The Betty Neumar Black Widow Murder Case

     In November 1950, Betty Johnson, an 18-year-old coal miner's daughter who had grown up in Ironton, a town in southeastern Ohio along the West Virginia border, married Clarence Malone. In 1952, shortly after the birth of their son Gary the couple divorced. At the time they were living outside of Cleveland. A year later Betty married an alcoholic from New York City named James F. Flynn who died suddenly in 1955. In the years following Mr. Flynn's passing Betty told people various stories of his death. She said that he had been killed in a car accident, was murdered on a New York City pier and died in the snow from exposure. The cause and circumstances of his death are to this day unknown.

     In 1964, while working in Jacksonville Florida as a beautician, Betty, now 36, married a 29-year-old Navy man named Richard Sills. In April 1967 police officers found Mr. Sills shot to death in the bedroom of the couple's mobile home in Big Coppitt Key Florida. Betty told investigators, her husband, during an argument they were having, pulled out a .22-caliber pistol and shot himself in the heart. Mr Sill's highly suspicious death, without the benefit of an autopsy was ruled a suicide. (Years later a forensic pathologist determined that Richard Sills had been shot twice.)

     Betty married an Army man named Harold Gentry in January 1968. Two years later Betty's first husband, Clarence Malone, was shot to death outside his automobile repair shop near Cleveland. Police never identified the gunman who in execution style shot Mr. Malone in the back of the head.

     Betty's 33-year-old son Gary Malone, in November 1985, was shot to death in his Cleveland area apartment. As the beneficiary to his life insurance policy Betty received $10,000. The police never identified Gary's killer.

     In July 1986, Betty and Harold Gentry, who was now retired from the Army, were living in Norwood, North Carolina about 50 miles east of Charlotte. That month someone fired six bullets into Mr. Gentry. Betty claimed to have been out of town when her fourth husband was shot to death in his own home. The police never identified the shooter. As a result of her fourth husband's untimely and sudden death Betty enjoyed another life insurance payday.

     In 1991, the 60-year-old serial widow married her fifth and last husband, John Neumar. Nine years later, while living in Augusta Georgia, the couple owed $200,000 on 43 credit cards. They filed for bankruptcy. In October 2007 Mr. Neumar, at age 79, died. While his cause of death was listed as sepsis (a bacterial blood infection) Mr. Neumar's children believed his wife Betty had poisoned him to death with arsenic. Even though they had paid for a burial plot, Betty had her husband's body quickly cremated. Those who suspected her of murdering Mr. Neumar believed she had him cremated to avoid an autopsy and telltale toxicology tests.

     In 2008, following a cold-case homicide investigation in North Carolina, a grand jury indicted Betty Neumar on three counts of solicitation to commit the first-degree murder of her fourth husband, Harold Gentry. According to investigators she had asked three people-- a former cop, a neighbor, and a third man--to kill her husband. None of the potential hitmen carried out the murder, but a fourth person who was not identified did follow through on the suspected contract killing.

     Almost a year after her arrest in the Harold Gentry, case Betty Neumar posted her $300,000 bail. (Where did she get the money for that?) After being released from jail she moved to Louisiana. That year a television documentary about Betty Neumar called "Black Widow Granny" was aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom. Film-maker Norman Hull interviewed Betty and the relatives of her dead husbands who believed she had murdered them for their insurance money. In response to these accusations Betty said, "I cannot control when somebody dies. That's God's work." 

     Betty Neuman died of cancer in June 2011 while being treated a Fork Polk, Louisiana hospital. The so-called Black Widow passed away before the authorities in North Carolina could try her for soliciting Harold Gentry's murder. Under the law, Betty Neuman went to her death presumed innocent. Her former in-laws, however, did not share that presumption. 

The Kristopher Gartrell Murder Case

     On November 25, 2018, when the cleaning lady arrived at the home of 87-year-old Virginia Barbour outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, she found the house in disarray. When the cleaning lady couldn't locate the homeowner she called the police.

     When officers with the Pennsylvania State Police rolled up to the scene they found Virginia Barbour's body wrapped in a sheet and stuffed beneath her bed. The killer responsible for strangling her to death had stolen her 2012 Chevrolet Impala and what was later determined to be $1,200 worth of coins. The killer also tried to burn down the house in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence. The fire did not take and went out by itself.

     The day following the murder, detectives developed 48-year-old Kristopher Gartrell as a suspect in the case. According to Gartrell's girlfriend, he murdered the elderly victim. Mr. Gartrell had allegedly threatened to kill his girlfriend if she went to the police. 

     Police officers took Kristopher Gartrell into custody at the Presidential Inn in Gettysburg. At the time of his arrest he was in possession of the dead woman's car and coin collection.

     When interrogated by detectives Mr. Gartrell confessed to entering the victim's unlocked house for the purpose of robbing her. After he forced Virginia Barbour to show him where she kept the coins he tied her up and raped her twice. Following the sexual attacks he strangled the victim, stuffed her body under the bed then set fire to the room. He left the scene in the victim's car.

     Officers booked Mr. Gartrell into the Adams County Jail on charges of murder, rape, kidnapping, arson and robbery. Given the number and seriousness of the charges the magistrate denied him bond.

     Further investigation revealed that Kristopher Gartrell was registered in South Carolina as a sex offender. In 1997, he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He had also been convicted of kidnapping. A parole board in South Carolina released Gartrell from prion in March 2018. In August of that year the authorities placed him on South Carolina's "19 Most Wanted" list after he failed to report to his probation agent.

     In May 2019 following his guilty pleas to sexual assault and murder, the judge sentenced Kristopher Gartrell to life in prison.

The Brady Oestrike Double Murder/Suicide Case

     In Grand Rapids, Michigan, 18-year-old Brooke Slocum and her boyfriend Charles Oppenneer, 25, were homeless. She was eight months pregnant. The couple frequently exchanged sex for food and a temporary place to stay. They hooked up with johns through the online service Craigslist. An Internet pay-for-sex arrangement brought them into contact with Brady Oestrike.

     The 31-year-old Oestrike, employed as a lineman for a utility company, resided in a suburb of Grand Rapids called Wyoming. Because he talked about killing people and having bizarre dreams, many of his acquaintances considered him disturbed.

     On Saturday, July 12, 2014, Slocum, Oppenneer and Oestrike engaged in sexual activity at Oestrike's house. At some point that night the utility company lineman stabbed Charles Oppenneer to death and took Slocum prisoner.

     Hikers, on Wednesday July 16, 2014 came upon a headless corpse in nearby Gezon Park. A forensic pathologist identified the remains as Charles Oppenneer.

     The day following the gruesome discovery, Mr. Oestrike strangled the pregnant teen to death. He stuffed her body into the truck of his car for later disposal.

     By now homicide detectives had identified Oestrike as a suspect in the murder and missing person case. At nine-fifteen on the night of July 17, 2014, uniformed police officers and investigators rolled up to Oestrike's house in Wyoming armed with a search warrant. The suspect saw them coming, jumped into his car and drove off.

     Following a brief chase Oestrike crashed his vehicle into a tree. When officers approached the wrecked car they found him dead. He shot himself in the head.

     Inside the dead man's trunk officers found Brooke Slocum's body. Her unborn baby was dead as well.

     A search of Oestrike's house produced several guns, ammunition, swords, knives and items that belonged to the murdered couple. Mr. Oppenneer's head was never found. 

Russell Bucklew: A Painless Death For A Man Who Didn't Deserve To Live

     In 1995, 27-year-old Russell Bucklew, a criminal with a violent past, resided with his girlfriend Stephanie Ray in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. On Valentine's Day 1996, following months of physical abuse, Ray left Russell Bucklew. During the next several weeks he harassed her, punched her in the face and cut her with a knife. Fearing for her life she moved into a nearby mobile home with Michael Sanders and his 6-year-old son.

     The day after Stephanie Ray moved in with her friend Michael Sanders, Russell Bucklew, thinking that Mr. Sanders was her new boyfriend stole his nephew's car, and in possession of two pistols, a set of handcuffs and duct tape, drove to Sander's home with the intent to kill him. It was there he shot Michael Sanders to death and shot at but missed the victim's son.

     Following the cold-blooded murder, Mr. Bucklew handcuffed Stephanie Ray, dragged her into the stolen car and drove from the murder scene. Shortly thereafter he beat and raped his ex-girlfriend.

     Later on the day of Bucklew's crime spree, a Missouri State Trooper spotted him in the stolen car outside of St. Louis. In the exchange of gunfire both men were wounded. Other police officers took Bucklew into custody, and after being treated and released from the hospital he was booked into jail on charges of kidnapping, rape, assaulting a police officer, attempted murder and murder.

     Shortly after his arrest Russell Bucklew escaped from the Cape Girardeau Jail, and before being re-arrested he attacked Stephanie Ray's mother and the mother's boyfriend with a hammer.

     Convicted in 1997 of first-degree murder and numerous other offenses, the judge sentenced Bucklew to death. The death row inmate would spend the next fifteen years or so in a 6 by 14 foot cell at the maximum security prison in Potosi, Missouri.

