The Carlos Diaz Attempted Murder-Arson Case

     Carlos Diaz and Cathy Zappata were married in 2007. He worked at W. D. Auto Repair at Tenth Avenue and 207th Street in Harlem, New York. A year later the couple had a son. In 2010 Mr. Diaz lost his job at the body shop and shortly after that his marriage fell apart. He became homeless, moving from one parking lot to another where he slept in his van.

     Although estranged from his wife, Carlos Diaz refused to accept the fact they were finished as a couple. He resented it when she, to improve her looks, had cosmetic breast surgery and liposuction. She also made him jealous by going out with other men.

     On January 15, 2013 Diaz became enraged when he discovered that his estranged wife had sent a nude photograph of herself by cellphone to another man. The next morning, at eight o'clock, Carlos Diaz asked Cathy to meet him at a Pathmark parking lot on Ninth Avenue at 207th Street where he spent the night in his van. The lot was a block from the auto body shop where he had once worked.

     As Cathy sat behind the wheel of her car her estranged husband sprayed the 38-year-old's face, head and neck with lighter fluid then ignited the accelerant with a blowtorch. With her entire head engulfed in flames Cathy managed to exit the vehicle and extinguish the fire by rolling in a puddle of water. The victim was rushed to Harlem Hospital's burn unit with second-degree burns on her lips, eyelids, nose, cheeks and neck. Her hair had been burned off to the scalp. Doctors listed her condition as critical.

     After setting his estranged wife on fire Mr. Diaz, in possession of a can of gasoline, entered the W. D. Auto Repair garage. He found the owner, Helson Marachena, the man who had fired him, in his office. Diaz doused the room with the accelerant, but when he tried to set fire to the place his lighter wouldn't work. The malfunctioning lighter gave Mr. Marachena the opportunity to escape.

     Later in the day the 35-year-old arsonist turned himself in to the New York City police. When questioned by detectives he said, "I had to teach her a lesson. To give her a little pain. Now she can worry about our kid and get serious instead of focusing on going out with other men." In relating how he felt when he discovered the nude photograph on his wife's cellphone, Diaz said, "I couldn't think straight. I wanted to pass out. I had to do something. I had to be a man about it. She hurt my pride." Mr. Diaz described his perception of his marriage this way: "She was my right arm. I did everything for her. I forgot all about my own life. I just worked to support her and to pay the rent. And this is what she does."

     Charged with attempted murder, arson, assault and attempted assault, Diaz was held at the city jail on Riker's Island. A magistrate denied him bail.

     On December 15, 2015 a jury in New York City took just four hours to find Carlos Diaz guilty of attempted murder and the other charges. Three weeks later the judge sentenced Diaz to 35 years to life in prison.

     Jealous boyfriends, discarded husbands and rejected suitors can be dangerous. In the annals of crime men like Carlos Diaz have done terrible things with fire, including mass murder. It's extremely difficult for women to protect themselves from angry, sociopathic losers who can justify their acts of violence. 

Adam Lee Brown: The Pedophile Who Tried to Infect Children

     When 27-year-old Adam Lee Brown was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1990 he was HIV positive. The married military computer technician, while serving in southern California, had picked-up the virus after having affairs with homosexual men. Furious that he had contracted the disease, Mr. Brown told his estranged wife that he would somehow get revenge. He didn't say how or who would be the target of his fury.

     In 1992 Mr. Brown was living in the logging town of Roseburg, Oregon. The son of a pastor, Adam Brown became the lay preacher at the Fair Oaks Community Church in nearby Sutherlin. That year, over a six-month period, he sexually molested and tried to infect dozens of 5 to 10-year-old boys he met through friends and a women he knew who babysat in his neighborhood. Once he had lured a boy to his home he would either drug the child or force him to drink alcohol. He also showed his victims pornographic videos, and after raping them, promised to stab them with knives and scissors if they told anyone. He also assured the boys that if they informed their parents what he had done to them they would burn in hell. One of the boys, a 5-year-old, told his parents and the police that Brown had smeared semen into a scratch on the victim's arm. (The boy obviously didn't use the term semen.)

     In the fall of 1993 Douglas County District Attorney William Marshall charged Adam Brown with 49 counts of rape and attempted murder. This was the first case in the country involving a pedophile who had tried to kill his victims by infecting them with HIV.

     For some reason District Attorney Marshall allowed Adam Brown to plead no contest to only four of the 49 counts. After Brown pleaded no contest to 3 counts of sodomy and one count of child endangerment the judge, in December 1993, sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

     On October 5, 2004, after serving 11 years of his prison sentence, Oregon's corrections authorities released Adam Brown on parole. The freed pedophile was ordered to register as a sex offender and was barred from frequenting places where children regularly congregate. His parole would expire in 2020.

     At two in the afternoon of Sunday, July 1, 2012, Adam Brown, now 49 and still a pedophile, was loitering around the entrance to the men's room at a Wendy's in Portland, Oregon. When an unaccompanied 10-year-old boy approached the restroom Brown grabbed the child, pulled him inside and locked the door. As the abductor stabbed the struggling boy the victim's father heard his screams and ran to help. But the frantic parent couldn't save his boy because Brown had locked the door. When a Wendy's  supervisor unlocked the men's room Brown pushed the wounded boy out of the restroom and locked himself inside. A group of employees held the door closed so he couldn't escape until the police arrived.

     As paramedics rushed the badly injured boy to a nearby hospital patrol officers with the Portland Police Department spoke to Brown through the men's room door. The pedophile refused to come out and claimed he possessed a gun. A hostage negotiator, following a two-hour standoff, coaxed Brown out of the restaurant. When taken into custody he had a knife, but no firearm.

     The district attorney in Multnomah County charged Adam Lee Brown with attempted murder, sexual abuse, kidnapping and assault. The subject was held in the Multnomah County Jail on $2 million bond. The injured child underwent emergency surgery and recovered.

     Adam Lee Brown pleaded guilty in October 2012 to sexual abuse and kidnapping. Judge Julie Frantz, before sentencing the 49-year-old to 33 years in prison said, "The crimes you committed are horrific and absolutely unspeakable."

