot Chisako had thrown away.

     According to investigators the suspected serial killer's M.O. had been simple and direct. She used the online dating services to find lonely and moderately wealthy men whom she showered with romantic emails professing her undying love. Shortly after she married these men she pressured them to change their wills to make her the sole beneficiary of their estates.

     Chisako, dubbed by Japan's tabloid media as the "Black Widow," had amassed $8 million of her victims' money. Since she was richer than her last two or three victims, money may not have been her primary motive. She may have killed these men out of anger and resentment against a male-dominated society that did not recognize her worth.

     During her November 2017 murder trial Chisako confessed to murdering three of her husbands and attempting to kill a fourth. The judge sentenced her to death.

    This serial murder case highlighted a problem in Japan's criminal justice system. Because of a critical shortage of forensic pathologists in Japan, autopsies were not conducted on six of Chisako's suspected eight victims. In 2014 only 11.7 percent of Japan's so-called "unusual deaths" resulted in autopsies. In England that percentage was 40 percent. In Sweden, 95 percent. In the United States, with so many drug overdoses, suicides and murder, while no statistics were available regarding this percentage, it was probably lower than Japan's.

Psychic Detective Sylvia Browne

     While some people believe in fortune tellers, soothsayers, spoon benders, people who communicate with the dead and so-called psychic detectives, the pairing of the words "psychic" and "detective" is beyond ridiculous. Nevertheless there are criminal investigators who take psychic detectives seriously and confer with them. One of the most famous psychic detectives was a woman named Sylvia Brown who died in 2011 at the age of 77.

      Sylvia Browne grew up in Kansas City Missouri. In 1964 she moved to southern California where she set up shop as a psychic. Ten years later, perhaps in an effort to create the indicia of legitimacy, she founded the Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research.

     During her career Browne wrote 50 "nonfiction" books of which 22 appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. 

     Sylvia Browne achieved fame and fortune through her regular appearances on the TV shows "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Montel." Her television exposure also helped her promote her books.

     While the psychic detective offered her services in dozens of celebrated crimes her predictions never resulted directly in the solution of a murder or the location of a missing body. (For example, in a missing persons/murder case Sylvia Browne told Montel Williams that the body was on the bottom of a small lake in Connecticut. The woman's remains were later found several hundred miles away.)

     One of Sylvia Browne's high-profile goofs involved the Cleveland kidnapping case featuring Amanda Berry. Browne told the victim's mother that her daughter was dead when in fact she was being held prisoner in Cleveland Ohio by Ariel Castro.

     Psychic detectives wouldn't exist if producers stopped putting them on television. While it is doubtful that any person smart enough to be a TV producer actually believes in psychics, a large segment of the TV-watching public does believe in them. That's why psychic detectives are on TV. Moreover, if you're on the tube you are perceived as legit. Media exposure can be a phony stamp of approval.

     For millions of Americans living in a land of magical thinking, psychic detectives are perceived as visionaries who can see and know things ordinary people can't. In reality, psychic detectives give false hope, create investigative wild-goose-chases and make TV hosts look foolish in the eyes of people who can think straight.

Leatrice Brewer: The Woman Who Killed But Didn't Murder Her Three Children

     In 2002 21-year-old Leatrice Brewer, while living with her grandmother, had her first baby, a girl she named Jewell. Leatrice and the baby's father Ricky Ward broke up shortly after the birth. Leatrice and her grandmother, Maebell Mickens, lived in New Cassel New York, a suburban community on Long Island 20 miles east of New York City.

     Brewer's grandmother and her mother Pearly Mae Mickens were mentally ill drug addicts. Leatrice, already showing signs of insanity, worked as a filing clerk at a law firm. She also had a part time job as a sales assistant at a Kohl's department store.

     Not long after the birth of her daughter Jewell, Leatrice began dating a man from Queens named Innocent Demesyeux. Less than a year later she gave birth to their son Michael. Leatrice continued to live with her grandmother, Maebell Mickens. Maebell, to help support her drug habit, was not above panhandling on the streets of New Cassel. At this time Leatrice continued to struggle with severe bouts of depression and drug dependancy.

