The Eugene Maraventano Murder Case

     Sixty-four-year-old Eugene Maraventano, his wife Janet and their 27-year-old son Bryan lived in Goodyear, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. On April 6, 2013 Mr. Maraventano called 911 to report he killed his wife and son. To the dispatcher he said, "I can't kill myself. I stabbed them to death. My wife had cancer."

     When police officers arrived at the two-story stucco house they encountered Mr. Maraventano walking out of the dwelling wearing clothing soaked in his own blood. (He murdered his 63-year-old wife and their son four days earlier but just attempted suicide.)

     Inside the Maraventano house police discovered Janet Maraventano dead in the master bedroom. The carpet, bed and bedroom door were stained with the victim's blood. A bloody 14-inch kitchen knife lay on the nightstand next to the bed.

     In another bedroom officers discovered Bryan Maraventano dead on the floor not far from the doorway. He had been stabbed as well.

    Later on the day of the 911 call a police interrogator asked Mr. Maraventano the obvious question: Why did he kill his wife and son? The subject explained that he suspected he had infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease he picked up from patronizing prostitutes when he worked in New York City. After her cancer diagnosis he was worried she would test positive for HIV. He killed his wife to spare himself her wrath and disapproval.

     As to why he murdered his son, Mr. Maraventano said that the young man had no life. He didn't have a job or a girlfriend and just sat around the house playing video games. He figured his son had some kind of mental disability and wouldn't be able to make it on his own.

     After the cold-blooded murders, Mr. Maraventano tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists and putting a plastic bag over his head. When he couldn't commit suicide using these techniques he placed a knife handle against a wall and pushed himself into it. That didn't work either so he gave up trying.

     Following treatment for his self-inflicted wounds at a local hospital, Eugene Maraventano, charged with two counts of first-degree murder was placed in the county jail under a $2 million bond.

     In June 2018 officers with the Arizona Department of Corrections found the 69-year-old Eugene Maraventano dead in his cell. He hanged himself.

How Many Psychiatrists Are Mentally Ill?

     Over the years numerous studies and surveys have confirmed the conventional wisdom that people who enter the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy were mentally and emotionally disturbed as children. A relatively high percentage of these mental health professionals develop drinking problems, suffer depression, become paranoid, struggle with anxiety and eventually become suicidal. (Sigmund Freud, the father of psycho-babble and mind-talk, killed himself.)

     Authors Robert Epstein and Tim Brewer, in a July 1, 1987 Psychology Today article, wrote: "Mental health professionals are, in general, a fairly crazy lot--at least as troubled as the general population. This may sound depressing...but having crazy shrinks around is not in itself a serious problem. In fact, some experts believe that therapists who have suffered in certain ways may be the very best therapists we have."

     According to one group of researchers, while psychiatrists account for just 6 percent of all doctors, they make up 33 percent of the sexual crimes committed by doctors. This study also revealed that the percentage of sexual molestation offenses by psychiatrists was 37 times higher than that of the general public. It is not surprising that almost all psychiatrists are patients of other shrinks.

     In 2012, fifty-six-year-old Jackson Dempsey, a psychiatrist with offices in Medford, Oregon, served as the psychiatrist for Jackson County. Dr. Dempsey, who walked his dog on the national forest trails outside Ashland, did not like the mountain bikers who regularly sped past him on the downhill runs. He decided to wage a guerrilla war against the bikers.

     In June and July 2012, Dr. Dempsey strung nylon ropes across the trails in an effort to booby trap the bikers. He also littered the trials with nails and placed tree branches in the bikers' paths. As a result of his clandestine work three mountain bikers were injured.

     Police officers arrested Dr. Dempsey in July 2012 after a witness saw him setting a biker trap. A local prosecutor charged the shrink with assault and reckless endangerment, a pair of misdemeanor offenses.

