The Teen Pimp

     Montia Marie Parker lived in Maple Grove, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The 18-year-old cheerleader was one of 1,800 students who attended Hopkins High School. In February 2013, she sent a text message to a 16-year-old member of the cheerleading squad asking if the girl was interested in performing sexual acts for money. The Hopkins High School sophomore, who received special education services due to "developmental cognitive delay," had been telling her friends that she needed money.

     In response to the senior cheerleader's query, the 16-year-old, in a return text said yes. She didn't want to engage in sexual intercourse for money, but would perform oral sex for paying clients. Montia Parker asked the girl to send photographs of herself that were "not too nasty but kind of cute." When Parker received the photographs she posted them on Backstage.com, a website that advertised juvenile prostitution.

      Montia Parker, on March 5, 2013, drove the high school sophomore to an apartment building in a nearby community to service a client willing to pay for oral sex. "You're up!" Parker said to her passenger as she pulled up to the address. The 16-year-old entered the building, and when she returned handed Parker $60. The young pimp deposited the money into her bank account.

     The next morning, Montia Parker, identifying herself as her young sex worker's mother, called the school and reported that her "daughter" wasn't feeling well and would staying at home that day. The young pimp drove her novice prostitute that morning to a customer's house in Brooklyn Park. When the teenager met the john he insisted in engaging in sexual intercourse. To the reluctant girl, Parker said, "You'll be fine. I didn't drive up here for nothing. Eventually you will need to have sex." The 16-year-old offered oral sex, but not sexual intercourse. The john refused, and the high school girls departed without a sale.

     The sophomore prostitute's mother noticed changes in her daughter's behavior and learned she skipped school on the pretext phone call. When the mom checked her daughter's cellphone she discovered text messages pertaining to prostitution. She called the police.

     On May 22, 2013,  police officers, on charges of sex trafficking and promoting prostitution, booked Montia Parker into the Hennepin County Jail. The next day the suspected pimp posted her $50,000 bond. If convicted Montia Parker faced a maximum prison sentence of twenty years and a $50,000 fine. She was represented by a lawyer from the county public defender's office.

     On October 2013, Montia Parker pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution. The judge sentenced her to three years in prison.

     While sex trafficking in young girls by adult men is common criminal activity, teenage female pimps are uncommon.

Donte Johnson: Playing the Stupid Card

     At one in the morning after watching a movie at a friend's house, 20-year-old Sabina Rose O'Donnell borrowed a bicycle to ride to her north Philadelphia apartment a few blocks away. She never made it home. Later that day, June 2, 2010, police discovered her body in a trash-littered lot behind her apartment building. At the scene investigators found jewelry, a camera and an uncashed paycheck made payable to the victim. With her bra wrapped tightly around her neck, the victim had been raped, beaten and strangled to death. The killer left his bloody undershirt near her body.

     According to video-tapes from neighborhood surveillance cameras, police were able to place 18-year-old Donte Johnson in the area at the time of the murder. After two Philadelphia officers arrested him on June 10, 2010, he admitted biking around the neighborhood that night but denied any knowledge of the murder. His interrogators explained to him how DNA analysis of his sperm could link him the the dead woman's body. Upon hearing this, Mr. Johnson said he and the victim had consensual sex two days before her death. When the detectives questioned that story, Johnson tried another way of neutralizing the DNA evidence: he said that after stumbling across her body he had masturbated over the corpse. The interrogators explained that this didn't explain away the bloody undershirt. At this point Johnson confessed to the rape and murder.

     Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax charged Donte Johnson with first-degree murder, rape and robbery. Soon after Johnson's court-appointed defense attorneys entered the case, the suspect took back his confession and turned down a negotiated guilty plea. The defense challenged the reliability of the DNA evidence linking Johnson to the body and the murder site, and made the argument that the prosecution couldn't use his recanted confession. Johnson was now claiming that at the time of Sabina Rose O'Donnell's rape and murder he was at home with his family.

     At a pre-trial hearing on April 30, 2012 to determine if the prosecution could introduce Johnson's confession, defense attorney Gary Server put a private forensic neuropsychologist on the stand. Dr. Gerald Cooke testified that Johnson, with a damaged brain and an IQ of 73, had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. Because the suspect was retarded, his interrogators could have easily manipulated him into confessing to a crime he didn't commit.

     In arguing for the exclusion of Johnson's confession, attorney Server said, "The detective speaks to Mr. Johnson and he thinks he's talking to an adult, when in reality he's speaking to a child." The defense attorney also noted that when questioned by the police his client had been drunk and high on drugs.

    The police officers who arrested Johnson took the stand and testified that the suspect, sober and coherent, knew exactly what was going on when they took him into custody. According to the police officers, Johnson did not act or speak like an 11-year-old child. The judge, after hearing both sides of the argument ruled that the prosecutor could introduce Johnson's confession at his trial. The defense attorneys could make the false confession claim to the jury.

     On May 1, 2012, after opening statements to the jury from both sides, the prosecutor presented the state's case. Surveillance cameras placed the defendant in the vicinity that night, Johnson had confessed to the rape and murder and, as cases go, this was about as good as it gets.

     By comparison the defense--that DNA analysts made mistakes, the confession was false and Johnson's family said he was at  home with them that night--was weak.

     To convince the jury that police interrogators had taken advantage of Johnson's feeble mind to wrangle a false confession out of  him, the defense attorney showed the video-taped testimony of the neuropsychologist, Dr. Gerald Cooke. According to Dr. Cooke--who earned $9,300 for his I.Q. testing and testimony--Donte Johnson had trouble solving problems, reasoning and thinking quickly. His mother had given birth to Donte when she was 16; early in his youth he suffered some kind of brain damage; and since turning 14 he had been using drugs and binge drinking. According to the psychologist, this simpleton never held a job and had sex with scores of women.

     Donte Johnson's attorneys chose not to put their client on the stand. Perhaps they didn't want to risk a witness box confession like in one of those old Perry Mason TV episodes. Moreover, having tried to make the jurors feel sorry for the defendant, the attorneys wanted to keep him under wraps. Following the closing arguments and the judge's instructions the case went to the jury.

     Jurors, after deliberating four hours, found Donte Johnson guilty of first degree-murder and rape. The judge sentenced him to life plus 40 to 80 years. In speaking to the judge after receiving his sentence, Johnson said, "How can you clearly say I did anything? If I did something I would take responsibility."

The Candice Walton Arson-Murder Case

     Tasha Vandiver lived in Monroe County Georgia a few miles southwest of Forsyth, a rural town of 3,700 in the central part of the state. The 46-year-old resided in a house with her 21-year-old learning disabled son Gerald Walton and her 16-year-old daughter Candice Walton.

     At three-thirty in the morning of Thursday February 27, 2020, someone reported a fire at the Vandiver/Walton house. When firefighters arrived at the scene the structure was fully involved.

     Firefighters, while sifting through the debris, found two bodies. Tasha Vandiver and her son Gerald were identified as the fire scene casualties. A cause and origin investigator determined that the house fire was incendiary--intentionally set. From this point on the case was investigated as an arson-murder. The fire was started on the living room couch and spread so fast the occupants of the dwelling, Tasha Vandiver and her disabled son Gerald Waltan, were unable to get out of the house in time. The victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning. 