     In 2006 Leatrice Brewer had a second child with Innocent Demesyeux, a boy who inherited his father's unusual first name. Shortly after Innocent's birth Maebell Mickens kicked Leatrice and her children out of her house.

     Leatrice Brewer and her three kids moved in to a small second-story apartment on Prospect Street in New Cassel. Without financial help from the children's fathers Leatrice continued to hold down two jobs. She also received rental assistance, food stamps and a stipend from the federal Women, Infants and Children program.

     As early as 2003 caseworkers from the state's Child Protective Service agency received complaints filed by neighbors and family members accusing Leatrice of child neglect. Every so often one of the fathers would call the local police to report that Leatrice, a six-foot woman who weighted more than 200 pounds, had hit one of the children. Notwithstanding these complaints she never lost custody of Jewell, Michael or Innocent.

     By 2007 Leatrice Brewer was too drug-addled and mentally ill to hold down a job. For days she was absent from the apartment, leaving the child-raising to her 6-year-old daughter Jewell.

     In late February 2008 Leatrice called 911 and informed the dispatcher she had stabbed Jewell and drowned her in the bathtub. The distraught mother said she had also drowned Michael and Innocent. After talking to the 911 dispatcher she tried to kill herself by swallowing a concoction of household cleaning chemicals. When it appeared she couldn't commit suicide by poisoning herself Leatrice Brewer jumped out of her second-story bedroom window.

      The mother's second attempt to kill herself also failed. Instead of the morgue she ended up at the Nassau University Medical Center with an injured back. The next day a county prosecutor charged her with three counts of murder.

     While being treated at the hospital Leatrice Brewer told a visiting relative that "the voices took control and I had to do it."

     According to a battery of court-appointed psychiatrists, Leatrice Brewer suffered from a major depressive disorder that caused her to kill her children. She had been under the delusion that killing her kids would save them from something worse than death--the effects of voodoo.

     In 2009 Leatrice Brewer pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect. The judge sent her to a state psychiatric facility where the 28-year-old would reside and be treated until mental health experts and drugs made her sane enough to rejoin society.

     The Brewer case came back into the news in 2013 when Leatrice petitioned a judge for her share of her children's $350,000 estate. (I do not know the source of this wealth. Perhaps a wrongful death lawsuit had been filed against the state on the children's behalf that resulted in a court settlement.) Normally, under New York's Son of Sam law, convicted criminals are prohibited from profiting from their crimes. But in this case, Brewer, rather than being convicted of triple murder, had been found not guilty by reason of insanity. This raised the legal question of whether or not, under these circumstances, she was entitled to the money.

     In November 2013 a judge ruled that pursuant to the Son of Sam law Leatrice Brewer was not entitled to a piece of her dead children's estate.

     Leatrice Brewer remains a patient at the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center at Long Island New York. 

Murder Most Rare: The Anna Mae Blessing Case

     In January 2018 92-year-old Anna Mae Blessing moved into a condo in Fountain Hills Arizona with her 72-year-old son Thomas Blessing and his 57-year-old girlfriend who owned the dwelling.

     Around nine-thirty on the morning of July 2, 2018 Thomas Blessing was in his mother's bedroom arguing with her over plans to send the elderly woman to an assisted living facility. She did not want to live in such a place and said so in no uncertain terms as the argument became heated. With her son's girlfriend looking on Anna Mae Blessing pulled a handgun from the pocket of her robe and shot her son several times at close range. He died on the spot.

     After shooting her son to death the old woman pointed the gun at her dead son's girlfriend who managed, following a brief struggle, to disarm her. At that moment Anna Blessing pulled a second gun from her robe, a weapon the girlfriend knocked out of her hand.

     Once she had separated the elderly shooter from her weapons the girlfriend called 911. At ten that morning members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene. The deputies found the 92-year-old sitting quietly in a reclining chair. As officers led the murder suspect from the condo in handcuffs she said, to no one in particular, "You took my life, so I took yours."