     On May 1, 2013 Dr. Dempsey pleaded guilty in return for a 30-day sentence in the Jackson County Jail. Pursuant to his plea agreement he apologized to the mountain bikers, his family and the local mental health community. Dr. Dempsey resigned his position as the county psychiatrist. He was also prohibited, as a condition of his probation, from going near the national forest trails for a period of two years. He was also ordered to pay $2,400 in restitution to his victims.

     William Roussel, one of the bikers injured by a Dr. Dempsey trap, told reporters that he didn't believe that Dr. Dempsey's apology to the bikers was sincere. Another of Dr. Dempsey's mountain trail victims told a local TV reporter that, "I don't understand how someone with six to eight years of [advanced] education could...do this." There are at least two answers to that victim's question: Just because someone is well-educated doesn't mean this person is mentally sound (or for that matter, smart). Moreover, Dr. Dempsey was a member of a profession populated by nut cases.

     In the fall of 2013 the Oregon Medical Board reviewed Dr. Dempsey's criminal case. While calling his behavior "dishonorable" and "detrimental to the community," the board chose not to suspend or revoke his medical license. (The board could have pulled his license and fined him up to $10,000.) In other words, Dr. Dempsey's behavior was anti-social enough to send him to jail but not bad enough to remove him from the medical profession. So much for professional standards.

     Shortly after being professionally exonerated by the medical board Dr. Dempsey opened a private practice in Grants Pass, Oregon. 

August Vollmer: The Forgotten Father of Community Policing

     In the modern-day struggle between the opposing models of law enforcement--community-based policing in which officers interact with citizens as public servants versus militaristic policing comprised of cops who see themselves as crime fighters in a hostile environment--the concept of community policing has lost out. The rise of police militarism parallels the escalating war on drugs aided by the growing fear of domestic terrorism. The emergence of shock-and-awe policing and zero-tolerance peace-keeping at the expense of police-community relations and the advancement of professionalized criminal investigation would have concerned August Vollmer, the now forgotten police administrator who envisioned an entirely different future for American law enforcement.

     In 1905 the citizens of Berkeley, California banded together to rid themselves of the prostitutes, gambling houses and opium dens operating openly in their town. The man they elected to do the job was a 29-year-old uneducated mail carrier who promised to clean things up. Reform candidate August Vollmer kept his campaign promises, and as a result rose from town marshal to chief of police, and, within a period of 16 years became president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and one of the most influential police administrators in the country.

     During his law enforcement career Chief Vollmer introduced advances in police training, established concepts of effective personnel deployment, developed methods of dealing with juvenile offenders, established one of the nation's first fingerprint bureaus, maintained and used crime statistics and crusaded for the use of science in crime detection. Over the years he hammered out a theory of police professionalism later adopted by J. Edgar Hoover when he became director of the FBI in 1924.

     Vollmer did not believe in capital punishment and became skeptical of J. Edgar Hoover's efforts to rid America of the "Red Menace" in the late 1940s and early 50s. He spoke out against the KKK at the peak of its power. After Pearl Harbor he formed a committee to seek humane treatment for Japanese-Americans who were interred in prison camps. August Vollmer also spoke out against the so-called "third-degree" as an interrogation technique.

     In 1919, Vollmer placed an ad in the school newspaper at the University of California soliciting student applicants for jobs as police officers. Over the years hundreds of full-time college students applied for these positions. Vollmer's "college cops" included Walter Gordon, the department's first black officer, John Larson, the future inventor of the polygraph and V.A. Leonard who became a well-known writer and criminal justice educator.

     Hundreds of Vollmer's proteges became police administrators like O.W. Wilson who became chief of the Chicago Police Department. Others became forensic scientists, lawyers, military leaders and politicians. By the late 1940s at least 25 police chiefs around the country had served under August Vollmer.

     In 1924 Vollmer took leave of the Berkeley Police Department to reorganize and head the Los Angeles Police Department. There he established hiring standards and set up a crime lab and a crime records bureau. He formed a vice squad and created a bank robbery unit to combat the epidemic of bank hold-ups in the city. Notwithstanding his efforts to professionalize the Los Angeles Police Department, Vollmer was unable to eliminate the graft and political corruption that had become ingrained in the organization. After a year in Los Angeles where he lost political support for his reform agenda, Vollmer resigned in defeat. He had learned that big city police departments, unlike law enforcement agencies in college towns like Berkeley, were almost impossible to control.