     Notably missing from the destroyed house was 16-year-old Candice Walton. Because the family car, a 1967 white Chevrolet Malibu was also missing from the dwelling, investigators assumed that the teenager had taken off with the car. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) opened a missing person case and issued broadcast alerts for the girl's apprehension.

     At three in the afternoon that Thursday, about 12 hours after firefighters put out the fire, a sheriff's deputy in McCracken County, Kentucky near the city of Paducah spotted Candice Walton sitting at a gas station in the white Chevrolet Malibu. The deputy detained the girl until U. S. Marshals took her into custody. She was arrested 450 miles northwest of her home in Monroe County, Georgia.

     The day after Walton's arrest GBI agents questioned her at the McCracken County Juvenile Detention Center. A search of the white Chevrolet Malibu produced evidence that connected the teenager to the house fire and deaths of her mother and brother.

     A Monroe County, Georgia prosecutor charged Candice Walton with two counts of murder, one count of arson and several counts of theft.

     At her arraignment in McCracken County the suspect refused to waive extradition. That meant the state of Kentucky had 60 days to hold an extradition hearing. In the meantime, Candice Walton was held in Kentucky without bail.

     Once back in Georgia, Candice Walton was held at the Macon Regional Youth Detention Center. The Monroe County prosecutor indicated that Walton would be prosecuted as an adult.

     After confessing to stealing cash from her mother's tax rebate, Candice Walton said she set the fire and stole her mother's car so she could drive to Oregon to start a new life with her boyfriend. In February 2022 she pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole when she turned 48. 

The Boy Scout Leader From Hell

     In mid-October 2013, Boy Scout leaders Glenn Taylor and David Hall took members of their troop on a tour of Goblin Valley State Park in southern Utah. Advertised as "a showcase of geologic history" the park, surrounded by eroded sandstone cliffs features boulders (called goblins) perched atop slender stone pedestals. These unique formations were created over a period of 170 million years by wind and water.

     Glenn Taylor, a beefy man in his mid-thirties with his son and other Boy Scouts looking on, and David Hall videotaping him, pushed a boulder roughly the size of a small car off its ancient pedestal. It took just fourteen seconds to destroy something nature took millions of years to create.

     The geological destroyer, flexing his muscles and beaming with pride over his achievement, laughed and high-fived the kids. Behind the video camera David Hall cheered Taylor on. "Boom!" he shouted when the boulder toppled off its point. "Yeah! We have now modified Goblin Valley!" Hall yelled triumphantly. Then, in a burst of absurd justification for this act of sheer idiocy, Hall said, "Some kid was about to walk down here and die and Glenn saved his life by getting the boulder out of the way. It's all about saving lives here at Goblin Valley." (This is like draining Lake Erie to keep swimmers from drowning. This is what clinical psychologists call "a load of crap.")

     Sometime after the state park desecration, a friend of Hall's published the video on YouTube. From that site it was linked up to Facebook. Eventually the video came to the attention of state park officials and the local prosecutor's office.

     In January 2014, the prosecutor charged Glenn Taylor with criminal mischief. The prosecutor charged David Hall with aiding criminal mischief. If found guilty of this third-degree felony the men faced up to five years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

     Following his arraignment, Glenn Taylor, absent his hero persona (remember he saved lives) but still full of crap, said, "It was wrong of us to be vigilantes. We thought we were doing a good deed. We should have alerted a park ranger."

     Utah state parks officer Eugene Swalberg, in speaking to a reporter about the case was not in a BS-accepting mood. "The destruction gives you a pit in your stomach," he said. "There seems to be a lot of happiness and joy with the individuals doing this, and it's not right. This is not what you do at a natural scenic area."

     Officials with Boy Scouts of America didn't think much of Mr. Taylor's vigilantism either. They kicked him and David Hall out of the organization.

     In March 2014, the defendants were allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses. The judge, pursuant to the plea bargains, sentenced them to one year probation. The former Boy Scout leaders were also ordered to pay fines and restitution. They got off light. 

Robert H. Richards IV: The Case of the Rich Pedophile

     In 2005 38-year-old Robert H. Richards IV resided with his wife Tracy and their three-year-old daughter and 19-month-old son. Mr. Richards, the heir to a pair of family fortunes, lived in a 5,800-square-foot mansion in Greenville, Delaware. He was a member of the du Pont family, the people who built a worldwide chemical empire, and was the son of a prominent Delaware attorney. Richards also owned a luxury home in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach.

     In October 2007, Mr. Richards' six-year-old daughter told her grandmother, Donna Burg, that her father had sexually assaulted her several times in 2005. According to the girl, her father penetrated her with his finger at night in her bedroom. He told his daughter to keep what he had done to her a secret. The grandmother passed this information on to the victim's mother, Tracy Richards. The mother took her daughter to a pediatrician who confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted.

     In December 2007, a grand jury sitting in New Castle County indicted Robert Richards on two counts of second-degree rape. If convicted of the felonies he faced a mandatory prison sentence. Following his arrest he retained the services of a high-powered Delaware defense attorney named Eugene J. Maurer Jr.

     Having denied his daughter's accusations, Robert Richards agreed to take a polygraph test. When advised by the lie detection examiner that he had failed the test he confessed to sexually assaulting his daughter. He said he was mentally ill and in need of psychiatric treatment.

     In June 2008, attorney Maurer and New Castle County prosecutor Renee Hrivnak agreed on a plea arrangement. According to the deal, Mr. Richards would plead guilty to one count of fourth-degree rape. This was not an offense that called for an automatic stretch in prison.

     Superior Court Judge Jan Jurden, in January 2009, sentenced Robert Richards to Level 2 probation. Under the terms of his sentence he would visit a case officer once a month. He also paid a $4,395 fine to the Delaware Violent Crimes Compensation Board.

     Judge Jurden, in justifying the probated sentence, wrote that prison life would be especially difficult for Mr. Richards, and that he would not fare well behind bars. In her mind prison was for drug dealers, robbers and murderers, not for child molesters in need of psychiatric treatment.

     In March 2014, Robert Richards' ex-wife Tracy filed a lawsuit against him on behalf of their children. The plaintiff sought compensatory and punitive damages for assault, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional stress on his daughter and her younger brother.

     According to the affidavit in support of the lawsuit, Mr. Richards, in anticipation of a second polygraph test in April 2010, expressed concern about something he had done to his son in December 2005. He was worried that he sexually assaulted the then 19-month-old boy. Richards promised that whatever he had done to that child it would not happen again.

     Richards' incriminating remarks, sparked by the lie detector test he took in 2010 following his probated sentence for sexually assaulting his daughter were not make public until Tracy Richards filed her lawsuit. The new information inflamed a public already angry over what seemed to be Richards' preferential treatment by the prosecutor and Judge Jurden.

    On June 28, 2014, Robert Richards' attorney negotiated a settlement agreement with his client's former wife. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed. No charges were filed against Richards in connection with the possible molestation of his son.