     It's hard to understand why a pedophile who had raped and tried to infect his victims with the HIV virus was allowed, in 1992, to plead no contest to such a small number of reduced charges. Prosecutors are put in office to protect the public, not to go soft on sexual predators. Offenders like Adam Brown should be imprisoned for life. The notion that pedophiles will not re-offend, or be prevented from victimizing vulnerable children through legal restrictions on where they can live or go is stupid and irresponsible. Under the terms of Brown's parole he was allowed to patronize fast-food restaurants popular with children.

     The Adam Brown case reveals why the only place for a pedophile is in prison and why the public has lost faith in our criminal justice system.     

Helen Pearson's Murderous Stalker

     On October 21, 2013, 33-year-old Helen Pearson, a resident of Exeter, England, while walking in the rain from her flat to a physical fitness class at a nearby gym was stabbed in the back by an attacker armed with a large pair of scissors. The man dragged her through the entrance gate of St. Bartholomew Cemetery where he pinned her to the ground, punched her and stabbed her in the face and lower jaw.

     When Sandra Robertson, a passing motorist heard Pearson's screams she jumped out of her vehicle and ran into the cemetery, a place known by the locals as the Catacombs, and pushed the assailant off the victim. That gave Pearson the chance to run out of the cemetery and take refuge at the Fitness First Gym. The attacker fled the scene as well.

     Questioned at the gym by a police officer, the hysterical Pearson cried, "It was my stalker!" An ambulance crew rushed the victim to a nearby hospital. Her wounds, while serious, were not life-threatening.

     Helen Pearson's nightmare began in 2008 when her neighbor, an unemployed mechanic named Joseph Willis, asked if she would accompany him to a local pub to hear a band. She declined his invitation. Her rejection incurred Willis' wrath and turned him into an unrelenting stalker. During the next five years Mr. Willis devoted himself to making Pearson's life a living hell.

     Early on, Joseph Willis made his intentions clear. He wrote Pearson a letter that read: "I want to see how you would cope if you were attacked…Would you fight back? Scream? Let the game begin." Willis' "game" included regularly pawing through her trash, visiting her Facebook page, disrupting her eating disorder support group (she suffered from obsessive compulsion disorder), harassing hang-up phone calls, depositing a dead cat on her doorstep, slashing her tires and vandalizing her flat and her parents' home in Crediton. Willis also continued to send her poison letters in which he called her a "lying evil girl" and warned her to "watch her back."

     On April 7, 2014 Joseph Willis' attempted murder trial got underway at the Crown Court in Exeter. Crown prosecutor Richard Crabb, in his opening statement to the jury, said, " The defendant was obsessed with Helen Pearson and consumed with hostility for reasons that may never become apparent. Willis was consumed by hatred. He had done his best to make her life a misery and made clear threats against her in two letters." [As a matter of substantive criminal law, motive does not have to be proven, just the intent to commit the crime. Intent, however, is often inferred from motive.]

     Helen Pearson took the stand and described to the jury how the 49-year-old defendant had forced her and her family to live in fear. Her father installed security grilles on her windows and set up a security camera at his house in Crediton. She changed cellphones every month and lived in constant fear of being physically attacked. She also kept a diary in which she documented more than 100 incidents of harassment and vandalism.

     In describing the October 21, 2013 attempted murder, Pearson said, "He came from behind. I did not hear him because it was raining heavily and I had my umbrella up. The first thing I knew was when I was stabbed in the back. I turned and saw it was Joe. I saw his eyes and he looked absolutely furious. The first blow pushed me to the ground, and he kicked me and was dragging me along. It was obvious he was planning to get me into the Catacombs. That was where I was going to end. I tried to get free. I felt another kick and stab from behind. I thought this is going on until I am completely dead."

     Continuing with her account of the vicious attack, Pearson said, "I got my phone and was able to dial two nines but not the third. He got the phone away from me. He was deranged and so evil. He knew full well what he was doing and he was determined I was going to be dead. He was trying to drag me farther and farther from the cemetery entrance gates. I thought this is where he is going to get rid of the body. I thought I would be found and my mum and dad would not know what happened.

     "I had six stab wounds in total in my back. I remember seeing the scissors and turning my head and seeing them come down…I was struggling and screaming and pleading. I remember saying, 'Please, Joe. No!' He never spoke to me throughout the whole thing."

     The victim-witness told the jury about her father's home security camera and her window bars. Because the police were useless and apparently uninterested in protecting this woman, the family hired a private detective in an effort to catch the stalker in the act. During Pearson's prolonged ordeal she filed 125 complaints with the Devon and Cornwall Police Departments.

     On April 15, 2014, the jury found Joseph Willis guilty of attempted murder. Outside the Exeter court house following the verdict, Helen Pearson, in speaking to a reporter with the BBC, said, "Every night you go to bed and you don't know what is going to happen and you constantly live in fear. You see that there's no way the stalking is ever gong to end." Pearson, feeling hopeless and vulnerable, said she had thought many times about ending her misery by killing herself.

     Helen Pearson's father, Bernard Pearson, said this to the BBC: "Nobody with the police could see that the level of violence was rising, rising and rising." Mr. Pearson spoke of the family's intention of filing a formal complaint against the law enforcement agencies that failed to protect his daughter against the obsessed degenerate who had obviously intended at some point to murder her.

     The Exeter Crown Court judge, in appreciation of Sandra Robertson's heroic life saving intervention on Helen Pearson's behalf, granted her a 500 pound reward. Regarding the future of the convicted stalker and attempted murderer, the judge said Mr. Willis could anticipate a "lengthy term of imprisonment."

     In May 2014, Bernard Pearson filed a 48-page complaint against the Devon and Cornwall Police Departments. To a BBC reporter he said, "They failed us terribly. The attacks were getting worse and worse and the police failed to realize this and act."

     On July 17, 2014 the judge sentenced Joseph Willis to life in prison, stipulating that the deadly stalker had to serve at least 13 years of his sentence before being eligible for parole.

     Helen Pearson, in speaking to reporters after the sentencing hearing, once again accused the local police of failing to protect her in the face of obvious threats against her life.

     On September 2, 2014, the convicted stalker's attorney filed an appeal to have his client's life sentence reduced. In response to this, Willis' victim said: "I'm not going to let [the appeal] worry me. Willis spent five years making my life a misery. Now he's trying to do it again from behind bars, but he won't succeed."