     While serving his time in prison, Bucklew developed a medical condition called cavernous hemangioma. He had blood-filled tumors in his head, neck and throat and had to breathe with the help of a tracheostomy tube.

     In May 2014, just before Bucklew was scheduled for execution his death house attorneys won a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court. A majority of the justices were concerned that Bucklew might, due to his illness, suffer some pain when given the lethal dose of pentobarbital.

     In 2019, as Bucklew's new execution date approached, his case was once again before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bucklew's anti-capital punishment lawyers once again argued that their client's throat tumor might burst after receiving the lethal injection, causing the poor man to choke and die painfully in violation of the Eighth Amendment's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

     On September 30, 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment "does not guarantee a painless death."

     The day following the Supreme Court decision, at the Missouri State Prison in Bonne Terre, Russell Bucklew, elevated on the death table to minimize complications from the pentobarbital injection, was executed. There were no outward signs suggesting the 51-year-old suffered an undue amount of discomfort, considerations he had not afforded the victims of his murder, assaults and rape.

     Morley Swinge, the Cape Girardeau County prosecutor in charge of Bucklew's prosecution told reporters that Bucklew was "the most pure sociopath I ever prosecuted. He was ruthless in the way he came after his victims."

     Except for a handful of anti-capital punishment sob-sisters protesting outside the Missouri death house, it was good riddance to a horrible person.

The Steven Zelich Murder Case

     On June 5, 2014 a highway worker cutting high grass along a road in Geneva, Wisconsin, a town in Walworth County 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee, exposed a pair of large suitcases. The overpowering odor of rotting flesh caused the highway employee to notify the police.

     Each of the suitcases contained badly decomposed bodies of two women. Through dental records the authorities identified the women as 37-year-old Laura Simonson, and 21-year-old Jenny Gamez. The forensic pathologist, due to the condition of the bodies, could not establish their causes of death. Neither woman, however, had been shot.

     One of Laura Simonson's relatives reported the mother of seven from Farmington, Wisconsin missing on November 22, 2013. While her cause of death was unknown, before she died someone tied a rope around her neck. That person also stuffed a ball attached to a collar into her mouth. The gag collar looked like a device commonly used by sadomasochists in bondage/slave sexual activity. According to family members, Laura Simonson struggled with mental illness.

     No one had been looking for the younger woman, Jenny Gamez. According to her foster parents, she left their home in Cottage Grove, Oregon to start a new life. In 2008, as a fifteen-year-old, she gave birth to a son. The baby's father in 2010 gained full custody of the child. In keeping with the sadomasochistic theme of the case, someone had tied Gamez's hands behind her back.

     On June 27, 2014. police officers arrested 52-year-old Steven M. Zelich at his home in West Allis, Wisconsin. Mr. Zelich had been seen with each woman on separate occasions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. A Wisconsin prosecutor charged him with two counts of hiding a corpse.

     In 1989, the then 27-year-old Zelich started working in West Allis as a police officer. Three years later, following an off-duty altercation with a prostitute, the chief of police forced him to resign. Since 2007 Mr. Zelich had been an employee of a contract security guard company.

     Zelich's sexual tastes, in light of evidence of bondage associated with the bodies in the suitcases, led detectives to suspect he was the last person to see these women alive. On a bondage and sadomasochism website he solicited sexual partners with the following message: "Seeking no limit enslavement, imprisonment, captivity, animalization ideally in a farm/caged situation."

     Following his arrest, Steven  Zelich told detectives he met the 21-year-old Gamez through the sex website. In November of 2013, he spent several nights with her in a Kenosha County Hotel where they had sadomasochistic sex that included bondage. Upon her accidental death in the course of this activity he stuffed her body into a suitcase and took the corpse home.

     After connecting with the 37-year-old Laura Simonson through the sadomasochistic Internet site, she and Zelich engaged in bondage sex at the Microtel Inn & Suites in Rochester, Minnesota. This took place on November 21, 2013. Simonson had checked into the motel under her own name but never checked out. After she died while having sex with him, Zelich placed her body into a suitcase that ended up in his house with the other corpse.

     In late May or early June 2014, Zelich dumped the suitcases along the road in Geneva, Wisconsin. According to Zelich's attorney, the women as willing participants in rough sex died accidentally. By dumping the suitcases along the road Zelich wanted the bodies to be discovered. The attorney did not believe that homicide charges in this case would be appropriate.

     In January 2016, Steven Zelich pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree homicide as well as one count of hiding a corpse. The judge, in March 2016, sentenced him to 35 years in prison.

The Forgotten Inmate

       The Dona Ana County Jail is in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the south central part of the state not far from the Mexican border. In August 2005, a driving while intoxicated and receiving stolen property arrestee named Stephen Slevin was placed into the 846-cot lockup. The 51-year-old, because of his history of mental illness was segregated from the jail population. For reasons that defy understanding, Mr. Slevin remained in solitary confinement until his release in June 2007. After having him in custody for 22 months, the local prosecutor dropped the charges against the so-called "forgotten inmate." (Had he been truly forgotten, the inmate would have starved to death. Since someone fed this isolated prisoner for 22 months, jail personnel knew of his situation. So how did this happen?)

     The "forgotten" prisoner entered the Dona Ana County Jail in relatively good health, mentally and physically. He left the place weighting 133 pounds with bed sores and rotten teeth. (During his incarceration he pulled out his own abscessed tooth.) Slevin also walked out of the facility suffering from post-traumatic stress.

     Attorney Matthew Coyte, in December 2008, filed a civil rights suit on Slevin's behalf against Dana Ana County, New Mexico. County authorities fought the suit but at Slevin's civil rights trial in March 2012, the jury awarded the plaintiff $22 million. Fighting the case had been an obvious mistake. The county appealed the award on grounds the damages were excessive.

     In March 2013, the Dona Ana County Board of Commissioners dropped the appeal and settled the case. The county agreed to pay the "forgotten inmate" $15.5 million.

     The settlement resolved the civil side of the case. But what about the criminal aspect of Slevin's 22-month wrongful imprisonment? The bureaucrats responsible for this man's ordeal were clearly guilty of a degree of reckless indifference that was criminal. But holding government employees responsible for malfeasance is extremely difficult. The nature of bureaucracy protects incompetent practitioners by making it almost impossible to pinpoint wrongdoing to any one person.

     Had Stephen Slevin been falsely imprisoned in a private sector facility, corrections personnel would be serving prison sentences.

     If Mr. Slevin, months into his hellish confinement, had committed suicide this would have been a homicide case. The taxpayers of Dona Ana County had to foot the bill for this stunning example of governmental negligence, but no public employee was held criminally culpable for this inexplicable corrections fiasco. 

The Levi Norwood Murder Case

     In 2020, 37-year-old Joshua Norwood lived in a home on Elk Road in Midland, Virginia with his 34-year-old wife Jennifer and their two sons, Wyatt, 6 and and 17-year-old Levi. The family moved to Virginia from Maine in 2010. Mr. Norwood had been a sales representative. His wife Jennifer was a licensed nurses's assistant.

     At six o'clock in the evening of February 14, 2020, Joshua Norwood called 911 and reported that he had just arrived home and found that his wife and his 6-year-old son had been shot to death. Shortly after entering the house someone in the dwelling had shot and wounded Mr. Norwood in the head. Armed with his own gun he fired back. He didn't see the shooter but believed the bullet that struck him had been fired from the doorway leading into his basement. Mr. Norwood ran out of the house.

     The 911 operator dispatched an ambulance and officers with the Fauquier County Sheriff's Office to the scene.

     As Joshua Norwood was transported to a nearby hospital in stable condition, deputies, thinking that the other son, 17-year-old Levi Norwood may have been the shooter and was barricaded in the dwelling, surrounded the house.

     At ten-fifteen that night police officers forcibly entered the Norwood house. Inside they found the bodies of Jennifer and Wyatt Norwood but not Levi. They searched the house and did not find the murder weapon. 

     Officers placed the immediate neighborhood on lockdown and instituted a search for the five-foot-nine, 125 pound suspect with his hair dyed purple. Since the teen did not have access to a vehicle, officers assumed he was on foot. 

     The next day, Saturday, February 15, 2020, a teenager meeting Levi Norwood's description was seen driving a 2007 red Toyota Camry that had been stolen that morning from a home about ten miles from the murder scene.

     At four o'clock that day a security guard at a Target store on Chapel Hill Boulevard in Durham, North Carolina caught a teenage boy with purple hair stealing hair dye, items of clothing and a backpack. The shoplifter was identified as Levi Norwood. The stolen Toyota was parked outside the store.

     Officers with the Durham Police Department ran Levi's name through a national fugitive database and learned that the teen was wanted in connection with a double homicide in Midland, Virginia. Police officers booked Livi Norwood into a local jail where he was held for extradition back to Fauquier County, Virginia.

     On Sunday, February 16, 2020, a television reporter questioned a Norwood family member named Victoria Eaton who said the violence at the Norwood house was not something she thought Levi Norwood was capable of, describing the act as "totally out of his character." She also said, " It doesn't make any sense" and noted that Levi had a difficult home life.

     Levi Norwood was a junior at Liberty High School in Bealton, Virginia. Local reporters spoke to several of his classmates who identified Levi's parents as racists who didn't like black people. Moreover, his father had been extremely upset over the fact Levi had been dating a black girl.

