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Archive of some fucked relationships in the news

These items have been culled from 'Anna's News Clippings'. Clippings archives are at this URL. The most recent are at the bottom.
4 September 2001
A Cape Coral, Florida, woman sold her body and that of her 13-year-old daughter to get money for crack cocaine. Stacy Nihipali was not a neglectful parent, though: after all, she smoked the crack with her daughter, after which she would offer the girl to men for a set amount of time. Deputies found out the situation when the mother and daughter were caught burgling the house of a man who refused to pay them for sex (he didn't press charges). Prostitution was Nihipali's sole means of support.
The daughter said she fled Hawaii with her mother and siblings to escape her stepfather, who allegedly allowed her to smoke marijuana and sexually abused her. When taken from her mother, the girl was excited that she would get to wash her hair and have a toothbrush.

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".

6 October 2001
Dayton, Ohio, was the scene of another run-in with a drunk, this one not driving a car, fortunately. Ethan James Herron arrived at hospital unresponsive and was found to have a blood alcohol level of .318 percent (three times the legal limit for driving). He had bruises on his body. Herron, two years of age, had been drinking rum and Coke at home. Police report that his mother's boyfriend William S. Porter, 20, was responsible.

14 October 2001
When William Stewart was arrested for driving drunk, sheriff's deputy Todd Hicks looked in the rubbish bags in the back seat and saw freshly scrubbed body parts. When asked "Who's in the bags?", Stewart said "That's my wife", referring to Joyce Stewart, mother of convicted killer Mark DiMarco. William was dumping limbs on rural roads.
A neighbour of the Stewarts, Laura Steele, said she was doing yard work two months ago when Joyce told her "If you hear me screaming, call the police. I'm in fear for my life". She said she regrets not reporting the four gunshots she heard on the day Joyce was killed.
After he was put in jail and placed on suicide watch, William was found hanging by a bed sheet. He is now unresponsive and on a breathing machine.
Police recall Joyce trying to intimidate jurors and concoct false testimony to protect her son. William spent a year in prison for stealing a woman's coat and purse when visiting DiMarco in jail on Christmas Eve.

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.

22 October 2001
A Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, man had to reschedule his honeymoon because he punched a guest at a wedding reception, causing a skull fracture. Jeffrey A. Maytum was not a guest of the groom who punched him; he was attending another wedding reception in the hotel. Police Captain Mike Babe's report states that the groom was trying to convince Maytum's wife to come back to the groom's hotel room. When Jeffrey Maytum approached and said "Hey", the groom punched him. The Maytums' son, Don, said the groom said "What are you going to do about it?" and laughed. When Don wrapped his hands around the groom's throat, the assembled throng defused the situation.
The bride says she is sure her husband acted in self-defense.

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.

30 October 2001
The Charlotte Observer reports on a North Carolina housewife who in 1995 helped her 14-year-old daughter and her friends with witty remarks for a teen chat room, then later posed as her daughter. Flirting led to steamy 'phone calls to a 17-year-old. She sent photos of "herself" and begged her daughter to go with her to visit him and to play the character she had created online but with "laryngitis" to explain the difference in her voice. After more visits, the mother bought condoms for her daughter, then secretly watched events unfold. The mother later told Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Detective Valencia Rivera that she felt the person having sex was "the girl from the Internet" rather than her daughter.
Worrying that the boy would grow suspicious of her daughter's "laryngitis", she had the girl study up for meeting new, older men. The girl told police that "I was terrified ... of having to have sex and what would happen if [he] discovered I wasn't her". The girl said she cried and told her mother she hated the role but that her mother pleaded "This is the only way I can be somebody else". When her school work began to suffer, her mother said they could keep each other's secrets. On a friend's insistence, the girl finally told her father, who said they would "work this out as a family", but it wasn't until 1998 that the mother sent the girl to a psychologist.
The mother's counselor, Donna Travis, says she suffers from addiction and depression. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison, where she lost 100 pounds, and is now on probation. She said she understands why her daughter refuses to see her but adds that the girl "never refused". Her husband has divorced her. The three adult men were registered as sex offenders, although the mother insists that "They thought I was 18".

