In pursuit of further fuckage...
William Gerber, serving a lifetime prison sentence for making terrorist
threats, illegally discharging a firearm, and using narcotics, appealed a
court's decision that he did not have the right to mail his semen to his
wife. A federal appeals court has now overturned that ruling and will
allow Gerber to artificially enseminate the 46-year-old woman. The
majority opinion stated that the "right to procreate survives
incarceration". Dissenting Judge Barry G. Silverman said the court
"does not accept the fact that there are certain downsides to being confined in
prison".
Jeffrey J. Harris, 39, was upset that one of his sons was getting more
plays than the other in their homecoming American football game in
Clearwater, Florida. At halftime, "the coach was trying to bring the
guys inside [the locker room] with the team. And the parent said 'I want
to talk to them and nobody tells them what to do but me'", according
to assistant principal Kevin Gordon. Gordon told Harris he could take the
boys home but asked that they change clothes in the locker room or leave
in their football gear. The 6-foot-1, 240-pound Harris refused. All eyes
were on the drama by the time Harris was ordering his sons to remove their
trousers.
When Harris "took a fighting stance" in response to police
officers' efforts to defuse the situation, officers and school police
subdued him with pepper spray. The boys, both starting players, sat out
the rest of the game, which turned around and saw the opposing team
win.
The Chatanoogan reports that Tennessee's James Lusk Jr. was angry
at his estranged wife and son for not attending his baptism at the
Community of Christ Church. According to the younger Lusk, this is why
James attacked his wife with a claw hammer in front of her
seventh-grade class at Brown Middle School. After the attack, he visited a
church friend and asked the man to drive him to the police station.
Speaking to the police hours after the attack, "he was making
statments about doing further harm to her when he did not know if she was
dead or alive" said Judge Richard Holcomb.
James said he hid the hammer under his shirt and had a student knock on
Donna Michelle Lusk's locked classroom door. He followed the student into
the room, and Donna told her students to "run, run" and get the
principal. Her injuries included a brain hemorrhage. James had also gone
to his son's work site to, in the younger Lusk's words, "beat his
brains out", but 20-year-old James Harold Lusk was working
elsewhere.
In the interest of fairness, I present some comments
made by someoen who has satisfied me that (s)he is in a
position of knowledge concerning the story. The reader should be able to
see (at least a little bit) from these comments why I have not taken my
informant's vacuous threats of legal action seriously.
My informant, to whom I shall refer as TAKE THAT OFF OF
THERE,......NOW!!!!, disagrees with the younger Lusk as quoted, saying
that his father was not upset because the family members didn't attend the
baptism but rather because he didn't want a divorce and his wife did.
TAKE THAT OFF OF THERE,......NOW!!!! adds the additional information that,
when with the church friend, Lusk went to other places before the police
station. Finally, TAKE THAT OFF OF THERE,......NOW!!!! disagrees again
with the accused's son, explaining that Lusk wasn't going to 'beat his
brains out' but had planned to shoot him.
In contrast, Pyotr V. Shmelev said he didn't plan to kill his wife but
acted in the heat of passion. After he argued with his wife, Svetlana
Pedash, about such issues as clothes on the bathroom floor, she and their
four-year-old daughter left the Eden Prairie, Minnesota, apartment. The
argument continued when all three returned home. This time Pedash said
she had been with another man. So he stabbed her several times. He
bought a saw the next day and cut up the body while his daughter slept.
He took the girl with him when he drove to Missouri to get rid of the body
parts. However, he "just couldn't" dump the head, so he kept it
in the trunk, where police found it about two weeks later.
Shmelev said he didn't kill himself because of what his daughter would
find on waking up.
The Boston Globe reports that single mother Jarcente Poisson
found her youngest child, Shalena Robinson, unresponsive after being
beaten and strangled while in the care of her boyfriend, Bobby Robinson.
Robinson said he would come to the hospital but never did. The child died
three days later. Robinson is accused of the first-degree murder of his
own niece - Poisson split up with Shalena's father shortly after her
birth. She started going out with her ex's brother, Bobby, shortly after
his release from prison.
Community members who helped feed and clothe Poisson's children noticed
bruises on the mother's face, but many said she could have done little to
prevent the death. One said "She was just a little lost",
another " ;She just trusted the wrong person". Neighbours said
Poisson's other daughter, aged 9, didn't go home when Robinson was alone
there.
And in news of other troubled relationships, Nimpha Orlino disapproved of her boyfriend's womanising, so she threw acid in his face, according to police in Caloocan City in the Philippines. Neighbours took the 49-year-old man to hospital, where Orlino threw more acid in his face. The 43-year-old Orlino is in police custody pending an investigation, according to the Philippine Star.
In Belton, Missouri, Hector Robles held his girlfriend chained up in his apartment for four days, beating her when she tried to escape. He then told her to kill herself, providing her with sleeping pills. The 20-year-old woman said she refused to take them. She was found when police came to the apartment to arrest him for violating his probation in Puerto Rico.
Musa Nyamonde claims to be divorcing his wife because her son's love life prevents him from getting to sleep. The Tanzanian man and his wife sleep in the sitting room, having given up their bed for the young man and the girlfriends he brings home, according to the Kasheshe weekly newspaper. Nyamonde added "When I ask for sex from my wife after the arousal, she refuses, saying that since we are sleeping in the sitting room the chances of being caught in the act are high".