     An agency in England called The Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an investigation to determine why this woman's plight had been ignored by the Devon and Cornwall Police Departments.

     On March 3, 2015, appellate judges at the Royal Courts of Justice rejected Joseph Willis' sentencing appeal.

     The chiefs of police of the Devon and Cornwall Police Departments apologized to Helen Pearson for the official misconduct and incompetence that led to her victimization. The chiefs promised to take the crime of stalking more seriously in the future. Ms. Pearson called the apologies and promises meaningless.

The Alexander Hilton St. Andrews Poison Case

     In 2011, Alexander D. Hilton, a 20-year-old rich kid from Princeton, Massachusetts attended St. Andrews University in Fife, Scotland. The sophomore prep school graduate (St. Johns) had moved to the United Kingdom to study economics at this ancient and prestigious institution of higher learning.

     On March 5, 2011 on the eve of the annual St. Andrews ball, Alexander Hilton and a group of his fellow students were participating in a dormitory drinking game. One of the drinkers, Robert Forbes, an American from Virginia, after gulping down a bottle of red wine given to him by Hilton, became seriously ill. The 19-year-old suffered loss of balance, severe nausea, had trouble breathing and temporarily lost his eyesight. He spent a week in the hospital. Doctors said that had Robert Forbes not received medical treatment he could have died.

     A few days after the dormitory drinking game, local investigators questioned Alexander Hilton about the incident. The authorities suspected that Hilton, known around the school as an anti-social oddball, had intentionally poisoned Robert Forbes. Hilton denied mixing anything into the wine. The Scottish authorities didn't have enough evidence to charge the American with a crime, but urged him to leave the country. He was also kicked out of St. Andrews. On March 18, 2011 Alexander Hilton returned to his parents' home in Princeton, Massachusetts.

     Back in Scotland, toxicological tests revealed that the red wine that made Robert Forbes so sick had been spiked with methanol, an ingredient found in antifreeze. The sweet-smelling liquid, also known as wood alcohol, is colorless, highly flammable and deadly. A search of Hilton's computer determined that he had investigated the toxicological effects of combining red wine and methanol. In Hilton's dormitory room investigators found a funnel.

     After Alexander Hilton returned to the United States he enrolled in a college in New Mexico. About a year after the St. Andrews drinking party he learned the authorities in Scotland planned to charge him with the attempted murder of Robert Forbes. Upon learning this Hilton dropped out of the college in New Mexico and returned to his parents' house in Princeton, Massachusetts. Seven months later, in the fall of 2012, the prosecutor in charge of the case in Scotland charged Alexander Hilton with attempted murder.

     On February 4, 2013, under an extradition treaty the United States had with the United Kingdom, United States Marshals took Alexander Hilton into custody. The federal authorities hauled the former St. Andrews student to the Central Falls, Rhode Island Detention Center where he was placed under suicide watch.

     Hilton, on February 21, 2013, appeared at his bail hearing in federal court in Boston before a U. S. magistrate judge. Assistant United States Attorney David J. D'Addio, in arguing against bail for this defendant, said, "This is an attempted murder case, a serious case, and we can't lose sight of that. The evidence before us is that Mr. Hilton deliberately poisoned a student at St. Andrews."

     Hilton's defense attorney, Norman S. Zalkind, argued that because his client was seriously mentally ill bail should be granted in order that the defendant could continue taking his medication and not be denied psychiatric therapy. According to the defense attorney, if Alexander Hilton remained in custody he was "...going to get sicker and sicker and sicker." Mr. Zalkind described Hilton as an extremely intelligent person with the socialization skills of a 14-year-old. The defense lawyer wondered why someone at the university didn't notice Hilton's mental problem after he started flunking his classes. 

     The U.S. magistrate judge withheld Hilton's bail decision pending the outcome of his extradition hearing scheduled for March 7, 2013.

      On March 7, 2013, the federal judge certified Hilton's extradition to Scotland. Following that ruling the U.S. magistrate judge allowed the suspect to post bail. Hilton's attorneys immediately appealed the extradition certification to a federal court of appeals.

     Robert Forbes, in March 2013, filed a personal injury suit against Alexander Hilton in federal court. A federal judge later dismissed the civil lawsuit. (It may have been settled.)

     The federal court of appeals, in February 2014, granted Alexander Hilton a stay of extradition on grounds he was mentally incompetent to stand trial in Scotland.

     Alexander Hilton, in May 2015, was extradited to Scotland to stand trial in the attempted murder case. In July 2015 the defendant pleaded guilty as charged pursuant to the claim that, at the time of the poisoning he had been mentally ill. Judge Lord Burns of the High Court in Edinburgh sentenced Mr. Hilton to three years in prison. 

The Emily Dearden Attempted Murder Case

     In 2013 46-year-old Kenneth Dearden, a prominent real estate developer, resided with his wife Emily in a house they purchased in 2000 for $562,000 in Yonkers, New York. The couple's two daughters lived with them in the house at 82 Ponfield Road West.

     Mr. Dearden, originally from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, had served in the Air Force. He had a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a masters from Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. He and his wife were married in July 1996. Mr. Dearden founded his company, DW Capital Associates, and was president of the Yonkers Downtown/Waterfront Business Improvement District.

     Emily Dearden, originally from Englewood, New Jersey, had a bachelor's degree in psychology from Northwestern University and master's degrees from Columbia University and Widener University. The 45-year-old held the position of senior psychologist for the New York City Police Department.

     At three-thirty in the morning of November 14, 2013, Kenneth Dearden awoke with a searing pain in his jaw. His pillow was soaked in blood and his wife Emily was not in bed with him. Mr. Dearden made his way to the first floor where he found Emily lying on the family room floor with her eyes closed. After being quickly revived she said an intruder struck her in the head.

     At a nearby hospital doctors determined that Mr. Dearden had been shot. The bullet entered his head near the base of the skull and lodged in his left cheek after passing through one of his carotid arteries. (He spent eight days in the hospital and underwent three operations.) Mrs. Dearden did not seek medical attention.