     In August 2022, Levi Norwood pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of his mother and second-degree murder of his brother, Wyatt. The judge in January 2023 sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 years, but under Virginia law, because he was 17 at the time of the murders he would be eligible for parole in 20 years. 

Team Stomping and Kicking

     California University of Pennsylvania sits on 290 acres in California Borough 35 miles south of downtown Pittsburgh. A good number of its students came from southwestern Pennsylvania. (California University is now part of the three-campus Penn West University made up of Edinboro and Clarion Universities.)

     Shortly after midnight on Thursday October 30, 2014, California University student Shareese Asparagus, a 22-year-old from West Chester, Pennsylvania, walked out of a restaurant on Wood Street in the college town. She was with her 30-year-old boyfriend, Lewis Campbell, also from West Chester. He did not attend the university.

     The trouble started outside the restaurant when a California University football player, accompanied by four of his teammates, said something to the young woman that offended her. This led to an exchange of angry words that prompted Lewis Campbell to step in to defend his girlfriend.

     The football players reacted to the situation by punching and kicking Mr. Campbell to the pavement. As he lay injured on the ground, the assailants kicked and stomped him into unconsciousness. As the teammates strolled away from their battered victim, they chanted, "football strong!"

     As paramedics loaded Mr. Campbell into a medical helicopter they noticed a shoe print on his face. Emergency personnel flew the unconscious man to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh where physicians determined that the lower part of Mr. Campbell's brain had shifted 80 degrees. The beating had caused the victim serious brain damage.

     Later on the day of the gang assault in front of the off-campus restaurant, as Mr. Campbell lay in the intensive care unit, police officers showed up at football practice armed with arrest warrants for four California University players. Taken into custody that afternoon were: James Williamson, 20, from Parkville, Maryland; Corey Ford, 22, from Harrisburg, Rodney Gillin, 20, from West Lawn, Pennsylvania; and D'Andre Dunkley, 19, from Philadelphia.

     Police officers booked the four college football players into the Washington County Correctional Facility on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, harassment and conspiracy. The judge set each man's bail at $500,000.

     On Friday October 31, 2014, interim California University President Geraldine M. Jones issued the following statement: "California University does not tolerate violent behavior, and the four student-athletes charged in connection with this incident [incident?] will face university sanctions, along with any penalties imposed by law. The police investigation is continuing and the rights of these accused will be upheld. But in light of these allegations, I asked Coach Keller to cancel Saturday's game [with Gannon University]. Behavior has consequences, and all Cal U students, including student-athletes, must abide by our Student Code of Conduct if they wish to remain a part of our campus community. [Aggravated assault hardly falls into the category of a college code of conduct violation.] At the same time, it must be clearly understood that the actions [crimes] of a small group of individuals are not representative of our entire student body, nor of all Cal U student-athletes. [Then what do these "actions" represent?] I ask our entire campus community to recommit to our university's core values, and to demonstrate through their words and their actions the best that our university can be."

      This was a mealy-mouthed public relations department response to a vicious attack worthy of a violent street gang. Where was the outrage in this statement?

     The charges against James Williamson were dropped after surveillance footage revealed that he had not participated in the beating. In response, Williamson filed a lawsuit against the district attorney, the police and the borough. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

     After doctors placed Lewis Campbell into an induced coma, he was discharged several days later with serious brain injuries. 

     Corey Ford, on June 7, 2016, pleaded no contest to assault. He received, in return, a sentence of one to two years in prison. (Ford had earlier pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run that killed a bicyclist in Washington, D.C. In that case the judge had sentenced him to 36 months in federal prison.)

     In July 2016, Rodney Gillin and D'Andre Dunkley, in return for their guilty pleas, received sentences of probation.  

Amish-Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller's Underground Railroad

     Lisa Miller, as a teenager and young woman in Virginia, struggled with an addiction to pills and alcohol. She also participated in self-mutilation. After a failed marriage and a suicide attempt, Lisa began dating women.

     In 1997, Lisa Miller met Janet Jenkins at an alcoholics anonymous meeting in Falls Church, Virginia. They became a couple, and in 2000 traveled to Vermont, the first state to offer homosexuals civil unions, to get married. The pair, after being civilly united by a judge, adopted the surname Miller-Jenkins and in 2002 bought a two-story house in a small southern Vermont town called Fair Haven.

     On April 16, 2002, after becoming pregnant through in vitro fertilization, Lisa, at age 34, gave birth to Isabella. But in September 2003 when Isabella was 17-months-old, Lisa and Janet split-up. After the break in the relationship a family court judge in Vermont granted Janet regular child visitation rights.

     In 2008, after trying but failing to terminate her former partner's visitation rights, Lisa Miller moved to Lynchburg, Virginia where a Christian anti-gay marriage activist named Janet Stasulli befriended her. Lisa, under Stasulli's guidance and influence, became a born-again Christian, and pursuant to her new religious beliefs denounced homosexuality as a sin. In October 2009, the family court judge in Vermont granted Janet Jenkins primary custody of Isabella.

     Kenneth Miller (no relation to Lisa), a 43-year-old Beachy Amish-Mennonite pastor from Stuarts Draft, Virginia, a town of 9,000 30 miles north of Lynchburg, conceived of a plan to get Lisa and Isabella out of the country to keep the 7-year-old out of the custody of a lesbian parent. On September 21, 2009, Philip Zodhiates, an evangelical leader and owner of a Lynchburg Christian direct-mail company drove Lisa and her daughter to Buffalo, New York. Shortly after midnight the mother and daughter crossed the boarder into Canada in a taxi. They were met on the other side by a Canadian evangelical pastor named Ervin Horst who drove Lisa and Isabella, disguised in long skirts and head scarves of the type worn by the Amish-Mennonites, to the Toronto airport. Later that day the fleeing mother and daughter flew to Managua, Nicaragua. 

     Pastor Kenneth Miller, indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in Burlington, Vermont for the offense of abetting an international parental kidnapping, went on trial on August 8, 2012. If convicted the Amish-Mennonite leader faced up to three years in prison.

     Fifty Amish-Mennonite supporters looked on as the Assistant United States Attorney, Eugenia Cowles and defense attorney Joshua M. Autry made their opening remarks to the jury. According to the defense version of the case, Pastor Miller did not know that by leaving the country Lisa Miller was violating a lawful child visitation order. Defense attorney Autry argued that his client, therefore, did not possess the requisite criminal intent to obstruct the court-order giving Janet Jenkins primary custody of the child.

     Federal prosecutor Cowles told the jurors that Pastor Miller selected Nicaragua as the point of destination because that country and the United States did not have an extradition treaty. Moreover, the preacher made sure to book a flight from Canada to Mexico that didn't touch down in America.

     Philip Zodhiates, Janet Stasulli and Ervin Horst, the evangelists the defendant called upon to carry out his anti-homosexual underground escape, took the stand as reluctant prosecution witnesses. Isabella's custody parent, Janet Jenkins, testified she hadn't seen the girl since January 2009, eight months before the evangelists snuck her out of the country. The government rested its case on August 12. 2012.

     Defense attorney Joshua Autry put on a pair of character witnesses then rested his case without bringing Pastor Miller to the stand to testify on his own behalf. On August 14, 2012, the jury, after deliberating four hours, found the defendant guilty of abetting international parental kidnapping. Outside the federal building a group of 100 Amish-Mennonite supporters stood around singing gospel hymns. Pastor Miller remained free on bail until his sentencing.

     Just hours after the verdict. Janet Jenkins filed a civil lawsuit against Philip Zodhiates, Ervin Horst and Janet Stasulli, the people who helped Pastor Miller kidnap her custody child.

     On March 14, 2013, the federal district judge sentenced Pastor Miller to 27 months in prison. The Paster would not, however, begin his sentence until a federal appeals court reviewed and ruled on the case.

     On October 8, 2014, federal prosecutors charged Philip Zodhiates with conspiracy and international parental kidnapping for his role in the abduction. Zodhiates pleaded not guilty to the charges.

     In March 2017, after being convicted as charged, the federal judge sentenced Mr. Zodhiates to 36 months in prison.

     Pastor Kenneth Miller lost his appeal in February 2016 and a month later was sentenced to 27 months in prison. In April 2018, after serving just under two years in federal custody, Pastor Miller was released from custody.

Cop Killer Ronell Wilson

     New York City detectives James V. Nemorin and Rodney J. Andrews arranged an undercover gun buy to take place on Staten Island on March 10, 2003. The officers purchased a .357-Magnum revolver from Ronell Wilson the day before. The detectives showed up at the meeting place with $1,200 in cash to buy a Tech-9 handgun from Wilson. Instead of making the deal, Mr. Wilson, who intended all along to rob the undercover officers, shot each of them in the head with a .44-caliber handgun.

     Ronell Wilson was convicted of the murders in 2005 and sentenced to death. But his death sentence was set aside a few years later when New York State's death penalty statute was declared unconstitutional.

     In December 2006, Ronell Wilson was found guilty in a federal district court in Brooklyn of murdering the police officers. The judge sentenced him to death under the federal law. Wilson's attorneys challenged the death sentence on the grounds that Wilson was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the lethal injection. Wilson's lawyers presented his case before a Brooklyn federal judge in November 2012.