     Following his retirement from the Berkeley Police Department in 1932 Vollmer visited Scotland Yard, the Surete in France and dozens of other European police departments. He wrote four books and continued to survey and reorganize troubled law enforcement agencies in the United States. He became a law enforcement professor at the universities of Chicago and California.

     In 1955, at the age of 79, Mr. Vollmer ended his life by shooting himself with his service revolver. Suffering from Parkinson's Disease and cancer, he didn't want to become a burden. His wife had predeceased him and they had no children. Before ending his life he called the Berkeley Police Department to report his own suicide. He had willed his papers and extensive criminal justice library to the University of California at Berkeley. His archives are located at the university's Bancroft Library.

Bad Blood at the Bolshoi

     In Russia they take ballet very seriously, perhaps too seriously. One would assume that the Bolshoi, the world's largest and most prestigious ballet company would be one place in this corrupt, crime-ridden country immune from criminal violence. But this was not the case. Professional and artistic rivalry in the Bolshoi world of dance was intense and vicious.

     Sergei Filin started dancing at the famous Moscow theater in 1988. He left the Bolshoi in 2007, returning in March 2011 as the artistic director of the ballet company. Filin's predecessor, Gennady Yanin, the target of threats and harassment during his tumultuous tenure had to step down after an artistic rival posted erotic photographs of him on the Internet. There were also incidents of performance sabotage including an alarm clock going off in the audience during a particular scene; a dead cat being tossed on stage in lieu of flowers; needles inserted into costumes; and broken glass planted in the tip of toe shoes.

     It seemed the artistic director of the Bolshoi, like the head of a Mafia family, was in constant danger of being unseated by a jealous, power-hungry challenger. Who would have guessed that behind the scenes these world-class ballet dancers were Tony Sopranos in tights?

     Shortly after assuming his role as artistic director Sergei Filin became embroiled in a variety of ballet disputes and feuds. One of the performers he crossed swords with was Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a famous principal dancer. In December 2012 someone scratched-up Filin's car, slashed his tires and hacked into his email account. The artistic director's tormentor/stalker also posted a derogatory Facebook page under Filin's name.

     The harassment became so intense friends of the 42-year-old Bolshoi director recommended that he hire a private bodyguard. (A big business in Moscow.) Filin, believing that the intimidation tactics would not become physical rejected the suggestion.

     At eleven o'clock Thursday night, January 16, 2013, when Sergei Filin opened the gate to his central Moscow residence, someone called out his name. A man wearing a face-mask emerged from the darkness carrying a bottle of acid which he threw into the artistic director's eyes. After the attack the masked assailant fled the scene on foot.

     The acid caused third-degree burns on Filin's face and partially destroyed his sight. There were plans to send him to Belgium for treatment, a process that could take up to six months. Police investigators in Moscow were working on the theory that the assault was work-related.

     In the fall of 2013 Bolshoi Ballet dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko was found guilty of ordering the attack on Sergei Filin. Two others were also convicted of the assault. All three defendants were sentenced to six years in prison.

     In May 2016 the authorities released Mr. Dmitrichenko on parole. While admitting that he had orchestrated the attack, Dmitrichenko told reporters that he had not intended his accomplices to use acid.

     The Bolshoi management, in November 2016 gave Dmitrichenko a pass to return to the site of the assault so he could practice. The building was also the place where his victim Sergei Filin practiced ballet.

    This case illustrates that in Russia ballet is much more important than criminal justice. In the United States, in a similar case, Tanya Harding following the assault of a fellow figure skater was thrown out of the sport even though she was not convicted of the crime.

