Two Stalkers, Different Outcomes

The Tire Slasher

     In January 2010, Jessica (not the victim's real name) broke up with Dieter Heinz Werner, her 68-year-old boyfriend. Shortly after that someone slashed her tires in the parking lot of a Houston, Texas movie complex. A month later Jessica found a GPS tracking device attached to the undercarriage of her car. Because Mr. Werner had been bothering her with text messages and phone calls she suspected him of slashing her tires and using the GPS device to keep track of her whereabouts.

     That spring the ex-boyfriend continued his harassment by sending Jessica hundreds of text messages. On April 3, 2010 he sent her a text which read: "Should have answered the phone and not ignored me again. Pissed me off. Now I'll show you." That day, after following her to a grocery store, Werner texted: "Pissed me off when I saw you at Krogers and you turned your head. I would never treat you like that."

     On April 15, 2010 a witness at the movie complex parking lot where Jessica's tires had been slashed saw an elderly white man slashing a car's tires with a pocketknife. The witness jotted down the license number to the vandal's Mercedes convertible. The vehicle was registered to Dieter Heinz Werner. A couple of weeks later a Harris County prosecutor charged Mr. Werner with stalking, a third degree felony. Werner was held without bond for a few days until a judge issued a protection order against the accused stalker. After being served with the restraining order Werner paid his $75,000 bond and was released.

     In late 2011 Dieter Werner was found guilty of the stalking offense. A few months later the judge sentenced him to ten years in prison, the maximum penalty for a third degree felony. But in 2012, before Werner was transferred out of the Harris County Jail into the state prison system he was paroled. After serving about a year behind bars the convicted stalker walked free.

     According to Texas corrections authorities Dieter Werner benefited from a so-called "parole in absentia." (Texas parole boards in the 1980s had issued these get-out-of prison passes when the state prison system couldn't handle all of the convicted felons.)

     Victims' rights activists, as well as Werner's stalking victim, were outraged. The parole authorities had not even bothered to notify Jessica of her stalker's parole hearing. In Texas and other places it was a fact that parole boards often did not inform victims when criminals were released on parole.

The Taco Bell Handcuff Case

     In 2011, in the northern Georgia town of Ringgold, 25-year-old Jason Earl Dean and the 18-year-old girl he had become obsessed with worked at the local Taco Bell. After Joan (not her real name) told Dean she did not want to go out with him he continued asking her out for a date. This had gone on for a month. The harassment became so intense she changed shifts at work to get away from him. Undeterred, Jason Dean continued to harass her.

     On the night of August 8, 2011 Mr. Dean waited outside Taco Bell until Joan's shift ended. As she walked to her car he came up to her with a pair of handcuffs which he slapped around her wrist, binding the two of them arm-to-arm. She screamed for help which brought other employees out of the Taco Bell. Her fellow employees talked Dean into turning his captive free. The police rolled up to the scene shortly thereafter but Mr. Dean had left. A few days later police officers arrested him on a college campus in nearby Dalton, Georgia. A local prosecutor charged him with stalking and felonious restraint.

     In January 2013 Jason Earl Dean entered a so-called "blind guilty plea" before Judge Ralph Van Pelt. (A blind plea meant that no sentencing agreement had been reached between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. The defendant was essentially throwing himself on the mercy of the court.) Judge Van Pelt, showing no mercy for this stalker, sentenced him to four years in prison followed by six years of probation.     

The Perfect Murder

     Investment crook Bernie Madoff probably thought he'd committed the perfect crime. He was rich, well-known, loved by his family and respected by his colleagues. But Ponzi schemes are not perfect crimes, and Bernie got caught. The financial sociopath lost his fortune, his reputation, his freedom and a son to suicide. His wife, the author of a boo-hoo memoir and his surviving son disowned him. And like a true sociopath Bernie insulted his victims by calling them greedy.

     Unlike Bernie Madoff, a lot of people get away with crimes big and small. Shoplifters, employee thieves and even murderers have avoided conviction. But getting away with a criminal act doesn't necessarily make it a perfect crime. Offenders escape criminal detection and punishment because their crimes weren't professionally investigated. So-called perfect crimes are made possible by imperfect police work, and good luck.