On Thursday, Australia's Katherine Mary Knight, 45, was sentenced to life
in prison for stabbing ex-lover John Price at least 37 times, skinning his
corpse, and serving it to his son and daughter. Knight, a 45-year-old
slaughterhouse worker, pleaded guilty but said she couldn't remember what
happened in the house. Justice Barry O'Keefe said there would be plenty
of chances for her to use her skills in the prison system.
Prosecutor Mark Macadam claimed Knight had earlier told her brother that
she would murder Price and claim she was insane. Despite death threats
from Knight, Price chose to continue the relationship.
An update on James Cripps (see 4 November's News Clippings), whose spur-of-the-moment Las Vegas marriage upset his girlfriend back in England: although his girlfriend dumped him as a result of the incident, he pointed out that he was "too drunk to consummate" his marriage with the Australian woman he had just met.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Jacquess Dyer Patton-Ugan was arrested after one of her grandsons heard people screaming in her basement. The grandchildren, aged 10 and 12, also "had seen their grandmother having sex with people other than their grandfather", according to police. Patton-Ugan is suspected of using her web site to solicit business for her basement bonddage den. The site asks visitors to "explore the erotic world of controlled domination" safely in "Madame Venus Du Plaisir's Paradise". Posing as a potential customer, an undercover officer was led to the "dungeon", whereupon officers stormed the home and arrested her and her husband for keeping a house of prostitution. Officers also took "an extensive array of sexual devices and bondage contraptions" and 63 whips as evidence.
We don't have names for any of the participants in this, but neither do Reuters. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, a man dressed in a Santa suit was handing out candy to motorists who were stopped at a traffic light. Then, he pulled a revolver from his black Santa belt and shot a woman who was entering her car nearby. A police spokeswoman said the incident did not appear to be a botched robbery. She offered no other motive or explanation for the shooting, but local media reported that the deed may have had to do with a paternity suit. The Santa suit, including beard and gloves, was recovered by police, and a sketch of the man has been produced.
In Mumias, Kenya, Peter Amalembiye showed up to his wedding to find two entourages and two women decked out as brides. In addition to his intended bride, Lilian Anyango, former girlfriend Esther Atieno showed up, and her supporters raised objections during the wedding, one of them shouting out "Either Amalembiye marries Atieno or there will be no wedding at the [Shibale] church". The groom-to-be responded by hitting the man with a chair. The ensuing fight ended when police intervened.
London's Richard Cooper, 40, believed his wife was having an affair, so he placed a tape recorder under a table at her house - they had decided to live apart - in order to get proof. He later came home in a rage and felt he didn't need to hear the tape. He was sure she had cheated on him. It has emerged that he forgot that the machine was still recording. The tape features the sounds of Cooper strangling his wife, Teresa, and shouting "You are the weakest link! Goodbye", a reference to a popular quiz programme. After Judge Andrew Patience's courtroom heard the tape, Cooper was sentenced to life in prison.
The unusual part isn't that 41-year-old Gail Bergman stabbed live-in boyfriend Warren Frendell during an argument after the pair had been drinking. Nor is it that she used two small paring knives, whose 2-inch blades she left completely buried in Frendell's buttocks. Fairbanks, Alaska, Detective Aaron Ring said Frendell reported on the knives "Yeah, she's picked them up all the time; she's just never put them in" that location. The funny part is Bergman's story. She claims the naked Frendell showed up on the doorstep with the knives already inserted. When Ring pointed out that the knives matched Bergman's set, she said "I've been asking him where those knives have been for the last three weeks", he reported. After Bergman pulled the knives out, Frendell rang emergency services from a neighbour's home, then went back home to wait for an ambulance.
In Ottawa, Ohio, Marvin Martin II explained that he didn't shoot at Linda
Breckler and fatally shoot her son, 15-year-old Charles, while the boy was
sleeping on the sofa at his sister's house. The sister had been married
to Martin for under two years, but that was long enough for a custody
dispute to be born. Police believe such factors were Martin's motive.
Martin, on the other hand, told Deputy Harry Berger that one of his
three clones committed the crimes. Martin claimed he was cloned while in
the army and that he and the clones are part of a death squad. Deputy
Mark Brecht gave similar testimony. A judge denied defence attorney Bill
Kluge's motion to prohibit references to cloning and the military. So
Kluge suggested that Martin was fooling around when he made the
statements.
And lastly we have the death of Cynthia Ganss, whose ex-husband Donald stabbed her to death. Quela D'Ambrosio, 15, said she heard her aunt scream for help. Going outside, she saw Ganss's body hanging out of the car. She said "She (still) had her seat belt on. My uncle came in ... he had a bloody knife, and I asked him 'What happened?' He goes 'Nothing'." Donald didn't get away, as he fell into a diabetic coma after the incident.
Karen Lee Huster of Hillsboro, Oregon, was found guilty of shooting her
nine-year-old daughter and cutting up the corpse, then scattering the
pieces from a whale-watching boat. Huster hid successfully for months,
but someone discovered that her freezer contained the corpose of the man
with whom she was sharing a Los Angeles apartment. Huster told police
that he died of a heart attack and she cut him up so authorities wouldn't
discover she was wanted in Oregon. The man's head was found in a crock
pot, with garlic and curry powder to cover the smell.