Kosta Karageorge's Football Concussions, Depression and Suicide

     In 2009 Kosta Karageorge graduated from Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb north of Columbus where the 6-foot-5, 285-pound athlete wrestled and played football. After high school Karageorge continued his wrestling career at nearby Ohio State University.

     In the fall of 2014 the 22-year-old fifth year senior joined the Ohio State football team as a walk-on. The defensive lineman played in one game in which he recorded a single tackle against Penn State.

     During his football playing years Karageorge suffered several concussions, the last one occurring in September 2014.

     At one-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, November 26, 2014, Kosta Karageorge sent his mother what she considered a disturbing text message. He wrote that if he had been an embarrassment to the family he apologized, stating that his concussions had affected his behavior. Thirty minutes later Mr. Karageorge left his apartment on East 7th Avenue in Columbus. He told his roommates he was upset over an incident involving his girlfriend and needed to take a walk.

     Karageorge did not return to his apartment that morning and failed to show up for the six AM football practice. He left his wallet in his apartment and did not possess any form of identification. He was dressed that morning in black sweatpants, black Timberland boots and a dark hoodie with the letters FOC on it. He had a short beard and recently shaved his head.

     At five in the afternoon on the day Mr. Karageorge left his apartment and didn't return, his mother, after not hearing from her son all day reported him missing to the Columbus Police Department. His earlier text message and the fact he usually kept in daily touch with his family caused her concern.

     Columbus detectives traced the missing football player's cellphone through GPS technology to West 3rd and Elmwood Avenues in the Grandview Heights section of the city. Officers, however, did not find his phone. He could have walked to that neighborhood, taken public transportation or accepted a ride with someone.

     On Friday November 28, 2014, 150 volunteers distributed hundreds of posters around the city that featured a photograph of the missing student. A group of former Ohio State football players put up a $1,000 reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

     On Sunday November 30, 2014, five days after he went missing a searcher found Karageorge's body in a dumpster several blocks from his apartment. The authorities identified him by his tattoos. Detectives believed that he had used the handgun found near his body to shoot himself in the head.

     The Franklin County coroner ruled Kosta Karageorge's death a suicide.

The Isaac Tiharihondi Mass Murder Case

     Uganda native Israel Ahimbisibwe, after being ordained in the Episcopal Church of Uganda, came to the United States where he earned three masters' degrees and a Ph.D. His masters' degrees came from the Theological Seminary at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School and Rice University in Houston where he earned his doctorate after completing graduate research at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

     The 51-year-old Reverend Doctor held the position of Vicar of the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Houston. He resided in a west Houston apartment complex with his 47-year-old wife Dorcus and their son Israel Ahimbisibwe Jr. who was five. Pastor Ahimbisibwe's 17-year-old son Emmanuel attended a private school in California. Isaac Tiharihondi, his 19-year-old son, graduated in 2014 from Houston's Memorial High School.

     Isaac told his father he joined the Marines and would report for duty on February 6, 2015. The pastor didn't believe his son, and this led to an argument and bad feelings between the two of them.

     On Sunday evening February 1, 2015 Redeemer church members Keever Wallace and his wife Brooke knocked on the pastor's apartment door after the vicar, his wife and their son failed to show up that morning for church. No one came to the door that morning and the pastor did not return calls to his cellphone.

     The next day, at nine in the morning, Brooke Wallace returned to the Ahimbisibwe apartment. When no one responded she contacted the manager of the complex who had a key.

     The building manager called the Houston Fire Department and waited for the arrival of the emergency personnel before entering the Ahimbisibwe apartment. When members of the fire department discovered three dead bodies inside the dwelling they notified the police.

     In one of the bathrooms Houston police officers found the bodies of the vicar, his wife and their 5-year-old son. The parents had been beaten to death with a lamp, a baseball bat and a hammer. The boy had been bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck and back.

     Investigators found no evidence of forced entry and no indication that the killer had taken anything from the apartment.

     On Wednesday February 4, 2015 in Jackson, Mississippi 350 miles from Houston, police arrested Isaac Tiharihondi, the vicar's 19-year-old son on a Texas warrant charging him with triple murder. Officers booked the suspect into the Hines County Detention Center in Raymond Mississippi where he would await extradition back to Houston.