     To avoid a murder conviction the killer should make sure he doesn't leave part of himself at the scene of the homicide or take part of the death site with him. Ideally, the murder victim should not be a spouse, an ex-lover, a business competitor or someone to whom the killer owes money. Moreover, the homicide should be committed as far from the killer's home as possible. And there should be no eyewitnesses or accomplices. The successful murderer should create a believable alibi and not tell a soul what he has done, not even a priest or a shrink. And if there is financial gain involved the killer should avoid spending large sums of money for at least a year.

     If arrested and brought into the interrogation room the suspect should say nothing except that he wants a lawyer. Also, no self-respecting criminal agrees to a polygraph test. If incarcerated the suspect should be aware of the jailhouse informant. Successful criminals trust no one and keep their mouths shut.

     Killers get away with murder all the time because police officers contaminate physical evidence at the crime scene. Too many detectives are overworked, lazy or incompetent. O. J. Simpson committed an imperfect, messy, clue-laden double murder and walked free. Police mistakes, a whacko jury and an all-star defense team led to the acquittal of an obviously guilty man.

     The commission of a perfect perfect murder should entail the following:

   1. The coroner or medical examiner rules the death either natural, accidental or suicidal.

   2. The killer does not come under serious police or media suspicion.

   3. The killer gains something significant from the victim's death.

   4. There is no physical evidence such as DNA that will later come back to haunt the killer.

     Before the emergence of modern toxicology and pharmacology, at a time when unhappy wives could slowly poisoned their husbands to death (usually with arsenic found in rat poison), the perfect murder was possible--perhaps even easy. Today committing the perfect murder, at least as described here, is much more difficult and extremely rare. 

The Young Female Arsonist

     Arson-for-profit is generally an adult male crime while serial, pathological fire setting is often committed by teenage boys. The rare female arsonist is likely to be a 30 to 50-year-old woman who sets the fire in her dwelling to attract attention and sympathy. It's even rarer when a young girl intentionally sets a fire that causes extensive property damage. Because fires set by females are generally not motivated by financial gain, they are by definition pathological offenses. This doesn't necessarily mean that these fire setters are legally insane. In cases of  young female arsonists the perpetrators set the fires because they are angry with their parents, their teachers or the world in general. 

     On May 14, 2014 someone set a fire north of San Diego that raged for eight days and burned 2,000 acres and destroyed 40 buildings, including homes in the towns of San Marcos and Escondido, California. The so-called Cocos Wildfire threatened several schools including California State University in San Marcos.

     The Cocos Wildfire cost $28 million to extinguish and destroyed $30 million worth of property. According to cause and origin investigators the fire had been intentionally set.

     In July 2014 arson investigators identified an unnamed 13-year-old girl as the suspected Cocos fire starter. She resided near the point of origin with her parents who schooled her at home. She was also a top competitor in the San Diego area junior cycling program. 

     Rather than being placed into a juvenile detention facility the authorities released the suspected arsonist to the custody of her parents. Under the terms of this arrangement she was not allowed out of the house from six in the evening to six in the morning. The rest of the day she was accompanied by a parent when she left the house.

     Superior Court Judge Aaron Katz ordered that the young defendant undergo psychological evaluation to determine if she was mentally competent to stand trial on the charges of felony arson. On August 20, 2014, following a three-week evaluation process, Juvenile Court Judge Rod Shelton found the suspect mentally competent to stand trial. She had, according to the psychologists, the capacity to understand the nature of the charges against her as well as the ability to help her attorney plan a defense.

     At the suspect's arraignment on the felony arson charges she pleaded not guilty.

     In March 2015 the young fire setter was found guilty of several counts of arson. The judge sentenced the juvenile to 400 hours of community service.

Caleb "Kai" McGillvary and the Hatchet Hitchhiker Murder Case

     On February 1, 2013 a CNN reporter in Fresno, California interviewed a 24-year-old homeless drifter named Caleb "Kai" McGillvary. The long-haired, backpack-carrying, bandana-wearing hitchhiker who went under the names Kai Lawrence and Kai Nicodermus described in a rambling profane-laced TV interview how he had thwarted an assault on a female Fresno area utility worker.

     On the day in question McGillvary hitched a ride with a manifestly insane driver who intentionally tried to run over the female utility employee. The large man behind the wheel jumped out of his car, and as he approached the injured woman said, "I am Jesus and I am here to take you home." When the mentally ill assailant began punching the helpless woman McGillvary pulled a hatchet out of his backpack and used it to subdue the attacker by whacking him in the head a couple of times.