     Later that morning when detectives showed up at the Dearden house to investigate the shooting they were surprised to find Mrs. Dearden washing her nightclothes instead of being at the hospital with her husband. Apparently unfazed over the fact an intruder had struck her in the head and shot her husband, she asked the officers if they had a warrant to search the dwelling. (Because it was a crime scene they didn't need one.)

     In the basement of the house officers found four pistols including two derringers that were consistent with the caliber of the attempted murder weapon. The handguns belonged to Mrs. Dearden. She said they had been given to her by her father. (Forensic tests to match one of these firearms to the slug removed from the victim's head were inconclusive.)

     Detectives, from the onset of the case questioned the home invasion theory. There were no signs of forced entry: the family Rottweiler who slept in a doggie bed outside the master bedroom had not awakened Mr. Dearden, the home intrusion alarm had not been activated, and nothing had been taken. In other words, Emily Dearden's story didn't make sense to investigators.

     Detectives were also suspicious of the fact the victim's wife had waited until the next day to visit her husband at the hospital. Moreover, on the day of the shooting, she met David Warren Roudenbush, a man she had been having an on-and-off again affair with since early 2011, at a restaurant in Yonkers. Investigators wondered why she had chosen to meet with Roudenbush instead of visiting her husband in the hospital.

     The investigation into the attempted murder stalled. Detectives did not identify an intruder, and no charges were brought against the victim's wife. She remained a suspect, however.

     In August 2014 Emily Dearden filed for divorce. About this time NYPD officials relieved her as the department's senior psychologist. They reassigned her to "administrative duties."

     Kenneth Dearden, on November 14, 2014 in a Westchester County Court, filed a civil suit against his estranged wife. According to the lawsuit the shooting had been a "sadistic attack by an adulterous wife on her husband." As for the motive behind the assault the plaintiff accused the defendant of shooting him so she could keep the marital home, avoid a contentious divorce, and never have to admit her infidelities to her family and friends.

     According to Mr. Dearden's version of the case, David Warren Roudenbush, after divorcing his wife, pressured Mrs. Dearden to leave him. As a result of the shooting, the victim claimed he suffered mental anguish and the fear of being attacked again.

     On November 21, 2014 the district attorney of Westchester County announced that Emily Dearden had been charged with attempted second-degree murder. Later that day the accused turned herself in to the authorities. At her arraignment the judge set her bail at $150,000 which she immediately posted to avoid going to jail. The judge ordered Emily Dearden to stay away from her husband and their children.

     Following the criminal charge, the suspended Dearden handed her NYPD identification card over to an Internal Affairs Bureau official. Her attorney told reporters that his client had not shot Mr. Dearden and that the lawsuit had been filed as retaliation for her having filed for divorce.

     Following her May 2015 indictment for attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, Emily Dearden pleaded not guilty at the arraignment in Yorkers. Her attorney, Paul Bergman, told reporters that "Dr. Dearden is confident she will prevail in this case." If convicted as charged the defendant faced up to 25 years in prison

     In February 2017 Emily Dearden pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder. Judge Barry Warhit sentenced her to a three and a half year prison term.

     Three and a half years in prison for shooting her husband in the head while he slept. This is a good example of plea bargain justice.

The Slenderman Stabbing Case

     On Saturday morning May 31, 2014 a bicyclist in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, came upon a 12-year-old girl lying on the sidewalk. Payton Leutner was bleeding from wounds on her arms, legs and torso. "Please help me," she begged. "I've been stabbed."

     The bicyclist called 911 and Leutner was rushed to Waukesha Memorial Hospital where she was listed in stable condition. A team of surgeons performed laparoscopic surgery on injuries to the victim's liver, pancreas and stomach. According to doctors the victim had been stabbed nineteen times with a large knife.

     To detectives who questioned the victim at the hospital, she identified her attackers as two middle school classmates, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier.

     Two hours after the bicyclist came upon Payton Leutner on the sidewalk, police officers found Geyser and Weier walking near Interstate 94. The twelve-year-olds were still wearing their blood-stained clothing. In one of the girl's purses officers recovered a large, bloody kitchen knife.

     Interviewed at the Waukesha Police Department, Weier and Geyser confessed to stabbing their classmate in the wooded section of a park following a sleep-over at one of the suspect's house. Weier held the victim down while Leutner wielded the knife. They traded jabs by handing the knife back and forth between them. In response to the obvious question of why they had stabbed and almost killed one of their classmates, the girls mentioned a website they visited regularly called Creepypasta Wiki.

     The Internet site in question posted horror stories, gory videos and violent images that featured a fictitious character named Slenderman. A faceless man who wore a dark suit and a full-brim business hat, Slenderman haunted children and those who sought to unmask him. For a website devotee to "climb up to Slenderman's realm," the viewer had to kill someone. It was clear that this website had been the inspiration for the knife attack on Payton Leutner.

     According to Morgan Geyser and Annisa Weier, the stabbing was not a spontaneous assault. The girls had planned to murder Leutner in February 2014. Initially they intended to kill their classmate by placing duct tape over her mouth then stabbing her in the neck while she slept.

     Murder plan B consisted of stabbing the intended victim in a shower stall or bathtub where the victim's blood would flow down a drain. The plan the girls actually executed involved stabbing the victim in the park during a game of hide-and-seek--child's play with a macabre twist.

     On Monday, June 2, 2014, the arraignment judge informed the twelve-year-old suspects they had been charged, as adults with attempted first-degree murder. The judge set each suspect's bond at $500,000. Police officers booked Geyser and Weier into the Waukesha County Jail. Both girls said they regretted the premeditated, ritualistic stabbing of their classmate. They said they were sorry for almost killing her.

     In 2017 Morgan Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder. The judge sentenced her to 40 years in a mental institution. The same year Anissa Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder. The judge sentenced this defendant to 25 years in a mental health facility.

The Lawrence Capener Knife Attack

     On Sunday morning, April 28, 2013, all hell broke loose inside St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The mass had just ended and the choir had begun its final hymn when a 24-year-old man who had been nervous acting and fidgety throughout the service vaulted over several pews toward the front of the church. Lawrence Capener, the crazed churchgoer, possessed a knife which he used to stab the choir director, Adam Alvarez, several times.