     Isaac Tirarihondi had been staying at a Jackson Mississippi motel. His mother had told friends that she was worried about him. He had lied about the Marines and was depressed.

     On February 1, 2016 Isaac Tiharihondi pleaded guilty to three counts of capital murder. The judge, pursuant to the plea agreement, sentenced Tiharihondi to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On the day of his sentencing the unemotional killer remained silent as to why he had committed such a horrific crime. 

Christopher Evans Hubbart: The Pillowcase Rapist

     In 1969 when Christopher Evans Hubbart attended high school in Los Angeles he reached out and touched a woman's breast as she walked by him on the street. He touched several woman this way until he quickly evolved into a rapist. In the early 1970s the sexual predator drove around Los Angeles in the morning hours looking for women to rape.

     Hubbart had a simple criminal modus operandi: in residential neighborhoods he'd look for open garage doors that revealed that the man of the house had left for work. If Hubbart saw toys in the yard or in the garage he knew children were in the house. Hubbart believed that mothers protective of their children were more likely to submit to him without a struggle. As a calculating sexual predator Christopher Hubbart represented one of society's worst nightmares.

     Once inside his carefully chosen victim's home Hubbart bound the woman's hands and while he raped her held a pillow over her face. In 1972 the so-called "pillowcase rapist" sexually assaulted 26 women in Los Angeles County.

     Detectives identified and arrested Hubbart in 1973. He pleaded guilty and instead of being sent to prison for at least fifty years the judge sent him for sex offender treatment at the Atascadero State Hospital. At that time criminal justice practitioners in California thought they could rehabilitate anyone. As a result the state became a haven for sex offenders. 

     In 1979 after a team of therapists, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists proudly proclaimed that the pillowcase rapist had been cured and was no longer a danger to society, these mental health experts decided to treat him as an outpatient. Mr. Hubbart must have been grateful for his clean bill of health and the chance to continue his career as a serial rapist.

     Within months of walking out of the state hospital Christopher Hubbart raped several women in northern California. Convicted in 1980, the judge sentenced him to prison instead of putting him back into the hands of counselors and therapists. But this was California, and in 1990, corrections experts released him on parole. As could be expected by anyone who knew anything about serial sex offenders, Hubbart re-offended. He raped a female jogger shortly after his release from prison.

      The authorities sent the pillowcase rapist back to prison. One would think that as a habitual rapist Mr. Hubbart was finally in prison for good. The parole authorities, obviously with warm spots in their hearts for serial sex offenders, released him back into society after three years behind bars.

     In 1996 while living in the Los Angeles County town of Claremont, California Mr. Hubbart told his parole officer that he felt he was losing control of himself. Later that year, pursuant to a new California law called the Sexual Predator Act, a judge committed Hubbart to the Coalinga State Hospital. The new law applied to serial sex offenders like Hubbart who were likely to re-offend. (Politicians in the state had grown tired of correction officials and mental health experts putting serial sex offenders back into society.)

     In May 2013 history repeated itself when a judge in Los Angeles County ordered Christopher Hubbart released from the state hospital. Once free he would come under the supervision of bureaucrats running the Forensic Conditional Release Program. Under this program, administered by the California Department of State Hospitals, Mr. Hubbart would receive free housing, continued psychological assessment, group and individual therapy and regular home visits. 

     Serial rapist Hubbart, under the release program, would be required to wear a GPS monitoring device. He would also be subjected to random drug testing, regular polygraph examinations and house searches. He was also prohibited from watching television shows and digital media that "acted as a stimulus to arousal." Under this program a security guard would be posted at his place of residence and he would not be allowed outside by himself at night. 

     In July 2013 District Attorney Jackie Lacey petitioned a state judge to block Hubbart's release from the state hospital on the grounds of public safety. The judge denied the request and the government appealed that decision. On August 25, 2013 the California Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's denial of the prosecutor's motion. The high court justices did not accompany their ruling with a written decision.