     According to media reports the crazy man, a month earlier, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a murder charge in another case. (This raises the question of why he was not in custody awaiting his homicide trial.) The assaulted utility worker underwent surgery for her non-life-threatening injuries. Her mentally ill assailant was charged, in that case, with attempt murder. This time he was denied bail.

     Kai McGillvary's television interview went viral with more than 4 million YouTube hits. An instant cyber-culture celebrity, the self-named "Hatchet Hitchhiker" appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where he informed America that he preferred to be called "home-free" rather than homeless. (He was also "car-free", "job-free" and probably "money-free" as well.) The story of McGillvary's hatchet intervention in the Fresno assault was also featured on The Colbert Report. 

     On Saturday, May 11, 2013 the "Hatchet Hitchhiker" was seen in New York City's Times Square in the company of a 73-year-old lawyer named Joseph Galfy, Jr. That night, Mr. Galfy took McGillvary back to his house in Clark, New Jersey, a town 20 miles west of the city. According to reports the drifter spent two nights with Galfy who lived in the house by himself.

     On Monday morning, May 13, 2013, when Mr. Galfy failed to show up for work at the law firm, a fellow employee asked local police officers to make a welfare check at his residence. Inside the tidy brick dwelling, officers found the lawyer lying dead in his bed wearing socks and his underwear. According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy Mr. Galfy had been bludgeoned to death. Detectives believed the victim had been murdered sometime on Sunday, May 12, 2013.

     On Tuesday, the day after the discovery of Mr. Galfy's corpse, Kia McGillvary, on his Facebook page, asked his readers what they would do if they awoke in a stranger's house to the realization they had been drugged and sexually assaulted. One Facebook commentator suggested hitting the rapist with a hatchet. To that McGillvary responded, "I like your idea."

     Late Thursday night, May 16, 2013, police officers arrested the "Hatchet Hitchhiker" at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Philadelphia. Officers noticed that Mr. McGillvary had cut his hair to change his appearance. Held on $3 million bail, the freedom-free suspect was shipped back to Union County, New Jersey where he faced a charge of murder in connection with Joseph Galfy's violent death.

     Following his arrest, McGillvary gained supporters who followed his case on a special Facebook site. Moreover, someone established a GoFundMe campaign for McGillvary as well as a YouTube page.

      In April 2019 a jury sitting in Union County, New Jersey found Caleb McGillvary guilty of murdering the lawyer. A month later the judge sentenced the "Hatchet Hitchhiker" to 57 years in prison.

The Grigoriy Bukhantsov Murder Case

     Grigoriy Bukhantsov, a troubled teenager and high school dropout, lived with his parents in Rancho Cordova, California 15 miles east of Sacramento. The young man's parents were Ukrainian immigrants who came to the United States in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They settled in this community of 100,000 immigrants from Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus.

     Grigoriy's parents, and the family of his older brother Denis Bukhantsov, belonged to the 6,000-member Bethany Slavic Missionary Church, an evangelical Pentecostal congregation founded by immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

     In December 2011 Grigoriy Bukhantsov pleaded no contest to burglary. The judge sentenced him to one year in jail and five years probation. He served seven months of that sentence. Once out of prison Grigoriy, a drug and alcohol abuser with serious mental problems and a propensity for violence, threatened virtually everyone he knew. People had good reason to be afraid of him.

     In the summer of 2012 Grigoriy Bukhantsov assaulted his father and sister and threatened to stab his entire family to death. Florin Ciuriuc, the executive director of the Slavic Community Center of Sacramento helped Mr. Bukhantsov obtain a temporary restraining order against the 19-year-old. (Grigoriy's parents struggled with English.) The Sacramento county judge issued the order, but when the family didn't seek to make it permanent the restraining order expired.

     Grigoriy became so disturbed and threatening, his parents, fearing for their lives moved out of the state, taking their daughter with them.

     According to Florin Ciuriuc, Grigoriy Bukhantsov "was going nuts. Saliva came out of his mouth when he screamed, yelled and cussed. He was talking nonsense. He was making threats to everybody."

     After Grigoriy's parents fled California, Grigoriy became homeless, living temporarily in the houses of relatives until he wore out his welcome and was asked to leave. On Monday, October 22, 2012 he asked his 29-year-old brother Denis if he could spend a couple of nights at his house. Denis, his 23-year-old wife Alina and their three children, ages three, two and six-months lived in Rancho Cordova, California. Because his nomadic brother seemed calm and in control of himself Denis agreed to shelter him.