The Sherri Lynn Wilkins Murder Case

     Nobody likes a hypocrite. We are particularly offended (and intrigued) when people we generally admire such as physicians, professors, clergymen, law enforcement officers, generals, teachers, certain celebrities and counselors commit crimes or behave badly. However, because of low expectations, we are less shocked when politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers and Wall Street types break the law or act like jerks. In terms of what we expect from people there are different standards of behavior. For example, in murder-for-hire cases, the upper-middle class mastermind is almost always considered more immoral and criminally culpable, than the lower-class hitman. This is true even when the contract killer has murdered a complete stranger simply for the money.

     Years ago when the head mistress of an elite New England girl's school shot and killed her lover in a fit of jealousy, this otherwise ordinary criminal homicide became a celebrated case. Ministers have gone to prison for having their wives killed and FBI agents have been convicted of first-degree murder. On a smaller criminological scale, the public is shocked when female public school teachers are caught having affairs with their male students. There was also a case involving a high-profile gun control advocate who shot an intruder with an unregistered firearm. These cases attract media attention because they feature hypocrisy.

     In October 2012, Colin McGrattan, an anger management counselor in Stockton, California murdered his ex-wife, her sister and the victim's aunt before killing himself. McGrattan had recently lost a legal dispute with his former spouse. Unable to control his anger, he killed three people and himself. On matters of anger management this man obviously wasn't able to take his own advice.

     Even though we have low expectations for politicians and bureaucrats, cases occasionally pop up that are egregious enough to, if not shock us, grab our attention. In 2007, Sheila Burgess, a Massachusetts political fund-raiser for democrat candidates collected her reward when Governor Deval Patrick appointed her to the position of State Highway Safety Director. Since this was a political appointment it was not surprising that Burgess didn't have experience in the fields of public safety, transportation or public administration. 

     On August 24, 2012, Burgess, while driving her state-issued vehicle on a sunny Sunday afternoon near Milton, Massachusetts, drove off the road, wrecked the car and injured herself. Although she told the police she had swerved off the highway to avoid an oncoming vehicle, she may have been texting.

     The Highway Safety Director's traffic accident prompted a newspaper inquiry into Burgess' driving history. On November 18, 2012, the day after the paper revealed that Sheila Burgess had a record of 34 traffic violations, the governor removed her from office. (Because she was a government employee full dismissal was out of the question.) Instead of firing this woman the governor assigned Burgess to a "different role" within the same department.

Sherri Lynn Wilkins

     In the fall of 2010, 50-year-old Sherri Lynn Wilkins began counseling substance abusers at the Twin Town Treatment Center in Torrance, California. In charge of the evening group sessions, she counseled as many as 50 drug and alcohol abusers at a time. It was her job to help these people either get sober or stay off drugs. While Wilkins had earned a degree in drug counseling from Loyola Marymount University, it was her background as an alcoholic and heroin addict that in the bizarre world of substance abuse counseling that qualified her for the position. While giving her street credibility, the fact she "had been there" also meant she might relapse, an event that would not be in the best interests of the people she was being paid to help.

     Sherri Lynn Wilkins' background before she began her counseling career involved a 16-month jail sentence in 1992 for theft. Two years later another judge sent her away for nine years for burglary. All of her crimes were related to her substance addiction. In May 2010 the Los Angeles police arrested Wilkins for hit and run in Torrance. Because she had not been driving under the influence the case against her was dropped. But in July 2010, the authorities in Los Angeles charged Wilkins with leaving the scene of an accident and driving under the influence of a controlled substance. For some reason this case was also dismissed.

     At eleven-thirty on the night of November 24, 2012, Sherri Wilkins, while speeding west on Torrance Boulevard, slammed into 31-year-old Phillip Moreno who was crossing the street near his home. The impact knocked Moreno out of his shoes and threw him up on the hood of Wilkins' car. Wilkins continued driving with the dying man lying on her hood, his body lodged into her windshield.

     At a traffic light two miles from where Moreno had been struck and thrown up onto the car, several motorists swarmed Wilkins' vehicle and grabbed her ignition key. An ambulance rushed Mr. Moreno to a local hospital where a few hours later he died. Los Angeles police officers took the substance abuse counselor into custody. Watkins' blood-alcohol content registered twice the legal limit for driving.

     On November 27, 2012, a Los Angeles County prosecutor charged Sherri Wilkins with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence. She was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail under $2.25 million bond.

     In April 2014, a jury in Terrance, California found Sherri Wilkins guilty of second-degree murder as well as several lesser offenses including hit-and-run. Two months later Superior Court Judge Henry Hall sentenced the 54-year-old to 55 years to life in prison. The judge said, "Ms. Wilkins demonstrated an extraordinary callousness in fleeing the scene and trying to shake Mr. Moreno's body off her car. Ms. Wilkins is not what we normally see. She's not a classic violent criminal. But you have to evaluate her history."(According to her own testimony, Wilkins' drug addiction started after she was involved in a traffic accident at the age of fifteen. Her back had been broken and she suffered shattered bones in her ankles and legs. She began medicating herself with heroin because it was "cheaper than going to the doctor.") In justifying the stiff sentence, Judge Hall added, "She had an insatiable desire to become intoxicated."

     Wilkins' attorney, Deputy Public Defender Nan Whitfield said she would appeal the sentence. To reporters outside the courthouse, Whitfield said, "Nobody likes a drunk driver. Because she was a drug and alcohol counselor she's held to a higher standard."

     In February 2016, a California appeals court overturned Wilkins' second-degree murder conviction on grounds the introduction of her entire criminal record prejudiced the jury. The court did not set aside her conviction for leaving the scene of the fatal accident.

     A year after the appeals court ruling, Wilkins pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. The judge sentenced her to 25 years in prison.

The Execution of Manuel Pardo

     In 1979, after serving four years in the Navy, 22-year-old Manuel Pardo graduated from the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) academy at the top of his class. Following his involvement in a Miami-Dade County ticket-fixing scandal in 1980, Mr. Pardo was kicked out of the FHP. Shortly after his discharge he secured a job with the police department in the small Miami-Dade County town of Sweetwater. In 1981, Manuel Pardo and four other officers faced numerous complains of police brutality. Those charges were dismissed by a local prosecutor.

     The following year, Officer Pardo, after saving a two-month-old boy's life by reviving him with CPR, was awarded a public service medal. In the fall of 1983 he graduated from a local community college with a two-year associates degree in criminal justice. Just when his future looked the most promising, Pardo's career in law enforcement came to an end when he was caught committing perjury at the 1985 trial of a drug dealer.

     From January to April 1986 the ex-cop embarked on a deadly crime spree in the Miami area. Within a period of three months, in the course of robbing dozens of drug dealers, he murdered six men and three women. He documented his execution-style killings by taking crime scene photographs of his victims and writing up detailed accounts of the murders in his diary. He also put together a scrapbook comprised of newspaper clippings of his crimes. It was during this period that Manuel Pardo collected Nazi memorabilia and professed a deep respect for Adolph Hitler.

     Because Manuel Pardo used his murder victims' credit cards, homicide detectives in Miami-Dade County quickly identified him as the man behind the drug dealer robbery/murders. His killing spree ended with his arrest in 1987. Eager to take credit for, and even brag about his murders, Pardo confessed to nine homicides.