     Gerald Madrid, the church flutist, came to Adam Alvarez's rescue by attempting to put Lawrence Capener into a bear hug. During the scuffle, Mr. Capener, before collapsing to the church floor under the weight of other churchgoers who mobbed him, stabbed the flutist five times in the back. Daren De Aquero, an off-duty Albuquerque police officer put the subdued assailant into handcuffs.

     Greg Aragon, an off-duty Albuquerque Fire Department Lieutenant treated the choir director, the man who came to the director's aid and a female member of the choir who was slashed by Capener's knife. None of the victims incurred life-threatening injuries.

     As Lawrence Capener was led out of the church an elderly parishioner spoke to him. She said, "God bless you, forgive yourself."

     "You don't know about the Masons," the attacker replied.

     Later that Sunday a local prosecutor charged Lawrence Capener with three counts of aggravated battery. A magistrate set his bail at $250,000.

     After detectives advised Mr. Capener of his Miranda rights the subject informed his interrogators that he was "99 percent sure" that the choir director was a Mason involved in a conspiracy "that is far more reaching than I could or would believe." He apologized for stabbing the flutist and the woman in the choir.

     While Mr. Capener did not belong to the 3,000-member church, his mother was an active parishioner. He had recently graduated from a community college and had started a new job. According to people who know him, Lawrence Capener struggled with mental illness.

     In February 2014 Carpener's attorney petitioned the court to lower his bail so he could live at home under the supervision of a GPS device. The judge, after hearing from Carpener's victims, denied the request. The trial was scheduled for September 2014.

     On September 29, 2014, pursuant to a plea deal a judge sentenced Lawrence Capener to five years in prison with one year credit for time spent in jail. 

     In June 2016, five days before he was scheduled for early release, Capener punched a prison guard. The assault kept him behind bars until his release on parole in April 2017. 

     The man who almost murdered three people and assaulted a prison guard served less than three years in prison. 

Jill Hansen: The Hawaiian Road Menace

     Jill Anjuli Hansen, a 30-year-old resident of Honolulu's Maunalani Heights neighborhood aspired to become a professional surfer. Hansen also claimed to be a model and owner of a swimsuit line. But in her community, if Hansen was known for anything it was for being a violence-prone woman who drove like a maniac.

     In 2010 Hanson was convicted twice for speeding. A year later police caught her driving without a license and car insurance. Local officers arrested her three times in 2014 for speeding, including driving 72 in a 35-MPH zone. The Maunalani Heights Neighborhood Watch Group's 500 members were aware of Hansen and her reckless driving habit. A representative of the group reportedly said: "We need everybody to be on the lookout for her, it's that scary. Two people were almost run over by her. One person had a head-on collision with Hansen."

     On April 18, 2014 Honolulu police officers arrested Jill Hansen on a charge of third-degree assault. The judge in that case ordered her to undergo mental evaluation. (According to Hansen's father she had solicited someone to murder him on Facebook. As a result, he obtained a restraining order against her.)

     On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, in the Diamond Head section of Waikiki, 73-year-old Elizabeth Conklin got out of her BMW 328 Wagon in the parking garage of her apartment complex. As Conklin walked away from her vehicle, Jill Hansen, who had followed her into the parking area, slammed her gray Volkswagen Passat into the woman, knocking her twenty feet.

     Following the impact, Jill Hansen climbed out of her VW and walked over to the injured woman who was writhing in pain on the garage floor. Instead of calling 911 Hansen returned to her car, climbed in and was about to take another run at the downed woman when a building employee named Chris Khory grabbed a crow bar and smashed out Hansen's back window.

     Mr. Khory's timely intervention caused Hansen to get out of her Volkswagen and flee the scene on foot. Paramedics rushed the victim to a nearby hospital where doctors treated Conklin for numerous cuts and bruises.

     At the hospital, the victim told police officers that the attack was not the result of an earlier road-rage incident. She believed her attacker followed her home with the intent of stealing her car. "I parked in my normal parking place," she said. "I got out and all of a sudden woke up in an ambulance. She saw my car, it was the car she wanted. She followed me and was going to kill me to get the car."

     An hour or so after running down Elizabeth Conklin in the Waikiki parking garage, Jill Hansen was on her computer updating her Facebook page with a photograph of the victim's BMW. She also informed her Facebook friends and readers that she had just been accepted into the Association of Surfing Professionals. "I am becoming a professional!" she wrote. "I have worked soooo hard to get to where I am today. I am so grateful for the support of surfers and the ASP."

     Police officers arrested Jill Hansen at her apartment seven hours after she intentionally plowed into the 73-year-old victim. Officers booked the suspect into jail on the charge of attempted murder. The judge set her bail at $1 million.

     In August 2014 the authorities charged Hansen while she awaited her attempted murder trial at the Women's Correctional Center in Kailua, with violating the protection order acquired by her father. (I'm not sure how she managed this while in custody.)

     Circuit Judge Richard Perkins, on September 25, 2014, following a series of psychiatric evaluations of Hansen found her mentally unfit to stand trial. The judge ordered her to undergo treatment at a local mental health facility.

    After regaining her connection to reality through anti-psychotic medication, Jill Hansen went on trial in Honolulu on the charge of second-degree attempted murder in the Conklin case. She waived her right to a jury in favor of a so-called bench trial where the judge determines issues of law and fact.

     The principal witnesses during Hansen's 4-day trial on August 23, 2015 involved three mental health experts brought to the stand by the defendant's attorney, Victor Bakke. The psychiatrists, pursuant to Hansen's insanity defense, testified that she had tried to kill the victim while suffering from a psychosis that had rendered her incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. She had therefore been incapable of forming the requisite criminal intent.

     On August 27, 2015 Judge Richard Perkins found Jill Hansen, due to her state of mind at the time of the assault, not criminally responsible. Instead of prison, she was sent to a state hospital where she would remain until her doctors determine she could be safely released back into society.

     Jill Hansen was released from the mental hospital sometime in 2018.

Byron Mitchell: The Roommate From Hell

     In January 2016, 23-year-old Danielle Cabo Jones was in search of a roommate after the person who had been helping her pay the rent for their downtown Miami apartment unexpectedly moved out. If Jones couldn't find a roommate, she would have to move out herself because the rent was more than she could afford. So, out of desperation, she placed an ad on Craigslist for a roommate.