     The next day, when Denis returned home at 3:30 in the afternoon following a class he took, he found that Alina and two of the children had been bludgeoned, stabbed and slashed to death. The 6-month-old boy had not been harmed. Denis ran to a neighbor's house and called 911.

     The police immediately launched a search for Grigoriy Bukhantsov. After committing the murders the suspect had stolen the family's 2005 Chrysler minivan. The next day, at two in the morning, a police officer spotted the stolen vehicle parked in front of a Denny's restaurant. Inside they found Grigoriy asleep in a booth. Taken into custody he was booked into the Sacramento County Jail where he was held without bond.

     Shortly after his arrest the local prosecutor announced that his office would seek the death penalty in the triple murder.

     In August 2015, following months of procedural delays, motions and stays, a Sacramento jury found Bukhantsov mentally competent to stand trial. The defendant's attorneys, arguing that their client was criminally insane appealed this verdict. A judge, in February 2016, ruled that Bukhantsov was competent to be tried.

     The Bukhantsov murder case remained in limbo. In California the criminal justice system was so overwhelmed it moved slowly, if at all. The Bukhantosov case delays were par for the course.

     In March 2018, almost six years after the murders, Grigoriy Bukhantsov pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison.

Aaron Schaffhausen: What Kind of Man Murders His Daughters?

     Jessica Schaffhausen and her three daughters, ages five to eleven, lived in River Falls, Wisconsin, a town of 15,000 30 miles east of the twin cities of St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota. The 34-year-old mother had been single six months after she and her husband of 12 years, Aaron Schaffhausen, divorced in January 2012. In March, Jessica called the police after Aaron threatened to harm one of the children. No arrest followed the complaint which was classified by the police as a "harassment incident."

     On July 5, 2012 Aaron Schaffhausen, a construction worker employed by a St. Paul company to work on projects in western North Dakota, was fired after he didn't show up for work. He was living in Minot, North Dakota.

     Just before noon on July 10, 2012 Aaron called his ex-wife who worked in St. Paul for a nonprofit agency on aging and asked if he could pay the girls a surprise visit. Amara, age eleven, eight-year-old Sophie and Cecilia who was five were at home in River Falls. Jessica agreed to the visit but wanted Aaron out of the house before she got home from work.

     That afternoon when Aaron Schaffhausen arrived at his former place of residence in the subdivision on the east side of town the babysitter said goodbye to the girls and went home. Around four that afternoon Aaron Schaffhausen called his ex-wife and said, "You can come home now because I killed the kids."

     Jessica Schaffhausen, after receiving this horrific message called the police. River Falls officers arrived at the scene about the time Jessica pulled up to the house. Upstairs the officers found the three girls dead. The were tucked into their beds.

     As the officers were trying to understand what had happened to these children Aaron showed up at the police department to turn himself in. When asked to describe what he had done, and why, the suspect refused to speak.

    The autopsies of the three victims revealed they had been murdered by what the forensic pathologist called "sharp force entry." They had been stabbed, and the five-year-old had been strangled as well.

     On July 12, 2012 the St. Croix County district attorney charged Aaron Schaffhausen with three counts of first-degree murder. Held on $2 million bond the defendant faced a mandatory life sentence on each count. A few days after filing these charges the district attorney appointed Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Gary Freyburg to take over the case as a special prosecutor.

     St. Croix County Circuit Judge Scott Needham on July 24, 2012 at Mr. Schaffhausen's preliminary hearing heard testimony from River Falls detective John Wilson who said he found a large pool of blood in one of the bedrooms where he believed the three girls had been stabbed. Officer Wilson also noted that the walls were splattered in blood. The girls were lying on their backs in their beds with their eyes wide open. The woman at the police department who had taken Jessica Schaffhausen's call that afternoon described the caller as "hysterical and hyperventilating." Following the 90-minute hearing the judge bound the case over for trial.

     In early March 2013 Aaron Schaffhausen pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Although he pleaded guilty he maintained that, due to insanity, he should not be held criminally responsible for his daughters' deaths. On March 5, 2013 at the prosecutor's request, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Erik Knudson interviewed Schaffhausen for seven hours. During that session Aaron Schaffhausen revealed that before the murders he had experienced reoccurring images in his head that featured the violent deaths of his ex-wife and children. Schaffhausen told Dr. Knudson that on two occasions he had aborted plans to murder the girls.