     At Pardo's 1988 trial his defense attorneys raised the insanity defense which fell apart when the defendant took the strand on his own behalf. Jurors were surprised when he told them that, "I'm ridding the community of this vermin and technically it is not murder because they are not human beings. I am a soldier, I accomplished my mission and I humbly ask you to give me the glory of ending my life and not let me spend the rest of my days in the state prison."

     The jury found Manuel Pardo guilty of nine counts of first-degree murder. The judge then granted the defendant's wish by sentencing him to death. Pardo became a death row inmate at the Florida state prison in the town of Starke.

     Instead of his life ending gloriously with a quick execution, Pardo, thanks to his anti-death penalty attorneys, languished on death row for 24 years. In filing their appeals in state and federal courts, Pardo's lawyers argued that because this killer had not been mentally competent he should never have been tried in the first place. Over the years various appellate court judges rejected this argument and upheld Pardo's conviction and death sentence.

     In 2012, as Pardo's execution date approached, his attorneys, in a last ditch effort to save him, tried a new appellate approach. The state of Florida had recently altered the combination of drugs used by the executioner to dispatch condemned prisoners. The lawyers argued that if prison officials improperly mixed the lethal concoction, the anesthetic effect of the lethal dose might be compromised. If this happened the execution might be painful and therefore inhumane in violation of Mr. Pardo's civil rights. A federal judge rejected the appeal. That meant that Pardo's execution would go forward as scheduled.

     At 7:45 in the evening of Tuesday, December 11, 2012, the executioner at the state prison in Starke, Florida injected the 56-year-old Pardo with the lethal cocktail of drugs. 

Memo To Armed Robbers

     At five-thirty Tuesday evening November 12, 2014, 18-year-old Adric White and Tavoris Moss, 19, walked into a Family Dollar store in Baldwin County, Alabama outside of Mobile. Adric White entered the premises carrying a handgun he intended to use to rob the place.

     This was not the first business establishment Adric White had held-up. A month earlier, after he robbed the nearby Original Oyster House, a judge allowed him to post bail despite the fact the Original Oyster House was not his first robbery.

     In the back of the store White put his gun to a Family Dollar employee's head and ordered the hostage to the cash-out area where a customer saw what was happening. This customer, who was also armed, pulled his firearm as White forced the terrified clerk to get on his or her knees.

     The armed shopper yelled at Mr. White not to move. The robber, rather than lower his gun turned the weapon on the customer. Fearing that he would be shot, the armed citizen fired at the robber who collapsed to the floor.

     Police officers took the robber's companion into custody as paramedics rushed Adric White to the USA Medical Center. Although hit five times he survived the shooting and received treatment at the hospital while under police guard. The judge revoked his bail on the Original Oyster House hold-up.

     The day following the Family Dollar robbery and shooting, a local television reporter spoke to a relative of White's who said the family was furious with the vigilante who shot and almost killed their loved one. "If the customer's [shooter's] life was not in danger," said the robber's relative, "if no one had a gun up to him, what gives him the right to think that it's okay to shoot someone? The [armed customer] should have left the store and went wherever he had to go."

     The same TV correspondent spoke to the man who used his gun to stop the robbery and perhaps save the store clerk's life. The shooter, referred to in the local media as the Good Samaritan, said he had no choice but to take the action in the case. When the robber raised his gun the customer fired in self defense. "I didn't want to shoot him," the shooter said.

     According to the Good Samaritan, "Criminals tend to think they are the only ones with guns. I've been legally carrying my firearm for a little over four years now, and thank God I've never had to use it until last night. It just shows it's good to have a concealed carry permit. You never know when you're going to need it."

       As could be expected, gun rights advocates and their opponents argued over the merits of this case. But one thing that was not up for debate: If you rob someone at gunpoint there is a good chance you will be shot by a police officer or a fellow citizen. And if you are, the person who shot you will be hailed by most people as a Good Samaritan.

The Lori Isenberg Poison-Murder Case

      In 2018,  Laurcene "Lori" Barnes Isenberg, the Executive Director of North Idaho Housing Cooperative, a non-profit organization created to help low-income families, resided with her 68-year old husband, Larry Isenberg in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Mr. Isenberg had a 39-year-old son from a former marriage. His 66-year-old wife had four daughters from her first husband. 

     On the morning of February 13, 2018, Lori Isenberg called 911. To the emergency dispatcher she reported that while boating with her husband on Lake Coeur d'Alene he had fallen overboard.

     As a water recovery team searched for Mr. Isenberg, Lori Isenberg told deputies with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office that her husband had been ill with the flu but had insisted on taking her on a boat ride that morning. While attempting to restart the boat's stalled electric motor he toppled into the water. When she couldn't find him she called 911 from his cellphone, 

     In a written police statement Lori Isenberg described her husband's fall this way: "He stood up, looked at me with a confused look on his face and started to fall over. I jumped up and tried to get him, but I tripped on the heater and banged my head and couldn't reach him in time." 

    Searchers were unable to recover Mr. Isenberg's body. At this point the authorities presumed he drowned as a result of a boating accident. Perhaps he'd suffered a stroke and lost his balance and toppled out of the boat. At this point no one believed that his death had been the result of foul play. 

     The day following Mr. Isenberg's presumed death, Lori Isenberg put the family home up for sale. She also gave her daughters personal items that were once owned by Mr. Isenberg. 

     On February 24, 2018, with Larry Isenberg still missing and presumed dead, FBI agents arrested Lori Isenberg on 40 counts of federal wire fraud and one count of theft. Over a period of years the Executive Director of North Idaho Housing Coalition had created thousands of forged invoices that enabled her to embezzled $570,000 from the non-profit organization. Her four daughters, having knowingly received some of the stolen money, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and theft. 

     After pleading not guilty to the charges, a federal magistrate set Lori Isenberg's bail at $2 million. She was held in the Kootenai County Jail on the federal charges. 

     On March 1, 2018, Larry Isenberg's body was seen floating near the shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, based on the results of a toxicological analysis that showed a lethal dose of the drug diphenhydramine in Mr. Isenberg's system, ruled his manner of death homicide by poisoning. Diphenhydramine is an ingredient commonly found in over the counter sleeping aid and pain pills. The forensic pathologist did not publicly reveal how Mr. Isenberg had been given the poison.

     Investigators with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, with Lori Isenberg as the prime suspect, launched a murder investigation. In the course of that inquiry detectives learned that in late 2017, when Mr. Isenberg and his wife were vacationing in Florida, she made an Internet inquiry about rental boats, lake currents, weather conditions and water depths pertaining to another Coeur d'Alene area lake called Lake Pend Oreville. While on that Florida trip, detectives had reason to believe that Lori Isenberg tried to kill her husband with diphenhydramine. As for motive, homicide investigators believed that Lori Isenberg was afraid that if her husband learned she had embezzled from her employer he would divorce her.

     Detectives also learned that just weeks before Larry Isenberg's death his wife had made handwritten changes to his will. As a result of these crude alterations the will devised 80 percent of his estate to her four daughters. 