4 November 2001
James Cripps, a student at Bristol University, decided to have the complete experience when visiting Las Vegas. After an evening of drinking with Kristy Ladzik, an Australian woman he had just met, he decided to have a Las Vegas wedding. He explained "If you go to Las Vegas, you drink, you gamble, and you get married, which is what I did". The next day, the two went their separate ways. Although Cripps said he thought it would be funny, his girlfriend back in England was not amused. She refused to speak to him again. After having to enrol as a married student, Cripps has decided to try to have the marriage annulled.

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.

14 November 2001
William Stankevicz, who went into a school and attacked students and teachers with his machete, has been refused the death penalty by a Pennsylvania judge. The 56-year-old explained that he was angry about his divorce and accusations of molesting his step-daughters; he couldn't find his ex-wife's home so took out his frustration on her children's former school instead. Stankevicz attacked 11 children, the principal, and two teachers. The principal, who helped wrestle Stankevicz to the ground, suffered the most severe injuries, cuts to her arms and hands.

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.

17 November 2001
The Pioneer Press reports on a Minnesota 19-year-old who was ordered to remove or alter one of his tattoos. Judge Robert King said he wanted a creative sentence for Michael J. Pigg, who, upon emerging from a KKK rally with co-defendant and friend Jarod L. Sparks, punched Sparks's girlfriend's four-year-old biracial child. Witnesses say Sparks lifted the child off the ground and spat slurs at him. The judge wants Pigg, of St. Paul, to see a human rights counselor, read To Kill a Mockingbird, and remove his "100% Honky" tatoo. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said he is hopeful about Pigg seeing the error of his ways, saying the young man has already begun removing some tattoos.

25 November 2001
In Indianapolis, Indiana, Trent Bethel held a knife to his wife's throat, put duct tape over her mouth, and threatened to kill her and the children if she made any sounds. So she decided to stay at her Baptist pastor's house - where he forced his way through a sliding glass door and fatally shot her before killing himself. A news report quotes one of the Bethels' neighbours as saying "They seemed happy. He didn't look like he would do something like that".

1 December 2001
A Beijing court sentenced Dr. Li Quang to death for blowing up a public bus on which his wife was riding. Li told police that he gave his wife a plastic bag which contained a homemade bomb. She didn't die in the explosion, but three others did and more than 40 were injured. Li explained that he wanted to kill her because she was pregnant and he didn't have enough money to support a family.

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.

17 December 2001
A Pontiac, Michigan, jury acquitted Billie Jean Rogers, who was accused of suffocating her husband. Prosecutors contend that Rogers helped her nephew, Harry Titlow, smother Donald Rogers, 74, for the life insurance money. Billie Jean gave a car and $70,000 to Titlow, who claimed to need the money for a sex change operation. Titlow now goes by the name Vonlee Titlowz. His/her attorney claims Rogers died of alcohol poisoning; prosecutors contend that Rogers poured alcohol down the victim's throat before smothering him with a pillow. Titlow's trial begins in January.

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.

22 December 2001
If your communication is this poor, it bodes well for your relationship... Reuters reports that Svein Froeytland of Oslo, Norway, swallowed the gold engagement ring which his girlfriend had hidden in his porridge for a surprise marriage proposal at a Christmas party. The girlfriend, Janne Grim, said she thought her proposal had been ignored, then she realised that it had been swallowed. He agreed to the engagement, borrowing a ring from another guest at the party for the occasion.

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.

10 January 2002
And in dysfunctional family relationship news...
Alaska's Anchorage Daily News reported on Saturday that a Texas man flew to Muldoon to visit his mother and left after strangling her, binding her corpose with duct tape, and hiding it in the breakfast bar of the trailer in which she lived. Police said Kenneth Padgett, 37, hoped to get some money from pawning Charlotte Miles's videos and CDs (for which he received a couple of thousand dollars) and by letting her trailer. The investigation started when Padgett was on his way home. Airline employees spotted a shotgun in one of his bags. A more thorough search of his bags revealed women's jewellery, ID cards for his mother, and women's clothing.
The breakfast bar had been sealed in several ways, but the body's location was quickly revealed by a foul smell and fluids leaking from the kitchen area in the trailer. The renter claimed she didn't know there was a dead body in her kitchen until the oozing and smell became obvious on the day the police arrived.
Padgett said his mother's death by asphyxiation was natural and that he awoke to see her die after she had trouble breathing. He said he covered her face in duct tape later so he wouldn't have to look at her before sealing her in the homemade crypt.