     After the killings, Aaron Schaffhausen, when he realized he couldn't clean up the murder scene, decided to burn down the house. In furtherance of that plan he went to the basement and poured gasoline on the floor. He didn't go through with the arson out of fear he would get trapped in the fire.

     On March 25, 2013 Aaron Schaffhausen went on trial before a jury that would decide whether or not he had been insane at the time of the murders. Dr. Erik Knudson, testifying for the prosecution, opined that the defendant's depression and alcohol dependency had no relevance to why he killed his children. According to the psychiatrist the defendant, rather than insane, possessed an antisocial personality disorder.

     In his closing remarks to the jury following the testimony phase of the trial Mr. Schaffhausen's attorney argued that his client suffered from a rare mental disorder rooted in his deep dependency on his ex-wife that caused him to believe the only solution to his problems involved murdering his children. The defense attorney blamed the mass murder on what a defense mental health expert had called "catathymic homicide."

     On April 13, 2013 the jury found the defendant guilty. Notwithstanding Schaffhausen's mental defects, the jurors wanted this man held criminally accountable for the murders. The jurors obviously believed that Mr. Schaffhausn, at the time of the killings, knew what he was doing and that what he was doing was wrong.

     Judge Scott Needham on July 15, 2013 sentenced Aaron Schaffhausen to three consecutive life sentences. Because of the nature of his murders, prison authorities were faced with the likelihood that this prisoner's life would be under constant threat from other inmates.

Murdered Over Nothing

     Just because murder is a serious crime does not mean that murderers always have equally serious motives to kill. In the world of criminal homicide the motive does not always match the crime. Authors of detective novels give their fictitious murderers good reasons to kill such as revenge, money, passionate sex, jealous love and burning hatred. In the victimology of crime fiction the killer and the killed usually know each other well. In novels murderers are, if not nice people, fascinating folks with interesting reasons to commit the ultimate crime.

     In real life people who commit criminal homicide are often wildly insane, drug-addled or just plain stupid. Nonfiction killers are frequently uninteresting people who kill for trivial reasons. Quite often in real life the murder victim is as insane, drug-addled or stupid as the person who killed him. In the more tragic cases these mindless murderers take the lives of decent people who simply had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If there is anything interesting in these under-motivated murder cases it is the fact they are real. The advantage of writing about nonfiction crime is that these cases do not have to make a whole lot of sense. They just have to be true. Fiction on the other hand has to be believable. Fiction has to make sense.

The Trigger-Happy Mr. Dunn

     At 7:40 in the evening of November 20, 2012 Michael D. Dunn and his girlfriend pulled into a service station in Jacksonville Florida. That day the couple had attended the wedding of Mr. Dunn's son. The 45-year-old software developer and his girlfriend were en route to Dunn's home 160 miles away in Satellite Beach Florida. Mr. Dunn parked his vehicle and waited behind the wheel as his girlfriend entered the gas station's convenience store.

     Mr. Dunn had pulled into the service station alongside a SUV occupied by three teenagers who were listening to music Mr. Dunn considered much too loud. He asked the boys to lower the sound level. The kids didn't take kindly to his request which led to an exchange of angry words. Suddenly Michael Dunn picked up a handgun and fired eight shots into the car. Two of the bullets struck 17-year-old Jordan Davis who was sitting in the back seat. The high school junior, who was about to start his first job at McDonald's, died in the SUV.

     The shooter's girlfriend ran out of the convenience store and as she climbed into Dunn's vehicle asked, "What's going on?"

     "I just fired at those kids" Mr. Dunn replied as the couple drove away.

     The next day police officers arrested Michael Dunn at his home in Satellite Beach. (A witness had written down his license number.)  Dunn told his police questioners that he had fired his pistol in self-defense after one of the kids in the SUV pointed a shotgun at him. Dunn's self-defense justification suffered a blow when investigators failed to find any weapons in the SUV. (There were no drugs in the car and none of the boys had ever been in trouble with the law.)

     In May 2013 a grand jury sitting in Jacksonville Florida indicted Michael Dunn of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. On October 17, 2014 after a jury found him guilty as charged the judge sentenced him to life without the chance of parole.