     Prosecutor Lacey, in speaking to reporters after losing the appeal, said, "We are now committed to working with law enforcement partners to ensure that all terms of conditions of release are strictly enforced. We will do everything in our power to keep all members of our community safe from harm."

     In July 2014 mental health authorities released the pillowcase rapist to his new home in Palmdale, California. Residents of this desert community northeast of Los Angeles were up in arms. A group of activists formed an organization called "Ladies of Lake LA Committed to Getting Hubbart Back into Custody". Members of the group held daily demonstrations in front of the rapist's house.

     The obvious problem with Hubbart's release was this: prosecutor Jackie Lacey could not guarantee that this serial rapist would not take off his GPS ankle bracelet and slip into the night and rape more women. The prosecutor knew this, the police knew it and so did the bureaucrats in charge of Hubbart's supervision.

    Sixty-three-year-old Christopher Hubbart had been kicked out of the state hospital to make room for younger rapists. The state was simply overrun with sexual predators. Christopher Hubbart's release had nothing to do with rehabilitation. Even the bureaucrats in California realized these people could not be fixed.

     In September and October 2014 Christopher Hubbart violated the conditions of his release by letting the power in his ankle monitor run low. Prosecutor Jackie Lacey charged Hubbart with parole violation and petitioned Judge Richard Loftus to send him back to the Coalinga State Hospital. Hubbart's attorney, public defender Christopher Yuen, argued that his client had not re-offended and that parolees routinely let their monitor batteries run down.

    At the parole revocation hearing on May 11, 2015 Judge Loftus ruled that Christopher Hubbart "was not a danger to the health and safety of others." As a result the rapist would remain free. The decision did not go down well with the citizens of Hubbart's neighborhood in Palmdale, California.

     On August 9, 2016, a Santa Clara County spokesperson announced that Hubbart had "failed to meet the terms of his release." As a result he was returned to the Coalinga State Hospital. The county official did not reveal how the serial rapist had violated the terms of his release. Hubbart's Palmdale neighbors were jubilant.

     In September 2024, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, the well-known criminal friendly prosecutor, announced that Mr. Hubbart would be released from the state hospital and placed back into the community. This decision did not please the residents of the community where this serial rapist would live.

Releasing Green River Killer Gary Ridgway: Fanatics On the Bench

     Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the so-called Green River Killer Gary Ridgway murdered at least 71 teenage girls in and around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Police officers took the serial killer into custody in November 2001. Two years later, Ridgway, in order to avoid the death sentence pleaded guilty to 48 murders.

     Gary Ridgway is serving a life sentence without parole at the maximum security prison in Walla Walla, Washington.

      During the COVID-19 pandemic 1,000 "non-violent" criminals were released from Washington state prisons. But for advocates of the free-prisoner movement these releases were just the beginning. These "social justice" warriors wanted to use the coronavirus epidemic as an opportunity to release 11,715 Washington state inmates from the state's prisons. That number amounted to two-thirds of the Washington state prison population.

     Of the 11,715 criminals the social justice people hoped to see back on the street, 470 of them were violent criminals serving life sentences without parole and 5,272 of them were behind bars for crimes such as murder, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping and child molestation.

     In March 2020, lawyers representing Washington's get-out-of-prison movement filed a petition with the state supreme court asking the justices to authorize the early release of any prisoner who was more than fifty years old, had a underlying health condition or had less than 18 months to go on his or her sentence. If a prisoner met any one of these conditions he or she would be eligible to walk free.

     Based upon this prison release criteria, serial killer Gary Ridgway met the requirement for early release. A man who had murdered 71 girls would be set free to murder again. Also eligible for release was Spokane serial killer Robert Yates. Between 1975 and 1988 Yates murdered at least 13 women.

     The Washington Supreme Court petitioners demanded the release of  qualifying prisoners regardless of what they had done, or if they posed a serious risk to public safety. And this included convicted serial killers Ridgway and Yates.