     In the spring of 2019, Lori Isenberg pleaded guilty to defrauding North Idaho Housing Coalition of $570,000. The judge sentenced her to five years in federal prison. Her daughters were sentenced to three years probation, community service and were ordered to pay back the stolen money they had received.

     A Kootenai County grand jury, in January 2020, indicted Lori Isenberg on the charge of first-degree murder for poisoning her husband to death then throwing him off the boat into the waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene. At the time of the indictment Lori Isenberg was serving time for wire fraud and theft at a federal prison. 

     In March 2020, due to COVID-19, the Idaho Supreme Court delayed all criminal jury trials in the state. Lori Isenberg's murder trial was postponed to August 3, 2020. The trial was postponed again to September 14, 2020, then again to early 2021.

     In February 2021, Lori Isenberg pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Three months later the judge sentenced her to life in prison.

The Bobby Woods Jr. Murder Case: The Banality Of Evil

     In August 2015, 17-year-old Bobby Woods Jr. was living in his family's house in Lufkin, Texas with his girlfriend Billie Jean Cutter and her son, Mason Cutter, a 3-year-old boy fathered by another man. When Billie Jean informed Bobby that she was pregnant with his child, the couple decided to murder Mason. With three families living under the same roof there was simply not enough room for the child.

     On August 15, 2015, Bobby Woods took the 3-year-old boy to a pond on the family's property and pushed him into the water. As the boy struggled to survive Bobby Woods turned and walked away. The terrified child drowned. The next day Mason Cutter's body was removed from the pond.

   When questioned by detectives, Bobby Woods confessed to killing Mason Cutter and doing it with Billie Jean Cutter's consent. The boy had become excess baggage and had to go. As it turned out, the murder wasn't necessary because Billie Jean was in fact not pregnant. Poor Mason, however, was still dead.

     A month before the August 2019 murder trial, Bobby Woods' attorney filed a motion to have his client's confession excluded as evidence on grounds it had been acquired by police coercion. The defense attorney explained that Bobby signed the Miranda warnings waiver under the belief that only guilty people needed lawyers.

     The judge denied the defense motion, ruling that Woods' confession had been given voluntarily. As a result it could be entered into evidence at his trial. This decision sealed the defendant's fate.

     On August 16, 2019, following seven days of testimony the Angelina County jury found Bobby Woods Jr. guilty of capital murder. The judge sentenced the 21-year-old to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

     Billie Jean Cutter, in exchange for her guilty plea to the charge of conspiracy to commit murder, received a sentence of 20 years behind bars.

      The fact that people like this walk among us is more than a little disturbing. Moreover, the fact this case received so little attention in the national media revealed that we are beyond being shocked and horribly disgusted by evil of this magnitude. Mason Cutter was just another kid who died because he was born to a degenerate mother who had a moronic murderous boyfriend.

Peter Keller: The Survivalist Who Didn't Survive

     On Sunday morning April 22, 2012, firefighters responded to a house fire in North Bend, Washington, a Cascade foothills town 30 miles east of Seattle. When they tried to enter the dwelling through the front door firefighters realized someone had blocked the entrance from the inside with a couch and an easy chair.

     Once the fire had been extinguished, firefighters discovered the bodies of 18-year-old Kaylene Keller and her mother Lynnettee who was 41. The victims were in their bedrooms, and both of them had been shot in the head at close range with .22-caliber bullets. Arson investigators found seven empty gasoline cans at the site. (The fire had been started by placing a skillet on the stove containing a plastic container of gasoline, then turning on the burner.)

     Peter A. Keller, the 41-year-old husband and father of the victims, was nowhere to be found. He and his wife had been married 21 years, and for the last seven years lived in the rented house in this unincorporated community. Mr. Keller's red Toyota pickup truck was missing, and a week earlier he had withdrawn $6,200 from a local bank. Friends of the family told the police that Mr. Keller, a reclusive man interested in guns, body armor and trains, was an avid outdoorsman who spent weekends hiking on the logging trails in the rugged Cascade Mountain foothills. Over the past eight years, Keller, fearing that the end of the world was near, had been building and stockpiling a wilderness fortress/hideout dug into the side of a hill. The cave-like structure he called Camp Keller featured three levels, a wood stove, a sophisticated ventilation system, a generator and several hidden entrances and exits. Although Keller had no history of violence, he owned several guns and a large supply of ammunition.

     On April 25, 2012, the King County prosecutor charged Peter Keller with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.

     The police searching for Peter Keller caught a break on Friday, April 27 when a tipster gave them the location of his pickup truck abandoned on a Rattlesnake Ridge trailhead. From this location expert trackers picked up his trail of deep foot impressions made by someone carrying a heavy backpack. The boot marks led them to Keller's wilderness refuge.

     At five o'clock Saturday evening, April 28, 2012, a group of Seattle police officers and a 30-member SWAT team surrounded the bunker. They figured Peter Keller was inside because they could smell wood smoke coming from his stove. The fugitive didn't respond when ordered out of the structure. Rather than enter a possibly booby-trapped structure to encounter a heavily armed inhabitant, the police pumped teargas into the fort, then waited.

     Following a 23-hour standoff, the officers, equipped with explosive devices, blew the top off Keller's bunker and found him dead inside. He had shot himself in the mouth with a Glock pistol. Among the stockpiled provisions the police recovered 13 rifles and handguns.

     Keller's wife Lynnette, disabled several years ago from a workplace accident, had been receiving a monthly state disability check. Because her husband had been so controlling and tight with money, she often had to borrow money from relatives. 

The Zakieya Avery Exorcism Murder Case

     Zakieya Latrice Avery resided in a Germantown, Maryland row house with her four children, ages one through eight. Twenty-one-year old Monifa Sanford lived under the same roof with the Avery family. The women met at a church called Exousia Ministries of Germantown. (It was one of 600 or more non-Catholic churches around the world where exorcism was practiced.) The 28-year-old mother of four and her husband, Martin Luther Harris, Jr., were separated. He lived in Los Angeles. Zakieya once resided in Gaithersburg, Maryland where she worked as a pharmacy technician.

     On Thursday night January 16, 2014, one of Zakieya Avery's neighbors in the community north of Washington, D.C. dialed 911 to report an unattended child inside a car outside the Avery house. When officers with the Montgomery County Police Department responded to the 911 call, the child was no longer in the vehicle. Officers knocked on Avery's door but no one answered. The officers left the scene but reported the matter to a child protection agency.

     The next morning at 9:30, the concerned neighbor called 911 again. This time the caller reported a car with its doors standing open parked outside the Avery residence. A bloody knife lay on the ground near the vehicle.

     Upon the arrival of the police, Zakeiya Avery ran out of the house through her back door but didn't get far. Inside the dwelling officers discovered the dead bodies of one-year-old Norell Harris and his two-year-old sister Zyana. The children had been stabbed several times. It appeared they were attacked while sleeping. In another bedroom officers found five-year-old Taniya and eight-year-old Martello. These two children had also been stabbed but were alive. The two wounded siblings were rushed to a nearby hospital.

     Avery's adult housemate, Monifa Sanford, was also taken to a hospital where she was treated for cuts.