Judge Alan Bonebreak rejected the 42-year-old's insanity defence. She
will be sentenced tomorrow.
The Boston Herald reports on Christopher Chamberlain, a Brockton, Massachusetts, man who became upset when ex-girlfriend (and the mother of his child) Jamie Davidson told his under-age drinking buddies to leave her house, where he had lived for five years. So he took the leash of Davidson's mother (Sharon)'s poodle and whipped the dog against the deck, the side of the house, and Sharon's head. The dog's neck was broken. Chamberlain led police on a chase in his red Camaro and was caught when he jumped out of the car and tried to flee on foot. He told police Jamie Davidson was "just mad because I killed her (expletive) dog". She said "He's never done anything like that before".
An Independence, Missouri, 15-year-old was shot in the chest in what appears to be an argument over a Nintendo video game which he was accused of losing or hiding from his brother. After being shot, apparently by his older brother, he is recovering but has refused to co-operate in the investigation. Two other boys were in the home but said they didn't know how the shooting occurred or who performed it. Independence Police Sgt. Doug Poole said the gun was not found at the scene. As a result of the investigation, the house was condemned due to unsanitary conditions and an injured cat and an elderly invalid unrelated to the family were removed from the home.
Two Martville, New York, brothers got out their shotguns in an argument over a deal they made with each other. William Paige, 32, agreed to trade his brother Randy a chainsaw for a small motorcycle. Each brother then discovered that the item he was to receive didn't work. William shot the motorcycle. Randy got out his own gun, and several shots were fired as the two stood in the driveway. The brothers' stories differ as to who shot what, but we do know that William was non-critically shot in the face and arm. The pair had been drinking beer all morning.
A jury found Belgium's Andras Pandy, 74, and his daughter Agnes, 44,
guilty of killing six of his family members and dissolving the corpses in
Cleanest drain cleaner, despite his lawyer's insistence that there can be
no conviction without bodies. Pandy, a pastor, insisted that his wives,
sons, and step-daughters are still alive and that he has contact with them
"through angels". Agnes's lawyer, Walter Muls, said she was under the
spell of her father, who had raped her.
Police started searching for human remains at Pandy's homes in 1997, but
at that time they only found kneecaps and other body parts which didn't
belong to a family member.
Elizabeth J. Holt, 23, of Billings, Montana, was annoyed that her boyfriend was washing the dishes too slowly, so she stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife. She claimed that he was making her late to visit her parents. But Holt's call to emergency services on the bleeding James S. Demontiney's behalf didn't make her visit to her parents occur any more quickly.
Compulsive gambler Raymond Koval, 65, of Elm Grove, Milwaukee, robbed a bank after he depleted his life savings. His wife Marcia said he then bragged that "I can rob banks, and you can't testify against me because you are my wife". Seven months later, after she filed for divorce, he shot her in the shoulder with the same distinctive blue gun used in the bank robbery. He was jailed for the shooting in November, but the charge of armed bank robbery was delayed due to a misunderstanding of the law... Marcia could have testified against Raymond while married to him, but she could not have been compelled to do so.
Lanesboro, Minnesota, police chief John Tuchek reported a fire downtown. He appeared in court on Friday to face charges that he himself started the blaze, which destroyed two historic buildings. Tuchek admitted to setting fire to some cardobard in an alley behind the apartment where his ex-girlfriend and her baby lived. He explained that he hoped to put out the fire or show up as firefighters arrived, for he "wanted to do something that would make (her) proud of him" and cause her to take him back. Fed by natural gas, the fire had grown more quickly than Tuchek expected.
The Arizona Republic reports that a Scottsdale man was convicted for the murder of his mother. Dean Glick agreed to give escort Soleadad Villalpando an advance payment of $1,500 on top of her agency's $350 fee. When his 82-year-old mother, Juanita, refused to let him use her credit card to make these payments, he began to beat her. Police, summoned by Villalpando and her driver, entered the elderly woman's home and found her just before she died. Dean's defence lawyer said that his client perhaps broke Juanita's ribs and sternum when trying to use CPR to revive her.
In Garfield, Pennsylvania, Kenneth Hairston was charged with forcing his step-daughter to have sex with him repeatedly over a period of several years. He was only arrested after he went to the 22-year-old woman's apartment and ordered her boyfriend to leave. In court recently, Hairston explained that he didn't want his wife and son to suffer the embarrassment of seeing his rape trial. Which is why he killed them with a sledgehammer prior to his trial. The bodies were found by firefighters who were extinguishing a blaze at Hairston's home.
The Tampa Tribune reported that two brothers argued after one attacked the other with a rubber band-powered paper aeroplane, causing him to spill his coffee. Emmett Carter, 60, cursed at his brother when hot coffee spilled on his hand, so Daniel, 39, hit him, according to third brother John. The fight ended when Emmett stabbed Daniel in the chest with a paring knife, killing him. Emmett was arrested when deputies arrived.