     After responding to Jones' Craigslist solicitation, 35-year-old Byron Mitchell, on February 1, 2016, moved into the apartment with Jones. The Air Force veteran and personal trainer quickly became romantically interested in his new roommate. Jones made it clear to him that she wasn't interested in him in that way. Mitchell refused to take no for an answer. This led to frequent arguments and accusations by Jones that he was harassing and stalking her.

     On February 14, 2016, after they had shared the apartment for just two weeks, Byron Mitchell, in the midst of a heated argument, chased Jones into bathroom where he threw her to the floor and started punching and choking her. As she lay on the floor with broken teeth, a swollen face and a fractured skull, he stabbed her several times.

     With Jones bleeding and unconscious on the bathroom floor, Mitchell took a shower, deleted his text messages from her phone, then dropped her cellphone into a sink full of water. He next called 911 and informed the dispatcher he had stabbed his roommate when she rushed him with a knife.

     Police officers and medics found Danielle Jones lying in a pool of blood next to the knife. She was rushed to a nearby hospital where she remained in a coma for two weeks. She survived the attack, but had incurred permanent damage to her brain.

     From the beginning, detectives did not buy Mitchell's self-defense story. She was five-three, 115 pounds and he was six-two, 190.  Officers also didn't believe Mitchell when he said he had not sought Jones' affection. Investigators discovered text messages the suspect had sent to his sister asking for advice on how to break the ice with his new roommate. He also Google searched "Rohypnol," a common date-rape drug.

     On February 15, 2016, Miami-Dade County prosecutor Sara Imm charged Byron Mitchell with aggravated assault and attempted murder. The magistrate denied him bail.

     Byron Mitchell went on trial in June 2019. The lead detective in the case testified that the defendant had a record of serious psychological problems during his time in the Air Force. He also had a long history of stalking his former girlfriends. When detectives asked Mitchell about his problem with women, he replied that they just didn't understand him.

     Danielle Jones took the stand and described how the defendant had become immediately obsessed with her, and when she informed him she wasn't interested in that kind of relationship, he harassed and stalked her. She also described the vicious attack in her bathroom that had almost cost her her life.

      Byron Mitchell did not take the stand on his own behalf. His attorney, in his closing argument to the jury, tried to make his client more sympathetic by noting that as a child he had been bullied. The defendant, according to his attorney, also had mental problems due to a childhood head injury. The attorney also blamed the Air Force for not providing Mitchell psychiatric help.

     The jury, after a brief deliberation, found Byron Mitchell guilty as charged.

     On December 10, 2019, at Mitchell's sentencing hearing, Danielle Jones discussed how the assault had changed her life: "I wanted to go to school for criminal justice and psychology and now, I have my 11-year-old brother help me with my math, what was my best subject in school."

     Byron Mitchell, in addressing the court, issued a weak, self-centered apology, then in a lecturing tone, infuriated everyone in the courtroom by saying this to the woman he had permanently damaged: "Don't let a single incident hold you back."

     Judge John Schlessinger sentenced Byron Mitchell to life in prison. 

The Gary Melius Attempted Murder Case

     Born in 1945 in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, New York, Gary Melius began his career as a plumber, became a builder and eventually made his fortune in real estate. In 1984 he bought a decaying 1919 French-style chateau on Long Island's Gold Coast. The Huntington, Long Island property called Oheka Castle was featured in the classic film "Citizen Kane." Melius turned the 109,000-square foot chateau into a luxury hotel, catering facility and wedding venue. He also resided there.

     A close associate of former U.S. Senator Alphonse D'Amato and contributor of hundreds of thousands of dollars to republican and democrat politicians, Melius was a force in Long Island politics. In 2010 the Oheka Castle hosted the wedding of the disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton aide.

     Like most rich and powerful men in politics, Gary Melius cultivated enemies. In February 2014 he conferred with law enforcement officials regarding evidence he acquired involving political bribery and witness tampering. Melius claimed to have proof of corruption that would send several high ranking government officials to prison.

     In 2013 Gary Melius was at the heart of a political scandal that led to the resignation of Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Dale.

     Mr. Melius had also made enemies in the business world. He was caught up in a legal battle over control of a company called Interceptor that manufactured ignition locks designed to curb drunken driving. On February 21, 2014, at a company shareholder's meeting, Melius announced that he planned to name a new board of directors.

     Melius accused the company's founder John Ruocco of mismanagement and financial improprieties. Ruocco responded by calling Melius a "political fixer." In December 2013 a judge, siding with Melius stripped Ruocco of much of his ownership of the company.

     At half past noon on Monday, February 24, 2014, just after Mr. Melius sat down behind the wheel of his Mercedes in the valet parking lot at Oheka Castle, a masked gunman approached the front driver's side window of the vehicle. The assailant fired a shot that hit Melius in the forehead. As the gunman fled the scene in a get-away car the wounded 69-year-old climbed out of the Mercedes and stumbled  back into his house.

     The injured man's daughter drove her father to Syosset Hospital. From Syosset he was transferred to the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Manhasset. It was there he underwent emergency surgery. Mr. Melius survived the shooting.

     In speaking to reporters shortly after the assault, Deputy Inspector Matthew C. Lewis, the Commander of the Suffolk County Police Department's Major Crimes Bureau, said, "This looks to be a targeted crime." In other words, Mr. Melius may have been the victim of an attempted assassination, and perhaps the target in a murder-for-hire plot.

     In August 2014, Mr. Melius told a reporter that the police had investigated his adopted son as a possible suspect in the shooting. Thirty-four-year-old Thomas Melius, just days before his father was shot, got out of prison after several months of incarceration related to a drug case. The father pointed out the lack of physical evidence connecting his son to the assault. Mr. Melius said he believed that one of his political enemies was behind the shooting.

     In February 2015, on the one year anniversary of the case, the Suffolk County Police Department raised its reward for tips leading to the arrest of the assailant to $100,000.

     On the second anniversary of the unsolved attempted murder, February 24, 2016, the Suffolk County Police released portions of a surveillance video the day Mr. Melius was shot. The video depicts the victim walking to his car in the parking lot of the castle when the gunman exits his vehicle and fires through his target's driver's side window. The Suffolk Police also announced that the FBI had entered the case.