     Police officers took Zakieya Avery into custody at the scene. The next day detectives arrested Monifa Sanford. Both women were charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. Police officers booked the suspects into the Montgomery County Jail where they were held without bond.

     A few days after the murder arrests, Captain Marcus Jones, head of the major crimes unit, told reporters that Zakieya Avery thought her kids were possessed by the Devil which led to a botched exorcism procedure and their deaths. Monifa Sanford was in custody because she assisted in the deadly ritual. According to the police officer both suspects confessed.

     Avery's step-grandmother, Sylvia Wade, told a reporter with the Washington Post that Avery was "humble and meek" and said she loved her children. "I don't know what triggered it. She wasn't herself."

     In January 2015, after Monifa Sanford pleaded guilty to the assaults and two murders, the judge declared her legally insane and sentenced her to an indeterminate incarceration at a state psychiatric hospital.

     On September 15, 2016, Zakieya Avery also pleaded guilty to the murders and the assaults. A Montgomery County, Maryland judge ruled that she was also legally insane at the time she attacked her children. Instead of prison, the judge sent Avery to a maximum security psychiatric hospital where she would stay until her doctors declared her sane enough to leave the mental institution.

The Chevonne Thomas Murder-Suicide Case

     In November 2010, 31-year-old Chevonne Thomas, a woman with a history of mental illness and drug abuse, drove to a park in western New Jersey to smoke PCB-laced marijuana. She blacked out in the park and when she came to couldn't remember where she had parked her car. This was a problem because her 6-month-old son Zahree was in the vehicle.

     A local prosecutor charged Chevonne Thomas with child endangerment, and she lost custody of Zahree to the New Jersey Division of Children and Families, a troubled agency known for its failure to protect children from unfit parents. For several years the New Jersey's child protection bureaucracy, after a series of high-profile failures, had been under the supervision of a federal judge. (Did anyone actually believe that putting a useless government agency under a judge's supervision would fix the problem?) The prosecutor in the Chevonne Thomas case, due to some problem with a witness, dropped the charges.

     In April 2011, the state allowed this drug-abusing mother who walked around cursing to herself to regain custody of her son. She had supposedly been under the care of a so-called behavioral health therapist. Where was the supervising federal judge when this decision was made?  Who was looking out for Zahree Thomas?

     In 2012, Chevonne Thomas was living in a two-story house in Camden, New Jersey with Zahree and her older child. At 10:30 on the night of Tuesday, August 21, she and her boyfriend were standing outside the dwelling, and according to neighbors, she was extremely upset over something. The couple disappeared into the house, and sometime before midnight, the boyfriend left the premises.

     Shortly after twelve, Chevonne called 911 to report that her boyfriend had just stabbed her 2-year-old son to death. As the dispatcher talked to the rambling, sometimes incoherent caller, police officers rolled up to the scene. Shortly after the arrival of the police Chevonne informed the 911 dispatcher that she had stabbed Zahree to death.

     Officers entered the dwelling and searched the first floor of the house as Chevonne spoke to the 911 dispatcher from an upstairs bedroom. They discovered the corpse of a decapitated toddler, and in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator came upon Zahree's head. On the chance that Chevonne Thomas, who was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, might still be armed with a deadly weapon, the police backed out of the house.

     Later that morning when officers re-entered Camden dwelling they found Chevonne dead from a self-inflicted kitchen knife wound to the neck. According to the forensic pathologist who examined Zahree's body, the child had been stabbed in the chest and an arm before being decapitated. The medical examiner ruled the deaths a murder-suicide.

     The fact this insane PCP abusing mother had custody of two children (the older child was not home at the time of the suicide-murder) revealed something profoundly wrong with New Jersey's child protection system.

     The toxicological report released on December 3, 2012 by the Camden County prosecutor's office confirmed that at the time of the murder-suicide Chevonne Thomas had been smoking PCP-laced marijuana. Known on the street as "wet," this hallucinogen was known to cause extreme violence in some users.

The Stanwood Elkus Murder Case

     As a young man who grew up in southern California's Orange County, Ronald Franklin Gilbert, the son of a physician, played in a rock band and worked as a stockbroker. In the late 1980s he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a doctor. In 1993, Dr. Gilbert joined the Orange County Urology Group housed at the Hoag Health Center in Newport Beach. The Huntington Beach resident, as a urologist, treated patients with prostrate cancer and bladder conditions as well as with a variety of sexual dysfunctions. He performed vasectomies, prostate surgery and other urology related medical procedures. Dr. Gilbert's colleagues considered him one of the best in his field.

     Stanwood F. Elkus, a 75-year-old retired barber from Elsinore, California told a friend on January 27, 2013 that Dr. Gilbert had botched his prostate surgery 21 years earlier at a Veteran's Administration hospital. (While Dr. Gilbert worked at that VA facility then, there was no record of him operating on Mr. Elkus.) To his friend, Mr. Elkus said, "I had surgery and now I am worse than before the surgery." According to him, Dr. Gilbert's operation aggravated his incontinence problem rather than fix it.

     The following afternoon at 2:30, Stanwood Elkus showed up at the Hoag Health Center for his appointment with Dr. Gilbert. He made the appointment using a fake name. Fifteen minutes later, when Dr. Gilbert walked into the examination room, the patient shot him several times in the upper body, killing him instantly.

     After the shooting Mr. Elkus emerged from the examination room holding a .45-caliber handgun. "Call the police," he said. "I'm insane."

     Newport Beach police officers arrived at the doctor's office eight minutes after the murder. They disarmed and arrested Mr. Elkus in the examination room. A few hours later police officers searched the shooter's home in Lake Elsinore.

     On Wednesday, January 30, 2013 Stanwood Elkus stood before an Orange County arraignment magistrate who charged him with murder. The judge set Elkus' bail at $1 million. The prisoner was booked into the Orange County Jail.

     On May 9, 2014 Stanwood Elkus settled a wrongful death suit brought by members of Dr. Gilbert's family. To shield his assets from the civil suit plaintiffs Mr. Elkus tried to transfer his ownership of eight houses and condominiums in Lake Forest, Huntington Beach and Lake Elsinore to his sister. A judge granted the plaintiff's injunction that stopped the real estate transactions. The accused murder's assets were valued at $2 million.

     In August 2014, the murder suspect's attorney Colleen O'Hara entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Orange County Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy told reporters that he planned to prove that Mr. Elkus, at the moment he killed Dr. Gilbert, was sane. "We are very confident in our evidence," he said.

     On August 21, 2017, an Orange County Superior Court jury found Elkus guilty of first-degree murder. In so doing jurors found that the defendant was sane at the time of the killing. A month after the guilty verdict the judge sentenced Stanwood Elkus to life in prison plus ten years.

The Carl Ericsson Murder Case

     Norman Johnson and Carl Ericsson attended the same high school at the same time in Madison, South Dakota, a farm town of 6,500. That's all they had in common. Mr. Johnson, a member of the class of 1958, had been a popular football star while Carl Ericsson, in the class ahead of him, was a loner and the team's water boy. As high school students, and as adults, these men lived vastly contrasting lives. Norman Johnson married his high school girlfriend and became a pillar of the local community while Ericsson moved away, married and lived in comparative obscurity.