     In late April 2020 the Washington Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, rejected the early prisoner release petition.

     According to Spokane prosecutor Larry Haskell, even if the supreme court had authorized the massive release of prisoners serial killers Ridgway and Yates would not have been set free. Nevertheless, the four radical justices who voted in favor of this reckless petition should have been removed from the bench, disbarred and denied their pensions. 

The Celina Cass Murder Case

     In July 2011 eleven-year-old Celina Cass lived in West Stewartstown, New Hampshire, a village of 800 in the northern part of the state not far from the Vermont/Canadian border. She resided in an apartment with her mother Louisa, her stepfather Wendell Noyes, her 13-year-old sister Kayla and 22-year-old Kevin Mullaney, the son of her mother's former boyfriend.

    Luisa Cass, on July 26, 2011, reported Celina missing. The mother last saw her daughter at nine the previous night before Celina and Kayla slept over at a friend's house. (Details of what happened that night and exactly when Celina went missing were sketchy.)

     Celina's disappearance triggered a massive search that involved 100 police officers, hundreds of searchers, police dogs and thousands of missing person posters. The FBI posted a $25,000 reward.

     At ten-thirty in the morning of August 1, 2011 a person spotted a body at the edge of the Connecticut River about a half mile from Celina Cass' apartment. The corpse, found at a popular fishing spot near a dam and a railroad trestle, turned out to be the missing girl. (For some reason emergency personnel did not pull the body out of the river until ten-thirty that night.)

     The medical examiner, without revealing the cause of death, ruled the case a criminal homicide. Following the autopsy a mortician cremated the corpse. 

     Within a few months following the murder Louisa Cass and Wendell Noyes, her 47-year-old husband, separated. In 2003 psychiatrists diagnosed Mr. Noyes with paranoid schizophrenia and committed him to a state mental facility. The diagnosis and commitment took place after he broke into the home of an ex-girlfriend and threatened to hurt her. After that commitment and release Mr. Noyes was in and out of several psychiatric wards.

     On January 10, 2012 police officers arrested Kevin Mullaney, the son of Louisa Cass' former boyfriend. The 22-year-old stood accused of a variety of crimes that included forging Lousia Cass' signature on a $250 check. Officers booked him into the Coos County Jail on charges of receiving stolen property, reckless conduct and possession of a weapon by a felon.

     A jury on June 12, 2012, found Kevin Mullaney guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to two to six years in prison.

     In December 2013 with the Celina Cass murder still unsolved the apartment she and her family resided in went up in flames. No one was hurt. (The cause and origin of that fire was not publicly revealed.) Louisa and her daughter Kayla moved in with Kevin Mullaney's father.

     Residents of the New Hampshire community were frustrated that the Celina Cass murder case remained unsolved. New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Jane Young told an Associated Press reporter in July 2015 that the case was still being actively investigated. However, Marcia Laro, the victim's paternal grandmother told that reporter that she hadn't spoken to an investigator for well over a year.

     The New Hampshire Attorney General's office on June 20, 2016 announced that detectives working on the Cass case had arrested Wendell Noyes, the victim's stepfather. Louisa Cass, the girl's mother, in speaking to a local television reporter, said, "I hope he rots."

    In February 2017 the state attorney general's office dropped the murder charge against the 54-year-old Wendell Noyes on the ground he was mentally unfit to stand trial. Instead Mr. Noyes was committed to the state psychiatric hospital for a minimum of five years. If at any point the patient's doctors considered him mentally fit the murder charge could be refiled. As of September 2024 Mr. Noyes had not been charged with murdering Celina Cass. With a long history of mental illness it was unlikely Wendell Noyes would ever be tried for this murder. Officials with the state when asked by reporters if Mr. Noyes was still a psychiatric patient did not respond.