     Officers booked the suspect into the Maricopa County Jail on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault. A magistrate set her bail at $50,000. At one point during her booking the murder suspect said, "Put me to sleep." An official close to the case speculated that after murdering her son Mrs. Blessing had planned to take her own life.

      In January 2019 Anna Mae Blessing, while awaiting her murder trial, died in the Maricopa County Jail.

The Douglas and Kristen Barbour Child Abuse Case

     Douglas B. Barbour was a prosecutor in the Pennsylvania State Attorney's Office headquartered in Harrisburg, the state capital. The 33-year-old attorney was assigned to the district office in Pittsburgh. He and his 30-year-old wife Kristen resided in Franklin Park, a borough of 14,000 just north of the city. In March 2012 the couple, through a religious organization called Bethany Christian Services, adopted a 5-year-old boy and an 11-month-old girl. The children were from Ethiopia.

     On September 14, 2012 Dr. Rachel Berger at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh examined the Barbour children. The 6-year-old boy had been brought to the hospital with hypothermia, rapid breathing and skin lesions caused by prolonged exposure to urine. He weighed 47 pounds and was severely malnourished.

     The girl, 18-months-old, had breathing difficulties, retinal hemorrhaging, brain injury and healing fractures in her femur and a toe. (Kristen Barbour told Dr. Berger that the toddler had suffered several accidental falls.) As a result of the toddler's head trauma she was blind in one eye, perhaps permanently. The little girl was also malnourished. (Tests would later reveal that the healing bone fractures were not the result of disease.)

     Dr. Berger, suspecting child abuse, notified the Allegheny County Police Department. The boy was admitted to the hospital's urgent care center and the girl placed into protective custody. In the doctor's report she wrote this about the 6-year-old boy: "[He is] the victim of significant neglect and possible emotional abuse over a prolonged period of time."

     After spending six days in the hospital the boy gained seven pounds. He was taken to A Child's Place, a children's abuse facility at the Mercy Health Center in Pittsburgh.

     On October 2, 2012 detectives with the Allegheny County Police Department questioned the boy at the Mercy Health Center. According to the child, whenever he soiled his pants his parents made him eat his meals in the bathroom.

     Two days after speaking to the 6-year-old the police arrested Douglas and Kristen Barbour. They were charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and in the case of their 18-month-old daughter, aggravated assault. The state attorney general's office suspended Douglas Barbour without pay pending the outcome of the case.

     Detectives searched the couple's suburban home in Franklin Park and found, in the boy's bedroom, nothing but a mattress and a sheet. There were no toys, window coverings, wall decorations or anything else that made the place livable.

     According to an employee of the adoption service, Mrs. Barbour had complained that the boy was "rude, defiant and very difficult." She also complained that both children ate too much.

     On June 23, 2014 Douglas and Kristen Barbour pleaded no contest to two counts each of endangering children. Mr. Barbour pleaded to the misdemeanor counts while his wife pleaded to the felony charges. As part of his plea deal Mr. Barbour received a probated sentence. Although his wife faced three to twelve months in jail, her attorney asked for probation. The couple relinquished their parental rights and the children remained in foster care.

     In September 2014 the judge sentenced Kristen Barbour to six to 12 months to be served at the minimum security prison at Mercer, Pennsylvania. Douglas Barbour, in March of 2015, resigned from the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

Raymond Clark: The Panhandler Arsonist

     Thirty-eight-year-old Raymond Sean Clark, a homeless panhandler, regularly loitered outside the 7-Eleven store on the Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach California. Mr, Clark made a habit of annoying customers who patronized the convenience store by begging them for money and cigarettes. He had become an unwelcome fixture in the neighborhood. 

     At five in the afternoon of April 12, 2013, as Jerry Payne sat outside the 7-Eleven store in his Toyota 4-Runner, the 62-year-old was approached by Clark who asked him for money. 

     When Mr. Payne refused to give Raymond Clark a handout the transient poured a bottle of gasoline into the SUV and tossed in a match. The vehicle and its occupant were immediately engulfed in flames. (The fire was so intense customers and employees in the convenience store had to escape through a back door.)