A New York City couple starved their daughter, Ice. Joseph and Silva
Swinton, both vegans, decided to feed the girl only ground nuts, fruit
juices, herbal tea, beans, cod liver oil, and flax seed oil. The
16-month-old was half the normal weight of a child her age when
authorities found her and took her to hospital, where she was determined
to look like a two- to three-month-old and suffer from rickets, a
distended abdomen, developmental problems, and a lung disorder caused by
malnutrition.
In November, doctors had told the couple their baby was on the brink of
death. They face up to seven years in prison if convicted of the charges.
The state asked that their supervised visits with Ice be stopped after
Joseph said he thought the girl was getting "chubby".
And finally, in Apison, Texas, college student Peter Bullington, 24, allegedly shot and killed his parents and sister after what Sheriff John Cupp said Bullington called "a family discussion about his spending on the family's credit cards", whose credit lines he had exhausted. Bullington said "He went upstairs and got his father's gun, came back downstairs, and shot them [multiple times] in the kitchen area". Bullington is a psychology student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Reed Gulley, 21, of Denver, Colorado, was sentenced to 31 years in prison for beating his pregnant, 19-year-old girlfriend so badly that police thought she had been stabbed. The beating occurred the day after Gulley completed a jail term for domestic violence against the woman, Christina Collins. Gulley tore her teeth out, broke her jaw and eye socket, nearly tore off her ear, and caused her severe brain injury. He told police that Collins hurt herself when she fell and hit her head on a coffee table.
Ohio's Toledo Blade tells us of convicted rapist Edward Brewer, who raped a Providence Hospital patient with cerebral palsy four months before she died of cancer. He is suing the hospital due to its "inadequate security in protecting visitors as well as their patients". Without the hospital's negligence, he wouldn't have raped the 44-year-old woman and wouldn't now be dealing with "pain and suffering". He is asking for $2 million in damages.
In an update on a January item, Pennsylvania's Renee Layne has now given birth to her 14th child. She and her husband Frank agreed to give the child up for adoption. After allegations surfaced that the couple sold their teenaged son for $300 on the Internet, they admitted to neglecting six others too, who were taken away. Over the years, they have lost or given away custody of all their children.
The Washington Post reports on a 19-month-old girl who died after being
locked in her family's van in Manassas, Washington, for seven hours while
the temperature inside rose to over 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Walking by, a
neighbour noticed the girl in the van and called police. Her father,
Kevin Kelly, found out she was dead when he brought pizza home for dinner.
In February, Kelly left his three-year-old son in a video store. When
police found Kelly that time, he was unaware that anything was wrong.
Police referred this case to the Department of Social Services, but
workers never contacted the family. A neighbour said she warned the famly
about leaving children in cars, having seen it happen twice.
In Waiuku, New Zealand, seven-year-old Yona Hou went missing at 7:00pm and her mother, Susan, couldn't find her. Neither could her grandmother or Susan's husband. So the two women drove around the streets - in vain - then called in the police, the girl's teachers, and 30 local volunteers. Police found her at 1:00am, asleep in the back of the family's van, which her mother drove in the search. Susan said she just didn't see her daughter there.
An unnamed 31-year-old school teacher from Frosinone, Italy, took out a bank loan worth about UKP 15,000 and used the equivalent of UKP 5,000 in savings to pay a clairvoyant to tell her if her husband was involved in an extramarital affair. According to the couple's lawyer, Gianfranco Barrella, her husband was not happy when he was informed that his wife had asked the bank for a loan. The husband, who insists "I never cheated on her", is divorcing her for ruining him financially. The clairvoyant cannot be located, according to Il Nuovo.
"But I couldn't eat a whole one..."
Melissa Wright, a 26-year-old woman from Coosada, Alabama, was charged
with attempted murder after she placed her 14-month-old daughter in a hot
oven. The child's father, Robert Lynn Smith, came into the kitchen when
he heard crying. He removed the girl from the oven, into which Wright
then said the baby had fallen. The story Wright reportedly told
authorities is that she had heard voices that suggested this course of
action. Diane Black, spokeswoman for the Children's Hospital in
Birmingham, said the child is listed in guarded condition, with
third-degree burns. Wright may be in jail a long time, Sheriff Bill
Franklin said.
Also in Alabama, an Aliceville woman was upset at her boyfriend, so she attacked him with a utility knife. Kimberly King, 26, is being charged with attempted murder after cutting off nearly all of Rodney Outlaw's buttocks and leaving him on a rural road. Outlaw regained consciousness and drove about nine miles to the nearest home to summon help. Police believe King acted alone, although the victim did not tell police what happened in detail; as District Attorney Chris McCool said, "With the trauma of the attack, how do you talk about that?" As she was being arrested, King objected "This ain't right".
Aimee Lee Weiss, a Tamarac, Florida, teenager who faces charges that she killed her newborn son, put his body in a backpack, and dumped the body in a canal, gave birth to a baby girl last week. Her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, and during her second, police say, she asked friends to jump on her belly to cause a miscarriage. Weiss's stepmother, Cherylann Weiss, said Aimee used to be in denial but would now make an excellent mother. She retains custody of the premature girl. Stay tuned...