     In August of 2012,  prison informants at the Metropolitan Detection Center, a federal lock-up in Brooklyn, told correction authorities that Ronell Wilson had been having sex with a female guard named Nancy Gonzales. (Gonzales and Wilson had been having sex since March 2012.) In an effort to avoid the death sentence, Wilson intended to impregnate the corrections officer. (Not bad thinking for a mentally retarded guy.) In a letter to another inmate, Wilson wrote, "I just need a baby before the pigs try to take my life."

     The 29-year-old prison guard, in a recorded telephone call to her boyfriend, an inmate in a New York state prison, admitted having sex with Wilson in his cell. "I took a chance because I was so vulnerable and wanted to be loved," Gonzales said. "And now I am carrying his child."

     On February 5, 2013, FBI agents arrested the eight-month pregnant prison guard at her home in Huntington, Long Island. At her Brooklyn arraignment the judge charged Nancy Gonzales with having sexual intercourse with an inmate. If convicted of this federal offense she faced up to 16 months in prison.

     On Wednesday February 6, 2013, the 72-year-old father of NYPD detective Rodney Andrews, in speaking to a reporter with the New York Daily News, said he didn't believe the man who murdered his son should receive mercy just because he impregnated a female corrections officer. "Put him to death for what he did. If he had 20 children I wouldn't change my mind. That baby will be better off with that father not being around."

     In February 2014, at Nancy Gonzales' sentencing hearing following her guilty plea, the defendant told the judge that she had been sexually abused as a child by family members. Moreover, she claimed to have been sexually assaulted while serving in the National Guard. The judge sentenced her to a year and a day in prison.

     Ronell Wilson was on death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

     In March 2016, a federal appeals judge ruled that because Ronell Wilson was "mentally handicapped" he was ineligible for the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment doctrine. He is serving his life sentence in a federal prison in Waymat Pennsylvania. 

The Jason Hendrix "Good Boy" Murder Case

     Kevin Hendrix and his wife Sarah lived in a middle class neighborhood in Corbin, Kentucky with their 16-year-old son Jason and 12-year-old daughter Grace. Mr. Hendrix, a beekeeper, sold honey at a farmer's market in the small, southeastern Kentucky town. His wife, Dr. Sarah Hendrix, worked as a professor at Union College in nearby Barbourville.

     In December 2014, Jason Hendrix was baptized at the Forward Community Church where he and his family were active members. The church, founded in 2012, held its services in a local movie theater. Besides being involved in church activities, Jason Hendrix participated in his high school ROTC program.

     Late Wednesday afternoon February 11, 2015, two days after Jason's parents disciplined their son by taking away his computer privileges, the boy, in a most cold-blooded way, murdered his family.

     The 16-year-old shot his father twice in the head the moment he came home from work. The young killer ambushed his mother with two bullets to the face when she entered the kitchen after parking her car in the garage following her day at work. His 12-year-old sister Grace lay dead in the house from two shots to her head. She had also been shot in the arm. In the close-range shootings, Jason fired through pillows to muffle the sound, and shield himself from the victim's blood spatter.

     A few hours after executing his parents and his sister, Jason met up with some friends at his church. There was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he had just massacred his family.

     The day after the triple murder, Jason, armed with four handguns and a backpack full of ammunition, drove out of town in one of the family cars, a green Honda Pilot.

     Late Saturday morning, February 14, 2015, a Maryland state trooper tried to pull Jason Hendrix over for speeding in Harford County 500 miles from the still undiscovered bodies in his house back in Kentucky. Jason, having no intention of being pulled over by a cop, led the officer and others on a car chase that took them into Baltimore County where police officers in that jurisdiction joined in the pursuit.

     The high-speed chase came to an abrupt end when the teenager crashed his SUV into another vehicle. When six officers with the Baltimore County Police Department approached the green Honda, Jason Hendrix shot at the officers, striking one of them. All six of the officers returned fire, killing the boy at the scene.

     The wounded officer received treatment at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and was discharged the next morning. All of the officers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

     That Saturday, a Baltimore County detective called the authorities in Corbin, Kentucky and requested a check of the address on the Honda's registration. If the occupants of the house were related to the boy they needed to be informed of his death.

     At five o'clock that afternoon, officers with the Corbin Police Department entered the Hendrix house on Forest Circle. Inside they found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Hendrix and their daughter. Following a cursory investigation the authorities in Corbin concluded that the boy killed by the police in Maryland had murdered his family.

     Friends and relatives of the family as well as residents of the community were stunned by the news of these violent deaths. As is often the case in "good boy" murder cases, no one saw the bloodshed coming.

The Kyle Dube Murder Case

     On the night of May 12, 2013 in Glenburn, Maine, 15-year-old Nichole Cable left her parents' home to meet a friend down the road from her house. She was under the false belief that the message she had received on her Facebook page was from Bryan Butterfield. The high school sophomore did not return home. The morning following her disappearance Nichole's mother reported her missing to the police.

     At the request of investigators, officials at Facebook traced the message ostensibly from Bryan Butterfield to a 20-year-old man named Kyle Dube who lived in his parents house in Orono, Maine. Detectives questioned Dube's girlfriend Sarah Mersinger who revealed that Mr. Dube used the fake Facebook account to lure Nichole out of the house that night so that he could kidnap her.

     According to Kyle Dube's brother, the idea behind the abduction involved the kidnapper's plan to abduct the girl wearing a ski mask, then later play the hero by rescuing her. But something went wrong and the victim ended up dead. Dube's brother told detectives that Kyle dumped the body in the woods near the community of Old Town, Maine. The brother said that Kyle's sexual advances toward the 15-year-old had been rejected. Dube's harebrained kidnapping plot and phony rescue scheme was motivated by his desire to have sex with the girl.

     Police officers from a dozen police agencies, with the aid of cadaver dogs and hundreds of civilian volunteers, searched the woods near Old Town for Nichole's body. In the evening of May 20, 2013 one of the searchers came across the corpse.

     The next day, police officers arrested Kyle Dube on the charge of murder. In confessing to his interrogators, Dube said he used the phony Facebook account to lure Nichole out of her parents' house. As she walked down the road to meet her friend Byran Butterfield he hid in the woods wearing a ski mask. After ambushing the victim he covered her mouth with tape and put her in the back of his father's pickup truck. When he checked on Nichole after driving to a remote spot near Old Town he discovered that she had died from suffocation. He left her body in the forest covered in branches.

     On May 22, 2013, a Penobscot County grand jury indicted Kyle Dube on the charge of murder. He was held in the county lock-up without bail.

     A jury in March 2015 found Kyle Dube guilty of murder. Two months later the judge sentenced him to sixty years in prison.

The Debacle at Sparkman Middle School

     On January 14, 2010, Jeanne Dunaway and Teresa Terrell, vice principals at Sparkman Middle School near Huntsville, Alabama, received a complaint that a male student had touched a girl inappropriately. The subject of the complaint was no stranger to this kind of allegation. He had been accused of predatory sexual advances fifteen times in the recent past. The latest complaint resulted in the boy being placed on "in-school suspension."

     A couple of days later, teacher's aide June Simpson spoke to principal Ronnie Blair about the boy. According to Simpson, he "repeatedly tried to convince girls to have sex with him in the boy's bathroom on the special needs students' corridor. The teacher's aide reported that the young predator had actually engaged in sex with one of the girls.

     Because the boy and the female special needs student denied having sex in the boy's restroom, the principal informed the teacher's aide that because the kids had not been caught in the act his hands were tied. The concerned teacher's aide recommended that school officials keep a close eye on this boy.

     On January 22, 2010, a 14-year-old girl who wasn't physically or mentally handicapped but took special education classes, told teacher's aide Simpson that the alleged schoolboy sex fiend had been pestering her to have restroom sex with him. Simpson asked the girl if she'd be willing to act as bait in a plan to catch the sexual predator. The girl refused to participate in the sting, then changed her mind.

     The teacher's aide, accompanied by the girl, laid out her plan to vice principal Dunaway who didn't endorse or approve of it. The vice principal didn't forbid the execution of the scheme either. The plan was this: the girl would agree to have sex with the boy in the special needs bathroom where teachers would be hiding to confront the kid before things got out of hand.

     Shortly after leaving the vice principal's office, the girl encountered the young predator in the hallway. She agreed to have sex with him. But instead of getting together in the special needs restroom, he told her to meet him in the sixth-grade boy's bathroom in another part of the school. The girl did not have time to alert the teacher's aide of the change in plans.

     In the sixth-grade boy's restroom, with no teachers hiding nearby to intervene, the girl rejected the boy's advances. Unable to fight him off, he raped her.

     After the victim reported the crime to a teacher, police officers were summoned to the school. They took the girl to the National Children's Advocacy Center in Huntsville where medical personnel used a rape kit to gather physical evidence. Hospital personnel also photographed signs of trauma consistent with the girl's rape allegation.

     The young suspect, when confronted with the accusation, claimed he only kissed the girl.