     After Good Samaritans eventually pulled Mr. Payne out of the burning vehicle paramedics rushed him to Torrance Memorial Hospital, a medical facility that specialized in burn patients. With third-degree burns on his chest and face the victim was in critical condition.

     Police officers arrested Raymond Clark around the corner from the fire. Charged with attempted murder he was held in the Los Angeles Inmate Reception Center under $502,200 bail. When Mr. Payne died from his burns the prosecutor elevated the charge against Raymond Clark to murder.

     In April 2014, a year after the deadly assault, Jerry Payne's family filed a wrongful death suit against the 7-Eleven convenience store chain and the city of Long Beach. The plaintiffs based the civil action on the theory the attack had been foreseeable therefore preventable. According to the plaintiffs, both the owner of the store and the police had known that Raymond Clark was aggressive and dangerous.

     Assistant City Attorney Monte H. Machit described Mr. Payne's death as an "absolute tragedy." However, he said, Long Beach could not be held accountable for every "random act of violence that took place in the city."

     In March 2015 the plaintiffs dropped the wrongful death suit against the city of Long Beach.

     Prosecutors in September 2017 announced they would not seek the death penalty against Raymond Clark.  

     In January 2022 Mr. Clark pleaded guilty to murder and arson. The judge sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison.

The Esteban Manzanares Rape/Suicide Case

     Before becoming a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2008, Esteban Manzanares, a resident of McAllen, Texas, a town on the Mexican border, worked as a jail guard and served in the Army National Guard. He had been married two years to his wife Susana, a woman he'd met online in 2000.

     In August 2013 Esteban and Susana separated. He moved from their home in Edinburg into an apartment in nearby Mission Texas. The couple's two children, a girl and a boy, one and six-years-old respectively, remained with their mother. The divorce became final in February 2014.

     After the separation the 32-year-old border patrol agent and his 30-year-old ex-wife remained on good terms. As far as she could tell he was mentally sound and remained devoted to his children who both suffered from cystic fibrosis.

      But at work agent Manzanares had gone rogue. Two women who crossed the Rio Grande into Texas illegally reported they were raped by a border patrol agent. The details of the crime and the victim's description of the rapist led FBI agents and border patrol personnel to suspect Manzanares. They did not, however, have enough evidence to charge him or place him on administrative leave.

     A few hours prior to the end of his daytime patrol shift on March 12, 2014 Manzanares encountered a young woman and two 14-year-old girls in a Hidalgo County park a few miles from Mexico. The woman immediately identified herself and the girls as Honduran nationals who had just entered the county illegally.

     Manzanares handcuffed the females and put them into his patrol truck, but instead of taking them to a border patrol station he drove them to a remote spot a few miles away. In this scrub-filled no-man's land Manzanares sexually assaulted the women and the girls, one of whom was the older victim's daughter.

     Following the assaults Manazanares put one of the girls back into his truck and drove off leaving the woman and her daughter in the wilderness. The border patrol agent drove to his apartment in Mission where  he left his victim tied up. Later that night he returned to his apartment and raped her.

     The mother and daughter were later picked up and taken to the McAllen Medical Center. Their description of the man who had assaulted them led to a search of Manazanares' patrol truck. Inside the vehicle searchers found blood stains and pieces of duct tape.

     During the early morning hours of March 13, 2014 two FBI agents showed up at Esteban Manzanares' apartment in Mission. They knocked on the door and heard from inside the dwelling a gunshot. The agents called for backup. Members of the Mission Police Department's SWAT team broke into the apartment. Inside officers found the 14-year-old Honduran girl. She was nude and bound but alive. Manzanares had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Rebecca Hardy's Strange Suicide

     In 2015, 22-year-old Rebecca Hardy resided in a modest home in Port Huron Michigan with her boyfriend Matthew Grattan and their 18-month-old daughter Molly. Port Huron is a small Canadian border town located 60 miles northeast of Detroit.