     After college, Norman Johnson returned to Madison where, for the next 35-years, he taught high school English and coached the football team. In retirement he remained active in the community as a playground supervisor, proofreader for the hometown newspaper and as a part time employee at the local hardware store. He was still married to his high school girlfriend, had two grown daughters and lived in a modest two-story house in town. He was surrounded by former students who still called him Mr. Johnson.

     After high school, Carl Ericsson moved to Wyoming where he found a low-level job with the federal government. After retirement he moved to Watertown, South Dakota 50 miles north of Madison. As an alcoholic who was chronically depressed, Mr. Ericsson was a surely, difficult man who loved his dog more than people. He lived in a tiny one-story house with his long-suffering wife. As is the custom with profoundly unhappy maladjusted people, he did not get along with his father, a successful attorney in Madison, or his younger brother Dick who had followed their father into the law. He also complained and harassed the children in his neighborhood, gave people who irritated him the finger, and once even threatened to kill his younger brother. He was the type of person psychologists, psychiatrists and medication can't fix. People avoided him like the plague.

     On the evening of January 31, 2011, Carl Ericsson was seen in Madison prowling around backyards, knocking on residents' doors and shinning his flashlight into homes. As further evidence he was up to no good, he was in possession of a Glock 45-caliber pistol with a 17-round clip, one of many handguns he owned.

     At 7:30 that evening, Carl Ericsson pulled his brown Ford Taurus up to Norman Johnson's house, walked up the sidewalk and knocked on his front door. When Mr. Johnson appeared at the entrance he did not recognize the man standing on his stoop with the shock of white hair and full beard. The men hadn't seen each other since high school. "Are you Norman Johnson?" Ericsson asked. Immediately after Johnson answered yes, the former water boy shot the retired teacher in the face--twice--leaving him to die in the doorway of his home.

     The next day, officers with the Madison Police Department took Carl Ericsson into custody. When a detective asked him why he had murdered a man he hadn't seen for 53 years, Ericsson said he had gotten even for a locker room prank Johnson and other students had played on him back in 1957. According to Ericsson, the football players forced him to wear a jock-strap on his head, a high school humiliation he had brooded over for decades. He had fantasized about getting revenge, and that's what he did.

     Investigators, of course, had no way of knowing if this prank ever took place, or if it had, if Norman Johnson had anything to do with it. As a matter of law and criminal homicide, all of that was irrelevant anyway. But some in the sob sister media, when covering this murder, focused on the bullying aspect of the story, suggesting that being forced to don a jock-strap can turn a person into a depressed alcoholic mad-at-the-world loser who will someday erupt into a cold-blooded killer.

     Carl Ericsson pleaded guilty to a South Dakota homicide offense called second-degree murder under circumstances of mental illness. (In many states this is called guilty but mentally ill.) This meant that he would receive mental health treatment at a state prison rather than in an institution for the criminally insane. Because he knew exactly what he was doing, this defendant was not criminally insane. He was a guy with a drinking problem and a lousy personality who couldn't cope with life. The woods are full of people like him. Fortunately they are not all murderers.

     On June 16, 2012 a judge sentenced Carl Ericsson to life in prison without parole.              

Stealing Mental Patients' Brains

     While most collectors acquire everyday objects such as coins, stamps and books, a few collectors specialize in things that are odd and to most people, disgusting. There was even a reality television series devoted to the acquisition of bizarre objects. The show was called "Oddities" and was presented on the Discovery Channel. Viewers followed the operation of a retail shop in Manhattan, New York called Obscura Antiques and Oddities. Items bought and sold on the show included a mummified cat, various animal teeth, a dead four-legged chicken and a shrunken head.

     The "Oddities" television series helped establish a market for unusual items and "conversation pieces" most of us would consider too disgusting to possess. It also created an opportunity for thieves who specialized in these collectibles.

     In early October 2013, a thief in Indianapolis, Indiana walked off with sixty jars of brain and other tissue from dead mental patients. The specimens were kept, among thousands of other such containers, in warehouse space on the campus of the Indiana Medical History Museum. The brains and other specimens came from clinical autopsies performed at the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane, an institution that opened its doors in 1848 and closed in 1994. According to the director of the museum, the stolen jars were valued at $4,800.

     In early December 2013, the director of the Indiana Medical History Museum received a call from a collector in California who said he had purchased, through an eBay auction site, six jars of brain matter. He paid $600 for the specimens. According to the oddities buyer, he became suspicious when the jars he acquired appeared similar to the ones pictured on the museum's website.

     The tip from the California collector led to the identification of David Charles as the seller of the stolen brains.

     On December 16, 2013, an undercover Indianapolis police officer posing as an oddities collector interested in jarred brains met Mr. Charles in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. When the 21-year-old suspected thief offered to sell the officer the stolen property, the cop took him into custody.

     A Marion County prosecutor charged David Charles with felony theft.

     In November 2015, after he pleaded guilty to stealing the museum brains, the judge sentenced David Charles to four years in prison. 

What Happened To David Bird?

     David Bird, a 55-year-old journalist with the Wall Street Journal who covered the world's energy markets--OPEC and such--lived with his wife Nancy and their two children in central New Jersey's Long Hill Township. Although he underwent a liver transplant operation in 2005, Mr. Bird was an avid hiker, biker and camper. The Boy Scout troop leader, in 2013, ran in the New York City Marathon. His children were ages 12 and 15.

     On Saturday, January 11, 2014, after he and his wife put away their Christmas decorations, David said he wanted to take a walk and get some fresh air before it started to rain. At 4:30 in the afternoon, dressed in a red rain jacket, sneakers and a pair of jeans, the six-foot-one, 200 pound, gray-haired reporter walked out of his house. Shortly thereafter it began to rain, and rain hard.

     Two hours after David Bird left the house his wife became worried. He hadn't returned and it was still raining. To make matters worse, he had been suffering from a gastrointestinal virus. Nancy Bird called the Long Hill Township Police Department to report her husband missing.

     Over the next three days police officers and hundreds of volunteers searched the neighborhood and nearby wooded areas for the missing journalist. The searchers were assisted by dogs, a helicopter and people riding all-terrain vehicles and horses. Volunteers also distributed hundreds of missing persons flyers.

     Notwithstanding the effort to locate Mr. Bird, he was nowhere to be found. It seemed he disappeared without a trace.

     The fact the missing man left his house without the anti-rejection medication he took twice a day in connection with his liver transplant made finding him all the more urgent. Without that medicine he would surely become ill.

     On January 16, 2014, police officers learned that someone in Mexico, the night before, used one of David Bird's credit cards. The card was supposedly used four days after his disappearance. Investigators, without a clue as to where David Bird was, or why he went missing, considered the possibility that his disappearance had something to do with his reporting on recent middle east crude oil price changes.

     On March 18, 2015, at five o'clock in the evening, two men canoeing on the Passaic River in New Jersey about a mile from David Bird's home spotted a red jacket amid a tangle of branches. From that spot emergency responders retrieved a male corpse.