James Pak: The Angry Landlord

     In 2006 James Pak sold his Korean Yankee Landscape Company, a Biddeford Maine business he had owned since 1964. In 2012 Mr. Pak was living with his wife in a cape cod-style home in the town of Bedford located 15 miles south of Portland. He rented out an apartment attached to his house to 44-year-old Susan Johnson who lived there with her son, 19-year-old Derrick Thompson. Derrick worked as an auto detailer at a nearby car dealership. His girlfriend, Alivia Welch, worked as a waitress at a local coffee shop. She was eighteen.

     Around six o'clock in the evening of December 29, 2012, Bedford police officers responded to a call to defuse a dispute between Mr. Pak and his tenants. The 74-year-old landlord was upset because Derrick Thompson and his mother had parked their cars in his driveway. (The town had banned overnight parking on the street to clear the way for snow removal crews.) After speaking with Mr. Pak and his renters the officers left the scene without taking anyone into custody.

     At seven that night, shortly after the police thought they had resolved the dispute, they were called back to the Pak house on reports of shots being fired in the rented apartment. Upon their arrival the officers discovered that Mr. Pak had shot Derrick Thompson and his girlfriend Alivia Welch, killing them both. He had also shot and wounded Mr. Thompson's mother, Susan Johnson.

     Following a three-hour police stand-off at his home James Pak surrendered to the authorities. Among other crimes he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. After pleading guilty on February 3, 2016 the judge sentenced James Pak to two life sentences.

Street Gang Killings

     Drug dealers and members of street gangs regularly murder each other over minor slights, petty arguments and even disrespectful looks. For these habitual criminals it's their chosen way of life. Unless some innocent bystander goes down in the cross-fire the general public couldn't care less about these deaths. One violent crook is dead and his killer is off to prison for life. From a societal standpoint these cases are hardly tragedies.

     Michael Dunn and James Pak were murderers who weren't career criminals or drains on society. Because they were not stupid their homicidal behavior makes even less sense. These men ruined their lives over nothing. And their victims did nothing to deserve their sudden and violent deaths. That is what makes these spontaneous homicides so tragic and hard to understand.

Steve Nunn: the Politician and Husband From Hell

     If you think all politicians are above average spouses and parents, think again. Although they pretend to be better than the rest of us, some of them are hypocrites and thieves, and even dangerous. Take Steve Nunn, a state legislator from Kentucky who was a lousy husband, a raging hypocrite and dangerous.

     Steven Nunn was 15 when his father, Louie B. Nunn, became Kentucky's 52nd governor in 1967. A Republican, Mr. Nunn was re-elected to a second term but in 1973 lost his bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Six years later he ran for governor again, but lost. His career in elected politics was over.

     In 1974, Steve, hoping to follow in his father's footsteps, enrolled in law school but dropped out. He got married and over the next five years had three children. In 1990, at age 38, he ran for the Kentucky state house of representatives and won.

     Steve's father, a hard-driven narcissist and BS artist who enjoyed subjecting his kid to ridicule, refused to be impressed with his son's election to state office. Like his father, Steve was a lousy husband who regularly cheated on his wife. In 1994 she divorced him. (In state politics, being a rotten husband is not usually a liability because most people have no idea who represents them locally.) Two years later Steve's mother Beula, after 42 years of marriage to Louie B., sought a restraining order against the abusive ex-governor. Steve confronted his father over this and the two men came to blows. After that they stopped speaking to each other. Shortly after the father and son stopped talking to each other, Beula divorced Louie B. Nunn.

     Steve Nunn, in his third term as a state legislator married Tracey Damron, a former flight attendant and daughter of a wealthy Kentucky coal magnate. A social butterfly who sparkled at fundraisers and social events, Tracey became the perfect politician's wife. Two years later, in 1998, Steve co-sponsored a bill that imposed the death sentence on convicted killers who murdered women who had taken out restraining orders against them. The bill became Kentucky law.  

       In 2002, after Tracey Nunn engineered a father-son reconciliation, she and Steve moved into the ex-governor's Pin Oak Farms mansion near Versailles, Kentucky. But a year later the 51-year-old's political career took a bad turn. In a bid for the governorship, Steve lost badly in the Republican primary. And on January 29, 2004 his father, at age 81, died of a heart attack. Although Steve didn't have a healthy relationship with his father, the old man's death devastated him. The wheels of Steve's political career came off in 2006 when he lost his legislative seat to an unknown challenger.