     On Thursday afternoon December 3, 2015, Rebecca Hardy stormed out of her house following an argument with her boyfriend. In the backyard of another house in the neighborhood she took off her shoes and climbed over a fence that kept the owner's two dogs confined to his property. The dogs, a pit bull and a pit bull-husky mix, immediately set upon the intruder.

     The dogs knocked Rebecca Hardy to the ground and attacked her neck and face. A local resident witnessed the mauling and tried but failed to call the dogs off. Eventually the dogs' owner responded to the attack and subdued his pets. By then the dogs had severely injured the woman who had climbed into their yard.

     Paramedics rushed the severely bitten Hardy to the Lake Huron Medical Center from where she was airlifted to the Beaumont Hospital for emergency surgery. That evening Rebecca Hardy died from her injuries.

     The dogs who attacked Hardy were gathered up by animal control personnel and euthanized the next day. The local prosecutor, following a police investigation, declined to file criminal charges against the dogs' owner.

     On Wednesday, December 9, 2015, Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic, the Chief Medical Examiner of Oakland County ruled the manner of Rebecca Hardy's death as suicide. In his report Dr. Dragovic wrote: "These were attack dogs. They were vicious dogs in an enclosed space. She [Hardy] obviously was aware of that because she climbed over the fence to subject herself to this threat." According to the medical examiner Rebecca Hardy recently attempted suicide after being thrown out of her house.

     Following Rebecca Hardy's gruesome and fatal mauling, Matthew Grattan, her boyfriend and the father of her child, told a local reporter that he disputed the medical examiner's suicide ruling. "I, in no way, shape or form believe that she was looking to hurt herself on that day. She had a little girl. She wanted us to be a family."

     Rebecca Hardy's mother, Terressa Engel, was reported as saying this about her daughter's bizarre death: "I just don't understand how being mauled to death is suicide. They must have a new term for suicide."

     Absent suicide, Rebecca Hardy's fate would have been classified as either an accident or a homicide. Her boyfriend, Matthew Grattan, did not offer an alternative theory as to the manner of her death.

     In January 2016 Dr. Dragovic released the toxicology report that revealed that Rebecca Hardy had alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in her system at the time of her death. 

The Talking Parrot Murder Case

     In 2015 Martin "Marty" Duram and his wife Glenna resided in Sand Lake, Michigan, a village of 500 in the southwestern part of the state. In their mid-forties the couple had been married 15 years. They each had children from previous marriages.

     According to their children and people who knew them the Durams, both quick tempered, argued a lot over money. They had a so-called love-hate relationship.

     Glenna Duram liked to gamble at local casinos. In 2010 she lost $75,000 to the slot machines. In April 2015 Mr. Duram learned to his shock and dismay that their house was in foreclosure. Glenna Duram, instead of paying their bills, had gambled the money away.

     On the night of May 13, 2015 police and emergency personnel were summoned to the Duram house following a shooting. Officers found the couple in their bedroom lying next to each other. Mr. Duram had been shot five times. He lay dead among six shell casings. Mrs. Duram had a superficial head wound and was conscious.

     When asked by the police who shot her and her husband, Glenna Duram said she didn't know. She also became combative when paramedics tried to take her out of the house for medical treatment. She kept yelling, "Why are you doing this to Marty."

     Police officers at the scene found no evidence of forced entry and nothing had been taken from the house. Mr. Duram was found clutching a clump of hair. Officers also discovered, in the living room, three manila envelopes containing suicide notes signed by Mrs. Duram and addressed to her children. In these notes she apologized for being such a disappointment.

     The dead man's parents, Lilian and Chuck Duram, told the authorities they believed Glenna Duram had murdered their son during a violent argument. At this point the police suspected a failed murder-suicide. When questioned again by the police after she had fully recovered from her head wound, Glenna Duram still claimed to have no memory of the shooting.

     Soon after the murder, Christina Keller, Mr. Duram's ex-wife, took custody of Bud, the former couple's 20-year-old African Gray parrot. In late May 2015 Bud began squawking in voices that sounded like a man and a woman arguing. In the man's voice, Bud said, "Don't f…ing shoot!" Christina Keller video taped the parrot's crime scene re-creation for the police.