The Gilbert Collar Police-Involved Shooting Case

     Gilbert Thomas Collar grew up in Wetumpka, Alabama, a town of 6,000 within the Montgomery metropolitan area in the central part of the state. The 135-pound, 5-foot-7 high school wrestling star was enrolled at the University of South Alabama, a 15,000-student university located in Mobile, Alabama. Collar, a social sciences major, wanted to become a high school teacher and wrestling coach.

     A university police officer named Trevis Austin, at 1:23 in the morning of Saturday, October 6, 2012, heard someone banging loudly on one of the campus police station's windows. Upon investigation of this noise the officer encountered Gilbert Collar, nude and crouched into a fighting stance. The muscular young man, who challenged the officer to a fight, obviously appeared to be out of his mind. When Gilbert Collar made an aggressive move toward Trevis Austin the officer drew his weapon, backed-off and warned the threatening 18-year-old to settle down. Collar rushed toward the campus cop several times, and each time the retreating officer ordered the man to stop and desist. The out of control student took a knee, rose and charged the officer again. This time officer Austin shot the young man once in the chest. The attacking freshman stumbled, regained his footing, rushed toward the officer again, then collapsed and died.

     University police officer Trevis Austin was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation conducted by the Mobile County District Attorney's Office and the local sheriff's department. An important aspect of the inquiry involved reviewing the surveillance camera footage of the bizarre confrontation. Some of the questions to be answered included whether or not the student and the officer who shot him knew each other. Investigators also wanted to determine if Mr. Collar had a  history of mental illness and/or drug use. The autopsy and toxicological would answer the question of drugs.

     Jeff Glass, Gilbert Collar's high school wrestling coach told a reporter that "He [Collar] was a kind soul. He was never aggressive to anyone off the mat. He was a 'yes sir, no sir' kind of guy." Chis Estes, an 18-year-old who grew up with Collar reportedly said, "Gil was a very 'chill' guy, mellow and easy-going. That's why I don't understand the story that he attacked the cop."

     According to the toxicology report Gilbert Collar had gotten high on a laboratory drug that mimics the effects of LSD. He had taken the drug at the BayFest music concert on the night of the deadly encounter. Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran, at a press conference, announced that the student had assaulted others prior to his death.

     In 2013 a grand jury sitting in Mobile County cleared officer Trevis Austin of criminal wrongdoing in the shooting.

     In the wake of the grand jury no bill, members of Gilbert Collar's family brought a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against former officer Austin and the university. In 2015, pursuant to that suit, former Tallahassee police chief Melvin Tucker, on behalf of the plaintiff, rendered an expert opinion regarding whether the officer's use of deadly force in the case was appropriate.

     In his report, made public in May 2015, Mr. Tucker concluded that officer Austin had used excessive force in violation of his department's deadly force policy. Melvin Tucker wrote that the officer should either have retreated or used non-lethal means to subdue the student.

     Mr. Tucker noted in his report that over the past 131 years only three police officers in the state of Alabama had been killed by an unarmed assailant. The use of force expert wrote that in 2012 not a single police officer in the United States had died as a result of being disarmed by an arrestee.

     This was one of those difficult cases that no matter how it was resolved it won't satisfy anyone. From the campus police officer's point of view he was confronted by an aggressive, muscular young man who was apparently out of his mind and intent on engaging him in a wrestling match. For all the officer knew he was dealing with a drug-crazed man with supernatural strength. (The officer was 5-foot-eleven and the student 5-foot-seven.) Had these two gotten into hand-to-hand combat there was a possibility that the attacker could have ended up with the officer's gun. Even if the officer had been equipped with a taser device there was no guarantee it would have subdued this aggressive, out-of-control subject, particularly with the LSD type drug in his system.

     Looking at this case through the eyes of Gilbert Collar's friends and relatives it's easy to understand why they had questions regarding this student's sudden and violent death. His mother Bonnie said this to a reporter: "Freshmen kids do stupid things, and campus police should be equipped to handle activity like that without having to use lethal force." Although Gilbert Collar was not a kid, college freshmen are known to do stupid things. But taking off your clothes in the middle of the night and without provocation or notice attacking a police officer goes beyond youthful stupidity.