     Regarding the release of the surveillance video, Mr. Melius told reporters that it was about time, and that he hoped the publicity would cause someone to come forward with the shooter's identity.

     As of this writing, the Gary Melius attempted murder/assault case remains unsolved.

Governor George Wallace's Prediction

Somebody's going to get me one of these days. I can just see a little guy out there that nobody's paying any attention to. He reaches into his pocket and out comes the little gun, like that Shirhan guy that got [Robert] Kennedy.

George Wallace, TheAlabama governor was shot by Arthur Herman Bremer on May 15, 1972. He survived the assassination attempt but spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Detroit News, 1972 

The Ebony Wilkerson Attempted Murder Case

     In 2014, Ebony Wilkerson and her three children, ages ten, nine, and three, lived with her husband, the children's father, in North Charleston, South Carolina. The 32-year old mother, pregnant with her fourth child, was losing her mind.

     On Sunday, March 2, 2014, Ebony called 911 and said she had been physically assaulted by her husband. To officers with the North Charleston Police Department, she claimed that her husband had abused her in a Myrtle Beach hotel room. They had been married 14 years.

     Following treatment at a local hospital, Ebony put her three children into her black Honda Odyssey and left the state en route to her sister's apartment in Dayton Beach, Florida.

     The distraught mother's sister, Jessica Harrell, saw signs that Ebony was in the midst of a mental and emotional breakdown. On Monday, March 3, 2014, at Jessica's urging, Ebony Wilkerson checked herself into a nearby hospital for psychiatric treatment. But the next morning she checked herself out of the health facility.

     That day, as Ebony ranted incoherently about demons, the Devil, disembodied voices, and various hallucinations, Jessica called 911 about having Ebony committed involuntarily into a mental facility. Before Jessica got off the phone with the 911 dispatcher, Ebony put her children in her minivan and drove off.

     A short time later, a Daytona Beach patrol officer pulled over Ebony's vehicle. Although the officer recognized that the woman driving the Honda carrying the kids seemed to be mentally disturbed, the police officer let her go. The patrolman didn't think he had enough evidence to take Ebony into custody pursuant to a Florida law that allows manifestly mentally ill people to be detained for their own wellbeing and the safety of others. The officer found nothing specific that indicated that this woman was dangerous, or about to go off the deep end.

     Two hours after the police officer stopped the distraught mother, Tim Tesseneer, driving with his wife on the sands of Daytona Beach, noticed a black minivan moving slowing through the surf in shallow water. As he ran toward the vehicle Tesseneer heard screams and saw two children waving frantically for help. "Please help us," one of the youngsters yelled. One of the kids was trying to wrestle control of the steering wheel from the driver. When Ebony became aware of Tesseneer's presence, she calmly said, "We're okay. We're okay." Obviously she and her children were not okay.

     Stacy Robinson, another man who had seen the car in the Atlantic Ocean, opened a back door and pulled out the nine and ten-year-old. The three-year-old child remained strapped in her car seat. A lifeguard who had joined the rescue effort dived through a front widow and unbuckled the toddler's seatbelt. As the van drifted into deeper water, he handed the terrified three-year-old to a second lifeguard who removed the child from the bobbing vehicle. One of the other men pulled Ebony out of the Honda.

     Ebony and the children were taken to the Halifax Health Medical Center for evaluation. In speaking to a police officer at the hospital, one of the Wilkerson children said, "Mom tried to kill us. Mom is crazy." According to the child, his mother told them to "close their eyes and go to sleep." She had locked the doors and rolled up the windows and said they were all going to a better place.

     On Friday, March 7, 2014, when a doctor released Ebony Wilkerson from the hospital, police officers booked her into the Volusia County Jail on three counts of attempted first-degree murder and three counts of aggravated child abuse. The judge set her bond at $1 million.

     In October 2014, Wilkerson's attorney announced that his client would plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Shortly after that, the Volusia County prosecutor dropped the criminal charges in lieu of an insanity hearing to determine if Wilkerson should be committed involuntarily to a mental institution or remain free on the condition she seek patient therapy.

     The insanity hearing got underway on December 17, 2014. Dr. Antonia Canaan, testifying on Wilkerson's behalf, said that in 2005 Wilkerson suffered from postpartum psychosis after giving birth. According to the doctor, pregnancy psychosis can occur near delivery time or emerge four weeks after delivery as postpartum depression.

     Wilkerson took the stand and testified that she hadn't been aware that her children locked in the minivan were in danger as she drove into the sea. "All that mattered," she said, "was that God was with me. I didn't realize the seriousness of it. I understand now that there were no angels, no demons. I understand now. I didn't hear voices in my head. I now know right from wrong." (This line suggests heavy coaching from her attorneys.)

     At the conclusion of the hearing before Volusia County Circuit Court Judge Leah R. Case, Wilkerson's attorneys announced that their client, to avoid involuntary mental institute commitment, would immediately undergo tubal ligation that would remove the possibility of postpartum psychosis.

     On December 23, 2014, Judge Case, before committing Wilkerson to mental incarceration for up to six months, said, "the court is convinced that the defendant should be involuntarily committed. She minimizes her health issues; she lacks insight into her mental health problems."

The Dynel Lane Attempted Murder Case

     On Wednesday March 18, 2015, 26-year-old Michelle Wilkins, in response to a Craigslist ad offering baby clothes for sale, showed up at the seller's house in Longmont, Colorado. Michelle was seven months pregnant. The woman who had placed the online ad, 34-year-old Dynel Catrece Lane, had told her husband and her relatives that she was pregnant. She was not.

     Shortly after Michelle Wilkins entered the Craigslist seller's house, she was attacked and brutally beaten by Dynel Lane. Following the assault, Lane cut the fetus out of the victim's body.

     That afternoon, Mr. Lane came home from work early to accompany his wife to a prenatal appointment. He found her covered in blood. He also discovered, in the bathtub, a baby. Michelle Wilkins was nowhere in sight. Dynel told her husband she had just had a miscarriage.

     Doctors at a nearby hospital pronounced the Wilkins baby dead.

     Two and a half hours after having her baby cut out of her belly, Michelle Wilkins, from the basement of the Lane house, managed to call 911. When Longmont police officers and emergency personnel arrived at the dwelling they heard a woman calling for help.