17 January 2002
In Alliance, Philadelphia, Frank and Renee Layne's one-year-old girl was taken away by order of Judge Jim James because the couple had not met counseling and other requirements. The couple, who told a social worker a couple weeks ago that they didn't want to pursue custody of the girl, are expecting a 14th child. Six of their children were taken away or put up for adoption before 2000, when allegations arose that the couple sold their eldest boy on the Internet for $300. Although they denied this charge, the pair did admit that they neglected their children. The remaining six were removed at that time.

14 February 2002
There is a fairly large amount of messed-up stuff about, just in time for Valentine's Day...
Terry Leblanc is a well-known gambler who has apparently earned over six million (US or Canadian?) dollars in the Canadian lottery. His girlfriend Josee Dubreuil, a stripper, stands accused of stealing $124,000 of that, giving winning tickets to her sisters and misrepresenting them as a gift from a "customer". She claimed he gave her the tickets, and one of the sisters, Nathalie Harb, said she remembered Leblanc visiting her and eating chicken for dinner but doesn't remember if he asked for the money back.
The Edmonton Journal-Canadian Press reports that a judge in Hull, Quebec, has ordered her to sit in the back of the courtroom after her previous flirting from the defence table flustered Leblanc to the point where he had difficulty testifying. Leblanc, 34, said he remains smitten with Dubreuil, 26, who took his virginity and was his first real girlfriend.

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.

18 February 2002
A Brighton woman and her partner wre charged with smothering two of her babies and a baby nephew, but the charges didn't stick, as the court couldn't decide which of the pair was responsible for the deaths. The 40-year-old husband is serving 2.5 years for neglect, 3.5 years for rape, and six months for threatening a social worker's life. Well, after serving 2.5 years in Holloway Prison for cruelty to her five children, the 28-year-old woman has been released, although her name hasn't. And she is now six months pregnant with her ninth child.
Brighton MP Des Turner said enforced sterilisation is a tempting option but "there are moral questions about people's civil liberties". Her care of her previous children included ignoring them, feeding them roast dinners before they were weaned, and letting them sleep in their own filth, with flies for company. They didn't know what toothbrushes or cutlery were.

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.

15 March 2002
Jefferson County, Oklahoma, officers took Cherse Smith into custody, foiling her plan to spring her son Joshua Bagwell and fellow inmate Curtis Gambill from a Texas jail. Sheriff Harvey Burkhart reported that a hacksaw blade Smith brought the men was found in the jail. Smith also obtained two rifles, camping equipment, and aerial maps. Gambill's brother, Rick, went to police after Smith asked him to clean the rifles. Police arrested Smith when she tried to carry out her plan.
Bagwell and Curtis, who were in jail for the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old cheerleader in 1996, had overpowered a jailer a month earlier, leading to a 10-day manhunt near the Texas/Oklahoma border.

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.

15 March 2002
According to the Carolina Morning News, two South Carolina teachers were arrested after allegedly trying to hire students to beat up one of their classmates. Tiffany L. Grayson and her sister Lakeisha both taught at Beaufort High School until last month, when Tiffany decided to get back at the female student with whom her (adult) boyfriend was allegedly having an affair. Police Chief Jeff Dowling described reports that Tiffany approached three students at a basketball game and offered them money if they would beat up the girl. Then, in late February, she allegedly accompanied four students off school grounds and made a similar offer. She allegedly did the same the next day in a classroom. A hearing is set for 29 March.

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.

16 April 2002
A Richmond, Virginia, judge denied an executed killer's family the option of carrying out his last request. Daniel Lee Zirkle asked that his ashes be spread on the graves of his daughter and her half-sister, who he murdered when they were 4 and 14, respectively. The judge had entered a temporary injunction barring Zirkle's family from entering the cemetery where Christina Zirkle and Jessica Shifflett are buried. The girls' mother, Barbara Jo Shifflett, said of Zirkle "He's still trying to torment me".