     After the alleged rape victim refused to cooperate with detectives, the police department turned the case over to the Madison County District Attorney's Office. Without the victim's testimony, an eyewitness, or the boy's confession, prosecutors closed the case for lack of evidence.

     Pursuant to an internal administrative inquiry into the incident, vice principal Terrell testified that after seeing photographs of the girl's injuries she didn't know whether or not the sex had been consensual. Vice Principal Dunaway testified that when the girl willingly entered the sixth-grade restroom with the boy she was on her own.

     In the school's final disciplinary report on the matter, the incident in the school restroom was described as the "inappropriate touching of a female." The principal suspended the boy for five days. Following the suspension the kid spent fifteen days at an alternative institution before returning to the Sparkman Middle School.

     The 14-year-old girl withdrew from the Sparkman Middle School. After extensive counseling she ended up in North Carolina with her mother. Upon her mother's death shortly thereafter, the girl and her brother were placed in Child Protection Services.

     June Simpson, the Sparkman teacher's aide, resigned not long after the incident. Her attorney described her as a scapegoat in the case.

      In October 2010, the girl's father filed a Title IX "Jane Doe" lawsuit in federal court against the boy, school administrators, the teacher's aide and the Madison County School Board. Title IX is a federal law aimed at ending gender discrimination in public education.

     A few months after the filing of the lawsuit a U.S. District Court Judge tossed out the claim against the boy because he was a minor. The judge also threw out the Title IX portion of the action. He did allow, however, the claim of negligence against the teacher's aide and the school administrators. Attorney Eric Artrip appealed the lower court ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta.

     On September 17, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education filed amicus briefs (friend of the court arguments) in support of attorney Artrip's appeal of the Title IX rejection.

     The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2015 overturned the district court ruling against the student used as sexual assault bait. That meant that "Jane Doe" could proceed with a lawsuit against the school system

     In March 2016, the Madison County School System settled the "Jane Doe" suit for an undisclosed amount.

The Nachman and Raizy Glauber Hit-And-Run Case

     Nachman and Raizy Glauber were members of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jewish community in the Williamsville section of Brooklyn, New York. He was studying to become a rabbi, and she worked at a hardware distribution store. The 21-year-olds had been married a year, paired by a matchmaker. Raizy was seven months pregnant with their first child.

     On Saturday, March 2, 2013, Raizy became worried because she could no longer feel the baby. The couple didn't own a car, so Nachman called a car service to drive them to Long Island College Hospital. Around midnight Pedro Nunez Delacruz arrived at the Glauber apartment in his livery vehicle. The couple climbed into the back seat of his black 2008 Toyota Camry. Raizy was seated behind the driver.

     A few minutes after being picked up by Delacruz, the livery car, while moving through a Brooklyn intersection was struck by a 2010 gray BMW traveling 60 miles per hour. Ejected from the livery cab Raizy's body came to rest beneath a parked tractor-trailer. Nachman was left pinned inside the crushed Toyota. (The Toyota's engine ended up in the back seat where Raizy Glauber had been sitting.)

     Following the collision, the driver of the BMW, 44-year-old Julio Acevedo, climbed out of the sedan and sat on the curb to collect himself. A few minutes later he returned to the mangled BMW and helped a female passenger out of the car. Acevedo and his companion walked away from the crash, disappearing into the gathering crowd.

     Raizy Glauber, who spoke to paramedics, died in the ambulance as it sped to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Pronounced dead on arrival, doctors delivered her baby by cesarean. The premature baby was born alive.

     Doctors pronounced Nachman Glauber dead on arrival at Manhattan's Beth Israel Hospital.

     The next day a spokesperson for the New York Medical Examiner's Office announced that the Glaubers had been killed by blunt-force trauma. At 5:30 on the morning of the crash the baby died from the same cause.

     The livery car driver, 32-year-old Pedro Delacruz, was released from Bellevue Hospital on Monday, March 4 2013 after being treated for minor injuries. In the meantime, New York City detectives had learned that the BMW was registered to a resident of the Bronx named Takia Walker. The 29-year-old told detectives that Julio Acevedo had borrowed the vehicle from a mutual friend who had possession of her car. She said she had never met Acevedo.

    Julio Acevedo had a long history of crime and incarceration. He spent eight years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of a Brooklyn hood named Kelvin Martin. Martin was the original "50 Cent," the inspiration for the rapper of the same name.

      Once out of prison, Mr. Acevedo continued to run afoul of the law. Police on various occasions arrested him for such crimes as robbery, reckless endangerment and possession of a weapon. On February 17, 2013, officers pulled Acevedo over in Brooklyn for driving erratically in a 1997 BMW bearing Pennsylvania plates. With an alcohol blood content level of .13, the officers charged the ex-con with driving under the influence. Acevedo told the arresting officers that he had consumed a couple of beers at a baby shower. The next day, following his arraignment, the judge released Acevedo with a court appearance scheduled for April 10, 2013.

     Acevedo's last known address was in a Brooklyn public housing project where his mother resided. One of his friends told reporters that the hit-and-run suspect wanted to turn himself in because "he has remorse." A reward of $15,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest.

     Isaac Abraham, a spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish community, called for the maximum punishment for Acevedo. "We in the community are demanding that the prosecutor charge the driver of the BMW that caused the death of this couple and infant with triple homicide. This coward left the scene of the accident, not even bothering to check on the people in the car."

     On Tuesday, March 5, 2013, Julio Acevedo, while hiding from the police, spoke to a reporter with the Daily News of New York. According to the fugitive, just before the accident he had been speeding away from a gunman who was trying to kill him. Acevedo said he met with a lawyer who was arranging his surrender to the authorities.

     Acevedo, on Wednesday evening, March 6, 2013, turned himself in to police officers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He approached the officers as they sat in their cars in front of a convenience store. The next day Mr. Acevedo, charged with negligent homicide, three counts of assault, leaving the scene of an accident, and reckless driving, was arraigned in a Brooklyn court. Judge Stephen Antignani suspended his drivers license and denied him bail. The suspect's wife and young daughter were in the court room with him.

     In July 2013, the New York City Department of Transportation installed a traffic light at the Brooklyn intersection where the Glaubers had been killed.

     A jury sitting in Brooklyn, in April 2015 found Julio Acevedo guilty as charged. Judge Neil Firetog sentenced him to 25 years to life. According to the judge, Acevedo had "forfeited his right to be a part of our community."

Investigative Malpractice

     Ryan Coleman-Farrow joined London, England's Metropolitan Police Department (commonly referred to as Scotland Yard) in 2000. As a bright and ambitious officer he rose to the rank of junior detective then became a detective constable (DC). Assigned to the Kingston-upon-Thames area in southwest London, DC Coleman-Farrow, as a member of a specialized unit, investigated sexual offenses.

     In late 2005, the detective and his wife were divorced, and less than a year later, Coleman-Farrow was diagnosed with skin cancer. Problems in a police officer's personal life are not supposed to affect his professional duties, but in this officer's case they did affect his performance as a sex crime investigator.

     In 2010, investigators with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), in addressing numerous citizen complaints that DC Coleman-Farrow had neglected his professional responsibilities and had attempted to cover-up his failings, launched an investigation. The internal inquiry focused on 32 of DC Coleman-Farrow's cases during the period January 2007 to September 2010.

     Investigators with the IPCC, in reviewing DC Coleman-Farrow's work in the 32 cases involving rape and pedophilia, found that he deliberately sabotaged prosecutable crimes just to lighten his caseload. In several instances the Scotland Yard detective had falsely informed victims their cases had been dropped for lack of evidence. Coleman-Farrow had also reported to his supervisors that victims in these cases had withdrawn their criminal complaints. The detective failed to submit crime scene evidence for crime lab analysis, and fabricated forensic reports that indicated negative results.

     When questioned by IPCC investigators, Coleman-Farrow admitted he lied to his supervisors and to crime victims. He also confessed to destroying physical evidence, and to fabricating crime lab reports. The author of the IPCC report described Coleman-Farrow as "a rogue officer who deceived his colleagues and concocted evidence to cover his tracks."

     The IPCC findings led to DC Coleman-Farrow's dismissal from Scotland Yard. In May 2012, a month after his firing, the Crown's Prosecution Service charged the former officer with 13 counts of misconduct in public office. According to prosecutor Mark Heywood, the defendant "willfully engaged in conduct amounting to an abuse of the public's trust."

     In September 2012, the 30-year-old former sex crime detective pleaded guilty to the 13 counts of public office misconduct. At his sentencing hearing on October 23, 2012, Coleman-Farrow's defense counsel, Robert Atchley, in arguing for leniency before Judge Alistair McCreath, said, "This was not corruption and not even laziness. These failures were due to poor health over part of three years. His [Coleman-Farrow's] major failing is not sharing it [his health problems] with anyone else, and in particular those he worked for." (It seems this officer's "major failing" was letting rapists and child abusers off the hook. One of these offenders had raped his 96-year-old mother.)

     Judge MCreath, before handing down his sentence said this to the defendant: "In all 13 cases you failed to take steps that were appropriate and necessary for a full and proper investigation whether by failing to take statements or to gather exhibits [physical evidence] or to pass material on to other agencies for further investigation or analysis."