Take this one for what it's worth, given that no names have been released. In dead baby news this time, a four-month-old boy died when his parents fought over him during an argument. The Daveyton, South Africa, parents allegedly began a tug-of-war when the woman threatened to leave the man. North Rand police spokesperson Captain Sophie Mayisela said the father allegedly grabbed his son by the neck and the mother gripped the child's body. The mother went to the nearest police station when she realised that not all was right with her son.
Steven Schuryard, 33, called himself a "full-fledged pedophile" on his Web site - perfectly legal. "This guy is smart enough to know that he has freedom of speech", said agent Al Danna of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But he was not clever when Temple Terrace police confronted him about apparently threatening emails he sent to his family. Appearing with a gun tucked in the waistband of his trousers, he threatened the police and then told them he had child pornography on his computer, police said. "He wasn't lying" about the homemade photos, said police Captain Tracy Mishler. Dozens of children have been interviewed, and the charges are adding up. And Schurgard now calls his Web site "all a big joke".
Giovanna Mata, 21, of Fullerton, California, was allegedly kept chained to her bed by her parents. David Mata, 53, and wife Guadalupe, 51, were arrested for false imprisonment, assault and battery, and making criminal threats. They were trying to prevent Giovanna from going out with a married man. Lt. Danny Becerra said the couple told police that they used 30-pound chains and two large gate locks to keep her from seeing her boyfriend.
Omaha, Nebraska, police found a 21-month-old girl malnourished and with
much of her nose eaten away by infection. Police Lt. Doug Chonis said
Kevin J. Flynn, 48 and Sally A. Flynn, 31, are thought to have kept their
daughter alone with the lights turned off most of the time. The girl had
been in foster care since birth, when drugs were found in her system and
Sally was deemed "homeless and erratic", but was returned to her
parents by a judge six months ago. Since then, she lost a third of her
weight, and lanugo hair had grown on her sagging skin.
The Flynns, who denied the allegations, have been investigated for child
neglect before, and three of their eight children are no longer under
their care.
Tarajee Shaheer Maynor, 25, of Detroit, left her children, ages three and 18 months, in her car for 3.5 hours. While Adonnis unbuckled his younger sister from her car seat and both pressed their faces against the windows, Tarajee was having her hair styled. When she returned to the vehicle, both children were dead. "We treat animals better than that", said Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas. When Tarajee returned to the car, she drove around for three hours before going to the police, during which time police say she concocted a story about being abducted, raped, and then returned to the parking lot.
In another child death, this one in St. Paul, Minnesota, Scott Tomlinson, 16, killed his 13-year-old sister as the pair argued over the TV remote control. He wanted to watch 'The Simpsons' and she didn't, he testified. He claims he didn't strangle Megan on purpose but merely put his arm around her throat until she went limp. He said he put the body in a sleeping bag in a shed behind the family home, where police found her. Scott's attorney, Anthony Torres, said, the boy's parents realise they could have handled their son's depression and hyperactivity better.
Shortly after Leo D. Youngblood, 26, of Muncie, Indiana, obtained a marriage licence, he was charged with bigamy. Wife Michelle found out about her husband's new wife, Rebecca J. Copley, in the course of looking through the listing of marriage licences in the newspaper. She reported his second marriage to the police.
When Albuquerque, New Mexico, police raided the crack house of Andrew Griego and Barbara Lopez, they found a loaded .410 calibre Derringer pistol on a bed next to unattended children, a one-year-old and an eight-month-old child. Police noted that the house had no running water, an ample supply of dog faeces, as well as the crack cocaine. Griego mentioned to police that his five-foot-long python was loose in the house and he hadn't been able to find it.
A Berlin man had been living in an apartment with his dead father for over
a year when neighbours reported a burning smell and firemen found the
corpse on the sofa. The unemployed son, 42, had worried that he would be
kicked out of the apartment, which was rented in his father's name, if he
told anyone of the death. Petra Volk, spokeswoman for the Wiesbaden
police, said "The flat was in a mess, with rubbish and empty bottles
everywhere... It's incredible to think of them together like that".
And, from 24 June,
Linda Akin, 28, is accused of sitting on her mother's back until she died.
During an argument, Catherine Akin was smothered by her 350-pound
daughter, who has a history of psychological problems, according to
Bastrop County, Texas, sheriff's Chief Deputy Ronnie Duncan.
The younger Akin rang 911 twice on the day of the death, announcing that
she was a member of the CIA and that she had caught the person who (she
claimed) had kidnapped her; when deputies arrived, Linda showed them the
body.
The Winnipeg Sun reports that a parole board told Winnipeg authorities that a man had fled there from British Columbia after two dogs were found dead near his home, one hanging in the man's garage and one in a ditch. DNA tests showed that the man had had sex with the dogs, who were found wearing bras and knickers. Staff Sgt. Booyd Campbell of the sex crimes unit said that, while the unit is keeping an eye on the man, who fled with permission and whose name is not being released, he fears "this is an escalating offence. Hopefully we are wrong but there is enough concern".
In Chicago, a seven-year-old boy called down to Andy Orellana, 13, from a
second-storey window, saying he had been locked in a pantry for two days
and wanted to jump. Orellana had the boy promise not to jump and says he
planned to tell his uncle of the situation. The boy, who had been using
the window as his toilet, did jump, escaping Cynarae Colbert, 33, and
Chris Rodriguez, 29. Jose Lavoy, 38, who lives on the first floor of the
building, said he had seen the child only when the boy moved in two years
ago - when Colbert and Rodriguez became his "informal guardians". The
child's parentage and first name are unknown. He didn't attend school.