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.

28 April 2002
The Des Moines Register reports on a woman who decided to have sex in a vehicle. Burlington, Iowa, police found Molly E. Burchett, 18, having sex with Nicholas Lee Huston, 23, while her 18-month-old child wandered in an alley nearby. County Attorney Patrick Jackson said "I could have seen them from my office window if I had looked out". Huston was charged with driving while barred, in addition to indecent exposure. He was also wanted for failure to appear in court.

16 May 2002
This time, it's mostly messed-up families rather than Springerian (or worse) couples.

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.

30 May 2002
Ronald Shanaburger was upset that his girlfriend, Amy Parsons, didn't attend his father's funeral. But he married her anyway, about three years ago, and they were later divorced. He now claims that his continuing anger about the funeral issue caused him to suffocate his 7-month-old son. Judge Raymond Kickbush heard that Shanaburger wrapped clingfilm around the boy's head in an attempt to punish Parsons. Parsons is due to collect on the child's $100,000 life insurance policy.

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.

5 June 2002
In an update on the item about Christina Silvas, whose stripping job led to her daughter's expulsion from a Christian kindergarten in California, Silvas quit her job and now works at a local radio station. Her daughter was accepted back by the school. Since then, Silvas has posed nude for Playboy's Web site; after all, "posing for Playboy is the American dream for a woman", she said.
Officials of Capital Christian School say that Silvas has broken her "Christian Philosophy" agreement again, but Pastor Rick Cole said the girl will not be expelled again. After the Playboy deal, Silvas now has enough money to pay her daughter's $400 per month tuition for some time.

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.

17 June 2002
In Lebanon, Ohio, David Biren was charged with domestic violence and assault of his estranged wife and her boyfriend. Biren, 52, told a Warren County judge that he dropped drums, boxes, soda cans, and a sheathed dagger on Kimberly Biren and Charles "Shadow" Perkins because he thought they were vampires, given their "extensive involvement" in the vampire world.

"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...

2 July 2002
The Anchorage Daily News reports that Joseph Sivertsen was having sex with his girlfriend in a Spenard, Alaska, alley, when Jerome King, 41, walked by. King asked the pair "Are you having fun?", whereupon Sivertsen, 36, hefted a piece of pipe - from a nearby construction site - and struck him multiple times in the head, according to police. Several witnesses in a nearby shop saw the attack take place in the parking lot.
The criminal complaint against Sivertsen says "Spontaneous interruption of a public sex act to engage in an aggravated assault should be considered as a strong indication of a seriously unaddressed anger management problem".

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.

12 July 2002
In South Fork, Pennsylvania, Shawn Popish took his sons, ages four and six, with him to burgle a neighbour's home. The police say the burglary victim found the boys in the home waiting for their father. According to the Tribune Democrat, Popish told police he was trying to stop a burglary after seeing someone enter the house. The cops don't think this likely.

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.

20 July 2002
Pregnant New Zealand porn actress 'Nicky' decided that she would give birth on film, and her family had no problem with the idea. Chief social worker Shannon Pakura of the Department of Child, Youth, and Family Services said "This is the first time I understand the birth of a child has been used in a pornographic movie and so we are wanting to tread very carefully in making sure we are acting within the framework of the legislation". She added that she is "absolutely appalled" by the idea of the film, titled Ripe. The department are considering various options for removing the child from the mother's custody if the film goes ahead.
Ripe's producer, Steve Crow, said this is "Nazi" talk and added that childbirth - and murder and mayhem - are shown on television fairly often.

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.

5 August 2002
A worker at a group home for mentally retarded boys in Durham, North Carolina, Robert Fuller Garrison decided to give four of his charges - one of whom has an IQ of 60-69 and the rest of whose IQs are 40-45 - some exposure to females. One of the boys told his parent about an incident in which Garrison and another worker at the home, Eddie Holden, had prostitute Latrina Shagail Battle perform sexual acts on the two workers while the boys watched. She was invited to the home - which she said was represented as a 'group home for sexually active boys' - on the following day, when she performed sex acts with three of the four boys, whose ages range from 12 to 17. Battle and the adult men are now in jail.