     Judge McCreath sentenced Ryan Coleman-Forrow to sixteen months in prison.    

The Brittany Killgore Sex Dungeon Murder Case

     After two years of marriage to Lance Corporal Cory Killgore, 22-year-old Brittany Killgore, on April 11, 2012 filed for divorce. The Marine was serving in Afghanistan. Brittany lived in Fallbrook California, a San Diego County town of 38,000 not far from Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine base.

     At two in the afternoon on Saturday April 14, 2012,opl one of Brittany Killgore's friends called the San Diego County Sheriff's Office to report her missing. The caller had last seen Killgore at 7 PM the day before when she stopped by her friend's apartment to borrow a dress. Killgore said she was going on a date with a 45-year-old Marine staff sergeant named Louis Ray Perez who was picking her up in less than an hour. They were going into downtown San Diego.

     At 7:45 that Friday evening, the friend received a text message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Help." The friend texted back, "What? R U okay?" When Brittany didn't respond, the friend texted "Brittany are U okay? I am freaking out here." At 8:05 PM the friend received another message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Yes I love this party." The worried friend considered this text suspicious because Killgore always used the word "yeah" instead of "yes" in her text messaging. That was the last the friend heard from Killgore's phone. (A transient in downtown San Diego later found Killgore's cellphone in the doorway of a Comfort Inn.)

     A detective with the San Diego Sheriff's Office called Marine Sergeant Louis Perez (who didn't have a criminal record) and asked if he'd come in for questioning regarding the Killgore missing persons case. Louis Perez showed up at the sheriff's office shortly after the call.

     According to the 16-year veteran of the Marine Corps, he had gone to Killgore's apartment at four o'clock Friday afternoon to help her pack for her upcoming move to another place. He asked her if she'd like to go out on a dinner-dance boat that evening in downtown San Diego. Killgore declined, saying that she was tired. Soon after Perez left Killgore's apartment at 5:10 PM she sent him a text saying she had changed her mind. Perez returned to her place at 7:30 for the date.

     According to the Marine's statement, he dropped Brittany off in downtown San Diego in front of a club called the Whisky Girl Night while he looked for a place to park. Fifteen minutes later, when he arrived at the club on foot he couldn't find her. Perez looked around for 30 minutes then headed home to the house he shared in Fallbrook with his girlfriend, 36-year-old Dorothy Grace Marie Maraglino and her friend, Jessica Lynn Lopez, 25.

     The deputy who interviewed Perez that afternoon asked if he could take a look inside the white Ford Explorer the Marine had driven to the sheriff's office. Perez said he had no problem with that.

     The first thing the detective noticed about Perez's car was the fresh mud caked on the underside of the vehicle and in its wheel wells. The Marine's shoes were also muddy. Perez told the officer that the car had gotten that way when he recently collected firewood near Camp Pendleton. The deputy took a plastic bag from inside the car that contained a pair of blue latex gloves which appeared to be blood-stained. (A presumptive luminal test confirmed it was blood and later DNA analysis identified the blood as Brittany Killgore's.) Perez also possessed a stun gun that had a human hair follicle attached to it. At this point in the investigation Sergeant Perez became a suspect in Brittany Killgore's disappearance and possible murder. The deputy, after recovering a stolen AR 15 assault rifle from Perez's Ford Explorer, arrested him on a charge of theft. The "person of interest" in the Killgore case was taken to jail where he was incarcerated under $500,000 bond.

     From Perez's cellphone investigators collected messages sent from his phone to Killgore's. The first message, sent at 9:20 PM on Friday, April 13, almost two hours after Killgore's "help" text, said, "Your friends are calling me worried." Later that evening at a time investigators believe Killgore was dead Perez had texted, "Now I am worried too."

     When the San Diego detectives questioned the suspect's housemate, Dorothy Maraglino, the 37-year-old said Perez had returned home Friday night sometime between 10 PM and midnight. He remained in the Fallbrook house until he left for San Diego the next day in response to the call from the sheriff's office.

     On April 15, 2012 San Diego deputies searched the Perez/Maraglino/Lopez house in Fallbrook where they suspected Brittany Killgore had been murdered. The searchers discovered that one of the rooms in the dwelling had been set up as a "sex dungeon" equipped with a variety of "sex apparatuses, toys and tools" such as handcuffs, whips, leather restraints and chain shackles. When asked about this sadomasochistic playroom Dorothy Maraglino and Jessica Lopez explained that they participated in erotic master-servant and master-slave role-playing. Dorothy identified herself as the dominatrix and said that Louis Perez enjoyed spanking women.

     The Killgore missing persons/murder investigation took an even more bizarre turn on April 16, 2012 when investigators learned that Master Dorothy and her slave Jessica had checked into the Ramada Inn located in the Point Loma section of San Diego. Deputies showed up at room 105 at 9:30 that morning. Lopez, in a drowsy voice, told the officers she was too exhausted to come to the door to let them in. When a deputy cracked the door open as far as the interior door chain would allow the officer saw blood on the floor. Another officer kicked the door open and the police stormed into the motel room.

     The sheriff's deputies found Jessica Lopez, naked from the waist up and covered in blood from self-inflicted superficial knife wounds on her neck and wrists. (Maraglino had left the motel.) A message in lipstick scrawled on the mirror above the dressing table read: "PIGS READ THIS." Below this message lay a 7-page handwritten murder confession signed by Jessica Lopez.

     In the confession Jessica Lopez admitted using a ligature in the sex dungeon in the Fallbrook house to strangle Brittany Killgore to death. She killed the victim out of fear Louis Perez would be seduced by her. After half-hearted attempts to dismember Killgore's body, Lopez doused the naked body with bleach to destroy physical evidence. She wrote that she "hid the body of that whore in almost plain sight" near Lake Skinner, noting that the police would find handcuff marks on the victim's wrists. Lopez said she deposited the knife she used in her attempts to "chop her up" in a beach restroom in Oceanside. The police would also find a pair of handcuffs with the knife. In her statement/suicide note Lopez said she was taking full responsibility for Brittany Killgore's murder.

     At 2:30 that afternoon, searchers located Killgore's naked remains lying in the brush along the side of a road near Riverside County's Lake Skinner, 23 miles north of Fallbrook. The police arrested Jessica Lopez on April 17, 2012 on the charge of first-degree murder. Louis Perez, already in custody on the gun theft case, was charged with first-degree murder as well. Dorothy Maraglino, also charged with first-degree murder, was taken into custody on May 10, 2012. The three suspects were held on $3 million bond and all pleaded not guilty.

     At a Killgore murder case preliminary hearing that got underway on March 11, 2013 in Vista County Superior Court, the victim's best friend Elizabeth Hernandez testified that she and Killgore became acquainted with Marine Sergeant Louis Perez, Jessica Lopez and Dorothy Maraglino in 2011 after Hernandez responded to an ad selling a fertility monitor on a website used by military families. Hernandez said she befriended Maraglino because the two of them were trying to get pregnant. After that, Brittany Killgore regularly visited the house where Maragalino resided with Lopez.

     Hernandez testified that Sergeant Perez, Lopez and Maragalino openly discussed their sexual lifestyle that involved Perez as the master, Maragalino as the mistress and Jessica Lopez as the slave. In their sex dungeon they had painted a giant spider web on the wall and bars on the ceiling. According to the preliminary hearing, witness Elizabeth Hernandez and Killgore made it clear they were not going to participate in the sex games.

     In 2012, Elizabeth Hernandez and Britany Killgore had a falling out. At that time Killgore was preparing to divorce her husband, Lance Corporal Cory Killgore. Hernandez testified that she discussed the souring of their friendship with Louis Perez, Lopez and Maragalino. After that Jessica Lopez and Dorothy Maragalino began referring to Killgore as "the disease" and "herpes." According to Elizabeth Hernandez, Perez and Maragalino said they could get rid of Killgore but they wouldn't because they knew Hernandez would miss her. Hernandez said she thought they were joking.

     On March 14, 2013, Deputy Medical Examiner Craig Nelson testified that the victim had been strangled with some kind of ligature, and that her body had been moved to where it was found near Lake Skinner. The forensic pathologist said there were two marks on Killgore's neck and tiny hemorrhages in her eyes that indicated strangulation as the cause of death. Dr. Nelson had also discovered cuts on the victim's left wrist and left knee that suggested that someone had attempted to dismember the body. The cut to the left leg was so deep it reached the bone. The bone contained tool marks that indicated a saw had been used in the dismemberment attempt. This had occurred postmortem.

     A woman followed Dr. Nelson to the stand who said she had lived in the Maraglino house for three months in late 2010. According to this witness, she had been Dorothy Maraglino's sex slave for a time and knew that Maraglino and Louis Perez enjoyed choking their sex partners.

     On March 16, 2013, Vista Superior Court Judge K. Michael Kirkman ruled that the prosecution in the Killgore case had presented enough evidence against the defendants to justify a murder trial.

     On April 8, 2014, murder defendant Dorothy Maragalino, represented by the fourth attorney assigned to her since 2012, was back in court filing motions that would delay the progress of the case. Initially Maragalino insisted on representing herself then changed her mind. After dismissing her next two lawyers the judge assigned her a public defender who asked to be removed from the case. Attorney Jane Kinsey, the fourth defense attorney, needed more time to prepare. Judge Kirkman granted the motion.