Angel Resto, one of the workers called in to clean the unit after the
boy's escape, said of Colbert and Rodriguez's flat, "All over the place
there is garbage stacked as tall as me".
A Houston man, 36, was looking for people to give him punishment when he
made contact with Roger Van, 55, online. The first two days of torture in
the basement of Van's Wayne, Nebraska, flower shop went well well enough,
but he then decided he wanted to leave. He testified in court that Van
then reminded him of emails in which he told Van to punish him more
severely if he "freaked out" and wanted to leave. Flower shop employee
Jerry Marshall, 36, helped the Texas man escape after nine days.
The man claimed he was branded with the letter 'w' on the back of one of
his thighs and that Van injected saline solution in his groin area and
said he would conduct experiments on him. County prosecutor Chris
Connolly introduced the torture table, implements, and a collar with the
word 'slave' on it as evidence. But the torture was deemed consensual.
In a story from 22 July, police in Keizer, Oregon, stopped a car tightly packed with two adults and eight children on their way to a barbecue. They asked the pair of adults to open the trunk, as a motorist had alerted officers after seeing what looked like a child in the car's trunk at a supermarket. The trunk's lock was damaged, but the couple eventually got it open, to reveal four more children.
A Waterville, Maine, woman has been charged with a different kind of child endangerment. The unnamed woman's 13-year-old daughter and the daughter's 14-year-old friend had met two men on the Internet, so this helpful mother dropped both girls off at the bus station, where the men were waiting. She knew they were going to a motel, said Detective William Baker. Knowing the 14-year-old was forbidden from seeing the men, the woman lied about the girls' whereabouts when the girl's worried mother called her. The men, Kenya D. Magnum and Anthony A. Adams, both from Durham, North Carolina, are charged with gross sexual assault, and the 13-year-old's mother is charged with a misdemeanour.
Kentucky's Cherie Glover said yesterday that she and her husband, Chris
Harmon, had been drinking for several hours when he told her that her
seven-year-old son wasn't breathing. It was revealed later that Harmon
had fed the boy vodka through a medical feeding tube, shortly after the
couple stopped receiving welfare money for a medicine that allows the boy
to sleep. When the child was admitted to Kosair Children's Hospital, he
had a blood-alcohol level of .59 - a level that, according to standard
formulas, a 150-pound adult male could achieve by drinking 25 one-ounce
shots of 96-proof liquor in an hour. His condition has not been released.
Neighbor Patrick Stokell said the couple wanted to adopt another
child.
In another form of his-and-hers drink-related fun, Elko County, Nevada,
Sheriff's Deputy Sean Murphy pulled a man over for driving while
intoxicated. ABC News reports that Murphy was nearly clipped by another
car after dealing with the man. The second car was driven by the first
driver's wife. She too was drunk. Murphy felt that he needed to add that
the pair were booked into separate cells at the county jail.
The Longview [Texas] News-Journal reports on a woman who was arrested for punching and scratching her husband. Suzanne Editha Edwards, 34, might have been pleased that her husband posted $1000 in bail, but she still felt the need to punch her husband, who was waiting for her. She hit him before even leaving the courthouse. With her bail increased to $10,000, she was released later in the day without incident. Meanwhile, her husband is scheduled to stand trial for allegedly beating Edwards and then trying to run over a police officer who was trying to arrest him.
In Tennessee, Illinois, Leroy McClure's estranged wife came home to find a hole in her driveway, nine feet long, three feet wide, and four feet deep. McClure claimed he dug the hole in a search for damaged water pipes, but authorities said they couldn't find any pipes. He was charged with disorderly conduct and violating a protection order after he dug another grave-shaped hole in his soon-to-be-ex-wife's driveway.
In Fowltown, Georgia, Melissa Ferguson, 41, was arrested on charges of concealing a death after her children, Jaban Taylor and Tashiba Hamilton, called emergency services to report that they found a plastic-wrapped corpse when they were looking for something in the chest freezer to cook for lunch. The children called Ferguson at work, whereupon she came home and told them that someone else must have put a newborn girl's body in her freezer. She later told investigators that it was she who did so 18 months ago. The body's DNA and cause of death are being examined.
Following up on an unresolved complaint about Charles and Myra Foreman's
dog running wild, a Hargis, Louisiana, deputy asked to speak with Charles
after Myra, 51, said to keep the dog. Myra explained that her husband was
"in the house, but he wasn't there", said Chief Deputy Preston Mosley.
Myra showed him to the bedroom, where Charles Foreman's body had been for
about a month. After his death, which police believe to have been of
natural causes, Charles Foreman received baths from his wife, who also
continued sleeping next to him in the non-air-conditioned home. She said
she was protecting him from the aliens in the house.
While Myra had gone to a local funeral home to make arrangements for the
body, it was after working hours, and she didn't return the next day.
She explains that she didn't bury him because "the face of the devil" came
over him when she tried.