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.

11 August 2002
Clara Harris ran over her husband three times in a parking lot, leaving her Mercedes-Benz atop his body. Harris's 16-year-old daughter from a previous marriage was in the car. After the 24 July incident, Harris told reporters it was an accident. But now it has been revealed that Harris had hired a private investigation company earlier in the day to monitor her husband and determine whether he was having an affair. Blue Moon Investigations have turned over to police their tape of David Harris, in which he is seen going to a hotel with employee Gail Bridges - and in which Clara and Bridges were escorted out of the hotel after the former tore off the latter's shirt and began yelling at her.
After getting out of the car and being punched in the face by the 16-year-old, Clara told her husband "I'm so sorry! I love you! Keep breathing!"

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.

18 August 2002
Washington's Seattle Times reports on Theresa Olson, a public defender who apparently was seen having sex with a client in a King County Jail interview room. Olson, who has been a public defender for 15 years, had met with Sebastian Burns, 26, to discuss his upcoming trial for triple murder. Sources said a sergeant noticed odd movement in the interview room. The jail's director, Steve Thompson, said "we have a situation that's an internal investigation at this point".
The murder case has dragged on for eight years now. This will add to that time.

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.

25 August 2002
Berlin's Rolf Eden, 72, has promised an inheritance of 250,000 euros to the last women he sleeps with. Bild newspaper quotes the famous playboy as saying "...and it will all end with a heart attack and then I'm gone". Eden, whose offer is part of his last will and testament, warned potential applicants - preferably under 30 years of age - of his advanced age and exhorted them to hurry since "It could end very soon. Maybe even tomorrow".

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.

4 September 2002
Our first items comes from Detroit, where an unidentified man tried to sell his six-year-old daughter to customers at a party store. One customer told WDIV TV that the man was hoping to get money for alcohol and was asking $50 for the child. A customer informed a worker at the store of the unauthorised sale attempts, and the worker in turn called police.
By the time officers arrived, the witnesses had left. While charges will not be filed, WDIV TV reports that the girl has been placed in foster care.

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.

8 September 2002
A Jackson, Mississippi, man couldn't find a child-minder. So Caleb Laforrest Pete, 41, took his three-year-old son with him to rob a Community Bank branch. After the teller handed over the money, Pete ran off, but the boy wasn't so quick to budge and, according to police spokesman Robert Graham, slowed Pete enough that he was seen making his getaway in a cab. Police shopped the vehicle short while later. The cab also contained Pete's wife and five-month-old daughter. Pete is accused of holding up the same teller last month. His children have been taken into care by state officials.

13 September 2002
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that one 16-year-old fatally shot another at a crack house after the victim winked at the suspect's girlfriend. According to the complaint, Andrew C. Morton shot Justin J. Simpson in the head after both smoked some marijuana and discussed Morton's belief that Simpson was having sex with Morton's girlfriend. The pregnant girlfriend told police that she tried to tell Morton that an incident in which Simpson had allegedly been 'feeling' on her merely involved a touch on the arm when to get her attention at a store. After the homeowner told the youths gathered at the house that they had to leave for the day, Morton shot Simpson three times and then started crying.
The girl at first blamed the shooting on the man who had dragged the body out of the house (leaving a bloody trail that police followed inside), but she changed her story upon further questioning.

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.

19 September 2002
The Ottawa Citizen reports on convicted paedophile Ian Cheeseman. At his dangerous offender hearing, Assistant Crown attorney Robert Peltier reported that Newfoundland police had received roughly 20 complaints about several collect telephone calls made by Cheeseman from jail. It is alleged that Cheeseman, 34, posed as a disc jockey, got young girls on the 'phone, and told them they would win Backstreet Boys tickets if they simply urinated in a cup near the 'phone. Cheeseman pleaded guilty last fall to committing 16 sex crimes, mostly against pre-teen girls, over a 13-year period.

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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