     That April, Jessica Lopez's attorney, Sloan Ostby, asked the judge for more time to study the 7,345 pages of documents he acquired from the prosecution on discovery. Ostby said he also had to review 165 DVDs that had been supplied by the state. The judge granted this motion.

     Attorney Brad Patton, representing Louis Perez, the accused sex dungeon master, filed a series of pretrial motions in 2014 that slowed progress in the case. On December 12, 2014, perhaps in an attempt to move things along, the district attorney's office announced it would not seek the death penalty against the defendants.

     On June 6, 2015, at a pre-trial hearing, Judge Kirkman denied a motion by defense attorney Sloan Ostby to exclude writings by Jessica Lopez that described, in detail, the victim's torture, murder and dismemberment. Attorney Ostby, characterizing the writings as the product of his client's fantasies, argued that the material was so gruesome it would unduly prejudice a jury. Judge Kirkman said he would allow the writings into evidence with deletions of the most disturbing parts.

     The handwritten "Pigs Read This" document was found in the hotel room along with Jessica Lopez's suicide note. In denying the motion to completely suppress this evidence, Judge Kirkman said, "It is a document that very much has relevance."

     In earlier court related statements, prosecutor Patrick Espinoza compared the defendants to the Manson family. Defense attorneys objected to this and asked the judge to forbid such comparisons in the future. Judge Kirkman granted that request.

     On August 14, 2015,  the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office released its Brittany Killgore autopsy report. The document confirmed that Killgore had been strangled. Moreover, attempts had been made to dismember her body. The victim was initially identified by a small tattoo on her left wrist. According to notes made by Deputy San Diego Medical Examiner Dr. Craig Nelson, "On the left side of the [victim's] neck and face were two small, paired brown marks that were suggestive of use of an electrical weapon…The victim's left knee had a large but bloodless incised wound suggestive of attempted dismemberment."

     On September 8, 2015, in Vista, California, jury selection began in the Dorothy Maraglino, Louis Perez and Jessica Perez murder trial. Two months later, the defendants were convicted of murder and kidnapping. The judge sentenced all three to life in prison without the chance of parole.

Hands-On Sex Education at Destrehan High

     Destrehan, Louisiana is located 25 miles east of New Orleans on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Destrehan High School, part of the St. Charles Parish School District, consists of grades 9 through 12.

     Shelly S. Dufresne, a 32-year-old 11th-grade English teacher graduated from the high school in 2000. In 2005, she graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) with a BS Degree in secondary education. The daughter of 29th Judicial Judge Emile St. Pierre, she began teaching at Destrehan High in 2006. Dufresne resided in Montz, Louisiana with her husband and three children.

     Destrehan High's 10th-grade English teacher, 23-year-old Rachel Respess, graduated from the high school in 2008. Shortly after earning her education degree from LSU in 2012 she joined the faculty of her Alma Mater. Respess lived in Kenner, Louisiana.

     On September 26, 2014, school officials were informed that a 16-year-old Destrehan male student had bragged to his friends that he and the two English teachers, on two occasions, had engaged in threesome sex. Deputies with the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office, after receiving the complaint from the school, questioned the boy.

     According to the student, the first three-way tryst took place in early September in Kenner at Rachel Respess' apartment. The second episode occurred after a Friday night football game on September 12, 2014 at Shelly Dufrense's house in Montz. Deputies reportedly acquired videotapes of the sexual encounters.

     On September 30, 2014, officers booked Dufresne and Respess into the Jefferson Parish Jail on felony charges of carnal knowledge of a juvenile. The teachers posted their bonds but were under house arrest except for mental health counseling, doctor visits and church attendance. The school district suspended the suspects without pay.

     In August 2016, the parents of the student sued the two teachers and the St. Charles Parish School District.

      Shelly Dufresne, following her confession to the police, pleaded guilty in December 2016 to the minor offense of obscenity. In exchange for the plea the judge sentenced her to 90 days at an inpatient mental health facility. The former teacher also received three years probation and was fined $1,000. According to Dufresne, she had instigated the sexual encounters with the student.

     Shelly Repass pleaded guilty to the minor offense of failing to report the commission of a felony. For this she received one year of probation.

     Several questions come to mind in cases like this. How stupid or desperate must a teacher be to place her career, marriage, reputation and freedom into the hands of a 16-year-old boy who can be counted on to spill the beans to his friends? Why would these teachers consent to being videotaped committing sex offenses? Were these teachers emotional basket cases or simply stupid? If they were not very bright, do they reflect the caliber of people entering the teaching field? 

The Kayden Powell Kidnapping Case

     On February 2, 2014, 18-year-old Brianna Marshall gave birth to a six-pound, 20-inch boy she and her boyfriend Bruce Powell named Kayden. The couple resided in Beloit, a town of 7,700 50 miles south of Madison, Wisconsin near the Illinois border.

     At four-thirty in the morning of Thursday, February 6, 2014, Brianna Marshall called 911 and reported that Kayden was missing. The mother told responding officers with the Beloit Police Department that when she checked the baby's crib, located in the room where she and her boyfriend slept, the infant was gone. Police officers found no evidence of a break-in and there was no ransom note.

     According to the parents, they last saw Kayden at one-thirty that morning when their houseguest, Brianna's half-sister, Kristen Rose Smith, left Beloit en route to her home in Denver, Colorado.

     A police officer reached Kristen Smith by calling her cellphone. At five-thirty that morning Smith pulled into the Kum and Go gas station off Interstate 80 in West Branch, Iowa. From the gas station and convenience store 180 miles from Beloit she flagged down a local police officer.

     After searching Smith's car and finding baby clothing but no infant, officers with the West Branch Police Department took the half-sister into custody on an outstanding warrant issued from Texas. She was wanted in that state on charges of tampering with government records and fraud. Officers booked Kristen Smith into the Cedar County Jail.

     Back in Beloit, 40 officers representing the FBI, Rock County Sheriff's Office and the Beloit Police Department were working on the missing persons case.

     The missing baby's mother, in speaking to a local CNN reporter on Friday, February 6, 2014, said: "I held that baby one time and that was the last time I seen that baby and held him." Brianna Marshall said that she, her boyfriend, and the infant were about to move to Denver, Colorado. She and the baby had planned to ride there in her half-sister's vehicle. That explained the baby clothing in Kristen Smith's car.

     At a press conference held on the afternoon of Friday, February 7, 2014, Beloit chief of police Steven Kopp announced that Baby Kayden Powell had been found alive and well that morning. The infant was swaddled in blankets inside a tote bag in an exterior storage crate at the Kum and Go gas station in West Branch. The baby survived for 29 hours in subzero temperatures.

     After being taken into custody in Iowa, Kristen Smith agreed to take a polygraph test. When she denied abducting the baby she failed the exam. Following the infant's recovery, she admitted she had taken the baby and was pretending to be pregnant. Before flagging the police car at the gas station she hid the baby for later retrieval. Police officers disrupted that plan by taking her into custody on the Texas warrants.

     Remarkably, the baby had no signs of frostbite or hypothermia. A physician at the University of Wisconsin Health Center explained that infants possess a thin layer of fat they can metabolize into heat.

     A federal prosecutor charged Kristen Smith with kidnapping.

     In July 2014, a jury sitting in the Madison, Wisconsin federal court found Kristen Smith guilty of kidnapping baby Kayden Powell.

    United States District Court Judge James Peterson, in October 2014, before sentencing Kristen Smith, said, "You would have let him die rather than admit you had taken him. Your life is a pattern of misrepresentation which frankly continues even now." The judge sentenced Kristen Smith to 25 years in prison.

The Beth Potter/Robin Carre Murder Case

     At six-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, March 31, 2020, a jogger in Madison, Wisconsin came upon the bodies of a man and a woman lying in a ditch. The man was dead and the woman was near death. She died a few hours later in a nearby hospital.

     Dr. Beth Potter, 52, and her partner Robin Carre, 57, were found on the University of Wisconsin campus near the entrance to a 1,200 acre arboretum (a place where many kinds of trees are grown for exhibition and study). The park-like area was also a popular recreational site

     The Dane County Medical Examiner's office issued the rather vague statement that the manner and cause of the couple's death was "homicide related trauma." (The couple had been shot to death with a handgun.)

     Dr. Potter had been director of the Winga Family Medical Center operated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Robin Carre had worked as an independent educational consultant who helped high school students and their parents with the college admissions process. He had also been director of a local youth soccer organization. The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter.

     Detectives with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department took charge of the double murder investigation. A spokesperson for the department told reporters that the victims had not been randomly killed. They had been, in his words, "targeted."

     On Friday, April 3, 2020, police officers arrested 18-year-old Khari Sanford. A senior at Madison West High School, Sanford knew the murdered couple's children who attended the same school. The victims' daughter, according to her Facebook page, had been in a relationship with the murder suspect.

     Khari Sanford was booked into the Dane County Jail on two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. The magistrate denied him bail.