     Michelle Wilkins, as she was rushed to the same hospital, told the officers what had happened to her and her baby girl. (The victim underwent emergency surgery and a week later was discharged from the hospital.)

     Police officers arrested Dynel Lane and booked her into the Boulder County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder, first-degree assault, and child abuse resulting in death.

     On March 27, 2015, the Boulder County Coroner announced that the Wilkins baby did not take a breath outside her mother's body. This meant the infant had been killed as a fetus. Because Colorado was one of twelve states that did not consider the intentional killing of a fetus murder, the district attorney had no choice but to charge Dynel Lane with a series of lesser offenses.

     Dynel Lane, in February 2016, was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault, and unlawful termination of a pregnancy. If convicted of all counts, Land faced up to 118 years in prison.

     On May 2, 2016, Chief District Judge Maria Berkenkotter, after noting that the convicted woman never expressed remorse for her crimes, sentenced her to 100 years behind bars.

When a Haircut is Not Just a Haircut

     At five in the afternoon on Saturday, December 21, 2019, a man brought his 13-year-old son to a barbershop in Katy, Texas called Magic's Kutts and Fades. Following the haircut, the boy and his father left the shop. A short time later, the father and his son returned to the barbershop. Upon his return, the father complained about his son's look. The boy climbed back onto the chair and the barber fixed the problem without charge.

     Following the second cut, the barber and the boy's father got into an argument in the parking lot outside the shop. The fight ended when the father pulled a gun and shot the barber in the leg, arm, and stomach. As the barber lay bleeding outside the shop, the father and his son drove off.

     The wounded barber was rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital where he was expected to survive the shooting. Meanwhile, deputies with the Harris County Sheriff's Officer were searching for the shooter.

     Some people take haircuts very seriously. 

The Streets Of Chicago: Trick-Or-Treating Amid Flying Bullets

     At five-thirty on Halloween evening, October 31, 2019, a 7-year-old girl trick-or-treating in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood was struck in the neck by a stray bullet fired by a 15-year-old member of the Two-Six gang. A 31-year-old man, another innocent victim caught in the crossfire, was shot in the left hand. The man was treated and released at a local hospital. The seriously wounded child was admitted to a nearby medical center in critical condition.

     The 15-year-old shooter intended to murder a member of the Latin Kings, a rival street gang.

     The day following the gang-related shooting in a neighborhood crowded with trick-or-treaters and their adult supervisors, police officers arrested the 15-year-old suspect. Charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of battery through the discharge of a firearm, the shooter was placed into a juvenile detention center. Given the seriousness of the crime, the suspect will probably be prosecuted as an adult.

     In certain Chicago neighborhoods it is simply not safe to walk the streets. Last year 557 people were murdered in the city with hundreds more shot and wounded. A good number of these shootings were gang-related, and a vast majority of the shooters and their victims were young black men.

Attempted Honor Murder in Pakistan

     Shot twice. Tied up in a sack. Thrown into a canal. Yet somehow, 18-year-old Saba Maqsood lived to tell her story. Had she not, Pakistani police say, it could very well have been another honor murder. Those responsible for the horror, Maqsood told reporters on June 6, 2014, are her father and brother. They shot her because they didn't approve of her marriage to a neighbor….

     The first bullet hit her cheek, the next one her hand, after which the teenager says she "was slightly conscious, but alive. They put me into a sack, tied up the mouth of the sack and threw it into the canal," Maqsood recalled. "They thought I was dead, but I was not."

     [Maqsood was thrown into] a canal in the city of Hafizabad, a city in Punjab Province about 75 miles northwest of Lahore. Workers at a gas station spotted the sack and the young woman inside and immediately alerted authorities, Halfizabad police officer Ali Akbar told CNN. After corroborating the basics of Maqsood's story, including her injuries, Akbar said, "This seems to be an honor-related crime."

     Such crimes--which the perpetrators rationalize as necessary because the targeted women have somehow brought dishonor on a family--are hardly unprecedented in Pakistan…."The accused are on the run," the police officer Akbar said. "We are hopeful to apprehend them soon."

Aliza Kassim and Greg Botelho, "Pakistani Woman: My Relatives Shot Me, Threw Me in Canal for Marrying Neighbor," CNN, June 6, 2014

The Miami Spots Club Shooting Spree Mystery

     The Spot Nightclub, a strip-mall bar built into a storefront wedged between a furniture store and a smoke shop on Northwest 64th Street at Seventh Avenue in Miami, opened its doors sometime during the first week of September 2014. Just before one in the morning of Sunday September 28, 2014, an unknown number of gunmen opened fire inside the crowed nightclub. The assailants fired 100 or more shots. Fifteen of the 100 or so patrons were wounded, some seriously, others not.

     The Spots Nightclub victims were aged 11 to 25 with five of the injured under 17. Most of the victims received non-life threatening wounds. One girl was hospitalized in critical condition.

     Miami police and emergency rescue crews came upon a loud and chaotic scene. Wounded people were both inside the club and lying outside on the parking lot. People were screaming, running about, and calling for help. The shooters who had caused the mayhem had slipped into the night.

     From the beginning, investigators operated on the theory that at least four people were responsible for the shooting spree. Among the things detectives were trying to determine included the nature of the event and why so many teens were in attendance. Was this a private party or was the place open to the public? Early in the investigation the police didn't know what prompted the violence or if the attack was gang-related. Over the past few years Miami has been the site of several nightclub/restaurant mass shootings. 

Shawn Ryan Thomas: The Would-Be Rapist Killer

     On June 12, 2014, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officers arrested 29-year-old Shawn Ryan Thomas on charges of premeditated attempted homicide, attempted sexual assault, and ten counts of possession of child pornography. According to a confidential informant, Thomas planned to lure two parents and a juvenile female to a vacant house in Orlando under the charade of producing a television show. Investigators believed that Thomas intended to murder the parents with a knife then rape and kill the girl. He also planned to film the rape for a DVD he could sell.

     Police officers reported that Thomas lured a father, grandfather and child to a vacant house on June 7, 2014 but the family became suspicious and left.

     At the time of his arrest, Thomas possessed a bag containing a knife, sexual lubricant, a camera and tripod, and plastic sheets. The judge denied Thomas bail.