     In July 2017 a Newaygo County jury after deliberating a day and a half found Glenna Duram guilty of murdering her husband in the first degree. A month later the judge sentenced her to life in prison.

     While Bud didn't take the stand for the prosecution, Christina Keller testified on the parrot's behalf.  

The Andrew Nisbet Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 2006 24-year-old Andrew Michael Nisbet began working as a golf instructor at the Las Positas Country Club in Livermore, California, a suburban community 45 miles east of San Francisco. He quickly became a popular and well-known golf coach. Within a few years Mr. Nisbet was promoted to Director of Instruction. During this period he taught pre-teen and teenage golfers from the bay area as well as from Michigan, North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama.

     On December 7, 2013, the day before Mr. Nisbet was to receive the PGA's Northern California Section 2013 Junior Golf Leader Award, police officers showed up at the country club and took him into custody. An Alameda County prosecutor had charged Andrew Nisbet with 65 counts of child molestation that included lewd acts and oral sex with three of his former golf students during the period 2009 to 2012. The boys were between the ages twelve and sixteen.

     The alleged sex offenses took place in Nisbet's parked car at the country club, at his home and on out-of-town golfing trips. According to the criminal complaints the coach bought his victims expensive golf equipment, took them to restaurants and showed them pornography on his computer. Whenever one of the boys rebuffed his advances the gifts and other perks would stop.

     Following his arrest, Andrew Nisbet reportedly confessed to the commission of lewd acts. He was booked into the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California. The judge denied him bond.

     In late February 2014, from his jail cell the golf coach began exchanging letters with a man Nisbet hoped would murder his three accusers. In the correspondence Nisbet and the potential hit man discussed how much it would cost to kill the three murder-for-hire targets. He said he wanted them "taken care of."

     The solicited trigger man took Nisbet's letters to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. Shortly thereafter an undercover officer posing as a hit man visited Nisbet at the Santa Rita Jail. During these tape recorded conversations Mr. Nisbet provided the undercover cop with personal information about the targets of his homicidal wrath. The phony hit man told Nisbet he would make the murders look like robberies gone wrong.

     In April 2014 the Alameda District Attorney's Office charged the 32-year-old golf coach with three counts of solicitation of murder.

     In September 2014 Andrew Nisbet pleaded guilty to three counts of solicitation of murder. A month later an Alameda County judge sentenced him to 27 years in prison.

     Parents of the victims expressed dismay and disgust at the leniency of Nisbet's sentence. "This is a sick man who should never be released," wrote one of the parents.

The Sandra Layne Murder Case

     Since 2008 when designer drugs first came on the scene hundreds of violent crimes, overdoses and incidents of bizarre behavior have been linked to users of synthetic marijuana. Called Spice, K2, Yucatan, Skunk and Moon Rocks, the drug consists of dried shredded plant material sprayed with chemicals that when smoked produces an intense high. Marketed as a "safe" legal alternative to pot, the drug was sold openly in tobacco shops and gas stations.

     Synthetic marijuana can cause bath salts-like euphoria, paranoia and hallucinations. In addition to becoming agitated, aggressive and violent, users have suffered seizures and heart attacks. Several states made this group of mind-altering substances illegal. One of those states was Michigan, the site of a murder case involving a high school student named Jonathan Hoffman. 

    After his divorced parents moved from West Bloomfield, Michigan to Scottsdale, Arizona, 17-year-old Jonathan Hoffman in the fall of 2011 moved in with his grandparents so he could finish his senior year at Farmington Central High School. He had been accepted to East Michigan University where he planned on majoring in computer science. The boy's father, 56-year-old Michael Hoffman, a prominent divorce lawyer and co-founder of the law firm American Divorce Association for Men (ADAM) had recently retired. He and Jonathan's mother had been divorced six years and were living near each other in Scottsdale so they could spend time with Jonathan's 15-year-old sister. While living at his grandparents' condo at Maple Place Villas in the Detroit suburb, Jonathan was smoking the synthetic marijuana Spice. He had been arrested for possession of the drug and was on probation. This caused friction between him and his 74-year-old grandmother, a former school teacher named Sandra Layne. 