     In late 2019, the high school football player, when his foster parents were visiting Africa, disabled the home surveillance cameras and drove off in the family car. Because he wasn't allowed to use the vehicle, a relative notified the police. A few days later officers located Sanford in the Madison area sleeping in the vehicle.

     Charged with auto theft, Khari Sanford was admitted into a deferred prosecution program that involved counseling and community service. Once he completed the program the charge would be dropped and his record wiped clean. In January 2019, while still going through the deferred prosecution program, Sanford posted on his Facebook page a photograph of himself posing with a pistol. He also posted comments about policing the police.

     In 2018, Khari Sanford wrote the following on his Facebook page: "We gon (sic) change this world, cause it's time to let our diversity and youth shine over all oppressive systems and rebuild our democracy."

     On the day of Khari Sanford's arrest, University of Wisconsin Chief of Police Kristin Roman said this about the double murder: "It was calculated, coldblooded and senseless."

     On April 4, 2020, the University of Wisconsin Police Department spokesperson announced that on Saturday, the day after officers took Khari Sanford into custody, they arrested his friend, Ali'jah J. Larrue. The 18-year-old was booked into the Dane Count Jail on two counts of being a party to first-degree intentional homicide. Larrue also attended Madison West High School.

     On April 7, 2020, Khari Sanford and Ali'jah Larrue were arraigned via a video-conducted hearing. Assistant District Attorney William Brown testified that on the night before Dr. Potter and Mr. Carre were found in the arboretum ditch, Sanford and his accomplice entered the victims' home to rob them. Sanford allegedly shot both victims in the back of the head while they slept. After what the prosecutor labeled "an execution," Sanford and his accomplice hauled the deceased Mr. Carre and the dying Dr. Potter to the arboretum where they were found the next morning. Dr. Potter was wearing pajamas and socks. Robin Carre was found in his underwear.

     The Dane County magistrate set the suspects' bail at $1million each. 

     Ali'jah Larrue, in May 2022, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony murder and kidnapping. Later that month he testified for the prosecution at Khari Sanford's first-degree murder and kidnapping trial that resulted in a conviction on both charges. In September 2022, the judge sentenced Larrue to eight years in prison followed by ten years of probation. Khari Sanford received a sentence of life in prison.

Donald Harvey: America's Worst Angel of Death

     In 1975, after working briefly as a hospital orderly in Lexington, Kentucky, 23-year-old Donald Harvey took a job with the Veteran's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. As the years passed a pattern emerged. When Harvey was on duty, patients died. Finally, after ten years and the deaths of more than 100 patients on his watch, the orderly was fired. He was terminated because several hospital workers suspected he was poisoning patients under his care. After he left the medical facility the death rate plummeted. Terminating Donald Harvey turned out to be good medicine, at least at the VA hospital.

     Shortly after his firing, Mr. Harvey was hired across town at Drake Memorial Hospital where the death rate began to soar. As he had done at the VA facility, Donald Harvey was murdering patients by either lacing their food with arsenic or injecting cyanide into their gastric tubes. The deaths at Drake Memorial, like those at the VA hospital, were ruled as naturally caused fatalities. While suspicions were aroused it was hard to imagine that this friendly, helpful little man who was so charming and popular with members of his victims' families could be a stone-cold killer.

     As clever and careful as Donald Harvey was, he made a mistake when he poisoned John Powell, a patient recovering from a motorcycle accident. Under Ohio law, victims of fatal traffic accidents must be autopsied. At Powell's autopsy an assistant detected the odor of almonds, the telltale sign of cyanide. This was fortunate because most people are unable to detect this scent. The forensic pathologist ordered toxicological tests that revealed John Powell died from a lethal dose of cyanide. Donald Harvey was the last person to see Mr. Powell alive, and John Powell would be the last person he would murder.

     The Cincinnati police arrested Donald Harvey and searched his apartment where they found jars filled with arsenic and cyanide, and books on poisoning. Notwithstanding this evidence the Hamilton County prosecutor believed that without a confession there might not be enough evidence to convince a jury of Harvey's guilt. The suspect, on the other hand, was worried that if convicted he would be sentenced to death. So the serial killer and the prosecutor struck a deal. In return for a life sentence, Donald Harvey confessed to the murders he could remember. Over a period of several days he confessed to killing, in Kentucky and Ohio, 130 patients.

     When asked why had he murdered all of those helpless victims, the best answer Harvey could muster was that he must have a "screw loose." Forensic psychologists familiar with the case speculated that the murders had given Harvey, an otherwise ordinary and insignificant person, a sense of power over the lives of others. Harvey pleaded guilty to several murders and was sentenced to life.

     On March 28, 2017, Donald Harvey was found severely beaten in his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution at Toledo, Ohio. Two days later, the 44-year-old died from his injuries. In May 2019, fellow inmate James Elliott was charged with Mr. Harvey's murder.

Brittni Colleps and Her Senior High Orgy Club

     In the fall of 2010, Brittni Nicole Colleps, a married 28-year-old with three children, started teaching English at Kennedale High School near Arlington, a city located between Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas. She had also been hired to coach the girl's basketball team. Her husband Christopher served in the military and was stationed in the area.

     In April 2011, Brittni began sending sexually explicit text messages, including nude photographs of herself, to some of her senior male students. That quickly led to sexual encounters with five 18-year-old boys at her Arlington home. On at least four occasions the teacher engaged in group sex with three of her students. (Colleps and her husband were so-called "swingers" who participated in group sex with other consenting adults. On her job application Brittni probably did not list this activity as one of her hobbies.)

     Colleps' extracurricular sex sessions were exposed in May 2011 when a cellphone video recorded by a participant in one of the home orgies came to the attention of school officials. The police were called in, and when a detective with the Arlington Police Department asked Colleps about this, she denied being involved in such activity. However, when confronted with her text messages to these students, she confessed. The high school immediately suspended her, and a short time later she resigned.

     While it was not a crime in Texas for a 28-year-old woman to have sex with 18-year-old boys, it was an offense for a school teacher to have an "inappropriate" sexual relationship with a student. The text messages did not constitute a crime, but in Texas, the texting would have been sufficient grounds to fire her. A prosecutor in Tarrant County charged Brittni Nicole Colleps with 16 counts under the inappropriate teacher-student sexual relationship statute. These second-degree felonies carried sentences of two to twenty years in prison each. Colleps was clearly a serial offender.

     On August 13, 2012, the Colleps student orgy trial got underway in Arlington, Texas. The prosecutor put five of the defendant's student sex partners on the stand. All of the witnesses, while describing how their teacher had lured them into sex, testified that they did not consider themselves victims of sexual abuse. The prosecutor showed the jury portions of the cellphone recorded group sex episode that had ignited the scandal. (Colleps's face was not depicted, but a distinct tattoo on her lower back identified her as the female participant.)

     The jury, on August 17, 2012, after deliberating less than an hour, returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Colleps' sentence: five years in prison. Following the verdict, Christopher Colleps told reporters that while his wife's extramarital sexual activities had angered him he was standing by her.

     In recent years there have been several cases involving female high school teachers who engaged in sex with male students. These women tended to be immature, overly romantic types who fell in love with a single kid who was just too cool to resist. Brittni Colleps, on the other hand, simply enjoyed group sex with young men.

     On January 7, 2015, after serving less than half of her five year sentence, the parole board granted Colleps' request for early release. She returned home where she would undergo monthly supervision for the remaining period of her sentence.

The Reshad Riddle Murder Case

     Reverend David Howard just finished his Easter service on Sunday March 31, 2013 at the Hiawatha Church of God in Christ in the northeastern Ohio town of Ashtabula. As congregants began to file out of the church Reshad Riddle entered the building carrying a handgun and yelling something about God and Allah. A couple of church members grabbed the minister and ushered him to safety inside an office in the back of the building. Other congregants hit the floor and dialed 911 on their cellphones.

     The 25-year-old gunman walked up to Richard Riddle who was Reshad Riddle's 52-year-old father and shot him in the head. The victim died on the spot. Waving the gun in the air Reshad Riddle screamed that the murder had been "the will of Allah. This is the will of God," he yelled.

     Police officers stormed into the church and took the killer into custody before he shot anyone else.

     In 2006 Reshad, then 18, was charged with felonious assault and kidnapping in connection with his attempt to cut his girlfriend's throat. A year later he was arrested for another felonious assault. Riddle was charged again in 2009 for possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence.

     Ashtabula Chief of Police Robert Stell told an Associated Press reporter that "There was no indication that the father and son had a bad relationship. Everyone thinks this was very surprising," he said. 

     After a local prosecutor charged Reshad Riddle with aggravated murder and he was booked into the Ashtabula County Jail, the judge set his bond at $1 million.

     On December 20, 2013, a judge declared Reshad Riddle incompetent to stand trial. In this ruling the judge relied on the testimony of two psychiatrists who had examined the defendant.

     In December 2014, Ashtabula County Judge Ronald Vettel, based upon the findings of psychologist Thomas Gazely, officially declared Riddle legally insane. On January 15, 2015 the judge sentenced Reshad Riddle to life at the Northeast Behavioral Health Care System in Cleveland, Ohio.

     The lifelong incarceration reflected the belief that Mr. Riddle's mental illness was not manageable and that he would remain a danger to society as long as he lived.