     Following the death of his father Steve Nunn started drinking heavily, patronizing prostitutes and behaving irrationally. He also became, like his father, an abusive husband. Tracey divorced him in 2006. The following year the 55-year-old political had-been met 20-year-old Amanda Ross, the daughter of a recently deceased public financier. After two months of dating Steve moved into her Lexington, Kentucky apartment. In 2008 they were engaged to be married.

     Through his engagement to Amanda Ross Steve landed the cabinet-level job of heading up a state agency that oversaw a variety of welfare programs, include those dealing with spousal abuse.

     Although Steve was back on his feet career-wise, he was still emotionally unstable and drinking too much. His paranoia led him to suspect that Amanda was cheating on him. On February 17, 2009, in the midst of an argument in Ross' apartment, Nunn hit Amanda. The next day she petitioned the court for an emergency protection order which a judge quickly granted. Under the restraining order Mr. Nunn could have no contact with Amanda for a period of a year. Within 48 hours of the judge's ruling he had no choice but to resign his cushy, high-paid government job.

     Convinced that Amanda Ross had intentionally sabotaged his career, Steve Nunn became obsessed with revenge. To embarrass and humiliate his former fiancee he showed his friends nude photographs he had taken of her. He began to stalk her.

     On September 11, 2009, as Amanda Ross left her apartment on her way to work, Steve Nunn shot her to death. While no one witnessed the murder, homicide investigators immediately suspected him. Later that day police officers found him hiding in a cemetery. He had scratched his wrists in a phony suicide attempt.

     Charged with first-degree murder, Nunn, to avoid the death penalty mandated by his own legislation, pleaded guilty in 2011 in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.

     Members of Amanda Ross' family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Steven Nunn in 2012. Two years later the civil case jury found him responsible for Ross' death and awarded the plaintiffs $24 million.

     In February 2014 Steve Nunn petitioned Fayette County Judge Pamula Goodwine to have his guilty plea withdrawn. He said his defense attorney, Warren Scoville, had given him bad advice. Following the October 2014 hearing on the motion, Judge Goodwine denied Nunn's plea withdrawal request.

The Vi Ripken Kidnapping Case: An Unsolved Mystery

     Cal Ripken, Jr., inducted into the baseball hall of fame in 2007, played 21 years for the Baltimore Orioles. Because he played in 2,632 consecutive games Ripken earned the title the "Iron Man." He was a celebrity and businessman in the Baltimore area.

     In July 2012 Vi Ripken, the former ballplayer's 74-year-old mother, became a celebrity in her own right as a victim of an abduction that took place in July 2012. Based on what was published in the media and Cal Ripken's public statement on the matter, the following was the initial and sketchy account of this odd crime:

     Between seven and eight in the morning of Tuesday, July 24, 2012 an unknown man entered Vi Ripken's garage in Aberdeen, Maryland, a town 30 miles northeast of Baltimore and forced her at gun point into her silver 1998 Lincoln Town Car. The abductor was described as a clean-shaven white male who was five feet ten inches tall and weighed 180 pounds. He wore glasses, an orange ball cap and Camouflage colored clothing.

     The kidnapper tied Vi's hands and blindfolded her. (According to the victim, he originally planned to cover her eyes with tape. We don't know what he used to tie her up, or if she was bound behind her back.) With the victim in the back seat of her own car the abductor drove her around Baltimore and Anne Arundel Counties. They stopped for food and he lit her cigarettes. At first the kidnapper said he wanted her money and the car, but changed his mind.

     At some point in the abduction the man told Vi that he wasn't going to hurt her and that he had decided to take her back to her house. The next day, at six in the morning, the kidnapper parked the car 100 yards from Vi's dwelling and walked away. Still bound, Vi managed to honk the horn which alerted a neighbor. In telling friends and family what happened, Vi said her abductor did not know her son was Cal Ripken, Jr. (This suggested that she told him that.) He had not physically harmed her, and did not demand a ransom.

     In a press conference held on Friday, August 3, 2012, Cal Ripken, Jr. said he first learned of his mother's disappearance at 9 PM on the day of her abduction. His sister phoned him with the news that a witness had seen a woman in Baltimore County riding in the back seat of a car bearing the license number of the Lincoln Town Car. This person had called the Baltimore County Police. The county police relayed this information to the police in Aberdeen.