     Dr. Carlos A. Fonesca with the Morris County Medical Examiner's office, and forensic dentist Dr. Mitchell M. Kirshbaum, identified the remains as David Bird. The day after the discovery Morris County prosecutor Frederic M. Knapp said an autopsy would be conducted to determine Mr. Bird's cause and manner of death.

     A few days later a Morris County spokesperson revealed that Mr. Bird had drowned. Investigators found no reason to suspect foul play. Since Mr. Bird's death wasn't homicide or natural, it was either the result of suicide or an accident.

     In June 2015 a spokesperson for the Morris County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the manner of Mr. Bird's death as accidental. 

The Pedro Maldonado Murder-Suicide Case

     In 2013, Pedro Maldonado and his wife Monica, citizens of Ecuador, South America, were living in the United States on expired visas. The couple resided in a gated community in Weston, Florida thirteen miles west of Fort Lauderdale. The Maldonado's 17-year-old son Pedro Jose Maldonado Jr. attended Cypress Bay High School where he was a drummer in the band. The older Maldonado son, Jose, was a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

     Mr. Maldonado and his 47-year-old wife not only faced deportation back to Ecuador, they were in serious financial trouble. An exporter of police supplies to South America, he had recently lost most of his business. In September 2013 the couple's drivers' licenses expired. As people living in the country illegally they could not renew their licenses and drive legally.

     Due to his citizenship and financial problems, the 53-year-old Maldonado felt helpless and doomed. Facing a bleak future he slipped into depression to the point of becoming suicidal.

     On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 at four-fifteen in the afternoon, Mr. Maldonado telephoned a friend in Miami and gave him some shocking news. According to Maldonado he had killed Monica and their son Pedro in the family's Weston townhouse. Maldonado said he shot them the day before with arrows fired from a crossbow. When asked where he was calling from, Maldonado said he checked into a motel near Lake City, Florida. The stunned recipient of the phone call immediately notified the authorities.

     In Weston, Florida, Broward County sheriff's deputies at six that evening entered the Maldonado townhouse where they discovered the dead bodies of Monica Maldonado and her son Pedro. They had each been shot in the head with small arrows or darts fired from a crossbow that featured a pistol grip. (I assume the victims were shot while they slept.)

     On Tuesday, December 3, 2013, about seven hours after Pedro Maldonado called his friend in Miami with the startling news, deputies with the Columbia County Sheriff's Office spotted his SUV parked outside the Cabot Lodge Motel near the intersection of Interstates 10 and 75 near Lake City, 100 miles east of Tallahassee. Shortly thereafter police officers evacuated the motel and called in a SWAT team and a crisis hostage negotiator.

     SWAT officers, after receiving no response from Maldonado's room, entered the motel at two in the morning on Wednesday, December 4, 2013. The officers found Mr. Maldonado dead in the bathroom. He had used a knife to slit his throat. 

     Investigators in piecing together the sequence of events that unfolded over the previous two days learned that Mr. Maldonado, after murdering his wife and youngest son in the Weston townhouse, drove 460 miles north to Tallahassee where he checked into a motel. Just after seven o'clock Tuesday morning, December 3, 2013, he shot his 21-year-old son Jose in the ear with  a crossbow dart. Having failed to make a killing shot, the father tried to choke his oldest son to death. Following a struggle, the young man managed to escape.

     Jose Maldonado did not report his father's attempted murder until after he learned what had happened to his mother and his younger brother.

     Neighbors in Weston described Mr. Maldonado and his family as quiet people who kept to themselves. The only sounds anyone heard coming from the townhouse involved the boy's practice sessions with his drums. Moreover, Mr. Maldonado did not have an arrest record in the United States and the local police had never been called to the house to mediate a domestic dispute.

     That Pedro Maldonado committed suicide is not shocking. What is a mystery is why he decided to end the lives of his wife and his children. When the American dream ended for the father, he must have decided that if he couldn't have it neither could his wife and two sons. This case reflects the fact that there are things in life and crime that will never make sense. This is particularly true in the world of suicide and murder.

The Pedro Portugal Kidnapping Case

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lance T. Mason Murder Case

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Murder on the Crow Indian Reservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natalie Wood's Death: Accident or Murder?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cheryl Silvonek Murder Case

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Raped Woman's Revenge

     Nevin Yildirim lived with her husband and two children, ages two and six, in a village in southwestern Turkey. In January 2012, her husband left home to work at a seasonal job in another town. Shortly after Mr. Yildirim began working at the other place, a 35-year-old member of the village named Nurettin came to Nevin's house and raped her. This married father of two threatened to shoot Nevin's children if she reported the crime.

     By August 2012, after months of being raped on a regular basis by Mr. Nurettin, Nevin Yildirim was five months pregnant with his child. When she visited a clinic regarding an abortion, a health care worker informed her that her pregnancy was too far along for that option. In Turkey abortions were illegal after the first ten weeks of pregnancy.

     On August 28, 2012, when Mr. Nurettin came to Nevin's house to rape her again, she pulled her father-in-law's rifle off a wall rack and shot him. As the wounded Nurettin reached for his handgun to return fire, Nevin shot him again. Hit with the second slug he tired to run but stumbled and fell. As he lay on the ground cursing her she fired a third bullet, this one into his genitals. The rapist went silent and a few seconds later died where he lay in a pool of his own blood.

     The woman who killed the man who for months had raped her laid down her rifle and picked up a kitchen knife that she used to decapitate him. She picked up the detached head by the hair and carried it to the village square. To a group of men sitting around a coffee house, Nevin, still gripping her rapist's head as it continued to drip blood from the base of the severed neck, said, "Here is the head of the man who played with my honor."

     As the coffee house drinkers looked on in horror, Nevin Yildirim tossed her blood trophy. The severed head rolled along the ground and came to rest in the public square. A short time later a local police officer took the blood-splattered woman into custody.

     A few days after the killing, in speaking to her court-appointed lawyer who came to the local jail, Nevin reportedly said, "I thought of reporting [Nurettin] to the military police and to the district attorney, but this was going to make me a scorned woman. Since I was going to get a bad reputation, I decided to clean my honor, and acted on killing him. I thought of suicide a lot, but couldn't do it. Now no one can call my children bastards....Everyone will call them the children of the woman who cleaned her honor."

     On August 30, 2012 at the preliminary hearing on the charge of murder, Nevin Yildirim told the magistrate she didn't want to keep her rapist's baby and that she wished to die. The public prosecutor advised the court that he ordered psychiatric evaluations of the defendant.

    Nevin Yildirim gave birth to her rapist's child on November 17, 2012.

     On March 25, 2013, the district judge found Yildirim guilty of murder. Before he handed down the sentence the judge ordered police officers to remove feminist protesters from the courtroom.

     After clearing the courtroom of protesters the Turkish judge imposed the maximum punishment of life in prison. Among women in Turkey and others around the world the verdict and sentence created an uproar. Had Nevin Yildirim committed the exact crime in the United States she would have been charged with second or third-degree murder. Her attorney would have had the option of putting on either an insanity or battered woman defense. If found guilty her punishment would not have been anything close to life behind bars. In the U.S. a case like this would likely be resolved through the plea bargaining process that would lead to much lighter sentence.