Elsewhere in Italy, a man went to the Boscotrecase records office to register his son as 'Varenne Giampaolo'. When the man's wife got out of hospital, she tried to change the child's name to 'Christian'. Since that wasn't allowed, she went to court, according to Roma newspaper. An official at the office told Reuters "He said his wife agreed" to the names, those of an acclaimed racehorse and his jockey, respectively. The child is now a month old.
The story of Tanya Meyers and John Stackokus was all over the news.
After this couple split up, she wanted an abortion. He went to court to
prevent it but had his petition denied. Meyers had an apparently
spontaneous miscarriage before Stackokus's appeal could be heard. At the
height of their battle, Meyers sought a protection from abuse order
because Stackokus supposedly threatened her.
Well, now that that issue is behind them, the two are a couple again,
according to family members such as Betty Lambert, Meyers's grandmother.
Their decision to spend some time on holiday together did not sit well
with the family.
The Free Lance-Star reports that Stafford County, Virginia, deputy D.M. Stout Jr. saw an out-of-state car parked at a shopping centre at night. He ran a computer check on it and discovered that it had been stolen in Maryland. The thief was Maryland's Homas William Cauffman, 52, who explained to the deputy that he had decided to visit his girlfriend, who was in Virginia's Rappahannock Regional Jail. In order to get there, he needed a car.
A Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, man, Randy Johnston, was spinning a loaded gun on his finger when a bullet from it hit his girlfriend, Brandy Sager, in the abdomen. While she was being tended to, he began to explain to Detective Scott Chichy how the gun had gone off. Although Chichy had told him not to touch it, the 20-year-old ejected the bullet clip from the weapon, said it was safe, pointed it at the bedroom mattress, and fired. The round remaining in the chamber put a hole in the mattress, surprising Johnston. Police said the gun had been reported stolen.
Illinois's Lynn Stuckey, 34, was in court on Tuesday to argue that she should be allowed to continue breastfeeding her son. Judge Ann Einhorn was not persuaded, and further court dates were set. The boy, age 8, had already been placed in foster care for a time after it came to light that he was still nursing. Although the single mother is unsure whether she still produces milk, she lets her son nurse once every 10 days or so, she said. Last month, Stuckey appeared on television, where footage of the boy suckling was shown.
The Arizona Republic reports on Anndreah Robertson, a baby whose
mother admitted to having used cocaine on the morning of the delivery.
The child, weighing 5.75 pounds, was released into her mother's care after
the cocaine had cleared the baby's system and her condition had improved.
Despite warnings, both her mother, Demitres Lashoun Robertson, 23, and
grandmother, Lillian Ann Butler, 44, smoked crack each day in their small
Phoenix apartment. Anndreah weighed a little over four pounds when she
died, 10 days old.
Nine months after the child's death, Robertson and Butler have now been
arrested. Robertson, nine months pregnant, was easy to find, as she was
already in custody on a prostitution charge. Her two other children, ages
one and two - one of them born with cocaine in his system - were turned
over to Child Protective Services.
S.A. Balderson, 81, of Richmond County, Virginia, was ordered to get counselling after recently being convicted of having sex with cows in a Westmoreland County pasture. In response to complaints about Balderson's activities in the pasture, detective Merile Jones had gone to the field with a video camera; the tape, in which Balderson goes from cow to cow while wearing only a t-shirt, shoes, and sunglasses, was shown in court by attorney Peggy Garland. The police said Balderson had been to the same pasture many times in the past. Regarding the issue of sentencing, Garland said "What do you do with an 80-something-year-old man who would do something like this?"
California's Marcello Kendall was born with his 18-year-old mother's
heroin addiction. He spent six weeks in an intensive care nursery,
receiving morphine injections at first and gradually gaining strength
under the care of nurses and volunteers. As the child's father was also a
drug addict (in his mother's words) and drug paraphernalia was visible in
a photograph Marcello's mother had left in his crib, the child was
released into the care of his grandmother, 48-year-old Bretta Kendall, who
had visited him twice in the nursery.
Two weeks later, Bretta left Marcello in her car while she worked her
shift at a warehouse. She told police she thought she had dropped him off
with a child minder. The Alameda County district attorney's office is
considering whether to charge her in connection with the death. "This was
our baby" said one nurse, and "his death just hit us in the gut".
The Gainesville Sun reports on Florida's Dr. Joseph James Warner,
49, whose wife, Debra, called the police to report that he had punched her
in the face and thrown her against a glass display case. Debra said the
body parts Warner kept in the house had become a source of more and more
arguments. She had insisted that her 12-year-old son's room not contain
any body parts, but he still encountered a human head when the boy took a
bucket from under the kitchen sink to take fishing. When she said "I'm
not cooking anymore if you keep bringing [heads] in the kitchen", Warner
set up an extra lab for this. In a similar compromise, "I told him [the
heads next to the couple's bed] really bothered me and he covered them
with a blanket". Debra added "He told me he couldn't keep housekeepers.
He couldn't understand why they kept quitting."
Warner is being charged with domestic battery and illegal preservation
and storage of human remains - apparently from the University of Florida
College of Medicine, where he taught neuroanatomy. Debra and one of
Warner's ex-girlfriends both report that he force-fed them drugs.