     After Vi Ripken's safe return the authorities distributed a police-sketch of the abductor (these cartoonish depictions are generally useless). The sketch was placed on five massive billboards in the Baltimore area. The authorities also made public a surveillance video tape showing a man in a ball cap walking out of a Walmart store in Glen Burnie, Maryland, an Anne Arundel County town about an hour from Aberdeen. The police did not revealed how this man fit into the story, but one would assume he was the suspected abductor and that at some point during the kidnapping he entered the store to purchase something.

     At the press conference on August 3, 2012 Cal Ripken, Jr. said his mother had not returned to her home in Aberdeen but had otherwise resumed her normal routine. He also said she was talking about her experience "nonstop." On Friday night, August 3, 2012 the kidnapping was featured on the Lifetime Cable Network's "America's Most Wanted." The Aberdeen police offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Ripken abductor.

    The police did not release many details of the crime. For example, did the authorities know the identity of the witness who spotted the woman in the back of the Lincoln Town Car? What did Vi and her abductor do during the 24-hour abduction? Did they sleep? Did they leave the car? Where did she use the restroom? Did crime scene investigators process the car for latent fingerprints and other forms of trace evidence? Did the abductor leave behind the material used to tie the victim up? What about the blindfold? Did the abductor use the victim's credit or ATM cards?

     The biggest mystery, of course, was the identity of the abductor and why he chose to kidnap Vi Ripken.

     On August 2, 2017, more than five years after the Ripken abduction, the police released a new composite sketch of the man they believe had kidnapped Vi Ripken. The FBI had entered the investigation.

     Vi Ripken died in March 2021. She was 82.

    As of this writing no arrests have been made in the case. Moreover, investigators have not identified a suspect.

An Eye For An Eye: The New England Pentecostal Ministries Murder And Shooting Cases

     On Tuesday, October 1, 2019 Luis Garcia, the 60-year-old minister at the New England Pentecostal Ministries Church in Pelham, New Hampshire, a town of 13,000 near the Massachusetts state line, was helping a member of his congregation paint his house in nearby Londonderry, New Hampshire. The owner of the house, 60-year-old Mark Castiglione, was getting married to Claire McMullen on Saturday, October 12, 2019. The ceremony was scheduled to take place at the Pelham Pentecostal Church with Minister Garcia presiding.

     Minister Garcia had been trying to help Mark Castiglione's troubled 24-year-old son, Brandon. A resident of Manchester, New Hampshire, Brandon Castiglione had grown up in Londonderry. Since he turned 18 in 2012 Brandon Castiglione had been arrested on dozens of occasions and had been convicted seven times for drug related offenses.

     At two in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 1, 2019, Mark Castiglione's son Brandon Castiglione came to the house in Londonderry and shot Minister Garcia in the neck with a handgun. When Londonderry police officers entered the Castiglione house they found Minister Garcia dead.  Officers at the scene took Brandon Castiglione into custody.

     The following day, at his arraignment Brandon Castiglione was charged with second-degree murder. The magistrate denied him bail.

     Minister Garcia's funeral service was scheduled for noon on Saturday, October 12, 2019. That morning, Mark Castiglione, the man whose son was in jail for shooting Minister Garcia to death was getting married in Pelham's New England Pentecostal Church. The ministries' 75-year-old bishop, Stanley Choate, would preside over the wedding ceremony in place of his dead colleague.

     At this point it would be hard to imagine this story becoming more bizarre. But it did.

     In the midst of the Castiglione/McMullen wedding ceremony that preceded Lous Garcia's funeral service, Garcia's 37-year-old stepson, Dale Holloway, entered the Pelham Pentecostal Church with a handgun and started shooting. Mark Castiglione was struck in the head with an unidentified object, his bride was shot in the arm and Bishop Stanley Choate took a bullet in the chest.

     Several of the forty wedding guests charged the shooter, tackled him and pinned him to the floor. Pelham police officers arrived at the church and took Dale Holloway into custody. Bishop Choate was rushed to the Tufts Medical Center in Boston where he was listed in serious condition but expected to survive his gunshot wound.

     The Hillsborough County District Attorney charged Dale Holloway with two counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of first-degree assault.

    In August 2023, following a two-week trial, the jury found Brandon Castiglione guilty of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to 42 years in prison.

     

     Following his November 2023 trial in which he represented himself, the jury found Dale Holloway guilty as charged. The judge in January 2024 sentenced Mr. Holloway to fifty years in prison.