     Late in the afternoon of Friday May 18, 2012 neighbors heard Jonathan and his grandmother yelling at each other from inside the condo. They were fighting over Jonathan's schoolwork and his drug abuse. Hearing several gunshots, several neighbors called 911. Jonathan himself phoned for help, screaming that he'd been shot several times and that he was going to die. Three minutes into his 911 call he exclaimed that he had been shot again. 

     Police officers rolled up to the scene at 5:25 PM and ordered Sandra Layne out of the dwelling. She walked out of the condo carrying a .40-caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol and announced that she had just "murdered" her grandson. 

     Emergency personnel rushed Jonathan Hoffman to Botsford Hospital in Farmington Hills where he died less than an hour later. Police officers transported the 74-year-old mother of five to a holding cell in the West Bloomfield police station. 

     The Oakland County Medical Examiner determined that Jonathan Hoffman had been shot 10 times. (Later, a toxicological analysis showed that the victim had been high on Spice.)

     An Oakland County prosecutor charged Sandra Layne with open murder, a general homicide charge which covered first and second-degree murder. On May 21, 2012, following her arraignment at the West Bloomfield District Court, the judge ordered Sandra Layne to be held without bail in the Oakland County Jail. Her attorney Mitch Ribitwer told reporters that his client, married for 28 years, had never been in trouble before. "She's very distraught, very upset. It's a very difficult time."

    In April 2013 an Oakland County jury rejected Sandra Layne's self defense argument and found her guilty of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced the 75-year-old to a minimum of 22 years in prison.

Rodney King's Historic, Troubled Life

     On March 3, 1991, 25-year-old Rodney King led Los Angeles Police officers on a high-speed chase through LA County. He was trying to avoid a DUI arrest and ended up being a key figure in the history of civil rights and police brutality. 

     Once pulled over, four police officers with 17 looking on hit King more than 50 times with their nightsticks. They also used a stun gun on the man lying on the ground in the fetal position. George Holliday, from the balcony of his apartment, caught the entire beating with his video camera.

     The King beating marked the beginning of the video camera/cellphone era of citizen police surveillance. Over the next two decades officers all over the country were visually recorded beating people. Cops hated citizen video cameras and cellphones, and in many cases seized them to avoid having their behavior exposed. Laws were passed to prevent this.

     The four officers seen on the video pounding Rodney King were indicted (the 17 who watched the assault were not), but a jury in Simi Valley found the defendants not guilty. The acquittals led to riots in April and May, 1992. The following year a federal jury found two of the officers guilty of violating Mr. King's civil rights. The other two officers were acquitted.

     In 1996 Rodney King sued the city of Los Angeles for $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The civil jury awarded him $3.8 million in compensatory damages, but nothing punitive. Eighteen years later he published his autobiography. It was not a bestseller.

     In August 2003 Rodney King was spotted speeding and running a red light. When officers tried to pull him over he crashed into a house, breaking his pelvis. At the time of the incident he was under the influence of alcohol. He was fined and given probation.

     While riding his bicycle in November 2007 someone tried to steal King's bike by shooting him in the face, arms and back with birdshot. The shooters were never identified.

     In May 2008 Rodney King, suffering from alcohol and drug addiction, checked into the Pasadena Recovery Center in Pasadena, California.

     At 5:25 in the morning of Sunday, June 17, 2012, Cynthia Kelly, King's fiancee, called 911 from their home in Rialto, California. Responding officers found him on the bottom of his swimming pool. The 47-year-old was wearing swim trunks. A short time later he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Although there were no physical injuries on his body, and no other indications of foul play, his body was autopsied. The medical examiner ruled King's death as an accidental drowning influenced by drugs and alcohol.

     A next-door neighbor told officers that she heard a man crying in King's backyard from three to five that morning. The witness also heard Cynthia Kelly trying to coax the crying man back into the house. The neighbor said, "She was just saying, 'Get in the house. Get in the house.'" A few minutes later the witness heard a splash.