El Comercio Web site reports on a 24-year-old woman who stabbed
her boyfriend because he kept calling out his ex-girlfriend's name,
Veronica, during sex. The Monterrey, Mexico, woman stabbed Jorge Armando
Flores in the neck and chest and then called police to tell them what she
had done.
The police claim she told them she grabbed a knife from his trousers and
asked Flores to keep his eyes closed "in order to fulfil one of my sexual
fantasies". She then attacked him. At last report, Flores was listed as
in serious condition.
The Des Moines Register reports on a Storm Lake woman who had
left her 11- and 13-year-old daughters on their own for over a week before
they were found by police. Cynthia Ann Lumsden, 38, left daughters Brooke
and Autumn Lumsden a baseball bat and a dog for protection but didn't
leave them or anyone else a key to the house or a way to contact her,
according to Capt. Bob Swanson. Brooke told police that her mother had
called to check on her daughters, but caller ID didn't show the number.
Brooke told police that her mother was two days overdue, and a police
report says the fridge contained just milk and juice and 'When asked what
they had for supper the night before, both stated that they did not have
supper'.
Ted Wesselmann, whom Cynthia - whose surname he didn't know - once gave
a ride to work, checked on the girls a few times as she had requested, but
he stopped after having an epileptic seizure. Brooke knew that her mother
had left for a cross-country trip with a man. The girl said Cynthia
worked for Smithway Trucking. Smithway said Lumsden had merely applied
for a driving job and been rejected. The girls are now in foster
homes.
So far, more than 400 people have signed up for a new dating service designed by psychoanalyst Frederick Levenson. To actually start operation, initally in New York and Los Angeles, Levenson would like to see his 'TheraDate' service reach 750 members. The idea is that the members' therapists will fill out confidential questionnaires which will be used for matchmaking. Levenson said those with similar experiences can use their history as building blocks for compatible long-term relationships.
Last December, Lesley O'Rourke, of the Isle of Grain, Kent, drove over boyfriend Timothy Taylor, 19, with all four wheels of her car - allegedly because he ignored her. She had earlier thrown a pint of lager over Taylor and driven over his belongings. O'Rourke, 31, later said she hadn't noticed Taylor on the ground. The court was told of a "chilling" 999 call featuring engine-revving sounds. Judge Gerrard Gordon told O'Rourke that she had used a car as a weapon but was otherwise a "perfectly decent citizen". Cleared of attempted murder, she has been banned from driving for two years.
A Savannah, Georgia, man had been drinking for three days and was arguing with his wife. She was pouring his booze down the kitchen sink. So Donald Chase, annoyed, went into his upstairs den and fired a pistol through the floor, into the kitchen. The bullet hit his wife, Jackie, in the top of the head, killing her. In a videotaped interview, Chase, 56, asks police "It was right in the middle of her head? What are the chances of that?". On the tape, he claims he thought she had left the house and adds "I think I killed her. You don't think I killed her when I did that, do you?" Prosecutors contend that the killing was intentional.
Rie Fujii, in Canada on an expired visa, is in trouble - to the tune of eight years in prison - for leaving her three- and 15-month-old children in an empty apartment for 10 days while she spent time out of town with her new boyfriend, who believed a child minder had been hired. Fujii, 24, went home and threw one child's body into a skip. The other's body was left wrapped in a blanket on the floor. Fujii returned to her boyfriend's home. After her landlord found the blanket-wrapped corpse and she surrendered to police, Fujii was heard saying that the children had "cramped [her] style". The children's father, petty criminal Peter Brown, could not be located for the court proceedings.
In Atlanta, Georgia, three-year-old Alexis Headspeth was fatally injured in a bathtub while being bathed by her 11-year-old uncle. The child's mother, Beverly, who is being charged in connection with the incident, took her to hospital, where she died. Five days earlier, the child's grandmother had told a caseworker that she couldn't keep the boy from beating the children in the home. The AP reports that the child protection agency admitted that the caseworker didn't read the family's file, let alone talk to neighbours or question a boyfriend who reportedly used cocaine.
How to find that special person...
Male and female prisoners have managed to have sexual encounters and
conduct strip shows at North Carolina's Person County jail from 6 to 10
September. Sheriff Dennis Oakley said "It's ... because of a staffing
shortage" - his requests for more staff members haven't been met - and
"Things happen". Charges have been brought against 12 inmates for
offences such as prostitution and breaking and entering. A.K. Pruitt, the
jail's administrator, said an investigation revealed that prisoners had
removed the screws that held a Plexiglass barrier in place, allowing them
access to the canteen area and, from there, the females' area. Lookouts
were used to spot guards arriving for random checks. The encounters became
public when two women became upset that the men didn't provide the
marijuana that they had promised them.
Clearwater, Florida, twins Timothy and Matthew Feick, 17, broke into a
home and stole a digital camera, which they pawned without removing the
pictures they took of themselves. The teenagers' mother, Teresa Hoffman,
used her real name to cash a second stolen cheque. Finally, Shamir
Streater, the girlfriend of one of the men, panicked when she tried to
cash a cheque the brothers stole in another burglary; when she ran away,
she left her driver's licence behind.
Detective Philip Jackson says Streater couldn't spell the surname of the
twins who gave her the cheque to cash. But Jackson found their mug shots,
which matched the pictures in the stolen camera.
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